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Me in high school:
The Beatles: 24/7
The Who: a close second
The Rolling Stones: don’t get it
Led Zeppelin: I’m scared
Me decades after high school:
The Beatles: been a while
The Who: who?
The Rolling Stones: hell yeah
Led Zeppelin: pour it into my veins
A pretty straightforward project this week. Should be fun. There is one clarification I wanted to note first. The instruction template for the Junto projects has been slightly adjusted. The instructions on uploading tracks now reads:
Upload: A person participating in the Disquiet Junto should post only one track per weekly project (SoundCloud account preferred but not required). If on occasion you feel inspired to post more than one track (whether to a single account or across multiple accounts), you should clarify which is the “main” rendition for consideration by fellow members and (if on SoundCloud) for inclusion in the SoundCloud playlist.
Previously it read:
Upload: Post your track to a public account (SoundCloud preferred but by no means required). It’s best to focus on one track, but if you post more than one, clarify which is the “main” rendition.
And that about covers it. I am, as has been far too often the case, behind on email. I am catching up.
I knew the Jazz Workshop had been in North Beach, but I don’t think I’d ever noticed this plaque before.
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.
▰ When you live near the ocean, sunny day = lots of sirens
▰ Always interested when a director scores their own film. This is from Jim Jarmusch’s upcoming Father Mother Sister Brother.
▰ The day after 909 Day is:
▰ I got a pickup that separates a guitar into six (fairly) distinct outputs. It’s neat seeing, thanks to an oscilloscope, how the notes ring out in a chord. This is three pairs of strings, from lowest (left) to highest (right).
▰ Reading: Busy week, during which I managed to finish one novel I’m reading — and to not start too many others. I’m working my way through Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian (1985) and I recently read True Grit by Charles Portis (1968), and in that context I came to wonder if these might be somewhat rarefied, where westerns (or novels of the the west) are concerned. I set out to read a “proper” western, by which I mean one that maybe spent substantial time as a trade paperback? I was recommended a handful, and I selected — essentially because the library had it — The Day the Cowboys Quit (1971) by Texan author Elmer Kelton (1926-2009), and boy did I enjoy the heck out of it. It’s a tight, quite intense story that goes through several distinct phases, with a bunch of well-sketched characters, and it’s also a lesson in how a certain amount of detailed description of specialized activities (here those of ranch hands, at work and at home) can ground a story. There is a climax during a major court scene that brings to mind the famous one from Aaron Sorkin’s A Few Good Men, though it plays out differently.
