We woke up late, a 2pm light hitting the walls of our room, and in the space of ten minutes, Saelee Oh and I got ready and walked down Moran Street. 

From there, the day unraveled itself much like a ribbon, with the fabric of its hours moving and having me walking from house to house as each artist here continues to create and work within their home: Richard Colman painting patterns along a wall and forming a base coat of paint in a room which will eventually be covered in trees, Monica Canilao sculpting and creating a visual cacophony of objects strewn about and placed perfectly along the surfaces of a porch, Ben Wolf organizing dormers and painting geometric shapes along the surfaces of a wall, and Saelee Oh cutting out figures and sculpting miniature homes.

For several hours I wandered through each space, extending my hand when I could, going from house to house and documenting the process of progress within each home.

Days ago, in a conversation with neighborhood friend Chris Riddell revolving around music, we somehow got onto the topic of Die Antwoord, who were close friends of mine. The next day, he came to me, saying how they were playing here, in Detroit, on the 23rd.

Today is the 23rd.

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It was a few hours into the evening when we got into the van- Monica, Harrison, Tod, Bobby, Saelee and myself all driving downtown to see the show.

We arrived when openers Rye Rye were performing. After a bit of time - an interlude of stage set-up and a brief moment when I left to meet with Die Antwoord’s tour manager and to smuggle in a bag of alcohol with Saelee - Die Antwoord went on stage. 

The excitement was palpable and after a blistering introduction of video and noise, Die Antwoord came out in a contained fury which escalated further and farther in energy with every song- music blaring and video and lights scintillating through the senses of one’s vision; their art, music and stage performance / presence growing exponentially with each time I see them.

After over an hour of performance, the show ended. People hung around for awhile, a large line forming and taking up the majority of the venue’s space to meet with the band. We waited around in the front area where I saw Ninja and had a brief moment of embrace and conversation before he left to go sign autographs for the fans and persons who purchased $0$, their new album. 

From there, we left- Monica, Harrison, Tod, Bobby and Saelee all squeezing into the spaces of the van where we drove around the city- stumbling upon a night adventure we had not planned.

We ambled along the street, detours and navigation from separate phones taking us down different paths and one-way streets. There was a calm air blowing around, the storm from a few days previous having already stopped. We drove through the innards of downtown for a brief few moments before taking a street whose detour said we were to eventually reach the freeway and from there the path back to our neighborhood.

We continued along the roadway for a brief few minutes, the van accelerating in speed as the empty street passed on aloft in a silent curve, its black asphalt and the white lines separating the lanes of traffic pullulating like clouds and growing and gathering in the distance. We rounded the curve, signs surrounding still signaling that this road was the route to take to reach the freeway. The path extended- further and farther we drove down the street until abruptly- its pathway was suddenly terminated. 

The road just ended. 

The car drove over a curb crumbling and a mound of dirt, with no sign or warning as to the street's end.

We stopped immediately and pulled over. I got out to inspect the car; luckily, no damage had been done. I got back in- everyone's heads were turned, necks craned and eyes affixed to an abandoned building of old architecture, a quondam apartment complex. Everyone seemed to have the same idea- we pulled off to the side and onto an empty lot after removing a plastic net and several construction cones. We locked the van and one after another pushed our way through the broken glass of a window to enter the abandoned building’s interior.

The air was thick. Clouds of dust pushed themselves around, while light came in through the few windows which were not boarded up- patterns of silver and blue piling themselves in piles on the floor and affording visions of the numerous dust particles pushing around in their pathway. 

I took out a small flashlight that I had in the watch-pocket of my pants and followed along the route that Monica Canilao, Harrison, Saelee Oh, Tod Seelie and Bobby were walking. 

It was a small corridor, with fragments from the roof above reaching down like small hands through the holes of the building. We entered different rooms, each having its own architecture of objects strewn about. 

The first room that I entered was filled with collapsing cabinets- each filled with documents from a school or an office. Cobwebs hung and moved about in the air like intricate patterns of lace with dust and many fragments of paint crowding their enclosure. I walked around the room, sifting through its detritus with Monica and Saelee, the three of us finding strange and perplexing artifacts- the drawing of a house from a child named Ava Gardner, a "twist-on nipple unit" and an envelope of old "I Voted Republican And I'm Proud" stickers all together in the same cabinet.

We each walked around the complex, going through old rooms and hallways, our feet weary of creaking boards and hollow floors for at any moment they could collapse in on themselves.

After wandering through the majority of the first floor and sifting through the second, I found myself on the third, this floor having many more rooms, with a view through the ceiling to the fourth where floorboards and pieces of wood fell through blindingly and violently, as if someone struck them down or tossed them from a great height. 

The light of the moon was visible in fragments and fractures as I looked up and stared through the floor to the other and past the roof which was in its own state of deterioration. 

I went back into the staircase, looking to see how far up I could go. Upon entering the fourth floor I saw a small window with an even smaller balcony outside. I peered outside its space and down, looking to the buildings off in the distance- a skyline of downtown Detroit. 

I started to hear voices and looked over, seeing Harrison and Tod Seelie through the bars of another window. 

I was curious as to how they got there, for the building was not attached in any way to the one I was in. Harrison explained that he and Tod got on the balcony and hoisted themselves up a floor and entered the building through a window.

“It’s easy,” he said. 

I looked at the window for a moment, studying to see if a person my size and height could fit into its small space. I wasn’t sure, but got up anyway. I brushed aside the glass on the sill of the window and stepped out onto the space of the balcony which is being called a balcony here, but in reality was a small concrete ledge, no more than half-a-foot in diameter. 

Soon, I found myself hanging over the ledge of the building and scaling it a floor in order to reach the building adjacent to ours. I somehow fit my figure through the spaces of the broken window and the three of us wandered further, throughout the new building- its state of decay resembling much the one we had just come from.

I wandered through several rooms, following Harrison for a moment before branching off from him and Tod.

I took a set of stairs to the bottom floor and worked my way through the building, inspecting each room and vein of hallway. After a brief bit of exploring, I eventually reached the top floor, going through its spaces and finding a room with many others attached to it that once belonged to a family.

Off in the distance, I heard a voice murmur: "This is the saddest thing."

I walked into the room, a small pool of yellow light guiding my way. Far off, on the opposite end of the floor, I saw Bobby. His hands were clutching and hanging up a mound of small dresses which once belonged to a child. 

The whole floor was still decorated- family photos and portraits lined the walls and pots and plates filled the cupboards and cabinets. In the cavity where the sink once was: a pile of old suits and newspapers; metal here being nonexistent, its objects having been scrapped for money somewhere distant.

"This is the saddest thing,” he repeated to himself, “they thought they were gonna come back." 

Bobby examined the clothes for awhile, his hands dusting the dresses which he eventually hung on a small nail whose torso protruded out the spaces of a wall. Instantly, its color flooded the space, the dust having been kicked off of it and its fuchsia-colored sequins reflecting the light from his headlamp and my flashlight's bulb. 

Far back, in the corner of the space was a room whose image most burns its way into my mind- walls filled with old 45 record sleeves from early hip-hop and jazz musicians, a sticker for the restaurant Chili’s, a crumbling leather coat in the closet and two trophies for 2nd and 3rd place of a basketball tournament on a shelf- all amongst a pile of roof and bedding which had fallen and caved in from the floor above. I sifted through the room, noticing and finding a large amount of things: a binder full of baseball cards, a styrofoam top-hat, an old album full of photos and numerous comic books crumbling from water damage. 

We went through the spaces of the house, finding artifacts and remnants of the family that once lived here- their objects organized in a small way, though the majority of their body having already been gone through by persons who came into this space previous to our arrival.

We wandered on for awhile, and eventually, collectively, decided to leave. 

It was at this moment that everyone began tossing objects from the windows and placing them together in piles.

We stepped outside, the moonlight hovering around us like water from a distant lake- we waded through the pools of light, filling the van back up with all the objects accrued and gathered, everyone and everything somehow managing to fit inside. 

As we were putting the objects into the van, an old man came down the street, his feet shuffling against the surfaces of the curb. His hands were calloused, aged several years, and his eyes had a wandering-wondering look. He pushed a small shopping cart filled with objects and items presumably from this or other abandoned buildings.

"Yep, it's a nice one," he murmured, "you got to be on the look out for the old guy though, the one in the blue shirt- he catches you and you're caught-" he interrupted his sentence with an abrupt smile. 

We had a passing conversation with him as we put and placed objects into the van. He was, surprisingly, non-territorial with the space and the objects we had found, lamenting that he should have gotten to it first and that, "what's yours is yours and what's mine is mine."

We gathered into the spaces of the van, waved off and away to him and pulled out- driving back towards the music venue, hoping to catch friends Die Antwoord before they left, but to no avail.

From there we drove off, taking the necessary route back to the neighborhood where we unpacked and emptied the car of our bounty and fled off into the spaces of the homes to work for a few minutes before heading back to the other houses to sleep while light from the next day crept into the spaces of the city.

*

I stayed up for awhile with Saelee, ruminating over the day and talking of tomorrow; dawn’s image and light coming through the curtain, its penumbra and delta of shadow slathered across the entire surface of the room where we talked until too tired to continue- sleep enveloping the both of us.

- Jason Jaworski

Detroit, MI - 10/23/2010

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Photograph by Tod Seelie

Words by Jason Jaworski

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