Lingua Ignota: the anthem of survivors

Curated by Alice Kundalini - She Spread Sorrow

It feels strange to be writing about Lingua Ignota. The sensation really is one of the unspeakable, of standing before something words cannot describe. The choice of name for such a powerful musical project could not have been more fitting. The Lingua Ignota is an alphabetical system devised in the 12th century by the abbess Hildegard of Bingen, who used it for mystical purposes. A mysterious language, with an alphabet of 23 letters, of which we find traces in only two ancient manuscripts containing the words of this Lingua Ignota. To simplify greatly, since this is not meant to be semantic archaeology but a piece about music and art, I like to imagine this language as the invention of a woman who could not find in existing words the strength to go beyond. A language to overcome reality.

When I listen to Lingua Ignota, this is exactly what I find. An incredible woman who found a language to go beyond reality. Kristin Hayter was born in 1986 in California, which she later left to move to Rhode Island. There is little to say: her life has not been easy. Not at all.

A life of violence, abuse, anorexia, marginalisation. A youth spent between Catholic schools and church choirs, but also within the walls of a home where she suffered domestic violence. A life that continues with men who abuse her, "men" who turn out to be violent tormentors. A life accompanied by severe eating disorders, which brought her close to death. A life of screams and pain. And to tell a life like this, a Lingua Ignota is not needed. Sadly, it is a common language for so many women. For so many people. Sadly, pain can become unbearable. The violence suffered in childhood stays and returns, like a powerful regurgitation that resurfaces even in adulthood. Because it is your language, the one you learned as a child.

But then there are those who destroy this language. A woman of incredible strength, capable of writing a 10,000-page thesis that weighs as much as she does (she does it on purpose). A woman able to tear her own story apart and scream it at us so loudly that we feel it inside us. She is our abbess Hildegard, searching for a Lingua Ignota beyond the human. Kristin finds hers. And it becomes ours. Her screams are harrowing. Truly. Almost unbearable. She calls her singing the anthem of survivors, and that is exactly what it is. Her strength is the strength of all the survivors who have not found their own Lingua Ignota with which to cry out the pain they carry inside. And her power becomes cathartic.

There are no words to describe the music of Lingua Ignota; you simply have to listen. Her singing moves from the lyrical to the heart-wrenching and the unspeakably violent, reaching the scream of Black Metal. The music goes from classical piano to the most violent noise. The atmosphere is one of extreme pain, which at times becomes tangible, almost physical. As if you could touch it.

It is not easy listening. Not only because it can be musically challenging, but because it bleeds pain and you cannot help but feel it.

I don't want to say anything more; there is no need. A recent body of work, begun in 2017 with the album Let The Evil Of His Own Lips Cover Him, which has already given us two albums of great intensity, All Bitches Die (2017) and Caligula (2019).

For the rest, just let the music do its work, and let Katryn's unknown tongue become, for a few moments, yours too.

Black Pills is a column that does not set out to teach anything. There are books, articles and manuals that deal with the biographies of artists, films and works of art in a detailed and exhaustive way. This is not one of those cases. The black pills are small glimpses of cultural and artistic landscapes, at times very broad, which offer the chance to explore themes that do not entirely belong to mass culture, but move along other channels and other circuits. In a world where the choice is often limited to what is defined, in the broadest sense, as pop, I highly recommend taking a few pills of a different colour and perhaps discovering something new, which in some cases, as in mine, can stay with you for the rest of your life.