Chapter 18: The Reason for Shining
Monday, June 22, 2015
Michael woke up in his chair, his neck stiff and the echo of the guitar still in his ears. He had fallen asleep in the makeshift studio after recording the vocals.
He stretched, feeling the dull ache in his back. The first thing he did was play the vocal take of "Star Shopping". It was still there. The raw emotion, the pain, the promise.
But now came the real work. The vocal track was isolated and dry. I had to turn it into a song.
He sat up straight and made himself an instant coffee. Today was not a day of inspiration. It was a day of technical work.
He spent the whole day editing the song in Ableton. Unlike "Ghost Boy," which had been a process of guessing and frustration, this time Michael had a plan. It was faster.
His fingers moved with a newfound confidence on the keyboard. I already knew the shortcuts. Cmd+C, Cmd+V. It cut the silence between phrases, eliminating the slight hum of the guitar amplifier.
He cleaned up the vocal track he had recorded with the AT2020. The quality was much better than the previous microphone, but even so, he spent an hour zooming in, cutting off mouth clicks and overly loud breaths.
Then, the atmosphere. He went back to his reverb plugins. I didn't want the same "empty cave" sound of "Ghost Boy." This song was closer, more intimate.
He played with the settings for half an hour, looking for a middle ground. She found a "small room" setting that made her voice sound intimate, yet spacious, as if she were singing in a dark bedroom at 3 a.m.
Now, the mixture. The hardest part. He brought the guitar track "out of tune". He used the EQ technique he had learned, cutting a small gap in the mid-frequencies of the guitar so that his voice settled perfectly into it.
He hit play. And there it was. The voice and the guitar no longer fought; Danced.
He added the lo-fi beat and the 808 bass, adjusting the levels with a monk's patience. The bass was a deep murmur, not a thump. The hi-hats were a whisper. The star was the voice and the melody.
He listened to the song on loop for hours, his ears tuning to details he couldn't hear before. The sun went down, and the only light in the room was the brightness of the screen.
Around midnight, I was exhausted. He had heard the song so many times that the words had lost their meaning. He got up, smoked a cigarette on the back porch to clean his ears, and went back inside.
He sat down and listened to her one last time. From start to finish.
And he smiled. It was finished.
Exported the file. Star Shopping_final.mp3. He opened SoundCloud.
He uploaded the song.
Title: Star Shopping. For the cover, he used a simple photo he'd taken with his phone last week: the night sky above his house, blurry, with the orange glow of a streetlight. No description.
He did the same on YouTube.
He looked at his profile page. Now there were two songs. Ghost boy. Star Shopping. It was the beginning of something.
He closed the laptop. The job was done. I was too tired to feel anxiety or anticipation about the plays. He crawled to his bed and went to sleep before his head touched the pillow.
……
Tuesday, June 23 - Sunday, June 28, 2015
The next morning, Michael woke up with a new feeling: anticipation. It felt like Christmas morning, but instead of gifts, I expected statistics.
Before getting up, he picked up the phone from the bedside table. He opened SoundCloud. Your profile page loaded.
Star Shopping - 83 reproductions.
Eighty-three. In a single night.
A small smile was drawn on his face. "Ghost Boy" had taken almost a week to reach 50. This time, the song started a little better. It made sense; people who had followed him on "Ghost Boy" received the notification.
He got up, showered, and went to school, feeling a little lighter. During history class, he refreshed the page. 112 reproductions. On his break at the Burger Barn, he looked again. 170 views.
The week became a new kind of routine. School. Work. And in each free moment, the ritual of refreshing the page. I watched the numbers go up, not with the viral explosion I'd dreamed of, but with a slow, steady trickle.
He realized something else. People who came through "Star Shopping" were curious. Michael saw that his song "Ghost Boy" also had more views. His audience, though tiny, was exploring his world.
By Sunday night, a week after launch, the numbers were respectable for a total unknown. "Star Shopping" had a couple of thousand views and about eighty likes.
It felt good. Eighty people had pressed the heart button. It was a victory.
That night, he sat in his makeshift studio, ready to work on the next beat. Before he began, he invoked the System. He wanted to see his reward. I was expecting at least another 100 PI.
The cyan interface appeared. He looked at the upper right corner.
TOTAL BALANCE: 139 PI
Michael frowned. He did a quick calculation. It had gained thousands of views and eighty likes. And the System had only given him 25 Hit Points.
He looked at the transaction history. +1 PI... +0.5 PI... +2 PI... They were crumbs.
Then he understood. The previous week's lesson solidified in his mind with brutal clarity.
Chloe, with her single, heartbreaking comment, had given him 100 IP. Two thousand casual reproductions and eighty superficial "likes" had barely given him 25.
El Sistema did not care about popularity. He didn't care about the "likes". He cared about the connection.
He realized that people liked the song, but they didn't connect with it in the same visceral way as they did with "Ghost Boy." It was a beautiful song, but it wasn't a mirror.
The disappointment he felt was quickly replaced by a new determination. He stopped looking at the SoundCloud numbers. They were a false metric, a distraction.
The real game wasn't about getting more listeners. It was to get more "Chloes". And for that, he knew he had to keep digging in the most honest and painful places in himself.
Sunday, June 28, 2015
In a suburb of Ohio, Chloe was sitting on her bed, her sketchbook open on her lap, even though she wasn't drawing. He had SoundCloud open on his laptop, listening on loop to the only song he cared about: "Ghost Boy."
It had become his ritual. The way the song made her feel seen hadn't gone away.
Suddenly, a small orange notification appeared in the corner of his screen. His heart skipped a beat.
"Michael Demiurge has uploaded a new track: star shopping"
He dropped the pencil. She sat up straight, feeling a strange mixture of excitement and fear. What if it wasn't just as good? What if the first miracle had been just that, a one-time miracle?
With trembling hands, he clicked on the link. The page loaded. The cover was simple, just the night sky. He readjusted his headphones, turned up the volume and hit play.
The guitar melody hit her first. She was beautiful. He recognized the sound instantly. It was him. The same melancholic atmosphere, the same dreamy guitar.
Then the voice came in. It was clearer this time, more confident than in "Ghost Boy". He loved the song. It was poetic, sad and beautiful.
He listened to the lyrics carefully.
"Wait right here, I'll be back in the mornin'..."
"I know that I'm not that important to you, but to me, girl, you're so much more than gorgeous..."
'Ah,' he thought instantly. 'It's a love song.'
He kept listening, absorbing the story. It was a song about a girl. About a longing. About feeling "not good enough" for someone.
It was, without a doubt, one of the saddest and most beautiful songs I had ever heard. But as it sounded, he felt a strange twinge of... not disappointment, but distance.
It didn't resonate with her as "Ghost Boy."
"Ghost Boy" had been a mirror. He talked about being a ghost, about being alone in the world, about feeling tired of everything. It was his life. It was his secret.
"Star Shopping", on the other hand, was a window. I was looking at someone else's pain, a pain that revolved around a romantic relationship. It was a pain that she, Chloe, didn't know.
I appreciated the song. Much. It was art. But it was not his anthem.
When the song ended, he liked it. It was the least I could do. He opened the comments section, which already had a dozen generic messages such as "good beat" and "keep it up".
She added hers. It was not a confession like the first time. It was a round of applause.
"Another beautiful song. Keep it up."
……
It was three o'clock in the morning in a small student apartment in Manchester, England. The air was tainted by the smell of stale coffee and the dust of law books. Victor, a freshman college student, rubbed his eyes, the light from his laptop monitor burning his retina.
He was thousands of miles from home, his grades were a mess, and his relationship with his girlfriend, Ana, was crumbling under the weight of the Atlantic. Each Skype call was colder, more distant. He felt like a failure.
He gave up. He slammed the book shut. He needed a break, something other than the oppressive silence of his room.
He opened SoundCloud out of habit, his refuge. I had met an American artist a couple of weeks ago, a certain "Michael Demiurge". His song, "Ghost Boy," had pleased him. It was dark, atmospheric. A good vibe to study.
He saw the notification. The artist had uploaded a new track: "Star Shopping".
It clicked, without much thought. He put on his studio headphones, leaned back in his chair, and closed his eyes, waiting for another song to help him relax.
He was struck by the use of the guitar at first. It wasn't a plugin sound, or if it was, it was perfectly disguised.
It sounded real. And it sounded... badly, in the best possible way. Slightly out of tune, as if it had been recorded by a friend in his room. It was a dreamy, watery sound that enveloped him instantly.
And then, the voice came in. It was not a boast. It was not a scream. It was a melancholy, almost confessional murmur.
"Wait right here (wait right here)..."
"I'll be back in the mornin' (mornin')...
Victor straightened up in his chair. A shiver ran down his spine. It was almost the same phrase he had said to Ana at Barajas airport three months ago. 'Wait for me. I'll be back at Christmas.'
"I know that I'm not that important to you..."
"But to me, girl, you're so much more than gorgeous (yes)..."
Guilt hit him. The past few weeks, she had sounded distant, as if he wasn't that important anymore. But to him, she was everything. It was his only connection to home.
"So much more than perfect (yes)..."
'God,' he thought, feeling a lump in his throat.
"Right now, I know that I'm not really worth it..."
"If you give me time, I can work on it..."
"Give me some time while I work on it..."
Victor covered his mouth with his hand. It was their own conversation, word for word. She felt like I was letting her down. His grades were mediocre. He was alone. He was not the successful man he had promised to be. 'Just give me time, please, just time,' he had written in an email earlier that afternoon.
The song continued, its story becoming darker and more specific.
"Losin' your patience, and, girl, I don't blame you..."
"The Earth's in rotation, you're waitin' for me..."
It was his life. The distance. Time. She, losing her patience. He, on the other side of the world, asking her to wait.
"Look at my face when I fuck on your waist..."
The raw line brought him out of his trance for a second. A fleeting memory of their last night together. Hurt.
"'Cause we only have one conversation a week..."
Victor stopped breathing.
No. It couldn't be. It was his reality. Literal. Their long daily calls had turned into calls every other day, and now... now it was just a single, clumsy Skype conversation every Sunday night. A conversation where they had less and less to say.
"That's why your friends always hatin' on me..."
He laughed, a dry, humorless sound. Ana's friends had been telling her for weeks to leave him, that a boy who goes to another country is not worth it.
"Fuck 'em though, I did this all by myself..."
A flash of defiance. Victor felt that too. I was alone in this country. I didn't know anyone. He was doing it all alone.
"Matter fact, I ain't never asked no one for help..."
"And that's why I don't pick up my phone when it ring..."
The next lines were a boast, a shield of arrogance.
"Nobody flexin'..."
"tell me she love me...". Victor barely heard them. They were the mask that the artist put on.
But then, the mask merged with reality.
"She know that someday I'll be over the sea..."
"Makin' my money and smokin' my weed..."
"I think it's funny, she open up to me..."
The song returned to vulnerability, to confession.
"I know that I'm nothing like someone her family want me to be..."
Ana's father. The man who looked at him as if he were a child, a lazy man with no future. The pressure of not being good enough for her.
"If I find a way, would you walk it with me?"
The question Victor was too terrified to ask Ana.
"Look at my face while you talkin' to me..."
"'Cause we only have one conversation a week..."
"Can I get one conversation at least?"
The plea in Michael's voice was his own. It was a raw, naked despair.
And then, the song changed. The beat felt bigger. The energy transformed from a plea to a hymn.
"Shout out to everyone makin' my beats..."
"You helpin' me preach..."
"This music's the only thing keepin' the peace when I fall into pieces..."
Victor felt goosebumps develop. It was true. His own music, his guitar, was the only thing keeping him sane in this lonely apartment.
The outro arrived. And the voice changed. It was no longer the melancholy murmur. It was more melodic, ethereal, almost like a chorus of ghosts singing a prayer.
"Look at the sky tonight..."
"All of the stars have a reason..."
Victor, without thinking, turned his chair and looked out the window at the night sky of Madrid.
"A reason to shine, a reason like mine..."
"And I'm fallin' to pieces..."
The song wasn't just music. It was a transcription of his soul. It was the story of his failure, his longing, and his desperate search for purpose. He felt completely identified.
"Look at the sky tonight..."
"All of them stars have a reason."
The last note of the guitar faded away.
Victor stood silent, tears burning in his eyes. They were not tears of sadness. They were tears of... recognition.
He was not alone. There was another boy, somewhere in the world, who felt exactly like him.
He played the song again. And again. And again.
That night, Victor did not sleep. He stayed at his desk until the sun came up, listening to "Star Shopping" on loop. He had found the soundtrack of his exile.
…..
Michael was in his bed, moonlight filtering through the blind. He was ready to sleep, but he did his last ritual: checking SoundCloud on his phone.
The numbers had gone up a little more. He saw Chloe's kind comment. "Another beautiful song. Keep it up."
Michael smiled. It was nice. I appreciated that he had taken the time to listen to it and write. But he felt that same distance as her. It was applause, not a connection. He was grateful, but it wasn't the victory he was looking for.
He continued to scroll down the list of notifications. A couple of fire emojis. A "good beat". And then, he saw a new one. A long comment from a user named "Victor_Kings00".
The comment was written in a mix of Spanish and English, as if the guy had fought Google Translate and given up halfway through.
"Brother. I don't know how. But this song... This is my fucking life. I'm in Manchester, my girlfriend at home. 'One conversation a week'. Shit. It is exactly that. 'If you give me time, I can work on it.' I told him last week. Thank you for this. Really. Thank you."
Michael stared at the comment. He read it again. And again.
A slow, genuine smile flashed across his face. This. This was the one I was looking for.
It was not a "good beat". It was a "thank you for telling my story". He was a boy in Spain, feeling exactly how he felt: an exile, begging for a connection.
Just as he was reading the comment for the third time, cyan light flickered in his vision. The System interface appeared, hovering silently above his phone.
[IMPACT ANALYSIS COMPLETED]
Source: Unique User Interaction (Victor_Reyes).
Resonance Level: Deep (Emotional Validation).
Impact Points generated: +100 IP
TOTAL BALANCE: 214 PI
Michael looked at the number. 100 IP for "Ghost Boy". 14 IPs for thousands of surface reproductions. And now, another 100 IPs for "Star Shopping".
He turned off the phone. The System interface faded away.
He leaned back on the pillow, staring at the darkness of the ceiling. He understood.
"Ghost Boy" wasn't for Victor. "Star Shopping" wasn't for Chloe. Each song was a different key.
He realized something fundamental. I wasn't building an audience. He wasn't trying to get everyone to love him.
He was building a world. A catalogue. A library for every type of pain. And for every song, there was a soul somewhere, alone in a room, waiting to hear it.
He felt at peace. He closed his eyes and, for the first time, slept without anxiety.