Off to see Corinne Bailey Rae @ St. Andrews Hall

We're headed down to Detroit tonight to see Corinne Bailey Rae at St. Andrews Hall. I love Corinne Bailey Rae, but more importantly I love that city. I do. I love wandering amongst the ghosts on her streets and feeling as though you might be standing smack dab in the middle of what someday might be the most modern ruins of Romanesque stature this continent has ever known. This city used to be great. I'd have liked to have seen that. I love it here. I could love it elsewhere, and have, but I can never just walk the streets of Detroit...I feel them, as if they were the dirt lanes and river banks of my childhood. So tonight I'll wait in an alley off of Congress, hoping to get in early enough to find a good spot on the balcony, just to the left of the stage, perhaps, and high above the young woman we've come to see. Then when the show is over we'll slip back outside to that other lady we came to see...Detroit.

I wonder what this place will look like when Zoey grows up? Sometimes it feels as though the decaying buildings on Sproat, between Woodward and Cass, will still stand empty and crumbling when she finds her way here...if she ever does. I hope she does. Who knows where our lives might find us looking back from, but I would hope that someday she gets to know this fabulous city. It's the most beautiful shame I've ever known.