This podcast was created in London during the first Covid lockdown, in weeks I was recovering from the virus and dealing with what is now understood as Long Covid.  I aimed to create a sonic fever dream, using fragments of Hildegard’s texts on herbal medicine and her ecstatic visions.

In May 2020, a time when we were facing a new pathogen that revealed the limits of modern medicine, it’s easier to feel an affinity with those who experienced contagions in Hildegard’s time. I discuss how Hildegard’s progressive approach to washing rituals and the observation of nature reverberate through the ages – now more than ever. We’ve been relying on measures that would not have seemed unfamiliar to her, in the absence of a cure.

 This podcast features music I extemporised in response to Hildegard’s writing on The Threads of The Air, in which she describes the purifying properties of the air as summer comes and goes.