Loose squares of sheet metal violently slap against the hollow industrial carcass of a structure, the reverberations begin to shake free decades worth of fine silt accumulated atop a row of swinging spot lights dancing to the sway of the wind. The dust effortlessly glides to the ground, catching and reflecting random rays of light like a plume of glitter, before settling across the lens of my camera. A steady February wind whips relentlessly through the dead factory, winding up rusted out ventilation fans into a spinning cacophony of screeching and squealing howls, as the corroded blades scape again their bent and busted metal enclosures. It's as if the factory is alive again with sound, yet the giant machines as dead as a heap of roadkill piled up along the gutter of a highway.
Outside, a trio of crumbling smoke stacks appear to scrape the speeding clouds obscuring the light blue sky behind. The cylindrical brick chimneys are just begging to be toppled from their ever-standing misery, like a line of dominos set to fall with spectacular show. The wind is so fierce it speaks with ghastly echos, as gusts pass over the open tops of the stacks, echoing like a child blowing his breath over the narrow neck of a soda bottle. I watch as a fiberglass sheet of siding is ripped loose from a conveyor belt chute, exposing the nude iron skeleton behind. The siding tumbles awkwardly through the air like a discarded newspaper before crashing into the ground and exploding into million tiny fragments.
This is the tune of the Post-Industrial Blues, a song familiar to many rust belt towns and cities stricken by decay and mass exodus. Stagnant factories create a silhouette across the horizon, forming a skyline of forsaken chimneys and corroded infrastructure, standing dead and lifeless like the charred trunks of trees after a massive forest fire. Rust stains bleed down the facades of old mills, and weather-beaten warehouses embody an aura of emptiness. Sidewalks out front once bustling with workers are now heaved and cracked, littered with shards of broken glass punched from the many thousands of little square windows lining the fronts of the forgotten buildings. Some places never seem to recover from the Post-Industrial Blues, but amongst the tune of misery beauty can always be found.
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