It was at The Edinburgh Fringe, I don’t recall which particular year, that a reporter asked me, “Lach, you write songs, published a poetry book, a novel, released over a hundred singles and six albums, wrote and starred in a BBC Radio 4 series, perform stand-up, act in films, and write and draw cartoons. You’ve owned nightclubs, hosted The Antihoot for decades, founded the Antifolk scene, ran record labels, managed and signed artists to seven-figure label deals...”

“Uh, yeah. Is that a question?”

“Ha, no, my question is, if you had to choose any of these things as what you do, which would you choose?”

I started to give my reflexive answer of ‘songwriter’ when a voice outside of myself whispered the answer to me. This particular voice shows up rarely and at highly significant moments in my life, those moments where everything can change in an instant. And so, I simply repeated out loud to the reporter what the voice had secretly whispered to me.

“I’m a writer.”

As the words escaped from my mouth, reality shifted, and my chest filled with a golden warmth that seemed to flow forth like a wave of subtle light, imbuing all of reality with a new purpose. Above me, I sensed an energy as if a halo had appeared. I’m no angel, so I looked up to see what it was only to find that I was sitting under a giant, black umbrella, and printed underneath it read, “Writer.”

By this time, the reporter had moved on to the next question, but to me, she dissolved into the air, disappearing like a sugar cube in a cappuccino, as I stared in fascination at my private umbrella.

“A writer,” I thought, “So simple, so obvious. An umbrella term that contains all of my creative work. Why didn’t I think of that?”