Klained

A recording I made of Philip Glass’s Metamorphosis One became the basis for a YouTube video. I never met the YouTuber who posted it, though he emailed me and asked permission. I could only tell him the rights belong to the record label, not me.

It’s a spare video. (There’s a single image of a lake.) This music is featured in the cult-fav TV show Battlestar Galactica. And a lot of BSG fans find the video. The music’s also used in NPR’s This American Life and that yields “hits” for the vid.

Last year, “Very-Famous-Celebrity” comedian Michael Ian Black made the album that has this recording of Metamorphosis One on it, his album of the year — though this “album-of-the-year” was released a decade earlier.

All this intertextuality brings waves of views to the YouTube clip.

Last week, the video was referenced in and linked to a fanfic called “Little Numbers.” LN is about the characters Kurt and Blaine on the cult-hit TV show Glee. A hypertext, this fanfic is in the form of a series of text messages:

(2:13)
And you could listen to the music I’m listening to.

(2:14)
Mhhh. And what would that be?

(2:15)
Since I’m on my phone, I only have a youtube link for you, sorry.

(2:15)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QL8lQU_1a-w

(2:16)
You can also pretend that I’m playing it.

Fans of Kurt and Blaine refer to them as Klaine. And all kinds of words can be derived therefrom: klainer, klaining…

It’s clear from new comments, this video’s been Klaimed. So many fandoms, so many cults — now 300,000 views.