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I love this photo! This was The Braille Tapes last bar show. This line up is pretty close the the final line up in Autumn Poetry. Minus Wendelin and plus Lacey. Only I drummed and Lacey played keyboards. I'm not sure if Autumn Poetry ever played in this bar. In fact, we barely played in Bellingham. We played very few bar shows, a handful of WWU shows, and a ton of house shows. While BT played anywhere and everywhere, but mostly bars. That guitar I'm strumming isn't mine. It's Chad's (his first guitar, got it when he played git-tar in the jazz band at Snohomish HS), and he would never part with it. If I buy another guitar (currently, all I have is Emily's) it will be that guitar. I mean not that exact guitar, but the same model and everything. OH, I miss it. You know what else I miss? Playing drums. It's been 17 months since I've played drums. I wonder if I still got it...

I've been itch to get behind the kit, and also, to plug in. I've been writing songs for this fiction band called Mission. The songs kind of sound Braille Tape-ish, but my plan is to Baroque them up a bit. Throw some Piano and Harpsichord in there, everything in a back-beat, but sloppy. I want these songs to sound "ahead of their time" but from the late 70s. I've been enlisting people in this project. So far, I have filmmakers, photographers, musicians, me (doing a big chuck), some possible poets, and I may be asking some of my friends (hint, hint) to contribute. Sorry, it's vague right now, but it's still in the germination stage, and it won't be years till I really start buckling down on making this happen. All I know is that there will be fiction, faux-reviews, a faux-documentary, poems, photos, album artwork, fiction (maybe different accounts), and a record or two). Of my friends, I've already figured out who I'm gonna ask to do what...

I just had a crushing rejection from a press (crushing because of the circumstances, and the fact that I had just bled over a revision, and it turns out they didn't want to publish my book, but something else, completely different...that and that apparently, they never understood my intentions. AT ALL. I'm actually really crushed. I've read their reason ten times now, and just a hour ago, I read it again and wrote responses. It feels like they just gave up, because they realized this wasn't the book they envisioned. Yeah, duh. It is my book. Not yours.) Anyway. I'm still bummed out and trying to recover by looking for press accepting submissions. It's not the same. I was so close, and the former head-editor of my project (before she left) had high hopes for this, but it seems once she left, the new editors gave and (they were over a month overdue from pitching to the executive board) when they contacted me with the rejection...oh, yeah, they never even pitched it to the board. How shitty does this make me feel? Uh...

Anyway, it's hard to be to bummed when your wife is Emily Fix and your son is wearing a Batman onesie, asleep in the swing.

Later guys,

Joooooooooooooooooooooooooooooossssssssssssssssssssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh