"Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right."

This section from George Orwell’s 1984 came to mind when I had read about the Stonewall Monument’s website removing terms relating to transgenders and bisexuals in the news, and I was frightened by the parallels between Orwell’s world and our own. It is from this event in which Vapors was conceptualized: a piece based on what I have observed to be a blatant erasure of culture and identity in the United States. It seems our own history is being removed and rewritten before our own eyes. Due to the subject matter, Vapors is a dissonant, almost nightmarish piece; its harmonies alien and sometimes cacophonous, yet wistful like a fading memory.

11 minutes | 2025

Instrumentation: 1.1.1.1 - 1.1.1.0 - timp.perc(2) - strings