I live in San Francisco, where new futures are minted daily, for better and worse. And yet nothing quite hits me like the future than does the regular sight of these massive vessels just off the coast. They always look like generation ships, self-contained ecosystems hovering on the horizon. I just don’t know if they’re readying for takeoff or recently arrived from offworld.
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.
▰ Afternoon trio for foghorn, tea timer, and washing machine
▰ It seems like it shouldn’t matter that I can now quickly post and to update Disquiet.com, which for a few months had a laggy thing going with its CMS. I should be able to just write and post, and a 30-second or even minute-long delay shouldn’t matter. But it really does. That’s how online-first writing, especially blogging, differs from (old-school) writing writing. There’s something fluid to the process of sketching a post, adding links and embeds, making sure it works, hitting post — and often tweaking slightly after. It’s just its own medium, and its own flow.
▰ The readymade haiku of Wikipedia’s notable death listings:
Maldivian footballer
Irish Gaelic games commentator
Cuban judoka
▰ I just learned that you can drag a specific note to the right-hand sidebar in Obsidian, and now all is right in the world
▰ The barber’s electric razor is expressing its sentience by performing a cover of Underworld’s “Rez”
▰ A reflection on the music of Aphex Twin by Alarm Will Sound percussionist Craig Thompson — all about the question of its “beatless”ness, to the nature of tempo, and much more. He’s played Aphex Twin arrangements for many years and has a unique perspective as a result.
▰ I’ve self-published Disquiet.com since the end of 1996. Some articles are backdated prior. I’ve been thinking about reading back through it from start to present, thousands of posts. Tidying it up as I go (a recent upgrade messed some markdown). Anyone here with a longtime blog done such a revisit?
▰ You know you’ve watched a lot of Bill Frisell live performance videos when you’ve graduated from “Yeah, cool socks as always” to recognizing specific shirts, as if they’re as much a part of his repertoire as a given piece of music
▰ Uh, so I’ve been working in an old version of Obsidian for months, not aware there’d been several updates, which explains why tables weren’t working as I’d expected. I must be missing somewhere in the app where it tells you there’s an update available.
▰ Have a good weekend, folks. Listen to an old favorite record. Identify a musician who played a secondary role on that record and listen to a second record that also features the musician. Then listen to a third record, one that’s from same label and time period as the second record. Happy hunting.
▰ And, another week during which I read a ton but finished nothing. Lots of books-in-progress.
As Bill Bragg sang, “What is that sound? Where is it coming from?” If you’re reading this, then you may very well be acquainted with Shazam not knowing what the heck it is that catches your ear. Though when it works, it works.
This little ambient (and adjacent) mixtape just went out to paid subscribers. Thanks, folks.
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 0652: By the Tale
The Assignment: Set a favorite story to music.
Step 1: Choose a favorite short story.
Step 2: Compose a piece of music that follows the arc of the story’s narrative or otherwise conveys something about the story you want to express. You may closely follow plot points, or convey an overall atmosphere, or incorporate related sound effects, or do something else entirely.
Tasks Upon Completion:
Label: Include “disquiet0652” (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-0652-by-the-tale/
Discuss: Listen to and comment on the other tracks.
Additional Details:
Length: The length is up to you. Your finished recording needn’t last as long to listen to as the story does to read.
Deadline: Monday, July 1, 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 652nd weekly Disquiet Junto project, By the Tale — The Assignment: Set a favorite story to music — at https://disquiet.com/0652/
