To be blunt about it: I’ve been busting my ass the last few days. I have a hellish afterschool class that is best titled “Me Vs. 25 1st Graders”. I don’t blame them (THOUGHT EXPERIMENT: You are 5 years old. A weird Korean guy walks into the room and tries to teach you Korean, but he only speaks Korean. What do you do?), but it has quickly become the most difficult thing I have ever had to do. My spare time has evaporated as I scramble around trying to think up new ways to keep them from tearing ass around the room, ripping everything off the walls while I futilely attempt to hold back the torrents of trouble that are amassing. I’ll recount the finer episodes later. This is about “In C”.

“In C” is the piece of music that puts my head back together when it has been rearranged. It is the piece of music that almost single handedly sponsored the American minimalist movement in contemporary classical music. Dudes like Steve Reich and John Adams might not be about were it not for Terry Riley’s harebrained idea to change music by destroying it. Radiolab (The 100% foolproof barometer for how much I like a person is how diehard of a Radiolab fan they are) recently did a small piece on it. And it was wonderful.

Anyway, the original recording of In C, part one, here:

Those of you with ambitions can find literally dozens and dozens of covers, remixes and performances of In C. They are almost all totally lovely. They put me back together.