Chapter 34: The Full-Time Artist
Early September 2015
Michael woke up. Not to the sound of a phone alarm, but to the sun coming through the window of his new room.
He stayed in bed for a minute, listening. He didn't hear the traffic from the main street. He didn't hear the neighbors. He heard... birds.
He wasn't working anymore. He had called the Burger Barn the day he sold the house and quit. The sense of relief was still overwhelming.
He got up and walked barefoot across the wooden floor of his new rented house. It was small, it was empty, but it was his.
He was more relaxed. He made himself real coffee, with a drip coffee maker he had bought for five dollars, not the instant kind he used to drink. He sat on the back porch. The house was secluded, at the end of a road, surrounded by trees. It was private.
He spent the morning in his new professional studio. It was the second bedroom. It was spotless. The MacBook Pro, the Neumann microphone on its stand, the Yamaha monitors... everything new. He felt like a pilot in a cockpit.
He simply practiced with the guitar. He played with Ableton effects. He wasn't trying to finish a song. He was just exploring, enjoying the process without the pressure of an eight-hour shift waiting for him.
He had more time to put out music.
The peace lasted until noon. Then, he had to go to school.
He got on the bus, the only part of his old routine that remained. And as the bus moved forward, it was becoming harder than ever.
The contrast was too great. He had just spent the morning in a professional studio, working on his future empire. And now, he was sitting on a sticky vinyl seat, heading to an algebra class he had already passed in his other life.
It felt like an absurd waste of time. His music career, though small, was real. His secret investments, the 437,500 ETH that no one in the world knew he owned, were sitting in his digital wallet.
And he was going to learn about the Pythagorean theorem.
The disconnect was total. He knew he couldn't keep pretending to be a normal student for much longer.
Mid-September 2015
Michael spent the first week in his new house organizing his studio. The relief of not having to go to the Burger Barn was immense. But his new freedom came with a logistical problem.
His house was secluded. The nearest bus stop was almost two kilometers away, at the end of the dirt road. Going to school was an hour-long trip. Going to buy food was a half-day mission.
He needed a car.
It was the next logical step. And now, thanks to the first YouTube earnings and the money he had set aside from his "Freedom Fund" (the $50k), he could afford it.
But first, he had to face the bureaucracy. He needed a driver's license.
He spent a night online, studying the California driver's manual. His adult memory absorbed the information easily. The next day, he took the bus to the DMV.
It was hell.
The place smelled of despair, burnt coffee, and old photocopies. It was crowded. The line to get a service number stretched to the door.
It took longer to wait in that first line (almost an hour) than to do anything else. Finally, they gave him a number: G47. He looked at the screen. They had just called G12.
He slumped into one of the hard plastic chairs, put on his headphones, and resigned himself to wait. Time moved at a glacial pace. He saw people argue. He saw a child cry. He saw a man fall asleep snoring.
Two hours later, his number rang.
He went to the window. The clerk, a woman who looked like she had seen the souls of a thousand people die that day, asked for his papers. Michael handed her his school ID and his birth certificate.
He took the written test on an old, slow computer. They were common-sense questions. He finished it in ten minutes. Passed.
"Now, the driving test," the clerk said, without looking up. "The next available appointment is in six weeks."
"Six weeks?" said Michael, panic seizing him. "No. No, I can't wait six weeks. Is there nothing today? Someone who canceled?"
The woman looked at him for the first time, irritated by his insistence. She sighed, typed something. "There is a slot in twenty minutes. The instructor just had a cancellation. But if you're not ready..."
"I'm ready," Michael cut her off.
He waited outside, under the scorching sun. An instructor with a bored face and a coffee-stained uniform shirt came out. "Gray," he shouted.
The driving test lasted exactly fifteen minutes. The instructor barely spoke to him, just gave him orders. "Turn right. Parallel here. Reverse."
Michael drove with robotic precision, his hands in the ten and two position. It was boring.
They returned to the DMV. The instructor checked the last box on his clipboard. "You passed. Go back inside."
Another hour of waiting in another line. Finally, they called him for the photo. A fluorescent light hit his face, blinding him. Flash.
They handed him a temporary sheet of paper. His 16-year-old probationary license.
He had spent almost five hours in that building to get a piece of laminated paper. It was a victory, but it felt dirty and bureaucratic. At least, it was done. Now came the fun part.
Michael walked out of the DMV, with the piece of laminated paper that was his probationary license in his pocket. It was official. He could drive.
The bus ride back to his rented house was the last one he planned to take in a long time.
He arrived at his studio and sat in front of the laptop. His work routine had changed. Now, his Ableton sessions were interrupted by the need to go buy food, a two-hour trip involving walking to the stop, waiting for the bus, and going to the supermarket. It was an inefficient waste of time.
He opened his bank account. He saw his YouTube earnings. The viral success of 'Sodium' and the steady growth of 'crybaby' and 'Star Shopping' had worked. After YouTube's withholdings, he had accumulated a few thousand dollars.
Added to a small part of the $50k "Freedom Fund" that Harris had authorized, he had enough.
He decided to buy a used car to get around.
He opened Craigslist. His approach was the same one he used for his music equipment: pragmatic, logical, emotionless.
He didn't look for a BMW or a Mustang. Those things attracted attention. He needed a ghost. A car that no one would look at twice.
His search filters were simple: "Toyota" and "Nissan". He knew they were reliable, economical, and would last forever.
He found what he was looking for in twenty minutes. A gray Toyota Corolla, 2004 model. It had 150,000 miles, the paint on the roof was faded by the sun, and it had a small dent in the rear bumper. It was perfect.
The seller was asking $2,800. Michael sent him a message: "I have $2,500 cash. I can come right now."
The seller accepted in less than a minute.
An hour later, Michael was in a shopping mall parking lot, handing a wad of bills to a guy who looked relieved to get rid of the car.
He drove the Corolla home. The car smelled vaguely of old coffee and pine air freshener. The engine made a dull, but steady noise.
He parked it in the driveway of his rented house. It was his first big purchase with "music money" (and company funds).
It wasn't a Mercedes. It wasn't a Ferrari. But for Michael, it represented something much more important.
It was freedom.
It was the ability to go buy food at 2 a.m. if he wanted. It was the ability to go to his friends' houses without having to ask for a ride.
For him, the car was transportation, not something to show off. It was a tool that had just eliminated one of his biggest obstacles: dependency.
Now, his isolation was a choice, not a circumstance.
Michael was sitting in his new studio. His gray Corolla was parked outside. His driver's license was in his wallet. And his new professional equipment was set up and ready to go.
He felt... free.
The stress of school and the anxiety of the future house sale were still there, but the exhaustion of the Burger Barn was gone. He had energy. He had time.
He looked at his release plan. 'Life Is Beautiful' was next. 'Ghost Girl' would come after. They were logical, safe moves.
But now, with this new equipment, he felt bolder.
He opened the System interface. His inventory floated in front of him. He ignored 'Runaway', as always. That song was untouchable, a monument to another time.
His gaze settled on 'Drugs You Should Try It'.
He remembered the guide. It wasn't a guitar song. It wasn't a lo-fi beat. It was a production masterpiece. It was a psychedelic soundscape, built on ethereal synths and, most importantly, a use of auto-tune that wasn't robotic, but atmospheric.
Until now, he had avoided that song. His cheap microphone and slow laptop wouldn't have done it justice. It would have sounded like a disaster.
But now... now he had the Neumann. He had the MacBook Pro. He had the effects plugins he had bought.
He wanted to end his SoundCloud era with a bang that no one saw coming. A bang that proved he wasn't just a sad boy with a guitar. He wanted to prove he was a producer.
'Drugs You Should Try It' was the perfect song. It was complex, it was beautiful, and it was the most mainstream song in its artistic potential, aside from the untouchable 'Runaway'.
It was the bridge between the lo-fi underground and the polished superstar sound he knew he would have to adopt someday.
But then, he thought about 'Runaway' again.
The temptation was there. Could he try it now? With this new equipment?
He opened the guide for 'Runaway' just for a second. The complexity of the layers—the piano, the strings, the beat, the three-minute vocoder outro—hit him like a wall.
He closed the guide immediately. He didn't feel ready. It wasn't a question of equipment. It was a question of skill, and of life. He hadn't lived enough to understand that song. Not yet.
His decision solidified.
'Life Is Beautiful'. 'Ghost Girl'. And then, 'Drugs You Should Try It'.
That would be his graduation from the underground. It would be the song that would prove to the world that he wasn't an accident. That he was a visionary.
He closed the System. His plan was drawn. He had his next three releases ready.
He put on the Sennheiser headphones, feeling the luxury of the velvet foam against his ears. He opened a new Ableton project.
life_is_beautiful_v1.
He picked up his Squier guitar, now with new strings and clean frets. He plugged the cable into his Apollo interface. It was time to work.