Kevin "Mc" McIlvoy has been a teacher for thirty years. He offers mentoring and manuscript critique through mcthebookmechanic.com. He lives in Asheville, North Carolina where he has a place in the woods, and behind that place a writing hut. His newest work is a collection of stories, The Complete History of New Mexico, published by Graywolf Press; it will be released in e-format in late 2012. "When will we speak of Jesus?" (which appeared in Issue Thirty-One of The Collagist) and "Mrs. Wiggins altocumulus undulatus asperatus" (which appeared in Issue Thirty-Two of The Collagist) are from an almost-completed new work, 57 Octaves Below Middle C.
Here Mc speaks to interviewer Joseph Scapellato about sing-thinking and think-singing, pouring and spilling, and the invitation of wildness into one's work.
Enjoy!
1. Elsewhere, you’ve described “When will we speak of Jesus?” and “Mrs. Wiggins’ altocumulus undulatus asperatus” as “fraternal twins.” Where did these pieces begin for you, and how did they get to here—to fraternal twinhood?
For almost thirty years I’ve found myself writing a story and, later, its non-identical twin. Even after recognizing this pattern in my writing habits, I have not consciously set out to find that second story, though I have placed myself in readiness for it. I am a sing-thinker mostly – and sometimes a think-singer. I go where sound leads me: where it spills and where it pours. After I have written a story, I will sometimes hear the sonic aspect of it as “pouring” or “spilling.” I have a great love of Delta blues music; when I hear Blind Willie Johnson, for instance, I feel I am hearing song through which gospel music pours and the blues-cry spills; when I hear Charley Patton, I feel his pouring is the arriving train-sound and his spilling is the departing train-sound.
I hope it’s not too presumptuous of me to bring them up – I’m only saying that I try my best to learn from singer-storytellers. After I wrote “When will we speak of Jesus,” which in its very title sounds to me like the narrator might be singing a form of gospel song, I could hear that at the next moment in his life this narrator might be singing as if he was a force of nature (as in kudzu, and as in a kind of horizon-to-horizon cloud-tide called “altocumulus undulatus asperatus”).
2. The terms “pouring” and “spilling” are so rich in sonic and textural evocations. I wonder, though: you’ve given examples of how they manifest side-by-side in the same artist, but how do you determine what’s pouring and what’s spilling? I suppose I’m asking what qualities distinguish these modes. Can you speak to how you hear or feel them differently?
A pouring narrative, by my reckoning, has some sense of design (of a spout controlling the pouring) regarding content or form. The narrator in “When will we speak of Jesus” is addressing this one person who will assume the job the narrator held. He is trying to “pour” out instructions to that one particular person, and is failing: he is, instead, “spilling” out everything non-instructive he feels about the whole wreckage of his life, and he is sometimes addressing The New Silence, sometimes himself, sometimes – implicitly – the band kids and his own children and ex-wife. His narrative cascades over many ledges. The presence of voids in the story and in the sentences themselves is evidence of the spilling quality. The verging into incoherence and into disproportionate evocation is characteristic of spilling storytelling.
In “Mrs. Wiggins’ altocumulus undulatus asperatus” the narrator is writing a letter that wanders where it will -- in the same manner that kudzu wanders; as his narrative grows, it overgrows; instead of uncovering a story, it smothers the story that might have been told. What I hope the reader is given is a glimpse of something like that haunting glimpse you get of a kudzu-ravaged structure that creates a riddle about what is underneath.
3. “When will we speak of Jesus?” is one paragraph/stanza, perhaps two; instead of line breaks, the reader encounters in-sentence spacing of different lengths, some of which heighten humor:
The idea-less band director – that's not bitterness, me calling him that – well, yes it is, it is, yes – he stole the idea from a band in Corinthian, Texas
—and some of which signal painful hitches in the heart, in the throat:
That boost, I don't know how you replace it when it's lost.
“Mrs. Wiggins’ altocumulus undulatus asperatus,” on the other hand, comes to the reader in multiple stanzas/paragraphs, but because there’s only one period, at the end—and no commas along the way—it reads to me like a single desperate sentence, a plea interrupted occasionally by questions. What goes into these compelling structural and formal decisions? When/how do you discover that these decisions are decisions to stand by, to follow?
Thanks for your sensitive reading of the story. To build upon the answer above, I’d say “Mrs. Wiggins’ altocumulus undulatus asperatus” is a spilling-pouring story and “When will we speak of Jesus” is a pouring-spilling story.
In composing my fiction and my prose-poems and my poem-proses, my sentence-level decisions regarding syntax, lineation, etc. are decisions about the nature of the narrative as being pouring or out-pouring or in-pouring, as being spilling or out-spilling or in-spilling, and I enjoy the wild uncertainties of that composing process. I revise extensively, welcoming the moments when there is no “or,” when the nature of the narrative is in-spilling and out-spilling and spilling and in-pouring and out-pouring and pouring, and I enjoy the wilder uncertainties of that revising process.
Forgive me, that’s a lot of words for what I’m trying to say. The essence of my composing process is to invite wildness; the essence of my revising process is to invite greater wildness.
4. Does the act of inviting greater wildness ever result in the party-crashing of its opposite—tameness?
In my opinion, the writer generates less energy (in the works’ limbs and roots, in the cambium of language itself) when the wildness is not resisting greater wildness or is not resisting tameness. The writer, likewise, generates less energy when the tameness is not resisting greater tameness or is not resisting wildness. When I am writing badly, that is, when I am over-controlling my own work, it is merely wild, merely tame, it spills but does not also pour, it pours but does not also spill.
5. The first piece is an “email introduction” addressed to the New Silence, the speaker’s replacement; the second is a letter to Abraham, the speaker’s estranged blind friend. For me, the presence of an addressee gives another dimension to the speaker, one that’s deeply felt. Does the act of imagining the speaker’s audience add a dimension to your writing process?
In my own work, the narrative situation (who is speaking to whom and under what circumstances) is important to the story’s authenticity and it is essential to the story’s sound. The speaker of these stories sounds one way when he is addressing the New Silence. The root note of his voice is the same when he is addressing Abraham, but the chord does not sound the same as when he is addressing the New Silence. Were I to ignore the natural chaos in a voice under the complex pressures of a specific narrative situation, I believe I would compose and revise less chaotically: my writing hours would sure be calmer and more controlled, but they would be less disturbingly, pleasurably satisfying.
6. I read in your bio that these two pieces will appear in 57 Octaves Below Middle C, which you refer to as an “almost completed new work.” Can you tell us a little about this work, and how these two pieces fit (and/or don’t) into it?
57 Octaves Below Middle C includes short stories, short-short stories, prose-poems, and poem-proses. There are four pieces in the book that have non-identical twins; in some cases, twin appears next to twin; in other cases, the twins are separated by other stories. I’ve lived with this book for awhile now. I like the sounds in it. I feel right about the Isobel map it places before the reader: a contour map of sing-thinking and think-singing experiences.
7. What other writing projects are you working on right now, aside from 57 Octaves Below Middle C?
I have a novel project that I am happy to say is growing wilder on each page.
8. What knockout writing have you been reading recently? Are there any upcoming releases you're excited about?
At the top of my list right now is Patrick Donnelly’s Nocturnes of the Brothel of Ruin (Four Way Books); I am a huge fan of his book, The Charge; in completely unassuming ways, the speakers of Patrick’s poems offer wicked-wise prayer. I’ve also been rereading Alan Shapiro’s Night of the Republic and Jennifer Grotz’s the needle: people tell certain holy truths only in their dreams, and these poems place you in those kind of dreams.
I’ll look forward to reading Darlin Neal’s new book, Elegant Punk (Press 53); I admire her previous book, Rattlesnakes & The Moon. And I recommend Eugene Cross’s Fires of Our Choosing (Dzanc Books) to everyone; Cross, a writer in the tradition of James Baldwin, has written a powerful first book.