Category: field notes

News, essays, reviews, surveillance

“without … desire of victory”

Junto ethos

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

I’ve given* dozens of talks, presentations, interviews, and lectures about the Disquiet Junto music community over the past 13 years, and Benjamin Franklin, who first coined the word “junto,” remains a deep well I keep going back to. I’ve shared this mention of Franklin’s original 1727 Junto (from his autobiography) many times, and each time I’ve always been sure to underline what’s seen here in purple.

And yet only now have I noticed the additional part, which I’ve underlined in red, about “without … desire of victory.” One thing I was certain about the Disquiet Junto from the start, back in January 2012, was that it wasn’t going to be a competition. And now I realize that was part of Franklin’s own plan from the start.

*most recently for Donnell Alexander and Lev Anderson’s West Coast Sojourn podcast and at the Lines meet-up at Mission Synths earlier this this month

Bosch’s Pre-Echoes

More from the Michael Connelly novels

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

This following bit is from The Black Ice, the second novel in the series by Michael Connelly about Los Angeles police detective Hieronymus Bosch:

I love that Connelly, back in 1993, foresaw Eric Eberhardt’s long-running youarelistening.to project, You Are Listening to Los Angeles, which pairs meditative music and police scanners. The original site suffers today from the inevitable situation in which embeds stop functioning dependably (something my own site’s older posts are rife with), but you can check out recordings in Eberhardt’s NTS.live show.

The author Warren Ellis, in his 2013 novel Gun Machine, quotes his own fictional detective, John Tallow of the NYPD, referencing Eberhardt’s work:

Eberhardt started You Are Listening to Los Angeles in 2011 and later expanded it to other cities. As he said to Roman Mars on the 99% Invisible podcast, “Some people think it’s peaceful. Some people think it’s creepy.”

Scratch Pad: Obsidian, RSS, llllllll

From the past week

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

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.

▰ The wind made it difficult to sort out from which direction the ice cream truck’s bell was coming.

▰ Happy 10th birthday to Lines, or llllllll.co, the online community I spend the most time on (it’s mostly about the making of electronic music, and especially about the making of the things that in turn are tools for making electronic music).

▰ Tired: AI, AI, AI

Wired: text-file databases in Obsidian

▰ As of Wednesday, May 21, at 11:20am, SoundCloud seems to be having technical issues. I hope this situation is cleared up soon and doesn’t mess up the Disquiet Junto project due to start in a little over half a day. (It cleared up.)

▰ From the trailer to the new Darren Aronofsky movie, Caught Stealing. How did this joke never occur to me before, and how was this not the natural successor to Google Reader?

▰ Anyone know if you can install the beta of Obsidian alongside the latest stable release? (Apparently the answer is no.)

▰ Read a bunch, finished reading nothing. Also wrote a bunch, which got in the way of reading, which certainly is ironic.

Three Stages

Of trio collaborations

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

We’re just a week from the milestone 700th consecutive weekly project in the Disquiet Junto, but right now all my attention is focused on the closing phase of the (semi)annual three-part “trios” sequence, in which, over the course of three consecutive weeks, musicians around the globe collaboratively, and asynchronously, create trios one third at a time. I have fun each year sorting out a new way to use a simple image to depict this process, and I’m happy wiht how 2025’s turned out.