Step 1: Choose a favorite book, or simply choose one at random.
Step 2: Read — preferably aloud — the first sentence in the book’s text.
Step 3: Make music that somehow reflects the line you read in Step 2.

Nice challenge!
I picked a book at random from a cardboard box filled with souvenirs from my years in Argentina. When I moved to Europe, I brought most of my belongings with me — but some heavier items (mostly old books, cassettes, and vinyl records) stayed behind. I'm gradually bringing those things — and memories — back.

The first book from that pile:
*Cuentos de dos orillas* (1971 edition)
I remember most of the short stories in it — I read them decades ago (at least 35 years). The one I truly love is the story by Borges.

For the music, I used an unused 2023 recording with Santiago Arias on bandoneon (I play bowed upright bass and Fender Rhodes). I added some synths to create an abstract soundscape.

This is the passage I read:

Funes, el memorioso
by Jorge Luis Borges
Lo recuerdo (yo no tengo derecho a pronunciar ese verbo sagrado, sólo un hombre
en la tierra tuvo derecho y ese hombre ha muerto) con una oscura pasionaria en la
mano, viéndola como nadie la ha visto, aunque la mirara desde el crepúsculo del
día hasta el de la noche, toda una vida entera. Lo recuerdo, la cara taciturna y
aindiada y singularmente remota, detrás del cigarrillo. Recuerdo (creo) sus manos
afiladas de trenzado. Recuerdo cerca de esas manos un mate, con las armas de la
Banda Oriental; recuerdo en la ventana de la casa una estera amarilla, con un vago
paisaje lacustre.

 @disquiet

Funes el memorioso (disquiet0705)

landing

A piano improvisation on the opening two lines of Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood

More on the 705th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Book Start — The Assignment: Let the beginning of a book help you begin a new piece of music — at https://disquiet.com/0705/. This week’s project was proposed by Neil Stringfellow.



To Begin At The Beginning (Disquiet0705)

Music for / inspied by the first line of Crime and Punishment, which reads as; 
At the beginning of July, during a spell of exceptionally hot weather, towards evening, a certain young man came down on to the street from the little room he rented from some tenants who lived in Stolyarnyi Lane, stepped out onto the street, and slowly, almost hesitantly, set off towards the Kokushkin Bridge.

I picked that line, in part because its the beginning of July as I make this and also we've had a spell of hot weather. I read this book probably 25 years ago and read it again at the start of this year.  
For this track I jumped onto Freesound.org and got some street sounds from St. Petersburg and the horse drawn carriage sounds - this seemed to fit the 19th century feel. I new then the music and field recordings should merge together. I wanted tension and the sense of the character in the book being alone with the music I added - soft tension strings and ambient keys. 



Raskolnikov's Walk [disquiet0705]

The first sentence of Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert M. Pirsig is, "I can see by my watch, without taking my hand from the left grip of the cycle, that it is eight-thirty in the morning."

More on the 705th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Book Start — The Assignment: Let the beginning of a book help you begin a new piece of music — at https://disquiet.com/0705/. This week’s project was proposed by Neil Stringfellow.

more halF unusuaL

halF icanseebymywatcH [disquiet0705]

This week's Disquiet Junto prompt asked us to use the first line of a favorite book as the inspiration for a piece of music. I selected David Byrne's "How Music Works", with the opening sentence "I had an extremely slow-dawning insight about creation."

I'm traveling this week, so away from my outboard gear, but I did bring along a mini keyboard and headphones so that I could still participate this week! Features several layers of software synths (mainly Alchemy) and a field recording made from the 3rd floor balcony of the flat we're renting while we're here.

I tried to keep this sparse (for me at least), following the idea of the "slow-dawning insight", while still capturing the chaos of the creative act. It's probably still unsettling, but I just can't help that.

More on the 705th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Book Start — The Assignment: Let the beginning of a book help you begin a new piece of music — at https://disquiet.com/0705/. This week’s project was proposed by Neil Stringfellow.


A Slow Dawning Insight About Creation (disquiet0705)

Disquiet Junto Project 0705: Book Start
The Assignment: Let the beginning of a book help you begin a new piece of music. 

The chosen text is a poem by Giuseppe Ungaretti (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giuseppe_Ungaretti),
written in July 1918 in the trenches during the First World War.

Si sta come 
d'autunno 
sugli alberi 
le foglie 

https://www.sololibri.net/Soldati-poesia-Ungaretti-si-sta-come-d-autunno-sugli-alberi.html


I obtained a sequence of 7 notes (AFDGBCE – 9 5 1 7 e 0 4), which I distributed across various sequencers and instruments. In particular, I used several old patches from SampleTank 2/3.

Soldati [disquiet0705]

For the 601th haiku proposed by Naviar records: 

pulling light from the other world . . . the Milky Way
 
by: Yatsuka Ishihara

Yatsuka Ishihara (1919–1998) was a Japanese poet and co-founder of the journal Aki 秋 with Akira Matsuzawa. He also served as an advisor to the Modern Haiku Association (Gendai Haiku Kyōkai) and the Association of Haiku Poets (Haijin Kyōkai).

https://www.naviarrecords.com/naviarhaiku601-pulling-light/

Pulling light (naviarhaiku601)

A distinctive piece from the Ballroom Records archive, “From Here to Eternity” by Kostas Maskalides is featured on TEN: The Archive Series, Pt. 4 — a curated collection exploring the label’s most atmospheric and genre-defying Electronica.

TEN: The Archive Series, Pt. 4

From Here to Eternity

2025-07_ethereal-swell_78BPM_03m30s_CC.WIP

Purchase 16/24bit Wav

Milestone

My other account.. since I stopped my paid account and somewhere to upload bits and bobs

Raskolnikov's Walk [disquiet0705]

Audio Obscura

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