At the beginning of this year, on the 12th of February to be exact, I bought a brown paper notebook from Choosing Keeping, a shop down the street from my job at the time, to write ‘seriously’. The idea had been in my mind for a while - the idea of writing. I already did it in my daily life, writing down words or phrases that came to mind, marking passages of writing that took my breath away with faint quotation marks while reading on the train to refer back to on a rainy day. I made the decision to sign up for a class at Goldsmiths University similar to one of my lectures at The New School, An Introduction to Creative Writing. To learn to write seemed like the next step in this life of mine when life itself felt precarious and terrifying but something I needed to confront. To write was to understand, to walk down the road from my desk and make a decision, to continue through the year in collaboration with myself. To write what, for who, and when, these are the questions that circle around my mind, you might say, but to write was and is to feel my feet on the ground, even if the edges of my shoes only briefly kiss the Earth.

Writing has never has the same feeling as playing does, or maybe it does, in brief moments. It isn’t necessarily its forwardness that draws me to playing but an intimacy that draws a wavy line between me and you, the exchange of sound and glances while performing or listening, the room we sit in as audience and performer. Writing remains softer to me, while forcing me to be direct in ways I never expected. You cannot see my handwriting but as we speak I am looking at the jolts of my t’s, the swings of my e’s that trail into other letters, the desperation to get the words out onto the page, an urgency within a tired body, to write is to brave throw the words on the page like loose dice, to curiously shake them up with hopes of finding the right fit. For weeks I wrote like this in my class, experimenting with fictional characters, starting and discarding the same lines of prose, and before I knew it the class was over and the feeling was still there, to write was to live in my daily life, as I am doing with you right now.

When I write she sits across from me, a girl I’ve mentioned before, eager to know what’s ahead, what’s next. Attached to outcome, label, distinction, what is the thing we are going to do here, and how, and when, moving from a place of anxiety. And then there’s her friend, who looks much like me. Silver streaks run through her hair as she rotates her neck in circles to stretch. Mellow, but steadily, she taps me on the shoulder to ask, when will we get to do that thing again, writing by the candlelight, in the book beside our bed?

2024 was the ‘year of the writer’. I promised myself to call myself a writer but with honesty, integrity, stepping away from the ‘I write, but’s that filled my vocabulary and focusing of the weight of those first two words, the joy that they bring me even just looking at them on the page. This year was filled with writing - slow, fast, in a deep trance with the smell of cinnamon incense burning in the corner of my room, writing was the secret voice notes I record on walks to talk through the loose strings of words in my head, writing was the cafes I have sat with my pen and paper, often a thick book swinging around in my bag, thinking, “To play is to write, to write is to play.’ I wrote with both urgency and for no one at all, filling my pages with essays and fragments the world may see one day, poems made of 10 second thoughts, sentences strung along weeks of contemplation. This year, I wrote because I write, i to je to, and that’s that.

I share these words in a time I find it hard to take my own advice, to call myself a writer or a clarinettist when I may not do it every day, feeling deeply connected to the (lore) of creating, and to creating itself, but struggling with time, space, with what feels like an everlasting pressure to have an output, to speak with continual significance. I share these words while I am juggling the areas of my life, clumsily, with heavy arms and foggy eyes, while allowing myself to flirt with my sense of self - I am a writer, I am a clarinettist, I am someone who wants to listen, even if for only 10 minutes at a time.

In these moments, ends of years or beginnings of new cycles, I find myself reflecting on all that is to come, and maybe forgetting to celebrate what has, and what is. There is an agreement with myself and her, the girl who dares to write with me, that we made a few weeks ago. She is patient, grinding coffee beans slow in the nook of the kitchen, knowing, in the words of Rilke, that summer will come again soon, to those who wait.

//// - thank you to everyone who takes time to read this Substack! It really means a lot to write + share + to figure out what that means. Here’s to all that’s ahead + the now, words can’t describe how grateful I feel. Below I’ve included some of my favourites from the year:

Michelle’s 2024

Books - Greek Lessons by Han Kang, As The Eagle Flies by Nolwenn Le Blevennec, The Breaks by Julietta Singh, Blueberries by Ellena Savage

Music - Mabe Fratti’s Sentir Que No Sabes, Adrienne Lenker’s Bright Future, Eliane Radigue’s Occam Ocean I, Ichiko Aoba’s q p

Food - Oysters (especially from Shankey’s), oranges, cabbage rolls (sarma) Claire Saffitz’s chocolate chip cookies, NY bagels

Etc - A 3-hour long summer walk I took with Sidney around Hackney, starting my duo SunRoom with my best friend Lucy, traveling around Petrčane and Brussels and Frankfurt, hosting a dinner party for my friends at the end of November