Scratch Pad: Sirens, Scores, Hex

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 find knowing I’ll revisit my posts to be a positive and mellowing influence on my social media 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.

▰ When you live near the ocean, sunny day = lots of sirens

▰ Always interested when a director scores their own film. This is from Jim Jarmusch’s upcoming Father Mother Sister Brother.

▰ The day after 909 Day is:

▰ I got a pickup that separates a guitar into six (fairly) distinct outputs. It’s neat seeing, thanks to an oscilloscope, how the notes ring out in a chord. This is three pairs of strings, from lowest (left) to highest (right).

▰ Reading: Busy week, during which I managed to finish one novel I’m reading — and to not start too many others. I’m working my way through Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian (1985) and I recently read True Grit by Charles Portis (1968), and in that context I came to wonder if these might be somewhat rarefied, where westerns (or novels of the the west) are concerned. I set out to read a “proper” western, by which I mean one that maybe spent substantial time as a trade paperback? I was recommended a handful, and I selected — essentially because the library had it — The Day the Cowboys Quit (1971) by Texan author Elmer Kelton (1926-2009), and boy did I enjoy the heck out of it. It’s a tight, quite intense story that goes through several distinct phases, with a bunch of well-sketched characters, and it’s also a lesson in how a certain amount of detailed description of specialized activities (here those of ranch hands, at work and at home) can ground a story. There is a climax during a major court scene that brings to mind the famous one from Aaron Sorkin’s A Few Good Men, though it plays out differently.