Self Portrait

April 2021 (for solo violin)

This piece is the self portrait of my brain—precisely, the 5% of it that is conscious, and the thoughts I am willing to share with the listener. It depicts the feeling of confinement that I often experience as a struggling trilingual. From the fast approaching fog that clouds my memory and steals away words and phrases of Korean and Japanese was born the notion of a glass box, an invisible force fencing me in from recalling what I once considered as basics of my native languages. It is merely a fun coincidence that my name in Korean means “glass”.

The G to A pizzicato motif is a key component that becomes the foundation of the piece, similar to breathing being the foundation of human beings.

What does the self portrait of your mind look like?