These two sizable, nearly 6’ tall, cement posts frame the space that will soon enough hold, presumably, a brand new sign identifying this spot on the San Francisco coast as China Beach. For the time being it frames the view as you approach.
Articles rarely carry titles written by their authors. My longtime favorite assigned to me was “About Face,” about the type foundry and magazine Emigre. Then came “The Man Who Fell for Earth,” an interview I did with science fiction author and environmentalist Kim Stanley Robinson. The crown has been passed to “Parable of the Mower,” on David Lynch’s 1999 movie, The Straight Story, which came out in between Lost Highway (1997) and Mulholland Drive (2001).
That’s in the new issue of The Wire, which has a special section dedicated to David Lynch’s work. It’s packed with cool stuff, like the role of finger snapping, backward speech, the wind, and other sonic elements — and of course, his scores.
I do this manually at the end of each week: collating most of the recent little comments I’ve made on social media, which I think of as my public scratch pad. I mostly hang out on Mastodon (at post.lurk.org/@disquiet), and I’m also trying out a few others. And I take weekends off social media.
▰ It’s that time of year when one finds oneself explaining, “Being interested in fireworks isn’t the same as enjoying them.”
▰ There’s even more silence in season 3 of The Bear than in previous seasons. It’s become a moody soap opera, concerned with the characters’ lives rather than with any plot beyond basic goals (a star) and hurdles (money). A highlight is in episode 5, when Marcus turns on his recently deceased mother’s medical devices for the comfort of the beeping.
▰ Browser tabs are the pile of dirt left over when you go down a rabbit hole
▰ Listening to noise drone music while writing makes my life feel way more dramatic than it is
▰ Title of a panel discussion for music educators in 1970
▰ The foghorns this morning certainly seem to be glad to have yesterday’s fireworks behind them — which I now realize is also a joke, ’cause the fireworks were literally behind the fog yesterday, as is pretty much always the case here on the 4th of July
▰ My daily life is evidence that this sound cue can be factually accurate yet say nothing meaningful about what is actually occurring
▰ Heck yeah I preordered that China Miéville + Keanu Reeves novel
▰ My MacBook Pro and my iPhone are up to date software-wise, and yet regularly my Voice Memos and Notes won’t sync between them. What is up with that?
▰ How many minutes before a late meeting finally starts before Fugazi’s “Waiting Room” starts playing in your head?
I didn’t have a ton of interest in the new movie Twisters, but the sound design of the trailers makes a compelling argument that it will, in fact, be a breakout hit in civic-alarm-system fandom, of which I’m a card-carrying member.
Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto music community, a new compositional challenge is set before the group’s members, who then have five days to record and upload a track in response to the project instructions.
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. The Junto is weekly so that you know it’s there, every Thursday through Monday, when your time and interest align.
Tracks are added to the SoundCloud playlist for the duration of the project. Additional (non-SoundCloud) tracks also generally appear in the lllllll.co discussion thread.
Disquiet Junto Project 0653: Break a Rule
The Assignment: Stop doing something you always do.
Step 1: Thinks of things you consider unbreakable rules when you make music. Maybe you never use a vocal, or you always use a click track, or you never remake earlier work, or you always use a specific instrument. The longer you think about these rules, the more you’ll unearth rules that you hadn’t even recognized as rules before.
Step 2: Make a list of the self-imposed rules you came up with in Step 1.
Step 3: Choose one rule from Step 2 and record a track in which you break that rule.
Tasks Upon Completion:
Label: Include “disquiet0653” (no spaces/quotes) in the name of your track.
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.
Share: Post your track and a description/explanation at https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0653-break-a-rule/
Discuss: Listen to and comment on the other tracks.
Additional Details:
Length: The length is up to you.
Deadline: Monday, July 8, 2024, 11:59pm (that is: just before midnight) wherever you are.
About: https://disquiet.com/junto/
Newsletter: https://juntoletter.disquiet.com/
License: It’s preferred (but not required) to set your track as downloadable and allowing for attributed remixing (i.e., an attribution Creative Commons license).
Please Include When Posting Your Track:
More on the 653rd weekly Disquiet Junto project, Break a Rule — The Assignment: Stop doing something you always do — at https://disquiet.com/0653/
