Settle for Walking
Red team versus blue team
Author: Marc Weidenbaum
Another Sidewalk, Another End
A road definitely not taken
Sidewalks can end in more ways than one
Sō x Bergamot
A short-term autonomous octet
The quartet, in all its variations, from standard rock line-up to its jazz parallel to the formidable string arrangement to the saxophone mode, has long been a cornerstone of my understanding of how music functions. The group Sō Percussion is another permutation of the quartet, featuring members Josh Quillen, Adam Sliwinski, Jason Treuting, and Eric Cha-Beach. The quartet, regardless of instrumentation, is a malleable form, one rich enough to stand on its own, and mobile and agile enough to collaborate fruitfully while maintain its own discipline and flavor.
A distinction of for many non-rock modern quartets is the implicit engagement with a fifth party: the composer. Classical and new music quartets, for example, often have composers in their midst, yet also engage with “external” composers as a kind of momentary fifth member. In this piece, “Oblique Music for Four Plus (blank),” group member Treuting has furthered the quartet’s modularity by, per the work’s title, aligning Sō Percussion with another unit, a foursome, in this live recording the Bergamot Quartet (Ledah Finck, violin; Sarah Thomas, violin; Amy Huimei Tan, viola; and Irène Han, cello). The short-term autonomous octet provides just enough musicians to allow for all manner of pairings and echos, rivalries and symbiosis — and yes, the title is a nod to Brian Eno.
End of the Road
While wandering
A sidewalk can, apparently, simply end
Scratch Pad: Ballard, Snow, Time
From the past week
At the end of each week, I usually collate a lightly edited collection of recent comments I’ve made on social media, which I think of as my public scratch pad. I find knowing I’ll revisit my posts to be a positive and mellowing influence on my social media activity. I mostly hang out on Mastodon (at post.lurk.org/@disquiet), and I’m also trying out a few others. And I generally take weekends off social media.
▰ “Delete and play next”*
“Head to the curb”**
There’s something brutal (and, to that end, Ballardian) to the user experience language one encounters on a daily basis.
*Netflix
**Uber
▰ On a positive note, whatever bizarre (seemingly) Cloudflare-related issues I had been having on Disquiet.com seem to be not happening during Monday’s AWS outage. Here’s to 21st-century snow days. :)
▰ Morning trio for pages being turned, passing jet plane, sprinkler
▰ Main thing I like about the new iOS upgrade is the massive time displayed on the lock screen. Every time I glance at it, I feel like the movie that is my life has begun some momentous, title-card-deserving new phase. It’s 4:18!
▰ Subset of iPhone users who still have U2’s Songs of Innocence on their phones
▰ Me: My 11” iPad is old and slow and can’t hold a charge for as long as it once did. Maybe I’ll get the 13” one when I upgrade
[Someone walks by carrying a massive 13” iPad]
Me: Uh, I think I’m good as is.
▰ So this new YouTube system converted all my channel subscriptions to “personalized” and I need to go through hundred of the channels and manually switch to “all”? This seems … odd.
▰ Very excited the second book, The Faith of Beasts, in James S. A. Corey’s The Captive’s War series will come out … in mid-April 2026. Very excited this new Cyberpunk card game, Cyberpunk Legends: Into the Night, will come out … in late July 2026.
▰ Have a good weekend. Hum along with your refrigerator’s drone. Meditate to your HVAC system’s whir. Dance to the rumble of a clothes dryer. See you Monday — or maybe Tuesday.
▰ You know it’s a busy week when you barely read anything. Whew.