“Do you think it’s time to give up?”

Mom’s voice paraphrases into a lightning storm under my skull. 

Give up on what?

LA, I think she means. I’m racing to Temecula for a budget wedding gig with a boss who will soon greet me with a misogynistic critique of my generic black dress while I pull a face muscle forcing a polite smile.

Or she means my career. I’m paying rent as a keyboardist for cover bands and the occasional pop star. My recording studio is a rented box that I need but can’t afford. Me and my piano squashed between men with subwoofers, men with drum kits, men pushing me against the wall to get somewhere else. 

“Welp, I guess that’s enough for one phone call.”

Flying 100 miles an hour in my blue Honda Fit with the sticky gearshift that kills my battery at every corporate gig with a valet. I’m screaming louder than the sound barrier so she can’t hear me, but she can still recognize a crying baby and adds:

“We love you, honey.”

Thirteen years of nonstop hustle and I do want to give up, yes thanks. I try building a defense from my list of accomplishments: world tours, producer credits, welcoming community, thriving houseplants. Nothing holds up to the burning relief of quitting. Never mind giving up. I’m ready to die. Not the kind of death that calls for a coroner. I’m talking about ego death—that grief when you realize not everything is about you, but you can’t yet imagine anything else.

Ego death feels like limbs tearing out of joints and ribs prying out of skin. You need to lose what you know to make space for what you don’t. This process is uncomfortable and apparently inescapable in the life of an artist. A baby painfully aware of her own birth. I’m stuck and I want out.

“Goodbye, Mom.” I love you too.

It feels like giving up at the roots and shaking off the fruit. Here is my gift. Enjoy. I have more than I can eat.

Drop a seed in the forest and it grows. Or feeds. Or fertilizes. Drop that seed in the desert and it sleeps until a storm shocks the ground to life. Change is slow and fast and now and never ending. Change is life and death and a fairy floating through branches as the body gives up and softens into dirt. 

Change happens. Ego resists. The big “I” must die.

Creativity bleeds into every moment, waking and asleep. Sometimes my skin prickles with excitement and I can see it all blooming in front of me. Songs flow from the tap and I start writing musicals in the shower, pop anthems while I vacuum, emo folk in traffic.

Sometimes, I remember that I haven’t released a solo album in eight years, and I curl up in my cave for a long winter of brooding rumination.

Is there a difference between giving up and letting go?

Letting go is releasing my death grip on the steering wheel. Giving up is failing to grab it again when I need to change course. 

Maybe ego death is just a classic Midwestern goodbye: awkward and overstaying the welcome, but all in the spirit of letting go with kindness and care. And maybe that’s what these phone calls with my mother are all about: reminding me to let go, but never give up.