Where Junto Projects Come From

It’s pretty common that when I’m talking with someone about the Disquiet Junto, the weekly music community I have moderated since January 2012, the question arises as to where Junto projects come from — how is it that the ideas originate, week after week, some 753 in a row as of this writing. I’ve answered this question various ways over the years, and one key explanation is that the Junto projects rarely if ever originate because I’m trying to come up with an idea. I have a huge backlog of potential projects. Most projects originate instead based on an observation, one that is then turned into a kind of interrogative, flipped from something that is or seems to something that might be. For example, the third Junto took the origin of the Junto itself, as inspired by Benjamin Franklin, and tried to imagine what one of his inventions, the glass harmonica, might sound like today. The 120th project came about because I saw reproductions of the heartbeart of artist Marcel Duchamp and…