"It's all one big Detroit," my friend Warren said.  At the time, I believed him.  I hadn't traveled very much at the time - we never went on vacation and I'd never made enough money to leave the house, let alone the state.  He'd spent part of his 20s in Spain, and had extensively toured the US and most of Europe, with a few stops in Australia.  If he said it's all one big Detroit, I had no reason to doubt him.

Looking back seven years later, however, I beg to differ.  My first major city outside of Detroit was San Francisco.  It's a city that the US opened to the world, the best of culture, natural beauty and chocolate (yes, there's incredible chocolate; it's the home base of Scharffen Berger, Joseph Schmidt and E. Guittard, not to mention Ghirardelli).  I've had cheap sushi, luxuriant bubble baths, my first ever look at the ocean, snake soup, daylong walking trips through the center of town, fine Asian art, book wanderlust, the opportunity to look at a museum-quality tattooed skull... everything I ever wanted is within seven square miles.

My next major city was Toronto, one of those places that I had only understood in personal assumptions.  It's hard to remember that Detroit is a border town, and probably harder to keep in mind that Canada really and truly is a foreign country.  Before I went, I knew that Toronto was the home of the Hockey Hall of Fame and the stage for Kevin Quain and the Mad Bastards, and nothing else.  Turns out their chocolate is terrific (go to Soma in the Distillery), the traffic north of the Annex is terrible and the city is rich in history and fantastic Chinese food.  the beaches are just lovely, too, not only for the view of Lake Ontario, but also for the people.  I think I heard 14 different languages, each with their own pitches and utterances.  I remember thinking the varied ethnic makeup was strikingly like that of San Francisco.

I've been to New York as well, but not long enough to really absorb the place.  Not that anyone could - the second largest metropolitan area in the US in terms of population, the marquee city of the nation and one of the world's most revered places, a hotbed of art, entertainment, sports, medicine, finance and life itself.  Being in New York is unlike being anywhere else.  Meals were inexpensive and top-notch; parking was expensive and hellish.  The buildings are tall but with a sense of human scale - I was always aware that people made this place happen, and the idea of Providence making it great was laughable.  Moreover, it was strikingly beautiful, in an austere Greek-column-and-Classical-Roman kind of way. 

So what's wrong with Detroit?  I've lived here all my life - or rather, I've lived nearby all my life.  No one with any money whatsoever lives in Detroit unless they're trying to make a fashion statement.  Detroit used to be a great city - 2 million people, a thriving manufacturing economy, well-heeled citizens who contributed by means of buildings and works of art.  Underlying all of this, however, was a very angry black population whose rights had been reduced to bare basics and whose communities were frequently gutted in the name of "progress".  The Detroit Police Department was founded in 1863 in response to a race riot; another race riot happened in 1943. The Hastings Street neighborhood was demolished for a freeway (as was Chinatown; all ethnic minorities have been historically dismissed with equal indifference), and black churches were intimidated into frustration.  The riots of 1967 were the most visible sign of a century of tension.  That tension still exists, but not as a struggle within the city. Today, the city v. suburbs battle plays out in grand manner during every county commissioner meeting.  We don't label it "race relations" anymore, but the truth is Detroit is 88% black and the suburbs are over 90% white, and that this population shift has been continuous for the past 50 years.

So much for everyone getting along.  The shame that Detroit possesses, however, shouldn't get in the way of fixing the beauty or securing the positive history that still pokes through.  Detroit is the oldest American city outside of the original 13 colonies, founded in 1701.  We have Fort Wayne, which is open to the public, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the newly revamped Detroit Science Center, a renovated Campus Martius (named after the other Campus Martius in Rome, a city center reserved for military parades and monuments), international music festivals and Eastern Market, one of the world's largest open-air markets.  We are one of only four US cities with teams in every major professional sport, and three of those teams actually play within Detroit's borders.  Our public art includes the famous Joe Louis fist, an Alexander Calder sculpture by the courthouse, monuments to Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac (the city's founder) and Johannes Gutenberg and the Heidelberg Project.

Detroit, however, isn't San Francisco, or Toronto, or New York, or like many other major cities in that it is rather unmanageable to visit.  Detroit sprawls for over 135 square miles, smaller than Toronto (which also boasts 2.7 million people), but much larger than San Francisco (808,000 people, 46.1 sq. miles) with similar population.  Also unlike all of the above mentioned cities, there is no green space, mass transit is a joke or a slur depending on the day and the crime rate is high for a population of this size.  If you want to leave a bad area of a large city, you usually hop a bus, or hail a cab, or sometimes walk very fast.  In Detroit, the concept of neighborhoods is illusory in most cases, and cabs aren't available unless you call ahead.  Much of what makes a city worth seeing is outside of Detroit as well - the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village are in Dearborn; the zoo is in Royal Oak; the modern art museum that everyone respects is in Bloomfield and the state parks are in Clarkston, Rochester, Romeo, Grosse Ile... everywhere but Detroit.  The city's very visible blight issues are nothing to be dismissed, either, nor is the "regreening", the subtle takeover of abandoned property and vacant lots by scrub trees and overgrowth. 

I want to believe my friend when he said that all cities were different in the same way.  I want to believe that Detroit can be reclaimed.  I want to see the city's flaming jewel that resides somewhere here waiting to be found.  But I don't know what this will take.  I don't know what makes Detroit unique because I only see it in tatters. My friend knew that every city has the same potential to slide into Detroithood and abandon its own people, but I know now that some cities are just different.  Is different better?  Or is different only different?  Detroit may someday get the chance to find out.

Statler Blvd. Studios has much to crow about!  Jef Reynolds, the CBG ("Chief Big Guy") and I have just completed work on a second album with Eastlawn Records label head RJ Spangler.  You Know I Can't Refuse: The Bill Heid Sessions features some of Detroit's finest musicians, including Keith Kaminski of the Motor City Horns (who helped with the mixing) and Johnnie Bassett, and was recorded at Aashrum Studio in Ortonville and our homebase in St. Clair Shores.

My job, one I hope to perform more in the future, was to design the cover.  This is my third album cover for people other than myself, and my second for Eastlawn Records.  I must admit to a love affair with Photoshop CS3, and eventually I will get CS4 and love it just as much if not more.  The final product was placed in my hands on Sunday, and it looks as good as I'd anticipated.  I'd received some positive feedback earlier in the week, so I was looking forward to seeing it for myself.  There's still nothing like the finished product to prove that you've arrived.

Jef's always been meticulous about sound.  As an engineer for 30 years, he has developed an incredible sense of aural perfection, and it shows in his process.  He works like an alchemist, mixing levels with filters and plates, augmenting this, changing that, all in the quest to produce audio gold.  Countless mixes were tested in as many environments as possible to make sure that it always sounded the way it should: full, vibrant, balanced and resonant.  He even asked to borrow my phone - to download a mix onto my SD card and play it through my phone's speakers!

This is our third album together, and we're pretty happy with the results.  Like so much of our lives, however, it was a collaborative effort.  Jef and I share a lot of the creative process wherever possible, bouncing ideas off each other and testing throughout.  Does this text color look good?  Does this compression scheme work with the guitar?  He let me tear through his record collection for ideas (a common habit of mine), and I loaned him my ears.

For legacy projects of this type, we like to invoke as much of a "classic" feel as we can.  When I'm hunting for ideas, I go to enormous coffee table books with very large illustrations and many examples of period art and advertising. If you're looking for Christmas presents for me, you can't go wrong with those.  For this album, I looked at mostly mid 1950's album covers, as much of the music featured on the Bill Heid Sessions was originally recorded during this time.  Jef listened to period recordings and researched some of the recording techniques used during the original sessions. Together, we tried to present the warmth and brightness of a 1950's album as recorded and released at Chess or Blue Note.

Want to see and hear the results for yourself?  The CD release party will be held at the Cadieux Café in Detroit on Sunday, September 27th at 9:30 PM.  Bring an empty stomach and a lot of friends for this not-to-be-missed event.

Albums that Jef and I worked on together:

KT Lowe, The Basics (2006)
Alberta Adams, Detroit is My Home (2008)
Faruq Z. Bey, Rev. Robert Jones and ML Liebler, Gasoline: The Legacy Sessions (2009)
Black Hat, Phases of the Sun (2009)
RJ Spangler's Blue Four, You Know I Can't Refuse: The Bill Heid Sessions (2009)

I used to be a real morning person – up at dawn, reading books in bed as the sun rose, then running around with my dad as he made breakfast or went for an early drive.  I fell out of it as he became sicker and no longer maintained a regular schedule.  Now I have to return to my childhood ways next week, when all my classes begin at 8:30 in the morning.  At this time of year, the sun rises at 6:30 in the morning; in a month, it will be dark by that time.  I will wake up before the birds.  I will probably drink more green tea, even though I have no desire to develop any sort of caffeine dependence.  And I will wait for the 7:38 bus, the only one I know for sure will get me to class on time.

But I have help.  This morning, I walked through downtown Ann Arbor, which I haven’t done in a while and never did often enough when I lived there. What struck me instantly was the smells – Canadian bacon, bitter coffee, frying eggs, chocolate chip pancakes.  Early morning food, the kind people only consume before 11 AM even if the coney island offers them all day, the kind I don’t eat often because it requires too many of my synapses too early in the morning.  I don’t like eggs or hash browns, but I like their odors, and I like to see people eating with relish and real energy.

I wandered up Fifth Street, past the all-day diner and the small restaurant that closes each day at three, up toward the farmer’s market.  Autumn was just starting to roll in; the leaves had suddenly taken on a crispness, as if retreating their essences back into the trees.  I wore a long sleeved grey and black striped shirt and loose black pants, with a light jacket the color of bark.  The temperature said 61; my chilled ears said 55.  The dew on the small patches of grass bubbled brightly as the sun broke through the buildings, and the newly laid cobblestones shone with a dull satin finish.  My Nikes made no sound as I walked the five blocks to the market.

As always, it was crowded with intelligent-looking people.  Ann Arbor is a major stop for people of education, particularly those with an environmental or cultural bent.  I see them every day at the museum where I work.  Today, dads brought their babies in papoose-like sacks, while moms chose the plums and tomatillos and this season’s honey.  Each colorful booth was mobbed with earnest, bright-eyed customers, paying in cash and inspecting each piece of fruit as if it were a rare Chinese bronze.  The peppery-green smell of basil and the earthiness of fresh-brewed organic coffee wended through every row of booths.  There were bakers, too, and soapmakers, flower growers, hobbyist jewelers and a few textile artists.  My favorite baker and florist were there; my favorite soapmaker was not.  I wanted to bring roses to my loveliest, but I wouldn’t see him for another day.  I consoled myself with homemade almond biscotti, crisp and thinly sliced with generous white chocolate glazing. 

I was due at work soon, so I walked back down Fifth.  The tea shop was open, and I was so tempted to go in – it’s a hangout for Germans, a sizable community of which still exists in Ann Arbor.  Speaking in guttural, sharp tones and bristling with orderly chutzpah, I appreciate the chatter, even if I don’t understand a word of it.  I pulled myself away from the shop and wandered past the open door of the mosaic gallery.  Across the street, the day spa was opening; oils of lavender, calendula and orange lightly pricked the air.  The buses bustled by me, quieted by hybrid motors and quelled with biodiesel engines.  Campus was a few blocks to my left. 

I got to my museum a few minutes after 10, a wrapped biscotti in my backpack and the morning walk in my hair.  I was awake and ready to work.  If Ann Arbor greets me like this every school morning, I will make it through the semester just fine. 

“I’m a woman first, a mother second, a laundress third.” – Ellen Tien

This line saddens me.  Where’s the “I’m me” part of this statement?  Where’s the “I’m alive and I don’t compromise my values” part?  Even a well-placed fuck-you at this point would be heartening.  I read this and feel this woman is subsumed by these arbitrary categories.  Luckily, I’m here to help.

The article that I found this quote in is about her middling marriage to a nice, not quite perfect guy, the mystique of divorce and the happy-ever-after myth that we’re all encouraged to buy into.  It’s a feminist critique, too: we can do it all, but why?  And for whom?  It’s not a great piece of writing, but I sympathize with it. I also rail against it – this role playing is hardly inspiring, and she’s drowning in being someone else’s definition. No wonder she’s miserable. 

I’m probably a feminist; I’ve never actually met one, so I can only guess if I am.  But  if I am, I’d be a feminist who doesn’t feel that men are out to control everything.  Historically, male hegemony is one of those white people’s burdens that seems to have pervaded all of American culture.  Most people, or most educated people at least, try to rally against it.  It’s fairly well-entrenched, however, and won’t disappear in my lifetime.  I forgive most people for buying into it, but not without mild admonishment and with a determination to keep it as far away from me as possible.

Women made nice gains in the 70’s, lost ground in the 80’s, held steady in the 90’s and went schizophrenic in the last decade.  Now women seem to be divided between extremes – polyphiloprogenitive* and worldly ascetic – that will never meet and do not adequately describe most women’s lives.  The most visible battleground is abortion (for no good reason), but, fueled by religion and reactionary politics, the distance between women promises to destroy more lives that any sympathetic doctor ever could.

I propose a reclamation of the self, all selves.  It’s time to dismantle the sacred cows, the overarching, rigid categories of sex and gender that come loaded with guilt and shame.  Why should I define myself by my genitalia?  I may belong to the female sex, but I guarantee my vagina doesn’t think for me.  I hardly think there’s such a thing as “maternal instinct” or “women’s intuition”, and I’ve met understanding, caring men with little to no trace of machismo.  These categories are damaging in the long run – we give up ourselves to fit in elsewhere, and for what?  So that we can be with other people who gave up themselves?  Women are so fractured these days, broken by expectations and split apart from men by arbitrary stereotypes, and the self is gone.  For the record, I suspect the same is true of men, with one terrible turn: they’re not allowed to discuss it. 

I am KT.  I will always be KT, no matter what else happens.  I am overly proud to the point of narcissism about this.  I think.  I write.  I draw stick people.  I read more books than most, and listen to more oldies than anyone.  I critique chocolate.  I choose my partner every morning all over again.  Individuals are defined by what they do, not how they’re born or where they’re scattered by dint of census or social convention.  Yes, I might be a woman, and I might be a student, a professional, a daughter, a lover, but these roles are meaningless without the actual meat of me to fill them.  What kind of a daughter would I be if I were only a bland facsimile of someone else?  I’d be no more significant than another piece of unfinished business in someone’s inbox.

We’re not sides of a scale, but points on a continuum (see genetic differences like Turner’s Syndrome and Klinefelter’s Syndrome, and intersexed/transgendered individuals for examples).  It’s no secret why the LGBT movement chose a rainbow for its symbol – it accurately represents the great diversity of human life and the way we interact and engage with each other.  We all have a place, if we choose to accept it, and especially if we accept it as individuals.  I am KT.  I am not a mother.  Fuck the laundry.

Source article: "She's Happily Married, Dreaming of Divorce", Ellen Tien.  Yep, it's from Oprah, but I read it on CNN and found myself continuing to revisit this premise from an individualist perspective.  This article was highly divisive and continues to make waves in some places.

*Polyphiloprogenitive: A nice word that I think TS Eliot coined; he’s certainly the only person I’ve noted using it.  It means “Overly fruitful; having many children” and by extension “Overflowing with love or charity”.  It has a maternal connotation.