I have something on my wall that’s definitely going in the trash in the immediate future. A Songs For a New Day poster. That, without question, is worthless to me now. Unfortunately, that’s where things stop being clear. While that poster is pretty easy to make up my mind about, there are other things that are much more complicated. Things I don’t understand at all.

I have a set list, too. That one, at first, was pretty easy to make my mind up about, but the more I thought about the sentimental value the harder that question became. I got the set list at a Mike Lombardo/DPC show at a venue called The Space in Hamden, CT. I absolutely and completely love The Space, and that set list is more representative of that than anything else. I have so many beautiful memories there. I saw the very first All Caps show in The Space. I bought the first physical copy of The Prince’s Tale ever sold, and I huddled over a walkman I had bought earlier that day, and I listened to it during intermission at The Space. Just a few months ago, I ran around with a clipboard for Lauren’s mailing list and had the time of my life just being with Matt, Lauren, Justin, and several regular show attendees - who I became friends with in The Space.

I also saw Mike Lombardo a lot at The Space. It’s his favorite venue. I saw Mike do a lot of very real, very genuine, very beautiful things in The Space. At one show in particular, he took a second to thank Michael Buckley (who was in attendance) for helping him at the very start of his career, dedicated a song to him, and started crying half way through. He was so emotional about the fact that about 40 to 50 people were there, watching and listening, allowing him to live his dream of being a professional musician, that he cried in the middle of a song he had played thousands of times before. That was, and still is, beautiful. Last time I was there, I found out that the reason The Space has been such a good venue for this community is because of Mike Lombardo. It was the fact that All Caps was on the same record label as Mike that convinced the owner to start booking Wizard Rock shows. Mike both did and enabled so many beautiful things to happen in The Space, and now The Space is tainted.

Another thing that happened at The Space was the final show of Matt, Lauren, and Justin’s This Star Won’t Go Out tour. That poster is definitely staying up, but I won’t ever be able to look at it quite the same again. Mike wasn’t part of that tour, but he did play at that show. After Matt, Lauren, Justin, Brian, and Brad played an acoustic version of The Weapon dedicated to Esther, Mike played his set, and he closed it out by dedicating You Should Know to Esther. It was, and still is, beautiful. And all of it is tainted. The show, the memories, even some of the money they raised that went directly towards paying for Esther’s tombstone, is tainted.

Those two are less confusing, I suppose. I have other things from The Space I can hang up, and the overwhelming majority of the TWSGO tour money had nothing to do with Mike. My Triple Rainbow Awesome tour poster, however, is baffling and confusing. The tour featured All Caps, Mike Lombardo, Skyway Flyer, and Alex Carpenter, and I have no idea what I’m supposed to think about those memories anymore. I really, really love this poster. I love everyone at Echo base, and Kristina Horner is genuinely one the people I admire most in this world. I loved being at two shows from that tour, and this, more than The Space and more than TSWGO, has Mike Lombardo all over it, and it is tainted because of that. It’s in some confusing in between place. The tour could have happened without Mike, but the fact remains that he was a large part of it. I am left with no idea of what I should and shouldn’t cherish anymore.

While it is simple to say that these things are tainted, it is so very far from simple to understand how much they are tainted.

There used to be a picture. One single beautiful picture, formed and held together by all these individual parts. A picture much bigger than just Mike Lombardo. It was The Space, TSWGO, Triple Rainbow Awesome, and so, so very many other things. All together as one. Now that picture has been broken and shattered. Some fragments are mostly untouched, worthy of being preserved. Some are destroyed completely and shall never be looked upon again. Most, however, are somewhere in between. Many fragments can be called neither broken nor intact, and those shards are everywhere and in everything, and what in the fuck am I supposed to do with this Triple Rainbow Awesome poster?