It can be hard to celebrate Detroit's wins, even when they're glowing, behemoth triumphs

When pillars of fire arose behind Jack White as he performed Thursday night in front of Michigan Central Station, it was difficult not to fear the ambitious pyrotechnics would set the place ablaze, sending the crowd scrambling and the astonishingly renovated behemoth crumbling.

Instead, the crowd of elated metro Detroiters sang the White Stripes song “Seven Nation Army” in unison, the way sports crowds around the world do to express wholehearted love and loyalty to their teams.

As a Detroiter, it can be hard not to expect the worst to happen. It's hard to shake the trauma and enjoy the wins.

More than 80 people have been killed in Detroit homicides this year. The riverfront’s glow-up has been tainted by corruption. A local boy was killed in a tornado this week. Protests continue everywhere over ongoing horrors in Gaza.

But for one night in Detroit, it was all peace and love.

The show kept getting better. The relatively sober crowd kept getting happier – bouncing with joy one cluster at a time as various quintessentially Detroit musical genres got the spotlight. There was Big Sean for younger Detroit hip-hop fans. Slum Village and Common paid tribute to J Dilla for older heads. A little "Old Time Rock and Roll" from Melissa Ethridge, Fantasia and Jelly Roll, honoring Bob Seger. The Clark Sisters and the Greater Emmanuel Choir turned up for Jesus and the Gospel crowd. Sky Jetta got the techno crowd rocking. Trick Trick showed up for the roughnecks.

Diana Ross, Eminem and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra were for everyone.

More: Michigan Central concert among most memorable evenings of homegrown music in years

It no longer mattered how many times we saw dreams deferred around this train station, closed since 1988. How many hopeful plans were scrapped as we watched Blight Porn Central rot for decades? Police station. Casino. Modernized transit hub. Mixed-use public-private live-work something-or-other.

Finally, Ford Motor Co. took the reins and spent $1 billion undoing one of the many great Detroit disasters of the last century.

More: Michigan Central Station still has decades-old graffiti: Why Ford decided to keep it

Bill Ford himself took the stage at one point to only a smattering of applause, which felt appropriate, because we don’t worship royalty in Detroit — at least not that kind of royalty.

Diana Ross, Barry Sanders, J Dilla and other cultural kings and queens got the royal treatment instead.

Perfect.

OK, not everything was perfect. The crowd was certainly representative of metro Detroit, if not Detroit proper. The TV broadcast made the crowd appear less diverse than it was, and some felt Black Detroiters were underrepresented. Tickets were free but scarce, and priority was given to neighborhood residents, Ford workers and other VIPs.

We could have squeezed in tributes to Aretha, Stevie, Detroit jazz, the MC5.

But it felt perfect in the moment, in that crowd, in an immaculately manicured park facing an meticulously restored train depot that outlived the previous owner, who let it fall apart.

More: Rehabilitation for a train station, and the Moroun family that let it rot | Kaffer

It was one perfect moment of promise and contentment to break up Detroit’s endless struggle for prosperity, dignity and respect.

So many of the recent wins Michiganders have seen in recent year are hard to fathom.

Marijuana is legal. The Lions are good. And, for God’s sake, the train station is open again.

It’s OK, we must convince ourselves, to forget for a moment that democracy is under attack, the climate is haywire and thousands of hopeful migrants are flocking to the southern border, where they’ll be treated poorly.

Or that most of Detroit’s neighborhoods continue to grapple with poverty and infant mortality and economic stagnancy, while Corktown gets billions in investment.

Thursday night was a much-needed celebration, and it was broadcast nationally, for all to see.

No need to keep staring, horrified, at the fire.

Khalil AlHajal is the deputy editorial page editor of the Detroit Free Press. Contact him at kalhajal@freepress.com. Submit a letter to the editor at freep.com/letters and we may publish it online or in print.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit triumphs can hard to celebrate, even in perfect moments