Bat Kol – an audio recording which explores the gendered blame game encoded in a 2,000 year religious history of noble words and ignoble actions and suggests one pay heed to the advice that “by their fruits you shall know them”
Bat Kol, a Hebrew term meaning "sound," "resonance," especially as it pertains to a heavenly or divine voice. It “means the reverberation or hum, caused by the motion of all things, which fills the whole world, and which accompanies the human voice....” And: “characteristic attributes of the Bat Ḳol are the invisibility of the speaker and a certain remarkable quality in the sound ....” Also “the sound of a voice issuing from heaven, whence the name ‘the daughter of the voice’.” This audio recording takes into account all of these and begins with the voice of a “special being,” who leads “the song of the celestial beings in praise of the Most High around His throne.” Other sources refer to “a kind of Bat Ḳol which … falls into the category of omens.”
What if there were a voice which emerged out of Nothingness on the breath of the Divine singing a beautiful tone? Perhaps that holy song, that Sancti Canticum, then passing through a prism of the Universe, created the diverging harmonies of all that is. That’s where the blame game comes in. To insist that all that has gone wrong is the fault of another, causes further divergence, disharmony and ultimately, disconnection. According to the legends, the blame game began along gendered lines: Adam blamed her [Eve]. And Paul shamed her.
Stories of gardens and glory, of sacrifice and suffering, were appropriated from ancient cultures. Men like Origen and Augustine re-named and re-appointed the themes and characters as religious doctrine. Debates regarding exact wording, in places like Nicaea, Ephesus and Chalcedon, were as political as they were theological. Terms codified in creeds shaped the psyches of believers, as “issues of power were disguised in theological terms.” Such is the Empire of Religion. Theologically “forced conformity” decreed that descendants of those banished from original glory exist in a state of sin and sorrow. A constructed hierarchy anointed some with power to dispense to those with none, the grace and mercy that is their due by the fact that all on earth are emanations of the Divine from whom all breath originates in that original song of creation.
A Credo, known as the Apostles’ Creed, hovers within the consciousness of believers and imprints itself upon their very souls, to remind all of proper belief, for “[q]uite literally, […] eternal salvation depends on holding a precisely correct faith.” That Credo hovers in the background of this recording in its original Latin. In an attempt to un-write it, the Latin recording is literally played backwards and words from the English translation are stated in reverse order. The result sounds like garbled nonsense until it disappears. In the words of Don Juan: “Here, surrounding us, is eternity itself. To engage in reducing it to a manageable nonsense is petty and outright disastrous.”
Perhaps I am but an eternal optimist. As such, I ride out on a melody, a song again, this one carrying a vision set forth in the words of William Blake:
“…Roses are planted where thorns grow,
And on the barren heath
Sing the honey bees.”
And when one finds oneself in the silence of Infinity, if one is silent often enough or long enough, one might hear an echo of that Divine voice breaking in on the world once again in holy song … Sancti Canticum …
The recording carries itself off into the silence of infinity on one last Sancti Canticum … the emergence of a different voice.

Voices and words created and arranged by Cameron Baylie Altaras
Sounds and effects created and arranged by Jeff Altaras
Final mixing and blending by Jeff Altaras

For more info: www.vocem-redisuum.com/recordings

Bat Kol.final - 3 20 22, 2.35 PM

Voice of the Residue, (3 tracks) A searing indictment of patriarchal  wounding of women, that is passed generation to generation, and one  woman's path to break free.
3a - Boxes and boxes, 9:05 min
3b - The scream I did not scream, 5:37 min
3c - Wounds write large upon my palm, 9:57 min

Words and Vocals – Cameron Baylie 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.

https://www.vocem-redisuum.com/

Aug. 2020

Voice Of The Residue 3c - 3:26:22, 1.45 PM

Aug 2020

Voice Of The Residue 3b - 3:26:22, 1.15 PM

Voice of the Residue, (3 tracks) A searing indictment of patriarchal wounding of women, that is passed generation to generation, and one  woman's path to break free.
3a - Boxes and boxes, 9:05 min
3b - The scream I did not scream, 5:37 min
3c - Wounds write large upon my palm, 9:57 min

Words and Vocals – Cameron Baylie 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.

https://www.vocem-redisuum.com/

Voice Of The Residue 3a - 3:26:22, 1.13 PM

An audio recording honoring creation streaming from and through a feminine source, akin to a mother giving birth. To understand that the creative force continually creates, through us and through all of nature, evokes within us a sense of reverence. Conversely, our “ejaculative acts of ego” lead to the destruction of the earth, and in the end, to our own annihilation. 

Words and Vocals: Cameron Altaras; Sounds, effects and mixing : Jeff Altaras
Length: 5:55 minutes 
https://www.vocem-redisuum.com/

Beauty Becomes Her 1.1 - 10 9 23, 3.50 PM

Her voice fills in and expands out beyond inherent and assumed nuances and meanings, extending the territory in which words roam. Musings kept secret for decades. Internal arguments that drive one mad. Tales told, made audible in collaboration with synthesized sound.

Vocem Redisuum

Popular tracks