GRWM—Write It Out with AM Ringwalt
Issue #3
GRWM (Get Ready With Me) is a new (and dare I say sexy!) segment where I'll be interviewing writers retro-style-- cute little questionnaires about what writers are wearing, listening to, snacking on, etc. We want to know what they're into and what gives them the ick. We want writing prompts based on their books. We want to know their favorite song, the worst writing advice they've ever received, and you better believe we want to know their brunch order.
It's time to stop asking writers the same boring questions and start getting REAL.
AM Ringwalt is a writer and musician whose work appears in Jacket2, Music & Literature, and Black Warrior Review. Called “rich with emotion” by Pitchfork, Summer Angel is out now on Dear Life Records. What Floods is forthcoming from Inside the Castle. Currently, she is a visiting instructor at Interlochen Arts Academy.
Choose a piece from your book, The Wheel, and give us a prompt based on the work. You can also choose any poem from your repertoire, preferably something you can link for us to read beforehand.
Excerpt from The Wheel
The construction of the phrase “as I write, I wonder” reminds me of the unavoidable
hymn: I wonder as I wander. During the summer our strain became unbearable, Will and I walked along the St. Joseph River. We walked past the dog park nearly every day on our way to see the water—for relief, for laughter, for anything. Animals running under the too-hot sun.
At some point of some walk, Will reached into his pocket, pulled out his phone, played a version of the hymn for me. He held his phone in between our heads so we could share the sound as we moved. The singer’s annunciation floored me, his rhythmic destabilization of utterance. His syncopation. I need you to listen with me.
[I Wonder As I Wander — Carols & Love Songs by John Jacob Niles. “I Wonder As I Wander.” Two minutes, twenty seconds.]
In Syncope: The Philosophy of Rapture, Catherine Clément describes syncope as “a sudden flight into nonexistent time.” She provides examples: fainting, depressive spells, hiccups, orgasm, breath. She says:
The advantage of syncope is precisely that one always returns from it. Asthmatics,
epileptics, lovers—they recount explicitly how wonderful it is to breathe after the attack. [...] We place ourselves in the before death, in the after death. The real crossing is forgotten.
In “I Wonder as I Wander,” if syncopation is a compulsive inhalation, what site does the song take? Where does the song take the listener, the musician? Where does syncopation transport one to? I need you to listen to me. Listen—for every pause between word, a breath. “But high from God’s heaven—a star’s light did fall—and the promise—of ages—it then did recall.”
Is breath-as-syncope “the real crossing”? I could notate—with em-dashes as symbols—every pause John Jacob Niles falls into during the song. And this “falling into” is crucial, the crux. Where does he go in these breaths? These are moments of divination. In Sound: An Acoulogical Treatise, Michel Chion writes that sound is “the coming and going where something has moved in the meantime, between the coming and going.” In “I Wonder as I Wander,” sound—the material of voice—finds its in-between-ness emphasized through breath.
This hymn is important to me because of the relationality it suggests. When John Jacob Niles sings “like you or like I,” he elongates the vowel of the “I,” the eye, subjectivity. In this elongation, he invites empathy, being-with. Chion describes vowels as “carriers of pitch and capable of prolongation.” This “prolongation” is a social invitation: to enter into the song and be with its sounds.
Prompt
Narrate or associatively explore your listening process in present tense. What are you listening to? What language can you use to convey the significance of the song and the listening process? What do the song and the listening process reveal to you—about yourself, your relationships, and your world? What is the shape of your listening activity on the page?
I adore this prompt. It wasn’t until I read it that I realized that how we listen to music is as personal as what we’re listening to. Thanks AM and WOD!