Disquiet

I do this manually each Saturday, collating most of the tweets I made the past week at twitter.com/disquiet, which I think of as my public notebook. Some tweets pop up sooner in [expanded form](https://disquiet.com/2022/05/04/justin-green-1991-pulse-tower-comics/) or [otherwise](https://disquiet.com/2022/05/01/emerg-call/) on Disquiet.com. I’ve found it personally informative to revisit the previous week of thinking out loud. This isn’t a full accounting. Often there are, for example, conversations on Twitter that don’t really make as much sense out of the context of Twitter itself. And sometimes I tweak them a bit, given the additional space.

▰ The scenario where you hear firetrucks, and then they get louder and louder, and then you realize they’re right there on your block? Apparently it doesn’t necessarily sound like one might imagine it sounds. As they approached the end of our block last night (for an incident at a nearby apartment building), the firetrucks cut their sirens, and as a result, they sounded sort of like they were trailing off. I thought they’d gone right past, but in fact they were right there. (The sound diminished, but the lights were unambiguously bright.) Not sure yet what happened, but the inhabitants returned to the building within about half an hour.)

▰ Great time to take a walk in the neighborhood is after school’s out on a clear day. The avenues resound with music practice. Fewer tubas than when I lived in New Orleans, but still a great sense of dispersed communal activity — separate but together, practicing alone as a group.

▰ Full force foghorn this morning

▰ “Marc, there have been fewer images in your [tinyletter.com/disquiet](https://tinyletter.com/disquiet) lately.”

“Yes, Tinyletter’s image situation seems a little broken lately.”

“Marc, why don’t you switch providers?”

“I’ve got time to either make a newsletter or investigate affordable options. Doing both is tougher.”

▰ Gotta love (which is to say, the opposite) that YouTube Music lists the title of *The Essential John Fahey* as simply *The Essential*. (Side note: “Singing Bridge of Memphis, Tennessee” is a work of sonic art. As is the rest of the album.)

▰ The gap between when you finish reading the library ebook and when an email alert tells you the finished book has been automatically returned. (There’s the distance in time, but also how long — or short, on rare occasion — the gap feels.)

▰ Next up in guitar class: Kenny Burrell’s “Chitlins Con Carne”

▰ Last week cartoonist Justin Green died and now Gene Santoro. I edited the various jazz sections of Tower Pulse! for the first half of the ’90s. Gene was a major presence every month. He knew more about jazz than the rest of us combined. The mag benefited from him greatly. RIP.

▰ If you’re Mastodon-curious, I hang out at [post.lurk.org/@disquiet](http://post.lurk.org/@disquiet). And if you find Mastodon confusing (e.g., Why isn’t that a mastodon.social URL?), you’re not alone. Took me 4,500 words to unpack what confused me, and why it’s still interesting ([“How I Got from Mastodon’t to Mastodon”](https://disquiet.com/2022/05/02/how-i-got-from-mastodont-to-mastodon/)).

▰ Graphics GPU or portable DJ gear?

▰ I was wondering how long I’ve been reading really long things on a phone (or phone equivalent). It would have been exactly 25 years ago, when I put Neal Stephenson’s 45,000-word *Wired* article about the world’s longest cable (great piece, by the way) on my new PalmPilot in 1997. Read Cory Doctorow’s *Craphound* the next year. Then got into Project Gutenberg. Now I mostly sync Libby/Hoopla, and buy the occasional ebook (good way to support an author is to pre-order). I’ve always read with a pencil in hand, even if that pencil is my phone (or Kindle).

▰ Long week. Offline weekend plans:

– Start listening by trying to stop listening.

– Train your algorithm by deleting unwanted stuff from your music/video history.

– Find a favorite book in audiobook form. Revisit it while taking a walk with no destination in mind save the past.