In Loving Memory of
The Basement
We will remember you always.
The hands of the witnesses must be the first in putting him to death, and then the hands of all the people. You must purge the evil from among you.
(page 2)
SHAPING:
Without the Basement I doubt I would be who I am today. Since the beginning of the Basement I have never been alone. Life
has always been one big party, not a boozing orgy of manifest destiny and divine right, but a happy gathering of heart and soul. From the moment I said the Basement was “always open,” the doors became a conveyer belt of new faces and revolving emotion. Hundreds have been here; it has been through these gathering, these reconnecting of lost spirits, that the world has been changed.
Look around, look at yourself, why are you, you?
How has the Basement affected you? Did laugh, for the first time? Did you meet a love here? Did you release yourself of secrets you couldn’t even tell God? Was your soul touched? To some this place is just a room, to others this place, this cinderblock basement is the most holy of holies, the place only the High Priest can go, the place only entered once a year, the place where God dwells.
This simple basement has cemented the ideals of Alpena, a new idea of a utopian society. It was through the Basement that people were able to craft, harness, and transmit this utopian view of society. The Basement has been the citadel from which the very idea of Alpenan utopia has grown.
The Basement has changed us all, whether you know it or not.
(page 3)
SKIMMING:
It is time to wipe our hands of the sins of the past. To long have we wallowed in our past and it is now time to look to the future. For our entire lives, our eternity, we have been anchored down by a fundamental misconception, an idea grown out of our very being. There is a need in all of
us for contact, friendship, and touch. The Basement, this universal hangout, has changed our hearts and minds. It has fundamentally shifted reality as we know it.
Looking back on its beginning I look at the heart of its creator: a Sinner, a boy who wanted friends, a malcontent, someone who chose people over God. From the heart of a sinner came a project, a place, a room in which even the dead can live.
I look at what I did, and I wonder. When people were down, when people were hurt, mentally, emotionally, when one needed someone, anyone, the basement was there. The basement was a tangible manif
estation of a new life, it brought new life. Yet, I still wonder, without the basement, how things would be different. Would it be for the better? When we die, will your souls thank mine, or will they cry next to my beaten remains.
It is time to scrape off our disease, remove our yoke, and forget our past; a new future is budding. No matter what our tears whisper, the death of the Basement is the beginning of another. Hopefully, the new
basement isn’t the basement of Hell.
Here, in a simple basement, a hole, a pit of disease, much has grown: life, utopia, and a social movement. Here, in a simple basement you will see death.
Nick Vandermolen
12/31/05
(page 4)
Check These Out:
Lombardo Barnyard’s new book…Coming soon.
“Lombardo Barnyard: Year One”
Michigan Mythos: Series Two
APRIL 2006
E-mail Lombardo Barnyard @
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