Chapter 78: The Call That Never Came
Wednesday, January 20, 2016
Michael opened his eyes and the first thing he felt was a sharp twinge at the base of his neck.
He tried to turn his head and grimaced in pain. His back was stiff, his knees hurt. Spending four hours crouched under a wooden platform, with his head sticking out through a hole in a carpet, hadn't been the most ergonomic exercise in the world.
He got out of bed walking like an old man. The shoot for the 'Lucid Dreams' video had been an artistic success, but his body was paying the price for the "vision".
He showered with very hot water, trying to loosen his muscles, and went down to the kitchen. The day outside was gray, cloudy, a rarity in Southern California that made the house in the canyon feel even more isolated than usual.
He took his coffee to the studio.
He sat in front of the computer. On his desktop was a digital folder titled: "LUCID DREAMS - FULL PACK". It contained the audio master and the raw video files Cole had taken to edit.
It was a nuclear bomb ready to be launched. But he didn't have the launch key.
Harris had sent him a message that morning: "Still negotiating with Sting's team. They want to review the lyrics to make sure it doesn't 'denigrate' the original work. Patience."
Michael sighed. Patience. He hated that word.
His career was based on momentum. He had just released 'Beamer Boy'. People were waiting for the next move. He couldn't sit still waiting for lawyers in expensive suits to decide his fate.
He needed to do something today. Something that didn't require jumping on a stage or contorting himself on a video set. Something that matched his mood: sore, tired, and melancholic.
He opened his "Problem List" (the songs with pending samples).
His eyes passed over 'Look At Me!' (already released), 'Lucid Dreams' (on hold).
They stopped on 'Jocelyn Flores'.
He opened the System guide.
PRODUCTION GUIDE: 'Jocelyn Flores' Sample: "I'm Closing My Eyes" - Shiloh Dynasty. Style: Acoustic lo-fi. Minimalist. Duration: 1:59.
He remembered the legal status of this song. Harris had put a private investigator to look for Shiloh Dynasty, the mysterious internet artist who had disappeared from the face of the earth. They hadn't found him yet, but he was a smaller risk than Sting.
'If I can't release it today, at least I can have it ready,' thought Michael. 'By the time they find Shiloh, I'll just have to press a button.'
He looked out the window, at the fine rain starting to fall. The day was perfect for this song.
'Jocelyn Flores' didn't require energy. It didn't require a big-budget video. It required silence. It required pain.
He opened a new project in Ableton. jocelyn_flores_v1.
He felt empty. And that was exactly the fuel he needed.
Wednesday, January 20, 2016 (Noon)
Michael sat in his Herman Miller chair, a blanket over his shoulders to fight the damp cold seeping into the house. The rain hit the studio window with an irregular and lazy rhythm.
He opened the folder of samples Harris and his private investigator had managed to track down. The file was named Shiloh_Dynasty_Im_Closing_My_Eyes_Rip.wav.
It was an audio clip extracted from an old Instagram post by a ghost artist. Shiloh Dynasty. An androgynous, mysterious figure, who had sung a few seconds with an acoustic guitar and then disappeared from the internet.
Michael dragged the file to the Ableton timeline. He hit play.
'I know you so well, so well...'
'I mean, I can do anything that he can...'
'I''ve been pretty...'
The voice was small, filtered, incredibly sad. The guitar sounded like it had been recorded with a cheap phone in an empty room at four in the morning.
Michael closed his eyes. The loop lasted only a few seconds, but it contained an entire world of melancholy.
He didn't need to "fix" it. He needed to frame it.
He started working on the sound. Instead of cleaning the audio like he did with 'White Iverson', he did the opposite. He added a vinyl noise plugin (iZotope Vinyl), turning up the hiss and static crackle. He wanted it to sound old, like a fading memory, like a cassette tape that has been played too many times.
He EQed the guitar to take away the shine, leaving it dull and mid-range, centered in the frequency range where the human voice lives.
Then, the beat.
Michael looked at his MIDI keyboard. His fingers hovered over the keys. His trap producer instinct told him to add fast hi-hat rolls, a distorted 808, siren effects.
He stopped. 'No.'
This song wasn't about hype. It wasn't about energy. It was about the void.
There was no beat. Barely.
He programmed a skeletal drum pattern. A soft, muffled kick, beating with the regularity of a tired heart. A hi-hat that was almost imperceptible, marking time in the background. And nothing else.
He left huge spaces in the mix. Silences where only the hiss of digital rain and Shiloh's lonely guitar could be heard.
The song had no pop structure. There was no intro, verse, pre-chorus, chorus, bridge. It was a stream of consciousness. A circular thought leading nowhere.
He listened to the instrumental. It lasted less than two minutes. It was short, abrupt.
It was the antithesis of 'Look At Me!'.
He realized this production required more discipline than anything else he had done. He had resisted the temptation to fill the space. He had let silence be the main instrument.
The loop spun round and round. 'I know you so well...'
Michael felt hypnotized. The instrumental didn't ask him to sing. It asked him to confess.
He was ready.
Michael got up from the chair and walked toward his recording booth. He didn't bring water. He didn't do warm-up exercises. He didn't want his voice to sound clean or prepared. He wanted it to sound how he felt: tired, small, and broken.
He entered the padded space and put on the headphones. The studio light was off; only the glow of the laptop screen entered through the ajar door.
The Shiloh Dynasty loop began to play again.
'I know you so well, so well...'
Michael approached the microphone, almost touching the grille with his lips. He started singing, not over the sample, but with it, harmonizing quietly.
'I mean, I can do anything that he can...'
'I''ve been pretty...'
His voice was a murmur. He wasn't projecting. He was confessing.
Then, the verse entered. The stream of consciousness.
'I know you''re somewhere, somewhere...'
'I''ve been trapped in my mind girl, just holding on...'
'I don''t wanna pretend there''s something, we''re nothing...'
He sang with his eyes closed. The "girl" in the song wasn't an ex-girlfriend. It was his previous life. The memory of who he used to be. He was trapped in his mind because it was the only place where his past still existed.
'I''ve been stuck thinking ''bout her, I can''t hold on...'
And then, the darkest line.
'I''m in pain, wanna put ten shots in my brain...'
He said it with terrifying calm. There was no drama in his voice, just a statement of facts. It was the absolute exhaustion of living two lives, of keeping secrets, of constant pressure.
'I''ve been trippin'' ''bout some thin''s, can''t change...'
'Suicidal, same time I''m tame...'
The narrative part arrived. The part about death. Michael adapted the tragedy of the lyrics to his own story.
'Picture this, in bed, get a phone call...'
'Girl that you fucked with killed herself...'
Singing this, Michael didn't see a girl. He saw the moment he woke up in this universe. The "call" he never received. The news that his parents had died in an accident while he "slept" (or while he didn't exist in this body yet).
'That was this summer and nobody helped...'
'And ever since then, man, I hate myself...'
Survivor's guilt hit him. He was alive, in this body, using the money from his dead parents' house to build an empire, while they were underground. He hated himself for it, even if it was necessary.
'Wanna fuckin'' end it...'
'Pessimistic...'
His voice cracked a little, a natural break that the microphone captured with brutal clarity.
'All wanna see me with no pot to piss in...'
'But niggas been excited ''bout the grave I''m diggin''...'
He thought of the haters. The industry. How everyone expected the "viral kid" to crash and burn. They were excited to see his grave.
'Havin'' conversations about my haste decisions...'
'Fuckin'' sickenin''...'
The house sale. The Ethereum investment. The hasty decisions he had to make to survive. They disgusted him, but they were his lifeline.
'At the same time, memory surfaced through the grapevine...'
'Bout my uncle playin'' with a slipknot...'
The lyrics spoke of a suicidal uncle. Michael thought about the fragility of his own family, the death that seemed to follow him.
'Post traumatic stress got me fucked up...'
'Been fucked up since a couple months they had a nigga locked up...'
"PTSD". That was what he had. Post-traumatic stress from a dimensional journey. From losing everything in a second.
He reached the final chorus, the mantra of dissociation.
'I be feelin'' pain, I be feelin'' pain just to hold on...'
'And I don''t feel the same, I''m so numb...'
He sang the word "numb" stretching the note, letting it fade into a sigh. It was the truth. The pain was so constant he didn't feel it anymore. It was just background noise.
'I be feelin'' pain, I be feelin'' pain just to hold on...'
'And I don''t feel the same, I''m so numb...'
The Shiloh sample returned to close the song.
'I know you so well, I know you well...'
Michael remained silent.
It had been a single take.
He didn't check it for pitch errors. He didn't care if he had breathed too loudly or mumbled a word.
The imperfection was the point. The song didn't sound like a studio production. It sounded like a suicide note found on a voice recorder.
He stepped out of the booth. He wasn't going to edit it. He was going to let it bleed.
Wednesday, January 20, 2016 (Afternoon)
Michael took off his headphones and placed them on the desk with excessive care, as if they were a fragile object.
He stared at the waveform on the Ableton screen. It was short. Just one minute and fifty-nine seconds. An irregular blue line, full of peaks of emotion and valleys of silence.
He played it once. He listened to it through the Yamaha monitors.
The vinyl hiss. The lonely guitar. And his voice, breaking on the high notes, whispering on the low ones.
He wasn't going to touch it. He wasn't going to add reverb to smooth it out. He wasn't going to correct the pitch. The imperfection was what made it human.
He exported the file. Jocelyn_Flores_Master.mp3.
He dragged it to his "FUTURE PROJECTS" folder, right next to the locked 'Lucid Dreams' folder.
He leaned back in his chair, feeling a strange mix of relief and frustration. He had two of the best songs of his career finished, ready to be heard, and both were trapped in legal limbo.
'Lucid Dreams' was waiting for Sting. 'Jocelyn Flores' was waiting for an internet ghost named Shiloh Dynasty to be found.
But Michael knew that silence was death in this industry. He couldn't disappear. He had to keep the audience hungry. He had to let them know something big was coming.
He grabbed his phone. Opened his photo gallery.
He searched for a photo from the day before, from the 'Lucid Dreams' video shoot. He found one that Cole had sent him that morning as a teaser.
It was a blurry, dark shot. Michael's silhouette was visible, barely seen under the purple light, with the smoke from the joint enveloping his head, looking into nothingness. His full face wasn't visible, only the atmosphere.
It was perfect.
He opened Instagram and Twitter.
He uploaded the photo. His fingers moved over the keyboard, drafting a message that was both a promise and an apology for the wait.
He wrote:
"Video is shot. Song is ready. Next week... 'LUCID DREAMS'. 💔"
He pressed "Post".
He closed the laptop with a soft thud.
He stayed in the gloom of his studio. It had been a strange day. It had started with physical pain and ended with an emotional catharsis.
He had created the saddest song of his career ('Jocelyn Flores') the day after recording the most important video of his life ('Lucid Dreams').
His artistic duality was complete. The commercial artist and the tortured artist lived in the same room. And soon, the world would know both.
He got up, turned off the studio lights, and left. He needed to eat something. He needed to sleep. And he needed to prepare, because when that legal green light turned on, he was going to set the world on fire.