Rising Beyond the Conspiracy of Silence

All the pieces on this channel were created as an exploration of living with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)- formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder. Different parts or alters in my DID system (the structure of my personality) have composed different scores depending on what experiences/memories/roles they have in my mind.

There has been a longstanding taboo at both the micro (individual) and macro (societal) level regarding talking about childhood sexual abuse, especially intrafamilial abuse.
Victims, such as myself, are silenced both through explicit threats, punishments and invalidation, and implicit shame, embarrassment, terror, avoidance and denial. In my case, any attempts to discuss the abuse happening to me was met with rage from both my brother and mother and often with severe consequences. I was also told that what was happening was either a ‘normal’ part of family life and/or because ‘I deserved it’. At a societal level, there has been a long history of discomfort regarding acknowledgement of incest and its prevalence resulting in strong taboos about discussing it in public domains or even researching it. Even as early as Freud’s writings we see that his original Seduction Theory was based on the impact of incestual abuse of children but, under pressure from his (male) medical colleagues and Viennese society, he recanted this theory and replaced it with the concept of unconscious sexual desires on the part of the child.
However, every now and then, victims and their advocates find a voice and there is a period of greater awareness and acknowledgement of both the prevalence and impact of childhood sexual abuse, especially of incest.
This piece was created in response to a building determination on my part to break this conspiracy of silence surrounding not only incestuous and other childhood sexual abuse but also the enforced silence of all other forms of abuse. Having been silenced my whole life and punished any time I broke that prohibition, I have finally reached a level of healing and confidence that has resulted in a determination to be silent no more. However, as is often the case with victim-survivors of childhood abuse, it is often difficult, if not impossible, to express the memories of abuse and its aftermath in words. This piece allowed previously silent parts to finally describe what happened to me. The final version is a performance piece which combines visual images and orchestral music to describe the narrative behind the silence.
The piece starts with 20 seconds of visual images of various aspects of abuse. E.g. physical, emotional, financial, sexual, domestic, psychological, elder, neglect etc. During this first 20 seconds, some instrumentalists from the orchestra try to play, but there is no sound emanating from the instrument. They have been bound by silence.
Slowly, instruments/personalities enter quietly and unsure of themselves testing the waters to see if it is okay to be heard.
As confidence grows and the parts start working together the piece adds more instruments and becomes louder and more confident. The personalities work together to overcome the conspiracy of silence. I included shorts snippets from the previous 3 orchestral scores to show that no matter what happens, people can get through anything. The piece ends with the full orchestra playing freely, with confidence and pride, having banished the shame and silencing to the past.
Not all personalities took part in the actual composing of this piece, although all were present when the composition was being created.