Author: Marc Weidenbaum

Screwy

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

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

This is a photo of a doorbell / intercom

My doorbell photograph backlog runneth over. Here’s one. What struck me about this specimen was the notation that reads “door chime” in small yet capitalized letters. I can’t tell if it’s merely a product component, or also intended as an instruction. The rusty old screw is so large that it ends up closer to the words than is the button they seem to be intended to align with. They’re also smaller than the name in the logo of the manufacturer, NuTone Scovill (the two companies became one when, in 1967, the latter, which was founded in the early 1800s, bought the former, which was founded in 1936). One other comment: the damage and discoloration around the busted button makes sense due to use over time. Less so does the ring around the screw — is that just rust, or was it actually mistaken by countless visitors for a button itself?

Disquiet Junto Project 0574: Audio Journal 2022

The Assignment: Create a sonic diary of the past year with a dozen (or more) super-brief segments.

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

This is the cover image for the week's Disquiet Junto project. It is a grid of dates showing all 12 months of 2022, with the project's title and number superimposed.

Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto music community, a new compositional challenge is set before the group’s members, who then have just over four days to upload a track in response to the assignment. Membership in the Junto is open: just join and participate. (A SoundCloud account is helpful but not required.) There’s no pressure to do every project. It’s weekly so that you know it’s there, every Thursday through Monday, when you have the time.

Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, January 2, 2023, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, December 29, 2022.

Tracks are added to the SoundCloud playlist for the duration of the project. Additional (non-SoundCloud) tracks appear in the [llllllll.co discussion thread](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0574-audio-journal-2022/).

These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):

Disquiet Junto Project 0574: Audio Journal 2022
The Assignment: Create a sonic diary of the past year with a dozen (or more) super-brief segments.

As has become the tradition at the end of each calendar year, this week’s Junto project is a sound journal: a selective audio history of your past 12 months.

Step 1: You will select a different audio element to represent each of the past 12 months of 2022 — or you might opt for even more elements, choosing a segment for each week, or each day, for example. These audio elements will most likely be of music that you have yourself composed and recorded, but they might also consist of phone messages, field recordings, or other source material. These items should be somehow personal in nature, suitable to the autobiographical intention of the project; they should be of your own making, your own devising, and not drawn from third-party sources.

Step 2: You will then select one segment from each of these (most likely) dozen audio elements. If you’re doing a dozen items, one for each month, then five-second segments are recommended, for a total of one minute. Ultimately, though, the length of the segments and of the overall finished track are up to you.

Step 3: Then you will stitch these segments together, equally weighted, in chronological order to form one single track. There should be no overlap or gap between segments; they should simply proceed from one to the next.

Step 4: In the notes field accompanying the track, identify each of the audio segments.

Eight Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0574” (no spaces or quotation marks) in the name of your tracks.

Step 2: If your audio-hosting platform allows for tags, be sure to also include the project tag “disquiet0574” (no spaces or quotation marks). If you’re posting on SoundCloud in particular, this is essential to subsequent location of tracks for the creation of a project playlist.

Step 3: Upload your tracks. It is helpful but not essential that you use SoundCloud to host your tracks.

Step 4: Post your track in the following discussion thread at llllllll.co [https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0574-audio-journal-2022/](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0574-audio-journal-2022/)

Step 5: Annotate your track with a brief explanation of your approach and process.

Step 6: If posting on social media, please consider using the hashtag #DisquietJunto so fellow participants are more likely to locate your communication.

Step 7: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.

Step 8: Also join in the discussion on the Disquiet Junto Slack. Send your email address to [email protected] for Slack inclusion.

Note: Please post one track for this weekly Junto project. If you choose to post more than one, and do so on SoundCloud, please let me know which you’d like added to the playlist. Thanks.

Additional Details:

Length: The length is up to you. Did your year fly by, or was it a slog?

Upload: When participating in this project, be sure to include a description of your process in planning, composing, and recording it. This description is an essential element of the communicative process inherent in the Disquiet Junto. Photos, video, and lists of equipment are always appreciated.

Download: It is always best to set your track as downloadable and allowing for attributed remixing (i.e., a Creative Commons license permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution, allowing for derivatives).

For context, when posting the track online, please be sure to include this following information:

More on this 574th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Audio Journal 2022 (The Assignment: Create a sonic diary of the past year with a dozen (or more) super-brief segments) — at: https://disquiet.com/0574/

More on the Disquiet Junto at: https://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here: https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: [https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0574-audio-journal-2022/](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0574-audio-journal-2022/)

Pentatonic Simplicity

From Trust by Hernan Diaz

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

This is an excerpt from the novel Trust by Hernan Diaz.

And with less than 10% of the book to go, I am still very much enjoying *Trust*, the novel by Hernan Diaz that is in fact four separate documents, each with its own unique author, or at least so we are led to believe when the final section begins. I’m at the stage of a novel I’m really enjoying where I find myself reading it more and more slowly. This process isn’t downright asymptotic; I will eventually succumb to the gravity of narrative, as well as to the desire to move on to another novel (or, more likely, to Diaz’s study of Jorge Luis Borges, a book I’ve already started, despite the promise I made myself to read no more than three books at a time). I wondered if mentioning here the identity of the author of this fourth section of *Trust* would be a spoiler, and then I noticed that it — she — is named right there on the book’s table of contents, which made me wonder what else Diaz is hiding in plain sight. I’ll know more — or less, given the Borgesian mode — in, say, 10%. Either way, all that matters at this stage if you haven’t read the book is that the person whose journals we’re reading here may or may not have been the wife of a real or fictional investor and may or may not have been a major benefactor of avant-garde composers. We’ve been led to believe she was either a dilettante-ish cultural supporter in socialite-philanthropist mode, or a deeply embedded urban aesthete who helped shape the lives and work of composers, among other artists, much as her financier husband directed the markets. This bit is early on in the woman’s journals, so who knows where it will head, but it clearly supports the latter narrative. I’ll find out soon — but not too soon.