1 / 74
0:00/0:00
2022
Cello
Viola
Violin
- Program Notes
- Lavender Amoung Thorns" is a 6-movement suite, where each consecutive movement represents the next progressive stage in Vivian Cass's LGBTQ+ Identity Model. Showcased here are movements II, IV-VI. Beginning at Movement II, "Touch of Comparison", I enter a time in my early adolescent years when I began to realize, with unease, that the "weird people" which my peers seemed to love making fun of in fact was me. I felt a sense of uncertainty, as I attempted to explain away my "different feelings" to myself; all in order to feel "normal". I endured years of having to justify and re-justify myself, knowing that I will "never be regular". My biggest recourse came when I further realized that, underneath all that social pressure, I was actually silently accepting of myself all along; my "being different" ultimately led to no detrimental end: no one was helped nor hurt by it. This unspoken self-love was especially needed later in life, when a bigger psychological distress called. Movement IV, "Acceptatio Regnat in Dies Irae", was inspired by a later time in my high-school life when I was painfully exposed to the fire-and-brimstone condemnation of my homosexuality by a fundamentalist church. Though I kept my enduring self-acceptance hidden within myself, on the surface, I had felt I should try to rid me of my homosexuality, only so that "maybe... just maybe" God will pull me away from the drops to "Earth's eternal fire". I was scared for what was to come. When I entered college, I was thrown another life-line: I had learned that the bible had changed wording and social interpretation countless of times since the inscription of each book. From this, I would then be lead to learn that the creationary God, of whom the fundamental hate-group had preached abhorred me so deeply, was in fact created by none other than human themselves; if what Christians of historic societies regarded as homosexuality was different than what we understood of it today, then there must have been a different version of God back then. Relieved with such great burden lifted off of me, Movement V, "Pride in Creating God", celebrates such a time as this, when I embraced my own God; who shares in my self-acceptance as a gay man. Finally, movement VI, "Marriage to Synthesis", marks California's milestone in implementing gay marriage in 2013, a statewide achievement that complementarily aided in fully incorporating my homosexuality into my makeup. I reflect on more than 20 years of my journey into acceptance; and have unregretfully reached a stage in my life where my LGBTQ+ identity is another esteemed component in a synthesis of identities completing me as a whole individual; where I no longer need remind myself to be 'proud of who I am'. Today, I live comfortably, not having to think about the pains that I had suffered many footsteps back when. Through what I hope to be the lushly exuberant sounds of my first string quartet, I wish to share just a little of my personal struggles to come to where I am today; and wish to be an uplifting inspiration to those suffering LGBTQ+ individuals of whom this may concern.
- Performer Credits
- Finale 2.71