Rev David DeChant

I had two hundred-ish band flyers from performances I’d seen in the 90-93 years. I wanted to share them all with that group of musicians so I scanned them all and sent a cd  of all the images to them. I included a note that said I wanted to do the same thing with a journal I kept in that time because, if nothing else, it was a portrait of that music in Kansas City at that time.

I started to scan the journal, but it required retyping because of my handwriting. Then I added some pictures. It was becoming too big a project, but I began filling folders with the order it would be in.

Then I had a daughter. Then I had another daughter.

At some point in there, a friend of mine who collects wood specimens and sells rare woods asked me to help him build up his website with 600dpi scans of all his collection (1600 different, 3inch by 5inch by half inch rectangles). I told him I was for hire and I had recently done this same shit with band flyers. The only difference this time was that I had to type 1. the Latin name of the wood, 2. the common name of the wood, 3. the country of origin, 4. the country of the specimen, 5. any information about specimen like date of harvest or from the collection of so and so, etc.I hate typing. I hate computers and they hate me. I was good at collecting and sorting and documenting, but just typing is for peasants. But I did it.   http://rarewoodsandveneers.com/

I’m forty this year so I decide to get back on my journal project and I begin to see that no one but those dozen musicians would care about this crap, and even they don’t want to read about my bad poetry days or my break ups with girlfriends. In fact, everyone in the world would be bored to tears with it–except those girlfriends, except all the players in the game, all the characters in my life.I had done 1600 images for someone else. How many would it be for my entire opus? Get paperless at the same time and part with all the stupid shit I’ve lugged around my whole life! Photos, speeding tickets, bus passes. Letters of love and hate. Things I should not share, but here it is. This is my oeuvre.

If you have read this far then I will take this opportunity to pitch a contribution. Have you got a picture that isn’t here? Do you have a letter I wrote? Do you want to contribute a story? I can be emailed at daviddechant@juno.com, telephoned at 404) 822-4290.