Chapter 77: The Head in the Ground
Tuesday, January 19, 2016
Michael sat in his studio, looking at his MacBook screen. The $50,000 wire transfer to Sting's publishing company was complete. His operating account was significantly lighter, but the most important asset was now legally his. 'Lucid Dreams' was his.
He knew he had a hit on his hands. The song was catchy, painful, and perfect. But in the internet age, audio wasn't enough. He needed an image. He needed a video that was as memorable as the guitar melody.
He thought about the original video for the song in his 2025 timeline. He remembered the trippy aesthetic, the heads coming out of the ground, the visual style of Cole Bennett.
In this universe, Cole Bennett wasn't the "Lyrical Lemonade" mogul yet. He was still a kid in Chicago with a camera and a weird vision.
Michael opened Instagram.
He started searching. He didn't search for Los Angeles directors with film crews. He searched the underground scene. He searched hashtags like #musicvideodirector #chicago #undergroundhiphop.
And then, he found him.
@colebennett
The profile was modest. It had a few thousand followers. But the content was there.
Michael clicked on one of his recent videos. It was a short clip of an unknown local rapper. The camera quality wasn't cinematic, but the editing... the editing was wild. Saturated colors, hand-drawn animations over the video, fast and psychedelic cuts. It was raw, playful, and different from everything on MTV.
It was exactly what Michael needed. He didn't want corporate polish. He wanted artistic chaos.
Michael opened his Direct Messages. He wrote fast, straight to the point.
"Hey, Cole. I'm Michael Demiurge. I've seen your work. You have an incredible eye."
"I have a new song. It's big. I have a budget of $10,000 for the video. And I have a very specific idea I need you to execute. Are you available to fly to Los Angeles today? I'll cover the flight."
He pressed send.
He leaned back in his chair, waiting. He knew that for a 19-year-old kid who was just starting out, five thousand dollars and a flight to L.A. was an offer impossible to refuse.
Five minutes later, his phone vibrated.
@colebennett: Michael Demiurge? The 'Drugs You Should Try It' guy? @colebennett: Dude, I'm a fan. Seriously. 10k? I'm in. Tell me when and where.
Michael smiled. He had his director.
@michaeldemiurge: I just sent the ticket to your email. Flight leaves in three hours. Bring your camera and your laptop. Let's make history.
He closed the chat. The visual piece of the puzzle was on its way.
Tuesday, January 19, 2016 (Afternoon)
Cole didn't waste time. With the ten-thousand-dollar budget Michael had transferred to him, he had managed to rent a small industrial photography studio in downtown Los Angeles for a few hours and had bought materials at a hardware store.
Michael arrived at the location at four in the afternoon. The space was an empty concrete box, cold and echoing.
"Here we are," said Cole, who was unloading wooden planks and rolls of fabric from his car. He looked nervous, but with that frenetic energy of someone wanting to impress their idol.
"Perfect," said Michael. "Let's get to work."
There was no construction crew. It was just the two of them and a friend of Cole's who had come to help carry things.
They built the set from scratch.
Michael's idea was specific and strange: he needed a fake floor.
They stacked wooden crates and placed a large plywood board on top, raising it about sixty centimeters from the real floor. Then, with a jigsaw Cole had brought, they cut an irregular hole in the center of the board, big enough for a human head to pass through, but tight enough to look like the floor was swallowing the person.
Finally, they covered the entire structure with cheap gray carpet, cutting the hole with a box cutter.
It looked ridiculous in the daylight. A low platform with a hole in the middle of an empty warehouse.
"Looks like a bear trap," joked Cole, wiping sawdust off his hands.
"Wait until you see the light," said Michael.
They started with the lighting.
Michael didn't want white studio lights. He didn't want it to look "good". He wanted it to look like a nightmare. Like sleep paralysis.
Cole took some gel filters out of his backpack. Purple. Dark blue. Black.
They covered the spotlights. They turned off the warehouse ceiling lights.
Suddenly, the cheap set transformed.
The gray carpet turned a sickly violet color. The shadows lengthened. The black hole in the center of the platform looked like a portal to the void.
"Wow," whispered Cole, looking through his camera viewfinder. "You were right. It looks... trippy."
"It's the paralysis," explained Michael, walking around the platform. "The song is about not being able to move. About being trapped in your own head. I want the video to feel claustrophobic."
He pointed to the space under the platform. It was narrow, dark, and full of dust.
"I'm going in there," said Michael.
Cole looked at him doubtfully. "Are you sure? It's going to be uncomfortable. You're going to have to be crouched or lying on the cold concrete for hours."
Michael took off his jacket. He stayed in his black t-shirt.
"Art is pain, Cole," said Michael, with a half-smile. "If I'm comfortable, it won't look real."
He crouched down and slid under the wooden structure, crawling into the darkness.
"Okay," shouted Michael from under the fake floor, his voice muffled. "Get the camera ready. Let's roll."
The space under the wooden platform was a coffin. It smelled of fresh sawdust and dust accumulated on the warehouse floor. It was dark, only illuminated by the beams of purple light filtering through the hole in the carpet.
Michael crawled to the center. He found the hole and pushed his head up, emerging into the "real world" of the set.
From below, his body was contorted, knees against the cold concrete. From above, only his head was visible, cut off at the neck, resting on the gray carpet as if the ground had swallowed him.
"How does it look?" asked Michael, feeling the pressure of the wood against his collarbone.
Cole was standing on the platform, looking through the camera viewfinder.
"It looks... disturbing," said Cole, with an excited smile. "Perfect. The purple light makes you look like a corpse. I love it."
Michael nodded, or tried to, restricted by the hole.
"Pass me the prop," said Michael.
Cole handed him a pre-rolled marijuana cigarette (or a blunt) and a lighter. Michael stuck a hand out through the hole —a strange visual effect, as if the hand were coming out of the earth— and took it.
"Okay. Let's roll," said Cole. "Playback in three, two, one..."
The sound of 'Lucid Dreams' exploded in the empty warehouse, echoing off the concrete walls.
'Uhm-uhm-mm, ah...'
Michael lit the blunt. The flame illuminated his face from below. He took a deep drag. Thick white smoke came out of his mouth, enveloping his head, trapped by the violet light.
'I still see your shadows in my room...'
'Can't take back the love that I gave you...'
Michael started singing. But he didn't move much. He couldn't. The physical limitation of the set became the artistic direction. Since he couldn't move his body, he had to act only with his face. His eyes darted from side to side, following invisible shadows. His expression was one of exhaustion, of resignation.
'It's to the point where I love and I hate you...'
'And I cannot change you, so I must replace you, oh...'
Cole moved around Michael's head, shooting from high angles, making Michael look small, helpless, trapped in the floor of his own mind.
'Easier said than done, I thought you were the one...'
The smoke from the joint made his eyes burn, but Michael didn't blink. He let them get red and watery. It added realism.
'You left me falling and landing inside my grave...'
'I know that you want me dead...'
The visual metaphor was perfect. He was literally in a grave.
'I have these lucid dreams where I can't move a thing...'
'Thinking of you in my bed...'
He sang that line looking directly into the camera lens, exhaling a cloud of smoke that obscured the image for a second. The feeling of sleep paralysis —being awake but unable to move the body— was real. His legs were asleep under the platform. His neck hurt.
But he kept singing.
'You were my everything, thoughts of a wedding ring...'
'Now I'm just better off dead...'
Cole was excited, shouting directions over the music. "Yes! Look up! Now roll your eyes back! Perfect! Exhale now!"
They recorded the song three times in a row without Michael getting out of the hole.
The atmosphere was dense, claustrophobic, and trippy. Exactly what Michael wanted. It wasn't a rap video about being cool. It was a video about being trapped.
Tuesday, January 19, 2016 (Night)
"Cut!" shouted Cole.
The music stopped. Silence returned to the cold warehouse.
Michael exhaled a long sigh of relief. "Get me out of here," he said, his voice resonating from the floor.
Cole and his friend lifted the wooden board enough for Michael to slide out. He stood up, stumbling a little. His legs were asleep and his neck was stiff, and he was covered in dust and sawdust, but he felt satisfied.
"That was... intense," said Cole, reviewing the footage on the small camera screen. "It looks incredibly weird. I love it."
"We're not done yet," said Michael, stretching his back. "We need the standing shots. Against the black."
They moved the makeshift fake floor set. Michael stood against the back wall, where they had hung a black cloth.
Cole adjusted the lights to create harsh shadows.
They recorded the last part of the video. Michael "fighting" against empty air, punching invisible shadows, clutching his head as if in pain.
"Here is where your magic comes in," Michael told Cole between takes. "I want you to draw on this. Scribbles. Skulls. I want it to look like my own mind is attacking me."
"Rotoscoping," said Cole, nodding frantically. "Frame by frame animation. Got it. I'm going to make your face melt and turn into a skull and then go back to being your face."
Michael smiled. The kid understood the language.
They finished at ten at night. They were exhausted.
Michael walked over to his backpack and took out his phone.
"Give me your account," he said.
Cole dictated the numbers. Michael typed into his banking app.
"Sent."
Cole's phone vibrated. He looked at the notification. His eyes widened like saucers. $10,000. For an 18-year-old kid who made skate videos, it was a fortune.
"Thanks, Mike. Seriously," said Cole, and there was genuine reverence in his voice. "I won't let you down. I'm going to edit this like my life depended on it."
"I know you will," said Michael. "Take your time. I want it perfect."
They said goodbye in the warehouse parking lot. Cole left hugging his camera as if it contained the nuclear codes.
Michael got into his Corolla.
He drove back to the canyon, windows down to get rid of the smell of dust and smoke.
He went over his mental inventory.
He had the song recorded and mixed. He had the legal rights to the Sting sample secured (although they cost him a fortune). And now, he had the video recorded, with the perfect visual director working on the edit.
The package was complete. 'Lucid Dreams' was in the chamber.
Michael looked at the lights of Los Angeles in the distance. The city slept, unaware of what was coming.
He was ready to drop the nuclear bomb on the music industry. It was only a matter of time.