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Posted On: June 5th 2026, 06:21 am
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“When the Earth Stopped Turning” from William Finn’s “Elegies”
—
This song has lived in my brain ever since I heard an incredibly vulnerable iteration of it in undergrad from one of my fellow music majors. Death is something every living thing will eventually experience, personally or peripherally. I think about death often and have done so for a very long time. The blatant disregard for the lives of others weighs heavily on me, and I am certainly not the only one that has felt the oppressive weight of it every day for the past several years now. It’s hard not to when we are able to see horrific things happening every day in the palms of our hands, sandwiched between animal videos and other media.
This performance is dedicated to the memory of my great grandmother. She’s the person I was thinking of and felt like I was with whenever I sang this song this quarter. I have visceral memories of being by her bedside in the last days of her life. I remember the voracity she had, making the most of every breath she had until the end. I remember her empowering me and reminding me just how much love she had for all of us. I remember not wanting to let go of her and knowing that I had to.
Zooming out back to the present, I see her resilience and deep desire to live as fully as possible mirrored in the lives of people that are faced with threat of their lives being cut short because of the cruelty and greed of others. Life is meant to be cherished. So we must live, because the world can be good. We can be good for each other.
With love,
YJ
—
This song has lived in my brain ever since I heard an incredibly vulnerable iteration of it in undergrad from one of my fellow music majors. Death is something every living thing will eventually experience, personally or peripherally. I think about death often and have done so for a very long time. The blatant disregard for the lives of others weighs heavily on me, and I am certainly not the only one that has felt the oppressive weight of it every day for the past several years now. It’s hard not to when we are able to see horrific things happening every day in the palms of our hands, sandwiched between animal videos and other media.
This performance is dedicated to the memory of my great grandmother. She’s the person I was thinking of and felt like I was with whenever I sang this song this quarter. I have visceral memories of being by her bedside in the last days of her life. I remember the voracity she had, making the most of every breath she had until the end. I remember her empowering me and reminding me just how much love she had for all of us. I remember not wanting to let go of her and knowing that I had to.
Zooming out back to the present, I see her resilience and deep desire to live as fully as possible mirrored in the lives of people that are faced with threat of their lives being cut short because of the cruelty and greed of others. Life is meant to be cherished. So we must live, because the world can be good. We can be good for each other.
With love,
YJ
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