Writers on writing
Writing and rhythm: call and
response with Anna Tsing and
Paulla Ebron
Anna Tsing and Paulla Ebron talk of the rhythms of
listening, inscribing, and thinking that give life to
our research. Fieldwork is a project of listening for
rhythms and watching for patterns. Writing, too,
depends upon rhythms.
In the field
AT: When I hear a story I open my ears to pick up
rhythms. Here is one from my fieldwork with
commercial wild-mushroom pickers in Oregon
(Tsing 2015). I haven’t written about this tale
before, but it has stayed in my mind because of
the vividness with which the teller presented the
excitement and danger of hunting in an
unfamiliar landscape. This is what the foragers call
‘freedom’, and it motivates them to come back
every year. I heard it in the rhythms of the tale.
M had been a trader in Vientiane, the capital
of Laos. Her husband, she said, was a professor,
like me. (‘A professor’, I interrupted, my face
brightening. ‘A professor of what?’ ‘A professor of
everything’, she explained. My eyes widened.)
Her husband had found his way to the United
States several years before; she had stayed to
keep her business. But one moonless night,
despite soldiers on both sides, she swam across
the Mekong, carrying her daughter, looking for
what she hoped was ‘freedom’.
When she finally arrived in the United States,
her husband, who had no Western qualifications,
had become a drug counsellor at a community
centre. He was bitter; they had nothing to say to
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each other. They divorced, and she met a
mushroom picker. The day after their wedding,
he took her into the vastness of the Oregon
forest. They were city people. She knew nothing
about forests – or mushrooms. But the season was
good, and they found matsutake.
The sun descended, and they tried to return to
the pickers’ camp. Which way were they to go?
The ground was dry; there were no tracks. There
was nothing to guide them but the glimpse of a
vaguely familiar snag or the arrangement of boles
and brush. Darkness fell. They stopped, gathered
wood, and built a small fire. They had no food or
water left, so they ate some of the mushrooms
they had gathered. Eating gave them strength.
They huddled, and when the temperature
dropped to freezing, they ate more mushrooms.
The mushrooms gave them vigour – more than if
they had ordinary food and water, M recalled.
They made it through the night.
The next day, they walked and walked, but
they could not find their way. They found more
mushrooms, and they ate them. The mushrooms
made them feel alive. Night fell, and they were
forced to stop again. Then suddenly they heard
wolves.
‘Are there really wolves in Oregon?’, I
interrupted. When I had checked the Internet,
there was only one wolf, which had wandered
from Idaho; the resident wolves, I thought, had
been wiped out years before. (But was that the
fault of the reports? Several years later, official
reports agreed that wolves had returned.) M was
sure. It was not one wolf but a pack. She could
feel them howl throughout her body. She could
hear them approach. M and her new husband ate
the last of their mushrooms. They built up the fire
until it roared. Finally, the wolves wandered away.
And, at last, the dawn came.
684 Writers on writing
And that day, they found a road – and made it
back to the camp, but without mushrooms.
The story I heard enacted several rhythms.
There is the adventure with its suspense: attacked
by wolves, almost – but saved by the power of a
mushroom. There are also my interruptions,
attesting to my astonishment. A professor of
everything? And were there really wolves? These,
perhaps, are the characteristic rhythms of
fieldwork: attentive listening to the rhythms of
other lives, punctuated by the fieldworker’s
surprise. Stories stick with me when I catch their
rhythm intertwined with my own astonishment.
Such writing-in-rhythm stays with me, even when
I am working on something else. It seeps and
bubbles into partially formed consciousness – and
analysis and theory are informed.
My rhythms here are stories, one form of
world-making. But, Paulla, you spoke of another
kind of listening: to the music performed by the
cultural workers who surround and enable our
efforts, both in and out of the field. If we make
rhythms, so do they. Tell us about some.
PE: In a small dimly lit room, I sit on the floor with
a master teacher and his small group of friends.
This is another day with several hours to go as I
try to learn how to play the kora, a twenty-one
stringed instrument with a sound like the fall of
water. My mentor, according to his patrons, is
sure to be next in line of ascendency to the
highest rank of jali, an achievement that can only
be reached after the passing of the most
prominent jali elder. The teacher, who is
simultaneously casual and meticulous, periodically
interrupts his conversation to comment on what I
am doing, or, put more accurately, what I am not
doing. I play what I hear, so I think. He or his
assistants tell me what I am not playing. This
exchange goes on and on, hour after hour, day
after day, typically during six to eight hours of
instruction. ‘You are not listening’, they say. I
think: What don’t I hear? I focus on getting the
correct notes, plucking the right strings. It is the
rhythm, though, that is elusive. The rhythm is
tricky – and as important to the sound as the
notes. Without the exact syncopation, without
the right intervals to break up the flow of sound, I
am not playing the song. Instead, what I play,
repeating over and over, is, to the observers,
unrecognizable. Over time, I begin to catch what
they expect; I begin to hear their instructions. My
teacher’s interruptions become less frequent. I
begin to grasp the temporalities of my audience’s
expectation. I hear the rhythm.
Listening: In much of this same spirit, I address
the recordings of my fieldwork interviews. I listen
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to my field recordings over and over again. The
point is not simply to hear the words for what
they convey as information. Words are not just
vehicles to truth. Rather, I listen for intonation, for
the cadence of words, the tempo of speech. This
repeated listening allows me to appreciate the
excesses that surrounded the words. Performer
and performance are together re-enacted in my
imagination as I listen to the contexts in which
responses are given.
Fieldnotes, at first, appear as that frightening
mass of words one must confront upon return.
We grasp at the task of how to spin what seems
like straw into gold. Combing through my
fieldnotes, most of the time I think: What am I
supposed to do with all this? What is important
here? What does this story mean? Why choose
this story over another? How do I write in a way
that shows the empirical material’s relationship to
theoretical questions? How does this pile of words
constitute an analysis?
I remember once telling you something, Anna,
about the travels of a jali I interviewed. During the
rainy season, typical of those in his profession, the
jali travels to see several of his patrons who live
upcountry, visiting each patron for a brief time all
along the way. Upon the jali’s arrival in one
village, he told me of the warm welcome he
received from his host and the young girls of the
village. Enthusiastic about his visit, each girl
presented the jali with a chicken, some sixty-six
he recalled. After visiting for several weeks, the jali
felt ready to leave. He asked his hosts’ permission.
But soon after permission was granted, an
obstacle appeared. A young woman approached
the jali and asked if he would spend an additional
night with them. Although he felt desperate to
leave, he agreed to stay, silently bemoaning the
prospect of receiving yet another chicken. In the
evening, a man knocked on the jali’s door. Much
to his surprise, the man stood there with a goat.
The jali was astonished: ‘The flying feathered
creature has turned into a horn-bearing creature’.
With gratitude, the jali asked that the goat be
killed and its meat distributed among his hosts
and others in the village. As an expression of his
deep appreciation, later that evening the jali
performed for his patrons and the villagers. He
said that to this day, he continues to dedicate one
of his songs to the young woman who asked him
to remain one more day (Ebron 2002).
I remember telling you this story in my
characteristically droll tone: ‘So what? There’s
nothing here’. You said,
No, this scene is really important! It shows
how much people appreciated the jali and

his visit. Listen to the rhythm of what you
have written. His song becomes their
song; their chicken becomes his goat.
They were honouring him, paying tribute
in their effort, and he was making a song
of it, even in the interview.
Your response suggested that rhythm shows us
the exceptional outpouring of the everyday. The
story presents us with repetition, and then
surprise. This is fieldwork.
In front of the computer
AT: Writing needs rhythm. It comes from the play
of private and shared: the rhythm of the body, of
the ear, and of thought; the rhythm of talk, of
texts, and of tales. Even just pondering, ‘How do I
write?’, brings me into my self, and into close
talk. Thinking gains rhythm from words passed by
others. We listen for the back and forth of those
beats. Let’s talk, then, about tempo. Through
what rhythms does writing emerge?
PE: 4 a.m. The darkness of early morning makes it
possible to think. The silence is so loud; it
becomes its own distraction. But this is a
distraction that helps me think. Think. There’s not
much else to do. To Do . . . . The blue lab book,
open to the numbered page 56: thin blue lines on
a faint green page. Find the ink. Fill the pen. Note
the time. Write. Write. Argh! Thoughts come
slow. I must write to page 59. This is the daily
ritual. But I’ve nothing . . . nothing to say. Write.
I listen to the scratch of the nib on paper. Write.
I hear the sound of the strokes of letters. Scratch.
I feel the words under my hand. Words. Words.
A paragraph! Another. Words are no longer so
slow to appear; the pace picks up. The sound of
the pen’s work fades. A page ends. 4:56 a.m.
Rituals: Anthropologists know them. We learn
not just the monotony of habitual practice but
also the way that repetition can transform us.
Sitting down to write in the early morning is my
way of coming to consciousness. Before anything
reaches out from the day’s duties to draw my
attention away, I come to thoughts slowly,
gradually reconnecting with the point I left the
day before. In this empty time I find the trace of
earlier thoughts. Or is it a new start?
I think of J.L. Austin’s great title: How to do
things with words (1992 [1975]). Free writing is a
way to work through the tangle of competing
thoughts. Where to start: that nagging question.
Sigh . . . Dorothea Brande’s Becoming a writer
(1981 [1934]) offers advice: Write every day, first
thing.
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Writers on writing 685
AT: The time of day is less insistent for me than
the motion of writing. My rhythm of writing is the
rhythm of walking. Trapped in a chair, my mind
shuts down. Moving my legs, thoughts start to
flow. Swept out of their corners by the flow of my
blood, words come into focus, and stories unfold.
One scholar told me, ‘A stroll in the city is my
research’. One artist wrote, ‘Napping is essential
to my art’. We each need to find the rhythms that
move us. For me, it is walking. In a pinch, I will
pace, but better the air and the smell of plants.
There my thoughts breathe. Often they race into
irrelevant daydreams. Yet even those fantasies,
useless and unbidden, remind me of rhythms I
have yet to explore.
Colleagues always ask each other, ‘How can
you tell when your writing is right?’ For me it is
rhythms; I can hear the song. Of course, there are
many possible songs. And surely one can write
with grace but no meaning. But scholars find it
easier to find the point than the music, yet we
need the music to make the point. Even for
oneself: I listen for the song to consolidate the
point. A point needs a song. And the singing
requires the work of the body. For me, the song
comes in walking.
PE: Even while sitting down to write in silence, my
words move to music. I am hearing a mental
performance of Anouar Brahem’s ‘Le pas du chat
noir’ (2002). In a sense, it’s like walking. The oud,
accordion, and piano resonate in my mind. My
words pick up the rhythm, creating an interior
soundscape. Moving: the repetition of the piano.
Write words. Write words. Write words. One, two,
three. Da . . . Da . . . Dada, Daah Daah, Daaah. I
hang my words on the sounds.
I finish a written passage. Brahem gives way to
the words read aloud. I must hear how these
words sound and play together. Here are my
measures of musical score. What do I hear? How
does this passage resonate? Words reverberate as
much as the oud. I listen again. Language is
spoken. It’s alive, not flat. Read, read aloud!
Aristotle notes the importance of rhetoric: the
spoken life of words. Words persuade through
their sounds as well as their meanings. I read a
passage over and over. After several times, I am
inside my text; I hear the same words differently.
They transform in their spoken state, they’re
given life beyond the page. Even to understand
someone else’s text, I listen, and listen again.
Finally I begin to hear, to understand. Repetition
changes things, Derrida suggests. Repetition is
good in reading and writing. Over again.
Substitute a word. Okay. Start at the beginning.
Listen first in one’s own voice, the practice

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686 Writers on writing
chamber in the mind. Then give the words a new
life. Speak aloud. Read it again. Listen to other
voices. Speak! It sounds right. Listen!
AT: I agree. Whether we notice or not, our words
have rhythms in them. We might as well enjoy
them. Anglo-Saxon sounds still stab and spark;
thus the monster Grendel’s work in Seamus
Heaney’s admirable Beowulf: ‘greedy and grim, he
grabbed thirty men/ from their resting places and
rushed to his lair,/ flushed up and inflamed from
his raid/ blundering back with the butchered
corpses’ (2000: 11, ll. 122-5). For those who
don’t like Beowulf, think of HipHop: what makes it
work is the musicality of words. Alliteration and
sonority are not just for poetry. Short words are
tools for giving writing punch.
For a while, scholarly criticism was defined by
the critic’s ability to interrupt the flow of ordinary
language by prose so hard to read that it forced
us to slow down and rethink common sense. I
appreciate this. But it makes no sense to
complicate our writing just to show our erudition.
Instead, why not make language work for us?
Whether we notice or not, our words have
rhythms in them.
PE: Music brings us out of ourselves, into
ensemble. Outside of the interior enclosure, we
play with others and for others. Our sounds call
and respond. Written prose is one fragment of
the score of the music performed by every reader.
In the world
AT: I hear rhythms in the world, and music helps
me understand them. When I began working on
multispecies anthropology, I found a great source
of insight in polyphonic music, that is, music in
which multiple melodies intertwine. Unlike most
rock and pop – or even classical music –
polyphonic music does not revolve around a
single, unifying beat. Instead, each melody carries
its own rhythm, and the whole is created in
listening across the engagements and
interruptions of the varied melodies. This helped
me understand how humans are actors, but not
the only actors, in making social landscapes.
Many ways of life come together in landscapes.
Their relationship is something like the separate
voices of polyphonic music.
Take the satoyama forest, the anthropogenic
woodlands of central Japanese peasants. Farmers
have used these forests for firewood, charcoal,
green manure, and many kinds of non-timber
forest products. They could not make a living
without the satoyama forest. Yet farmers alone do
not make such forests. Trees are major architects.
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Pioneering pine and long-living coppiced oaks are
world-makers, shaping the satoyama forest. These
trees in turn thrive by their associations with
mutualist fungi, which forage for nutrients for the
trees in exchange for carbohydrate meals. (I was
particularly interested in matsutake mushrooms,
which make nutrients available for pine, allowing
it to flourish on bare mineral soils in central
Japan.) It is the joint action of fungi, oaks, pines,
and humans – each making the forest in its
separate way – that produces the satoyama. The
product, the living landscape, emerges from the
unintentional design of each of these lifeways
making the landscape separately, and together.
Polyphonic music, for me, describes this process.
If one imagines a fugue in which matsutake,
pines, oaks, and farmers each get to play a
separate part, it is the coming together of these
‘voices’ that makes the landscape.
Once I started hearing multiple rhythms,
intertwining, in the world, I realized that this
polyphony is not limited to living landscapes. I
tried polyphony out as a way of ‘listening’ to
capitalism – and it gave me important insights.
Most critics of capitalism continue to imagine its
structural integration as based only the dreams of
capitalists. This is not enough. Our political
economy – in its productive confusions – emerges
from the polyphony of many livelihood practices.
As in the satoyama forest, my polyphonic ‘voices’
here are ways of making a living, and thus
shaping the world. Through this listening
practice, I found myself able to understand how
the many forms of precarious livelihood that seem
peripheral to capitalism – independent
contracting, day labour, piece labour, home
labour, peasant farming, and even mushroom
foraging – might have become central to the
accumulation of capital. Polyphonic rhythms,
then, may be useful in listening to how all kinds
of social landscapes, whether in cities, forests, or
global institutions, come to emerge.
And yet, in describing worldly rhythms, I have
strayed away from real music. Paulla, please take
us back there.
PE: Early one afternoon when visiting one of the
most prominent jali women performers, I find her
sitting alone on her veranda, listening to a
cassette. She is singing along, creating small
musical phases, rewinding the tape as if this is a
practice session for a passage that she is
determined to get right. My immediate thought:
What has she got to learn? Her repertoire is what
she learned from her mother and her mother
learned from her mother back through several
generations. But there she sits, focused, as if the

music is new to her, practising with all the
seriousness of a beginner rather than someone
who is the star that her reputation implies. Even
when someone so accomplished is there trying to
‘get it right’, even when everyone thinks she’s got
it right, the lesson I take away from watching the
jali is that even with success, one’s craft can still
be perfected. Listen and repeat; listen and repeat.
Take small parts and listen.
How many repetitions or drafts have you
written and still think, it’s not quite there? Let me
go at it again. Yet, at a certain point, others help
with their insights. How do they hear what you’ve
written? Do they get what you’re trying to
convey? Do they hear a song different from what
you think you’ve written?
Conditions are never ideal, but much can be
accomplished in less than ideal situations. A
picture of a cello player, a member of an
orchestra in Central Africa, shows a woman
practising in an urban space fenced off from the
street traffic but not without the competing
sounds of traffic and pedestrians just on the other
side of the fence. These are circumstances so far
away from Virginia Woolf’s classic image for ‘a
room of one’s own’ (1989 [1929]). Yet, in the
end, none of this disturbing ‘practice room’ noise
affects her performance.
Similarly, the circumstances for writing rarely
seem right; the conditions can be awful, but the
practice, the performance, must go on. Even in
distracting circumstances, one can find a space
where the work moves along. For me, it is
listening to music – real or imagined – that
creates this space for imagination and creativity.
In my inner ear, music and rhythms shadow my
writing. I must listen to the dialogue between
here and there and between prose and sound.
Right now, the inner track hears Branford Marsalis
playing ‘Who needs it’ (2014).
Let me end with a quotation I found that
reminds me of what you’ve said about walking,
Anna. Writing and rhythm: walking is one way to
hear the rhythms, and listening to music is
another.
In order to do what you do, you need to
walk. Walking is what brings the words to
you, what allows you to hear the rhythms
of the words as you write them in your
head. One foot forward, and then the
other foot forward, the double drumbeat
of your heart. Two eyes, two ears, two
arms, two legs, two feet. This, and then
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Writers on writing 687
that. That, and then this. Writing begins in
the body. It is the music of the body, and
even if the words have meaning, can
sometimes have meaning, the music of
the words is where the meanings begin.
You sit at your desk in order to write down
the words, but in your head you are still
walking, always walking, and what you
hear is the rhythm of your heart, the
beating of your heart (Auster 2012:
224-5).
REFERENCES
Auster, P. 2012. Winter journal. New York:
Picador/Henry Holt.
Austin, J.L. 1992 [1975]. How to do things with
words. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press.
Brahem, A. 2002. Le pas du chat noir. Le pas du
chat noir. ECM Records.
Brande, D. 1981 [1934]. Becoming a writer. New
York: Harcourt Brace.
Ebron, P.A. 2002. Performing Africa. Princeton:
University Press.
Heaney, S. 2000. Beowulf: a new verse translation.
New York: Norton.
Marsalis, B. 2014. Who needs it. In my solitude:
live at Grace Cathedral. Okeh, Sony
Masterworks.
Tsing, A. 2015. The mushroom at the end of the
world: on the possibility of life in capitalist ruins.
Princeton: University Press.
Woolf, V. 1989 [1929]. A room of one’s own.
New York: Harcourt Brace.
Anna Tsing is a Professor at University of
California, Santa Cruz, and Niels Bohr Professor at
Aarhus University. Her most recent book is The
mushroom at the end of the world: on the possibility
of life in capitalist ruins (Princeton University Press,
2015).
Anthropology Department, University of California,
1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA.
atsing@ucsc.edu
Paulla Ebron is an Associate Professor of
Anthropology, Stanford University. She is the
author of Performing Africa (Princeton University
Press, 2002).
Department of Anthropology, Building 50, 450 Serra
Mall, Stanford, CA 94305-2034, USA.
pebron@stanford.edu

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