▰ Play: “I find it’s important when approaching any activity to switch off my inner critic and unleash a child-like sense of play.”
▰ Action: “One of the best things about the Disquiet Junto is finding that creativity doesn’t need to wait for inspiration.”
▰ Variety: “Sometimes the prompts are like cryptic crossword questions, and it’s fun to see the variety of interpretations that emerge from the community; other times they’re prescribed directions and it still seems as though everyone comes up with something radically different.”
▰ Learning: “So I think that, while there are many lessons I’ve learned from being part of the Disquiet Junto community, a key one to reflect on here is that creative experiments can not fail. You just need to adopt an attitude that you’re still learning.”
Those four observations (with my labels) are just a few of the points brought up by Australian musician and artist Jason Richardson in a post he published this week, at cyclicdefrost.com, about his experience as a frequent participant in the Disquiet Junto music community. It’s a thoughtful, generous overview of the Disquiet Junto’s weekly compositional prompts, and it’s informed by his having accomplished roughly two thirds of the 464 projects to date. Jason has also contributed project ideas over the years, such as one using samples he made from “the biggest guitar in the southern hemisphere.” He also interviewed me back in 2017, during which he made an observation I think about quite frequently: “the Junto themes seem to have proportion to daily life, with a number about sleeping, waking, eating, walking, etc.”