Miserable Michael
When I dreamt up this song on a long, lonesome car ride home from work one night, I pretty much just imagined a scenario in which Donald Trump had been elected President of the United States and as a consequence a militant, left wing, ironically fundamentalist group would emerge with attempts to take him out of power through violence. A member of this fictional party was Miserable Michael. A white, suburban born, college educated male with an inherent hatred towards everything that American white culture stands for. The first section of this song repeats the lines “All we wanted was a place in heaven”. Although Republicans have a tendency to envelop their political agendas inside of a masked Christian doctrine, the lefties want essentially the same thing; a place in heaven. They just have a different notion of what heaven is; free health care, racial equality, LGBT liberation, fair wages for women, free education, less spending on military operations, etc. And so that’s what the first section illustrates, the sole desire of the 99%. Just to live well and morally. However, unfortunately Michael sees that we “work for no love” in a capitalist society. There’s no commune, no brotherhood, no helping your fellow man, just simply working in a capitalist machine to survive and so to fight the psychological trauma that this realization ensues they would drink and party on their time off. The next sections illustrate Michael’s more aggressive, militant and ultimately fundamentalist nature. The subsequent section with the descending chord progression starts out of “complot, gold lungs breathing lies through a thousand cycles”, the repetitive nature of anointed leaders breathing untruths to support their supremacy. “God, only speaks to himself despite his idols”. Michael believes that God is the creator, but he never speaks to his creations for they are doomed to govern themselves. “Outside I’m dying as Michael”. The narrator hates everything he personally stands for and feels that his white male exterior is dying. The line “Can you hear the halogen kids sing recitals?” is referring to the youthful, aggressive, emotive Bernie Sanders supporters. Halogen elements tend to glow and are highly reactive, but they are also the most negatively charged elements in nature. I was trying to illustrate the idea that the Bernie Sanders kids are luminous yet still possess a sort of dark, cynical energy. They are “gleaming of high hopes”, and yet metaphorically “hugging their rifles”, “devotion intact”, “fighting holds of denial”. When Michael claims that the “pink kings are sinking”, he’s referring to White America. Despite their desperate attempts to hold onto their power, the people will prevail. Furthermore, Michael claims that he’ll “go down with the fleet”. As a white man himself, it’s only fair that he suffer the same fate that those who he despises must suffer. He’s accepted this fact and sees himself as a messiah figure for doing so. He’s got a “barbed-wire crown” similar to Christ’s crown of thorns, yet in a more modern, urban, Americanized setting. He’s also “so proud of the grief”. He’s rewarding himself for feeling guilty about his own identity. Although he hates what he stands for, he’s happy that he’s acknowledging it. In fact it’s what keeps him motivated. And of course he can “see truth through the blood in his eyes”. He can see all of America’s true mechanisms in play, or at least so he thinks, and he sees them through a primal, violent lense.
The following section is Michael’s vague description of modern America. “Little pigs went to market with severed heads in bags, pedaling their fantasies buying riches selling rags”. Corporate, capitalist America, white men gaining fortune through ruthlessness and savagery. “Blackening the eyes of their drunk wives with open palms, dancing on the graves of veterans and single moms”. White men beating their tragic, drunk wives to keep them in line, while making money off the backs of hard-working Americans. “I was always meant to know, I was always meant for more”, Michael knows he’s always been meant for something grand in life and now that Trump is president and the white men are clinging to their power with one final effort, he knows exactly what his destined purpose is. “I am Michael Sufferer, blind son of a coke whore”. I had dreamt up that Michael was the son of a wealthy Hedge Fund investor, but his biological mother was a dancer and a drug addict. He thinks of her as a “coke whore” to validate his own existence. It’s much easier to accept that he’s a son of a coke whore than to accept that he’s the son of the very white corporate millionaires that he’s been conditioned into loathing. It also lets him think that he’s deep or maybe that he has some edge. He claims that he’s a sufferer because he likes the idea that he’s seen the ugly side of life and has survived through it, when in actuality he’s just a disillusioned privileged white guy.
The final section of the song is the most explosive. “Lies, relentless lies is all we ever see”, pretty self-explanatory. “There’s a man with a double chin and a silk tie and that man must die, so must I”. Michael has plans to violently remove Trump from elected office, as well as to remove him from this world entirely, but he also intends to shoot himself after he accomplishes his agenda. Ultimately he feels as though he is part of the problem and if he is to be true to his acquired fundamentalist dogma he’s gotta take himself out. The original title of this song was “white guilt”, but I felt it too specific for the broader themes I was trying to touch on so I made the title extremely vague and just created an arbitrary character that could embody what I wanted to convey about American, political polarity. The truth is; extremism is extremism not matter what side of the political spectrum you find yourself on. In fact, there is a socio-political description known as “horseshoe theory”. It suggests that the political spectrum of a bicameral system is not linear like the electromagnetic spectrum, but rather horseshoe-shaped so that the extremes of either side are closer in distance to one another than either extreme is to the median. The extreme left and the extreme right are essentially the same kind of people they just happened to have arbitrarily adhered to different contents of belief. However, their behavior, their narrow-mindedness, their selfishness, their unwillingness to compromise is something that they both share. We see that in America, today. Miserable Michael is supposed to show the similarity between the two extremes. He’s riddled with white guilt “never knew I was what I despised until I despised every white under sun and sky”, and he sees all minorities as people that should be idolized, regardless of individual character “never knew I was what I admired until I admired every son born of coal and fire”. This is very much a leftist conviction, however, he also believes in resorting to violence “only violence will open our eyes” as a means of social revolution. He believes that his actions of assassination will echo throughout the ages and that his actions will be responsible for correcting the flaws of society. “One day you’ll sleep with a smile, knowing all men surrender to light”. Furthermore, he believes he will be remembered as a saint and as a martyr “one day you’ll look to the sky and you’ll thank my rifle and I”. The chorus in this last section shows his internal struggle to execute his final act of suicide “I don’t wanna die, but somehow I feel obliged. I don’t wanna die, but I’m done clinging to life”. Although he fears death and doesn’t want to end his life, he believes that if he is going to be true to his own convictions he has to kill himself since his very existence represents everything he deems evil in the world. He’s done trying to make sense of being a privileged white male while maintaining a sustained sense of morality. He can either continue to live and abandon his own morality or he can stay true to his own moral beliefs and kill himself.