Band: Lingua Ignota
Album:CALIGULA
Best song:“DO YOU DOUBT ME TRAITOR”
Worst song:I guess “FUCKING DEATHDEALER” is the weakest, but it is very good
A lot of albums have come out in the 11 months since I last wrote in this space, including plenty that I’ve loved. Am I going to write about a new album? No, I am not.
I recently saw Lingua Ignota on what Kristin Hayter has confirmed is the final tour of this music. Her statement on it is something anyone with even the smallest bit of humanity can appreciate; her journey toward healing is something to celebrate. Because of Hayter’s humanity, I can’t say I’m happy that the work exists – it comes from a place of true pain that I’d prefer she didn’t experience. It’s not worth it. “It is not healthy for me to relive my worst experiences over and over through LI,” she writes and one would be a fool to argue with that.
I say this all because I’ve seen her twice in the last year and my superfandom (such as it is) has only blossomed over the last few years. What I’ve seen in the crowds and the online community that follows Hayter is something to behold. I know that pop stars get this kind of devotion, but rarely have I seen so many people crying at a club show. It happened when I saw her last May and it happened when I saw her last week.
Some of this, I think, is the availability of avenues toward parasocial relationships with artists in the social media age. Hayter loves Cheez-Its, which is a thing that I know because I follow her on social media. In a previous age, I would not know that.
But, more than anything, the Lingua Ignota is a deeply personal and deeply emotional project, based on Hayter’s experiences of abuse and filtered through the lens of her experience, emotions and life. It is, in a word, relatable.
***
It’s probably something I should bring up in a therapy context, but I am constantly trying to figure out why I love the art I love. It’s why I write here, I guess. I want a reason other than the proverbial vibes (a word I now despise because of its current usage); I want to look down on the “I like what I like” people with some explanation of key changes or lyrics or whatever. I spill words and words and words and words about it. I mostly talk about identifying with some part of the music. My favorite lyricists have a gift of putting together profoundly relatable lyrics – from the mundanity of Phoebe Bridgers explaining her dreams to Chelsea Wolfe saying salvation is far away because “the world’s bent.”
I cannot totally figure out where that brings me with LI. In writing about SINNER GET READY, I mostly noted the Christ-centric atmosphere we all live with in the U.S., but also that I can appreciate Hayter’s screaming at the divine (something I called a Jewish trait, which is exceptionally gross, looking back). On reexamination (and two live shows), I don’t know.
To know of the LI live experience of this song cycle is to know that Hayter also does Christian spirituals as part of the show. To know of Hayter’s life experience is to know of her abuse, her rage and her use of art within that context, particularly regarding gender violence.
You can probably see where I’m going with this. Despite having lived in these United States my entire life (of which the Moral Majority Christian shit has dominated), I’m not Christian and have a distinct antipathy to Christianity in anything other than art. Being a cisgender man, gender-based violence has not come upon me. Is LI relatable to someone like me, someone so far away from Hayter’s experience? Or am I taking a safari, gawking at her life?
I don’t say that lightly, mostly because I have no idea. Comfort is a luxury that I have that most don’t, just because of the luck of my gender, race and upbringing. There are better examples of this, of course, but what’s the line between my taking a safari in someone’s life and simply trying to learn? Where does art fill into this?
Hayter’s got agency, of course, and the notion of Christianity is that of power – a theme that Hayter examines in her music! – so it’s not like I’m exploiting these things by consuming the art; I wouldn’t call my listening to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan exploitative, either. I buy the records, I go to the shows. It is, in a way, a transaction. Art is both a product (because it is bought and sold) and it is not (because it is so much more. No one feels connected to their pants like they do their favorite music or film or literature).
***
Which, I guess, brings me back to the hated vibes. The LI show on this tour is all vibes; it’s atmospheric in its very nature. As I think about profoundly relatable lyrics, I often fall back on conversational, narrative-style writing that is usually delivered in a whisper or a deadpan. Hayter is… not that. Performing as Lingua Ignota, Hayter’s instrument ranges from operatic to softly sweet to all rage; at the show, she performed old church revival songs with the passion of a televangelist entertainer, then switched to songs from SINNER GET READY like “MANY HANDS” that include couplets like “Upon your pale, pale body I will put many hands /And rough, rough fingers for every hole you have.” Her movement changes in longer songs like “IF THE POISON WON’T TAKE YOU MY DOGS WILL” switch in an instant live, bringing energy in the room toward release.
And those, to an extent, are the hated vibes. It’s when the room, silent and attentive, breathed deeply with Hayter harmonizing with herself on tape or doubling melodies as she sits at a piano, outlining her horror, her revenge fantasies and her road to healing (or not healing). It’s ephemeral, it’s less ecstatic than other artists with whom she associates (Thou, Vile Creature, etc.) or is compared (Zola Jesus, Wolfe, etc.) or the revival religiosity she emulates. Rather, it’s something very different, almost like a modern, stoic religious service. The energy she emits is an avenue for us to touch divine healing. Vibes, indeed.
***
I don’t know why it works. I wish I could square the adoration I have with it with my separation from the experience Hayter describes, other than the fact that we all sometimes feel deeply. That piece of me has somewhat gone away; I’ve written before here about my own struggle with anhedonia and depression. But, I find it in CALIGULA, even if it feels somewhat safari-like. Maybe it’s both. When she did “DO YOU DOUBT ME TRAITOR” when I saw her live last spring, the entire audience felt the revenge fantasy and people openly wept. When she ended her set accompanied by a piano for her cover of “Wicked Game,” it was an out-of-body experience that turned the song from a romantic ballad into something far more tragic.
Beauty, even tragic beauty, is hard to quantify with words. It’s a reminder that some things just exist and are wonderful. They are perhaps not universal; I don’t know that a lot of people even know what the Lingua Ignota project is or who Hayter is. But, for those of us who do, it’s life-changing beauty.
