Field Notes: This is the practice.
Sometimes writing begins not with words, but by quietly watching something—or someone—come into being.
Rodriguez is back in Woodbridge. Or, mostly. When he was alive, people would experience “sightings” of him, often in the Cass Corridor neighborhood, as if he were already a haunt—long winter coat regardless of season, guitar strapped across his back. Artist Nicole MacDonald is painting the latest mural of the beloved Detroit musician Sixto Rodriguez, who died this month in 2023. A friend who lives in the area DM’ed me about it yesterday, and my breakfast this morning consisted of a quick drive past the nearly complete artwork.
The mural is on the side of a building at the corner of a one-way, but busy, street. One of those sturdy pre-war brick buildings Detroit is known for and that has too many functions. Is it an apartment building? (Looks like.) A coffee shop? (Soon, apparently.) A community something? (Probably.) I went there wanting to have the experience of seeing the artwork become itself, to stand still in the middle of rush-hour, hazard lights blinking and silence.
The artist is almost done. Visible just above the idle cherry picker, there are two smaller Sixto figures at the base of the mural where the brick still shows through. She has captured his likeness—the deep contours of his face, that mane—but what moves me is how well she has captured his quiet power. Everyone who knew his name or his music is in this mural. He is us.
You do this, too, don’t you? You know you’re inside of a story being told. But you don’t know what or when it will become. Maybe, just maybe.
This is the practice.
Writing happens in the middle of things, in pauses, or when we’re sure nothing notable is happening at all. Let me be clear: it’s not just that I am now telling you about it, literal writing. It’s the one-way street. Circling the block in a neighborhood I have one friend in and never visit. The time it takes to see the artist’s vision gathering shape. These are, in themselves, the first acts of expression that unfurl in a number of successive acts. The experience is a way of writing myself into the world.
What small thing has been quietly writing itself in your life this week? Maybe it’s those summer tomatoes stubbornly, then suddenly, coming in. Or, the stranger you chat with on your morning commute. Hit reply and tell me a story.
N.B. If you don’t know the music of Sixto Rodriguez you’re in for a treat. Go to whatever platform you favor and start with Cold Fact. Then move on to Coming from Reality, which has two cuts most often associated with him, “I Think of You” and “To Whom It May Concern.” Then watch the wildly inventive 2012 Academy Award-winning documentary Searching for Sugar Man. You’re welcome.
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