Voice of the Residue

©Cameron Altaras

Length: 24 minutes
Words and Vocals – Cameron Altaras
Music – Jeff Altaras
Video – Joseph Seuferling

There is a wounding unique to women. This wound is passed generation to generation, grandmother, to mother to daughter. It takes form particular to each life it touches and yet the wounding is much more than its particular manifestations.

This piece explores the many voices of the residue of that wound, which may have festered for generations before someone finally becomes aware of the wound, voices it for the generations, attempts to learn from it and decides to stop the wounding pattern.

The wound occurs every time a woman gives up on a dream, allows herself to be convinced that her ideas are but crazy notions, or denies the very yearning of her soul. The result is that words are not spoken, even screams are never screamed and in so many cases lives are not really lived. Yet, the wound, like an itch, will not be ignored. It’s a uniquely feminine itch, which when suppressed or repressed, turns to anger perhaps directed at others and most often at one’s self. It shows up as anxiety, depression, illness and broken relationships.

When a woman adapts herself to the insidious lessons of “how to do” and “how to be” in the world around her, which has been constructed according to male modeling, she allows further damage to herself. And yet, to step out of the confines of the box of the world as she knows it, takes great courage and is often met with resistance.

Our grandmothers may have loved their daughters deeply. Our mothers may have loved us deeply. And we, in turn, have loved our own daughters deeply. Yet, in our wounding and unbeknownst to us and certainly not because any of us ever intended to, we, too, have wounded. The pain is handed down and we have the choice to either blame those who came before us, or dig deep into the wounding as we experience it, glean the bits of wisdom found therein, and find our way to healing.

Each life offers moments of reckoning. In this piece, there are three such reckonings, three moments of face-to-face confrontation with the results of the wounding in an individual life. It is in these moments, when we are offered the choice to continue as before, or step into something unknown.

Acknowledgements:
1. "This is the whirlpool then" 
A line from "The Swimmer's Moment, a poem by Margaret Avison. Canadian Poetry Online | University of Toronto Libraries | Margaret Avison

2. "Tears are prayers without hope"
From "I wept my life away and learned to live/Where tears are prayers." - Rumi