Author: Marc Weidenbaum

27 Years of Disquiet.com

Keep on bloggin'

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Today, December 13, 2023, marks the 27th anniversary of when I started Disquiet.com (topic: ambient/electronic music, and more broadly the intersection of sound, culture, and technology). The website is so old that it predates the word “blog” by several years. I can’t imagine my past three decades — or the future, for that matter — without Disquiet. If you don’t have a blog as of today, then there’s no better day than today to start one. And if doing so is of interest, then here are two lengthier posts I’ve written about the benefits and process of blogging:

“Q: Why Blog? A: Blogs Are Great.” (2021)

“Bring Out Your Blogs” (2019)

For additional background, there’s a post I wrote two years ago, on the occasion of the site’s 25th anniversary, and ones on the 26th and 11th anniversaries. There are others, as well, on different anniversaries, all stabs at my memory of this website.

And that screenshot up top is what Disquiet.com looked like a year or so into its existence.

Another 30 Seconds

An ongoing series cross-posted from instagram.com/dsqt

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

I posted another 30-second recording on my Instagram account, @dsqt. Above is simply a still from it. Instagram’s interface can be a bit inscrutable, but it’s stored as a “highlight” called “30s,” where each entry is a half minute of straight audio/video. I recorded this on my phone while going for a walk in Daly City at night. Half a minute is a long time when you’re recording in public. It’s hard not to look untrustworthy. There were plenty of other places I would have liked to record, plenty of spots where a bright light quickly dimmed into the urban darkness. But to do so was to submit oneself to the suspicions of those around you. Recording can easily be misconstrued as an intrusion, as a challenge.

The Story of The Overstory

Who talks for the trees? Powers does.

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

It is safe to say I have enjoyed reading Richard Powers’ The Overstory so far. I’m almost done. There’s a lot of listening in the book — some metaphysical, some naturalist, some as hampered by language or by health concerns, with a lot of variations and overlaps in between.

Evergreen

Resources here

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

A funny thing about static web pages is they are just that: static. Without a dateline, they kind of hide on the site in plain sight. So here’s a reminder about some of them.

▰ There is an “about” page at disquiet.com/about.

▰ There is an FAQ at disquiet.com/faq.

▰ There is a list of places where I hang out online, mostly related to social media.

▰ There is a list of books I’ve written or contributed to, or that cover work I do, at disquiet.com/books.

▰ There is a list of all the interviews posted on the site to date.

▰ There is a list of all weekly Disquiet Junto projects to date — all 623 of them.

▰ The is an FAQ about the Disquiet Junto.

▰ There is a contact page, with a link to information about how to submit music for review consideration.

Scratch Pad: Laptop, Turnarounds, Tracking

From the past week

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

I do this manually at the end of each week: collating (and sometimes lightly editing) most of the recent little comments I’ve made on social media, which I think of as my public scratch pad. Some end up on Disquiet.com earlier, sometimes in expanded form. These days I mostly hang out on Mastodon (at post.lurk.org/@disquiet), and I’m also trying out a few others. I take weekends and evenings off social media.

▰ Waking up to the warmth of my laptop and the noise of street cleaners

▰ Oh, I see: the blues turnarounds I’ve been trying on guitar — not quite fruitlessly but not elegantly, either — are essentially the equivalent of the “flip turn” when swimming laps: yet another thing I was never very good at.

▰ I kinda wanna add to my list of rules for submitting music for review consideration that I won’t click on links in emails if they include tracking codes