From78

I just made an influences page here (you can see it at the top of the site in the navigation bar). I plan to keep adding to this as I think about who and what have influenced me.

However, when I look at it now, I notice something I think is significant that helps me not be overly focused on making things perfect: Most of the stuff the people on this list make isn’t super polished/overly produced.

• Chris Arnade’s Substack is very well written, but he keeps it very simple.
• Patti Smith’s Substack has videos she makes with a stock webcam on her computer.
• Nick Cave’s Red Hand Files are simple blog posts.
• Rob Bell’s podcast has no intro music and he leaves in the hums and ahh, and repetitive things he says.
• Marc Weidenbaum’s Disquiet website is an example of a simple blog that has been around for a very long time.

Of course, there are some things on this list that do have a rather high production value to them, such as Bella Freud’s videos, and Ezra Klein’s podcast, but these things constitute the minority rather than the majority of things on this list.

Hello,

This is the second field note I’ve recorded and posted to the new From78 site (hosted via Micro.blog). I used a small wireless mic and my iPhone’s voice memo app to make the field note. If it sounds good, I plan to do more things like this.

The idea is to record stuff in the fly, as a kind of field note. Then, later, use those off the cuff field recordings as source material for a From78 podcast.