My friend Chuck does this thing that I find incredibly cool. She chooses an album every month, she listens to it nonstop, and she writes a personal essay on it. I wish that were me. I wish I wrote consistently. 

An athlete is someone who (to transliterate from German) makes sport. A pianist plays piano. A mother is someone with a child. But a writer? I can claim the title without lifting my pen. Writers, famously, complain. They procrastinate. They really don’t seem to do much writing. To not write is the writer’s way. 

My mother and I both identify as writers. Both of us haven’t written anything real in a very long time, if ever. When does one stop being a Writer? When did I start counting myself as one? I can count on one hand the number of “real” things I’ve written, things that anyone other than my mother and closest of friends would like. Things that stick in people’s hearts. Things that stick in our own. I need to start. If I don’t write soon, I will become an “Ex-Writer,” and where will I be then? 

I can’t listen to one album per month. But I have a ritual of my own. Every month, starting at 12:00 AM on the first, I create a playlist that holds exactly twenty-one songs, with a max of one song per artist. One song per month is given to me by my mother. The playlist’s cover must be an image taken by me. The playlist is preferably completed by the sixth of the month, though the eighth is acceptable in extenuating circumstances. These are the lines I’ve drawn for myself, and staying within their boundaries brings me joy.

Generally speaking, my mother’s song is the low point of each month’s playlist. It’s usually just not my style. My wonderful array of indie and alternative bands, disrupted by a stray Dixie Chicks song. I find this deeply unsatisfying. It’s strange because when unforced, my music taste comes from my mom. The Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, Rufus Wainwright, Belle and Sebastian. Hell, she even got me into Lucy Dacus. Straight mothers introducing their queer daughters to lesbian indie singer-songwriters isn’t how the world is supposed to work, in my opinion. 

My mother seems to be poking through this “essay.” She’s practically begging to be discussed. My Mama. She’s an ex-writer like me, angsty teenage poetry and high school literary magazines and the works. I’ve read some of it and found it mediocre and sad, in an endearing way. She could’ve been good if she kept going. Could’ve made something real. My mom was born in August like me, but younger than the rest of her grade rather than older. She never wanted to put me through that. She didn’t like being the youngest. She got her comeuppance, though; she went back to get her degree and now she’s more than double the age of all her peers. Her goal is to graduate before I do. 

These are all facts, but I don’t want to even try to give you a sense of what she’s like to know. That’d be lying, and plus I really don’t know, and plus plus I’m afraid of failure. When I was 14 it truly dawned on me that she could be disappointed in me, causing me total panic. I told her that and she got pissed at me cause how is she supposed to respond to that, which, fair. I began to apologize for any little thing and she’d tell me to stop, but not in a nice way like some people do. Just pissed off. My mother’s an awful liar so she’ll tell me she hates my haircut and will take an awfully defensive position about it: “I’m not a liar. You want me to lie?” She’s able to lie to her friends and coworkers and strangers just fine, it’s just the family who she can’t lie to. Just something I’ve noticed. It’s not bad, though. I respect her a lot. We’re close, and I’m not lying. She’s the one who first called me a writer, when I was seven or eight. Weirdly, it was a lie; I don’t remember writing anything outside of school before that point. I kept the title, though. I liked it. 

The Writer commands respect. If I call it an essay, this weird diary entry-esque thing is transformed into art and reading it makes you a better person. You’re interacting with the local artists’ scene, supporting a queer creator, that kind of thing. You can feel good about yourself for having read this. And I feel good about myself for having written it. It’s a win-win. If I keep doing this shit, maybe I’ll make something actually good one day, instead of something that just makes people feel good. 

This October, I want to write. I want to feel good. I want to call my mother more and listen to her less. I want to have begun something. Do me a favor and listen to (Nothing But) Flowers by the Talking Heads this month. It’s about a world overgrown into a strange and beautiful garden. I walked through Poe Field this morning and wished I were there instead. I’ll be listening to the song, and my mother will be too. It’ll be stuck in my heart before I know it.