I will never not love that if Facebook is loading very slowly on a cell phone’s browser, the top navigation briefly resembles the I Ching in the ambiguous state before the hexagrams have been determined — or, in quantum terms, have collapsed.
Been going through my old records, including my 7″ singles, which I keep in these old purpose-made boxes I’ve picked up at thrift stores, used record shops, and garage sales over the years. I love this one in particular. It’s the most nondescript of the set, but it has this fantastic little tag, which has hung there for many decades, since long before I owned it, maybe before I was born.
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 tag on what books I may have finished reading. Knowing I’ll revisit my social media posts, I’ve found, serves as a positive and mellowing influence on my online 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.
▰ Nice reminiscence — at his Patreon account — by great artist/writer/creator David Lasky about work he did when I edited the comics at Tower Records’ Pulse! magazine. Click through for his full-page Beethoven story (the rough draft of which hangs on my bedroom wall). Meanwhile, here’s a little illustration of Morton Feldman he did for our classical magazine at the time (aka the 1990s).
▰ We don’t get snow in San Francisco, but occasionally we’re allowed to feel like it could snow.
▰ I recognize the original books are more complicated than merely sequences of fragments, and they work because of how they are collectively fine-tuned for internal coherence, but I wish Jennifer Egan had a newsletter where a few times each year she added a new chapter to her A Visit from the Goon Squad / The Candy House universe.
▰ Me, young: When I’m an adult I will face unique challenges.
Me, now: Ooh, can I reconnect my laptop to the project-required VPN before the computer alerts me I’ve been disconnected?
▰ [there is no trombone emoji]
▰ RIP, Tom Noonan (1951–2026)
DeNiro’s Neil McCauley: How do you get this information?
Noonan’s Kelso: Just comes to you. This stuff just flies through the air. They send this information out. I mean it’s just beamed out all over the fucking place. All you have to do is know how to grab it. See, I know how to grab it.
Heat (1995)
▰ Getting some work done at a small library branch. There is nothing like the sheer glee in the voice of a kid who just realized they can take all these books home with them.
▰ Much as there are Reddits that dissect the tracks in live sets and mixes, I wonder if there’s one itemizing the books in Thom Yorke’s Rome apartment. I easily identified several, including ones by Thurston Moore and Kim Stanley Robinson, but many are more difficult, like that one on the top shelf with “GP” (or “F”?) “L FM” on its dark spine. … After I initially posted this, a friend managed to identify that “GP L FM” book as Gilles Peterson’s Lockdown FM: Broadcasting in a Pandemic. (Image from Dezeen, photographed Danilo Scarpati.)
▰ I figured out that the way the librarians at this particular branch signal to everyone that closing time is coming is they start talking really loudly with each other, and with patrons. Their volume speaks volumes amid the volumes.
▰ Finished reading nothing this week. Very close on two novels. One I couldn’t make the book-club date for, so I slowed my pace (also, I’m not really digging it, too flamboyant and showboaty), and the other I’m enjoying so much that I’m finding I’m slowing to linger with each phase of the story.
Seems like a cry for help. In any case, have a good weekend.
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 llllllll.co discussion thread.
Disquiet Junto Project 0738: Speak Not
The Assignment: Saying something without saying it.
Step 1: Think of something you want to say — an expression of affection, a statement of dissent, a story, a bit of personal history, a joke, a complaint.
Step 2: Say what you want to say by recording a piece of music that employs only instrumental/non-verbal sounds. Use no words, not even transformed speech.
Background: Among the foundational concepts of the Disquiet Junto is an exploration of the commonplace idea that music is a universal language. The working theory is that while that statement holds some truth, music is a language perhaps most clearly spoken between musicians. Underlying all Junto projects is the idea that we are exploring a given project’s concepts by using music, rather than discussing the project’s concepts with words. (Of course, we do some of the latter in discussion threads, but that comes after the music, not before it.) This week’s project simply takes that overarching approach literally, so to speak.
Tasks Upon Completion:
Label: Include “disquiet0738” (no spaces/quotes) in the name of your track.
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.
Share: Post your track and a description/explanation at https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0738-speak-not/
Discuss: Listen to and comment on the other tracks.
Additional Details:
Length: The length is up to you. How much do you have to say?
Deadline: Monday, February 23, 2026, 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 738th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Speak Not — The Assignment: Saying something without saying it — at https://disquiet.com/0738/
