What does your PTSD sound like?
This post reminded me of an audio file I compiled last year when I was having trouble concentrating on writing a paper. I was not consciously aware of my PTSD issues at that time- just thought there were several aspects of my thinking that I couldn't get a handle on.
The lyric or text of the file is based on a writing experience I attempted in order to change the dynamic of my inner dialogue. Because I did not think that typing a linear journal entry would help me clear my mind, I attempted to use my voice to write my thoughts by dictating to Microsoft Word. However, I didn't want to get caught up in editing or correcting the dictation while I talked, so I just spoke the stream of consciousness and then checked it out to revise. In many cases, what Word had interpreted was bizarre, but poetically interesting. I revisited Word's transcript using the William Burrough's style cut-up technique by looking at the transcribed words in their own rite and arranging them as a new message. Then I read the new words aloud and recorded it as an audio file. I used the free program Audacity to manipulate tracks and mix the recording as a work of audio art, adding another track of vocalization that was a commentary on the Word generated cut-up. This file is designed to be listened to using headphones at the highest volume that doesn't produce distortion.
The resulting audio file is a layered piece where some thoughts and phrases are voiced at different speeds with elements of delay and echo. For me, it gives the impression of different themes of memory and idea being repeated by different aspects of a person's character- being repeated concurrently to them directly in their ears/mind. Some parts make sense, some seem unrelated, some echo into a beat that becomes an entirely new noise. A slow-ish aural vocalization- the thread of continuity- seems to represent my conscious self which attempts an integration of the ideas and also to generate a sense of calm.
The primary repeated concept in the piece is about "someone coming home". At the time of recording, I was distractingly hypervigilliant. I live in an old house in the country on the end of a dead end road. I had had major issues with meth-addict neighbors and two separate car-stripping/theiving rings one and two years before. I was writing in my bedroom, with no ability to see street traffic (which there should have been none), but continually felt like I heard cars driving up to my house. Interestingly, in retrospect, I recently read a recovery journal of mine written shortly after disclosing four years of rape and sexual exploitation as a child. One of the more distressingly emphasized points was about how there were frequently people in the house upstairs, in the bedroom next door, or literally knocking at the bedroom door while I was being raped. I think that that trauma was probably the biggest influence on this repetive thought.
At the time of recording, I was also stressed that my husband would come home while I was in the throws of unproductivity, "talking to myself" about crazy thoughts- and I wouldn't hear him, or he would be disappointed in my use of what should have been study time.
I'd like to post the file here for people to listen to at their own risk, but I get a database error when I try to attach it a .zip
