Writers collect stories of rituals: John Cheever putting on a jacket and tie to go down to the basement, where he kept a desk near the boiler room. Keats buttoning up his clean white shirt to write in, after work.
It’s hard to keep the romance going sometimes. Because you have a job. And you have children. And you have a house and a dog. And something leaks in the basement, and somebody has to take the dog to the vet… you’re exhausted.
Young actors ask me for advice. They say, ‘Should I get an agent?’ I tell them, ‘Don’t worry about that. Act, act, act. Get into that production of ‘The Three Sisters’ in a church basement. Consider every audition a chance to act, even if it’s just for three minutes. Just do it whenever and wherever you can.’
We had a lion that was living in somebody’s basement outside of Branson, Missouri.
Practical storage pieces are great if you have a basement or a garage. But when you actually live with them day in and day out, they should be beautiful to look at.
For novelists or musicians, if they really want to create something, they need to go downstairs and find a passage to get into the second basement. What I want to do is go down there, but still stay sane.
I was a girl from Massapequa, New York. I grew up in Massapequa. I lived in a basement with one window.
Both of my folks were into art. My dad was an art collector, my mom had a little kiln in our basement, and we would make pottery. I think from about age five on, they sent me to art classes, and I was a huge colorer.
I love having a basement.
After I left the Pumpkins, I went home and just sat around. I have a studio in my basement, and I found myself writing all these songs, just taking advantage of the relaxed situation. I wrote about 30 songs in about 30 days.
I’m always working on new songs. With the technology these days, any idiot can record on Pro Tools on your laptop. All you have to do is plug a microphone into the input jack and anybody can have their own recording studio. So I’m always down in my basement, singing along to riffs or whoever I’m collaborating with.
Due to my work as a musician, songwriter, recording artist and author, hundreds of people stream in and out of my basement studio to help me with my creative projects.
Some courts have said moving an employee to a basement or closet usually amounts to punishment. But others have said this is a decision that should be made case by case. How nice is the basement office? How big is the closet?
I wrote a best-selling book, and if you don’t believe me, you can come into my basement; I’ll show you every copy.
I started playing music around 13 or 14, played jazz in high school, and played other stuff in college. After college, I tried to make it as a musician. I lived in a big squalid house full of dudes outside of Boston. We were all musicians. We built this studio in the basement and played there all hours of the day.
Making the most of global trade opportunities does not mean transitioning to a low-tax, deregulatory, ‘Bargain Basement’ economy. It means developing a robust Industrial Strategy intertwined with a strong trade agenda.
From an early age, I knew I would become a scientist. It may have been my brother Sam’s doing. He interested me in the laws of falling bodies when I was ten and helped my father equip a basement chemistry lab for me when I was fifteen. I became skilled in the synthesis of selenium halides.
I know that collector types can be a pain in the neck and seem perpetually frozen in time – or at least in their parents’ basement – but someone has to look out for the past, lest it slip away forever.
There are times when we look back and think, ‘Do you remember when we had to lug a piano downstairs to a basement of some venue to play for five people?’ We do a lot of reminiscing. It helps us keep our heads on straight.
The scariest part to any story is the sliver of truth you hide in the horror. Sometimes its not about the axe wielding murder, but the fact that he’s lurking somewhere in your basement. Sure, you keep telling yourself that you’ll replace the burnt out light every week.
Every time I’d sing or play piano when I was a child, my dad would yell up from the basement, ‘That’s B-flat!’
After a few months in my parents’ basement, I took an apartment near the state university, where I discovered both crystal methamphetamine and conceptual art. Either one of these things are dangerous, but in combination they have the potential to destroy entire civilizations.
I have a little basement studio set up here at my house, and I do probably 80 percent of the recording here on my own. With multi-tracking technology, I can play various parts on top of one another.
I remember going with my grandmother to the houses she cleaned when I was little, and I would have to stay down in the basement while she cleaned, and then we walked back home together.
A journalistic purpose could be someone with a Xerox machine in a basement.
