Chapter 37: Don't Pretend To Be Okay
Sunday, September 20, 2015
Michael woke up in his studio. He had fallen asleep in the chair, his head resting on the desk, next to his MacBook keyboard.
The morning sun was coming through the window, but the room was still dark thanks to the thick curtains he had installed. The first thing he saw when he opened his eyes was the System interface, which he had left open.
TOTAL BALANCE: 57,445 IP
He stared at the number, still half asleep. 57 thousand. The night before, the release of 'Life Is Beautiful' had been... intense.
He stretched, feeling a dull ache in his neck. He grabbed his phone. What he saw woke him up instantly.
His Twitter feed was an emotional battlefield. The 'White Iverson' fans were confused. ("What's wrong with this guy?").
But his 'crybaby' fans were ecstatic. ("He did it again!").
And then, there was the new audience.
He spent the morning reading the new comments on 'Life Is Beautiful'. They weren't just from sad kids anymore. They were from people who were suffering.
"I'm on my third round of chemo. I heard the hospital part and I broke down. Thank you for not sugarcoating it."
"I lost my job and my wife left me. 'Isn't life comical' is exactly how I feel. Thank you for making my depression seem... normal."
He felt motivated by this connection, but he also felt a new and heavy weight of responsibility. These people weren't just listening to his music; they were using it. Like medicine. Like therapy.
He realized he couldn't stop. He couldn't, after opening that door, step back and release a commercial hit like 'White Iverson'. It would be dishonest. It would feel like a betrayal.
He had to keep going down this path. He had to continue being this vulnerable.
He summoned his inventory. His gaze passed over 'Drugs You Should Try It'. 'Too atmospheric. Not now.' He passed over 'Ghost Girl'. 'Too similar to what I've already done.'
And then he saw it. 'let's pretend we're numb'.
The guide was simple. A base, a sample, drums, etc. A voice. But the lyrics... the lyrics were raw. It was a confession, an apology, and a warning.
He remembered the intro monologue: "Don't pretend to be okay when you're not."
It was the perfect message for the audience he had just found. It was the logical next step after 'Life Is Beautiful'.
He decided, right then and there, that same day, to produce it, record it, and publish it. It wasn't a marketing strategy. It was an artistic impulse. It was a necessity.
He got up from the chair. He wasn't going to shower. He wasn't going to eat breakfast. The coffee could wait.
The world needed to hear this. And he needed to say it.
Sunday, September 20, 2015 (Afternoon)
Michael sat in front of his MacBook Pro, determination burning in him. He opened Ableton. He created a new project: lpw_numb_v1.
He summoned the System interface and opened the guide for 'let's pretend we're numb'. It was, as he expected, incredibly simple.
The guide contained the long, raw lyrics. It contained the intro monologue. And it contained a single description of the beat:
"A raw, melancholic, repetitive acoustic guitar sample. Lo-fi. Emotional Imprint: Repressed pain, false apathy."
The System didn't give him the sample. It just told him he needed it.
'Okay. I have to find it.'
Michael went to his new university: YouTube and sampling forums. This was a treasure hunt.
He searched for samples with very specific terms. He didn't search for "rap beat". He searched for "sad acoustic guitar loop free". "lonely guitar sample". "melancholy guitar riff".
He spent the next hour immersed in an ocean of terrible music. Videos of kids in their bedrooms playing sad songs, most of them out of tune.
He was about to give up and record it himself, but he knew it wouldn't be the same. The song needed to sound like it had been found, not created. It needed that "lo-fi" texture of a bad quality recording.
And then, on the fourth page of YouTube results, he saw a video.
The title was "sad loop i made". It had about 200 views and had been uploaded by a user named "YXXXNZ" a year ago.
He clicked. And there it was.
The melody. It was simple, melancholic, and most importantly, it was recorded with horrible quality. He could hear the hiss of the cheap microphone. He could hear the hum of the amp. It was raw. It was perfect.
He used a website to download the audio from the YouTube video and converted it into a WAV file. He dragged it into Ableton.
The waveform appeared on the screen. He isolated it and looped it.
He didn't add drums. He didn't add 808s. He didn't add anything. The song would be just that raw sample and his voice.
He leaned back, listening to the four-bar loop over and over again. The hiss of the sample was hypnotic. It was the sound of a lonely bedroom at 3 a.m.
It was the perfect canvas for his confession.
Michael sat in his chair, the raw, hissing guitar loop playing in his headphones. It felt hypnotic, almost like a mantra.
He went to his closet-booth, now a familiar space. He placed the Neumann microphone close to his mouth, but not too close. He didn't want the clean, professional sound of 'White Iverson'. He wanted it to sound intimate, like a secret whispered in the dark.
He pressed the record key. The guitar loop began.
First, he recorded the intro monologue. His voice was low, serious, almost a whisper, speaking directly to the listener.
'As a fair warning to everyone listening to this song... I advise you to not hide your feelings. Don't pretend to be okay when you're not okay. Don't pretend to be happy when you're sad. It'll only lead to your misery.'
He wasn't acting. He was talking to Sarah, the girl in the hospital. He was talking to David, the depressed man. He was talking to Chloe. And he was talking to himself.
He finished the intro and the audio track kept recording. The guitar loop started again. And Michael sang, his voice charged with the raw emotion of the morning.
'Don't you fucking hate it when you hear my name?'
'I feel the same and when you hear this you gon' feel the pain...'
He sang this with a mix of arrogance and self-loathing. The arrogance of his growing fame, the self-loathing of knowing he was a fraud.
'And all these niggas that you fuckin' with to get away'
'But girl I know you think about it almost everyday...'
He thought of Clara, the girl from the party. Of the empty encounters. Of how they sought an escape in each other.
'And I'll be honest I be jealous of these niggas, true'
'How you feelin' with these niggas that you talk to?'
'Captivated by your mind and your walk too'
'Can't replace you with these bitches that I talk to...'
The "girl" became his lost universe again. His family. The life he couldn't replace, no matter how hard he tried.
'This ain't lust, it's love, we had trust, what's good?'
'I should've held you close, should've kept you warm...'
The guilt hit him. The guilt of not having been able to say goodbye. The guilt of being here, while they weren't.
'And when the rain is fallin', wonder who you call'
'Don't pray to god, you rather cry than call...'
His voice cracked. Slightly. But he didn't stop the recording. He left the imperfection. It was real.
'Don't jump, pretend it don't hurt...'
This was the hardest line. It was a direct plea to his new fans, to people like Sarah, to those who were on the edge. His voice was a beg.
'Repent, I won't stomp, my feet in a rage'
'My nigga I'm no chump...'
'Need you and I crave you, hate you'
'Think I ripped the wings off of my fuckin' angel...'
He thought of his mother from 2025. Of the last time he saw her.
'It don't hurt me, damn... W.R.A.C...'
He lied. Of course it hurt.
'I'll forever be the'
'I'll forever be the elephant in the room...'
He was. The weird kid at school. The secret genius. The orphan.
And then, the outro. The final apology, whispered so low the microphone barely caught it.
'I'll always love you... I'm sorry.'
The last note of the guitar faded. Michael stopped the recording.
He stayed in the closet, in the dark, trembling. It had been recorded in one or two takes. It was raw, it was full of breaths, the voice cracking.
It was perfect.
Sunday, September 20, 2015 (Night)
Michael stood in the silence of his makeshift studio. The raw vocal take was on the timeline. It was perfect.
Normally, he would have taken a day, or even a week, to mix it. He would have wrestled with EQ, compression, effects.
But this song felt different. The rawness was the point.
Michael didn't waste time on an elaborate mix. He did the absolute minimum.
He dragged the guitar sample from YXXXNZ onto the track. He adjusted the volume of the vocals so they sat just on top, loud enough for every word to feel intimate, but not so much that it drowned out the hiss of the sample recording.
He added a touch of reverb. Not the cave reverb of 'Sodium', nor the empty room reverb of 'Ghost Boy'. He used a small "ambience" preset, just to give the voice a little space, so it didn't sound completely dry.
That was it. No compression. No Auto-Tune. No crazy effects. Just the sample, the voice, and the hiss.
He exported the file. let's_pretend_we're_numb_final.mp3.
He didn't think twice. He didn't hesitate. The impulse that had led him to record it now compelled him to release it.
He uploaded it immediately to SoundCloud and YouTube.
For the cover, he didn't look for a photo. He opened notepad, typed the lyrics of the opening monologue in a simple font, took a screenshot, and uploaded it. It was raw, direct, and ugly. It was perfect.
Then, he went to Twitter. His hands moved fast. There was no bragging. There was no cynicism. Just the message of the song.
"Don't pretend to be okay when you're not. New song. 'let's pretend we're numb'. (link)"
He pressed "Send".
He closed the laptop.
He felt completely empty, as if he had just had a two-hour public therapy session. He had exposed himself in a way that 'Life Is Beautiful' didn't even come close to.
He had no idea how people would react to something so naked, so painful, so ugly.
But he knew he had to do it.
It was song number 7. He had released seven songs. He was one step closer to his milestone. One step closer to the next roulette.
He got up from the chair. He didn't feel euphoric. He felt... relieved.
He walked out of the studio, closed the door, and headed to his room, letting the digital world do whatever it wanted with his confession.