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 in expanded form or [otherwise](https://disquiet.com/2022/02/11/high-voltage-sunset/) on Disquiet.com sooner. It’s 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.

▰ The feeling in guitar class where you don’t just have a question. You have a question about how to express your question.

Me: “So … when we move up the fretboard with triads there are, uh, two “forms,” major and minor, aside from the 7th, which is diminished. But when we move up the fretboard with 7th chords, the 5th is, like, a third “form”? Why’s that?” (That’s after several attempts and still a mess.)

(And I understand the answer now. I’m just reflecting on the difficulty I had in forming the question. And I’m not sure I can, yet, concisely explain the answer. But I’m making strides.)

(The difference between understanding and the ability to explain being an important step toward, you know, actually understanding. On a positive note, I did get the underlying concept. I just couldn’t verbalize it. For me, being unable to verbalize something is, like, claustrophobic.)

▰ Recently got reacquainted with the Watersons due to their music’s use in Autumn de Wilde’s (highly enjoyable) film adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel *Emma*. RIP, Norma Waterson (obituary: [theguardian.com](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/jan/31/norma-waterson-obituary)).

I love this bit from their song “Country Life”: “And I like to hear them small birds singing / Merrily upon their laylums.” The meaning of “laylums” today is apparently not entirely clear. There are varied interpretations (“chorus, or group of birds,” “meadow or cropland,” “fallow land”). Much online discussion is uncertain: [afolksongaday](https://www.afolksongaday.com/?p=404), [traditionalmusic.co.uk](http://www.traditionalmusic.co.uk/traditional-music/ency/l.htm), [efdss.org](https://media.efdss.org/resourcebank/docs/RB222SongsOfRuralLifeSEN-CatKelly.pdf). Those links go to a handful of people who have specific (and differing) opinions on the topic. A general search for “laylums” yields lots of conversation among people looking to find out what it means.

▰ There was a fun but of chatter on Twitter due to Robert Pattinson having been quoted in GQ as saying how he bided his time in the Batman suit ([nme.com]((https://www.nme.com/en_au/news/film/robert-pattinson-made-ambient-electronic-music-while-suited-up-as-batman-3157454))): ““I’d be in the tent just making ambient electronic music in the suit, looking over the cowl.” This led to a lot of fun jokes, and I weighed in with [a thread](https://twitter.com/disquiet/status/1491476824517341188), beginning with the ideas that Alfred just puts “Bat-” stickers next to the logos on a lot of synth equipment he buys used via Reverb and Craigslist (Bat-Moog, Bat-sequencer, etc).

▰ Michel Fiffe’s sound effects are where it’s at.

▰ If you’re in Oslo in March, this Jon Hassell tribute concert looks pretty great. Of course, anything with Eivind Aarset and Jan Bang and Arve Henriksen and Nils Petter Molvær looks pretty great: [nasjonaljazzscene.no](https://nasjonaljazzscene.no/arrangement/jon-hassell-minnekonsert/?fbclid=IwAR23CsaiSJwuCSIBcaJkjaxQn4nM13iwPaQGm6J4nXxZO6jGandjPkiMLzA).

▰ Clearly a lot of Hassell fans in mourning. I post this announcement, and then Twitter goes down. :)

▰ Twitter loops video, so I’ve just got Ted Laderas running while I eat lunch: [twitter.com/ooray](https://twitter.com/ooray/status/1492229929487921153).

▰ Recommended weekend strategies:

– Remember the room tone of a place where you used to live.
– Imagine what Monday morning will sound like. Write down what you foresee (“forehear”?) and then compare come Monday.
– Re-listen to your least favorite record by a favorite musician.