Chapter 29: The War Cry
Thursday, August 13, 2015
Michael woke up feeling good. It was a rare sensation.
The night before, he had finished 'White Iverson'.
The song was safely stored in his "WEAPONS" folder, a silver bullet waiting for the right moment. Knowing he had it, knowing he had created an undeniable hit, gave him a surge of confidence.
He was no longer the frustrated amateur struggling with Ableton. He was a producer. He could do this.
He felt that the frustration he had with 'crybaby' had just been a bump in the road. Today, with this new energy, he was sure he could overcome it.
He finished his instant coffee and went to his makeshift studio. He felt ready.
He turned on his MacBook and opened Ableton. He ignored the 'White Iverson' file. He opened the project he had abandoned two days earlier: crybaby_v1_beat_ready.
The acoustic guitar loop and aggressive drums filled his headphones.
The beat still sounded incredible. It was powerful, it was melancholic. It was the perfect contradiction.
'Okay. Today is the day,' he thought. 'Let's record this.'
He got into the closet-booth. The air was stale, but he felt ready. He set the track to record.
'She said I'm a crybaby, I can't be up lately...'
His voice came out. And... nothing. It was the same sad, weak voice as before. The same melancholic whine.
He stopped the recording. 'Shit.'
That wasn't it. The song wasn't sad. It was defiant. But he didn't feel defiant. He felt... good. He felt relaxed from his success with 'White Iverson'.
He couldn't find the anger.
He took a deep breath. 'Come on, Mike, act. You're an artist. Act.'
He tried to force the emotion. He put more "grit" into his voice, a fake growl.
'Girl, you drive me crazy, AMG Mercedes...'
He listened to it. It sounded worse. It sounded like a high school actor trying to play a tough guy. It was embarrassing.
He was still blocked.
He stepped out of the closet and slumped into the chair, rubbing his face. What was wrong?
The song required a very specific emotion: the fury of being insulted. But right now, he felt successful. His current mood was the enemy of the song.
He couldn't access that darkness. The confidence of having finished 'White Iverson' had become, ironically, a disadvantage.
He looked at the screen. The perfect beat. And an empty vocal track mocking him.
He felt the same old frustration coming back. He was stuck again.
'Maybe... maybe I can't do this song,' he thought. 'Maybe I should just release 'White Iverson' and be done with it.'
The idea left a bitter taste. It would be giving up.
He turned off the music. He needed a break. He needed... something. A trigger.
He sat in his studio, but didn't even want to reopen Ableton. The thought of listening to that melancholic beat and failing again churned his stomach. He needed a distraction, something that wasn't music.
He opened his laptop and, for the first time in days, decided to check his new social media accounts. It was a way to procrastinate, to feel like he was "working" without having to face the real work.
He opened Twitter. The notifications were chaos. Hundreds of new followers, dozens of mentions.
He started reading the comments on the 'Sodium' video. Most were positive.
"Amazing vibe, bro." "TeamSESH forever. Keep it up." "This video is art."
The comments made him feel good, but it was a superficial feeling. It was people appreciating the aesthetic, not the feeling. It was the fame he had opted for with 'Sodium'.
He kept scrolling, skipping the compliments. And then, a comment stopped him. The avatar was a blurry photo of a group of guys on a soccer field. He recognized one of the faces.
He saw the comment. He was tagged in a reply to someone who had praised the song.
"Do you really like this shit? This guy is a fag. Emo music is for losers. He should go back to listening to 50 Cent."
Michael stared at the tweet. "Emo music is for losers".
The word "losers" resonated in his head. For a second, he felt the old prick of shame, the same one he felt in his other life before this type of music became cool and accepted. It was the generic insult that jocks and popular kids used to marginalize anyone who dared to be different.
He was about to close the window. To ignore it. It was just an idiot on the internet. Who cared?
But the image of the jock, of that kid from his own school, stayed in his mind. And anger flooded him.
It wasn't a hot explosion. It was a wave of cold, protective fury.
The strange thing was that he wasn't angry for himself. Honestly, he didn't give a shit what an idiot he barely knew thought of him. He wasn't in that game anymore. He wasn't seeking their approval.
He was angry for Chloe.
The memory of her first comment came back to him with absolute clarity. "You're not alone. I feel like a ghost too."
To that idiot, Chloe was a "loser".
He thought of Victor, the college kid in London, alone in his room at 3 a.m., feeling like his life was falling apart. "This song is my fucking life."
To that idiot, Victor was a "fag".
He thought of the dozens of other comments he had started receiving on 'Ghost Boy' and 'Star Shopping'. Boys and girls writing "this saved me" or "I really feel this."
They were all the fans connecting with his music. That idiot wasn't just insulting him; he was invalidating the pain of all of them. He was telling them that their feelings, their sadness, their loneliness... were a sham. That they were "losers" for feeling that way.
The frustration he had felt with the 'crybaby' beat evaporated, replaced by this new, icy fury.
The block had broken. The emotion he couldn't find, the one he couldn't fake... now he felt it in every fiber of his being.
It wasn't the sadness of 'Ghost Boy'. It wasn't the longing of 'Star Shopping'. It was defiance. It was the rage of a protector.
He remembered why he was doing this. It wasn't for the viral fame of 'Sodium'. It wasn't for the house plan. It was for them. It was for those kids.
He realized that 'crybaby' wasn't a sad song. It was a war cry. It was an anthem for the outcasts. It was a direct, unapologetic "fuck you" to everyone who had ever called them "losers" for daring to feel something.
The emotion he needed wasn't sadness. It was pride. Pride in being broken.
He got up from the chair. His movements were firm, determined. There was no longer a block. There was no longer doubt.
He had an enemy. He had a mission. And he had an anthem to record.
Michael didn't need a warm-up. He didn't need to search for the feeling. The insult on Twitter had provided it.
The cold, protective anger he felt for his fans was the perfect fuel. He stepped into the closet-booth and positioned the AT2020 in front of his face.
He leaned forward. He pressed the record key. The Ableton track started moving.
The beat began, the melancholic acoustic guitar merging with the blunt hit of the drums. The sound was a challenge.
Michael leaned into the microphone. His voice wasn't soft. It was firm, tense, charged with a cold, cutting intent, a focused weapon.
'Oh, Skedda! She said I'm a crybaby, I can't be up lately...'
He sang the line with icy contempt, spitting out the word "crybaby" with an acceptance that sounded like mockery. 'Yeah, I'm a crybaby. You gonna do something about it?'
'Girl, you drive me crazy, AMG Mercedes...'
'Speedin' down the highway, lookin' at the street lights...'
He sang the "flexing" lines with a distant tone. The song wasn't about a car. It was about the speed of the world. He was forcing himself to keep up with that pace.
'Geekin' on a Friday, I can never sleep right...'
His voice rang with a deep truth in this line. He couldn't sleep well. The anxiety of the house, of school... it was the price of his secret.
'Knowin' I hurt you, I don't deserve you...'
'I shoulda curved you, I know I'm the worst, boo...'
The heartbreak line became an apology to his own parents. He was the worst. An impostor living in the body of their dead son.
'But I could be cool too, and you got them dance moves...'
'And I got this vibe, I swear it's perfect to ride to...'
Here, the voice became arrogant. It was the artist waking up, promising his audience that he was good enough to be the star they needed.
'I wanna die too, we all wanna die too...'
This line was the most intense. He sang it not as a personal threat, but as a declaration of nihilistic camaraderie. An acknowledgment of the darkness shared by his generation.
'I'll be inside, I'm makin' music to cry to...'
The voice gained a metallic edge, an oath. 'Yeah, I'm gonna take this pain, and I'm gonna turn it into a weapon for you.'
He reached the chorus, his last hope.
'Oh, it's a lonely world, I know...'
'Gon' get a lonely girl, that's fo' sho'...'
'Oh, I'm a lonely boy, she made a lonely boy, yeah, I know...'
He sang this part with the fury of a protector, thinking of the idiot on Twitter calling his fans "losers". It was a war cry, a "fuck you" to the world that mocked sadness.
He finished the song, the last line fading with the beat. He stood motionless, breathless.
It had been a single take. Raw and powerful. He felt exhausted, as if he had just had an exorcism.
He stepped out of the closet-booth and walked over to the laptop. He hit the spacebar, stopping the recording.
The sound was rough, the voice was on the verge of breaking in many parts, but it was the voice of truth. It was the voice of rage.
He spent the next few hours adding the vocals to the beat and editing it.
He cleaned up the clicks, but left the distortion. He added effects and ambience, but in a way that made his voice sound hard and torn. He made the drums sound even louder.
The song was finished.