A deer found beside a running path became a way of measuring time in "Fig on Wrist". AP Lewis, the Atlanta musician behind American Sacred Music, returned each week to photograph its decomposition. Those images gave the song's accompanying film its backbone, with home videos and photographs contributed by friends and collaborators filling out its account of lives passing.
Released on October 20, 2026, the roughly thirteen-minute song shares its name with Lewis's label and recording studio. The connection is personal: after losing someone close, Lewis began reconsidering the space that making music occupied in everyday life. The project developed alongside a move away from touring toward working on other people's recordings and making more ambitious music as American Sacred Music. Here, Lewis explains the promise contained in the name and how the film brought that promise into view.
Three questions
(1) Doomnation Radio: What led you to release "Fig on Wrist" as a standalone piece with its own film?
AP Lewis: I wanted Fig on Wrist (the song) to serve as somewhat of a self titled track for the label / recording studio by the same name that I run. Despite being different outlets, Fig on Wrist (label/studio) and American Sacred Music feel very intertwined creatively from my perspective. The decisions to transition from the role of touring musician to splitting my time between working on other people's art and the more ambitious sounds of ASM (compared to my past output) were made concurrently.
As the song continued to grow in scope, I eventually decided that it would be a lot of fun to push the entire concept as far as I could take it. This felt like a great chance to shove all of my interests into one project and really make a statement about the direction I wanted this all to go.
(2) DR: The song shares its name with your label and studio. What did that name come to mean within the song itself?
Lewis: The name represents a promise that I made to myself to never lose sight of the love that I have. Prior to starting these projects I had allowed my art to consume me, and as a result I missed out on the life of someone that I cared about very much. Their death led to me re-evaluating my priorities and finding ways to still be creatively fulfilled while also being present for my family and friends.
(3) DR: How did you decide which images belonged with the music as you assembled the film?
Lewis: A large part of the creative process came by tracking a decaying deer that I found along my weekly running path. I found her very shortly after she had passed away and took a photo each week as nature took its course on her body. It felt like a great metaphor for the march of time that none of us are immune to and also really matched up with the lyrical themes I was exploring on the track itself. Eventually the idea of watching this decay in realtime became the backbone of the film.
For the additional scenes in the film, I was very fortunate to have some friends and collaborators who were willing to share their own home videos and photos to add to the backlog of my own. I pulled together a loose narrative by matching our collective memories to my lyrics as best as possible and overlapped a few repeating themes in addition to the deer to create cohesion.
Watch the film for American Sacred Music's "Fig on Wrist".
