The basement is a sacred place, meant primarily for two things – for storage and for safety. To shield ourselves from tornadoes and nuclear bombs, we humans carved holes in the ground, which we also use to store our old college textbooks and family photos too. I was in a basement last night. While most people here in D.C. have converted theirs into tight, dim rentals to hustle to interns spending their summer on a budget, OTHERFEELS is one in the neighborhood of Mt. Pleasant that was generously converted into a haven for musicians and their kind. The walls and ceilings are packed in with soundproof foam, string lights line the stage area, and everywhere you go someone’s sparking something. In this age of cyberwarfare and rainbow bagels, it’s nice to know that some things don’t change. Being there to catch my sis from the Bay, Hollis, was all the makings of reminiscing.
Almost exactly 9 years ago, I was also in a basement. Then, it was in Boston, on tour with iLL-Literacy and our backing band The Hi-Lifes, who I too frequently take for granted in my memory’s eye. This jam session is one of the only captures I have of Otis Jackson Jr., the drummer iLL-Literacy toured with back then. He passed away this past week, and as I prepare to head to California to say our adieus to him, I’m reminded of how much life this man gave me. You can tell from my camerawork here how captivated I was (and still am) by his control over rhythm, the juice he put in each strike of the drum. His heartbeat. Truly, basements are sacred places. For storage and safety. Archived in the walls of some pit in the ground in Boston, probably to an unsuspecting tenant, is the radiance of this night of a decade’s past. Rest in power, OJ.