March 8, 2007
A world of possibilities: UW Bothell staffer’s music gets a second chance in the online world Second Life
It’s not every day a musician gives a concert and a three-story gingerbread cookie shows up. It happened to UW Bothell staffer George Michael, but not in this world, of course — in Second Life.
Second Life, as thousands are learning daily, is an online alter-world that in many ways takes up where the real world leaves off. Participants represented by “avatars” — self-created graphic characters — walk, run, jump, fly and “teleport” through a world of simulated scenes and experiences. They make friends, do business, play sports, build communities and relationships and, yes, attend concerts inside the exponentially growing virtual world.
“You can’t imagine how large this is,” says Michael, the mail room supervisor for UW Bothell. “You could play it for the rest of your life and not see all of it.”
Second Life generally boasts more than 3 million members, but recent news stories indicate the regular user base is closer to one-tenth of that. Almost daily, headlines announce another company or agency establishing a beachhead in the online world. IBM hosts virtual meetings, Harvard’s law school holds classes — the Reuters news agency even has set up a virtual news bureau “in-world,” as participants say. John Edwards’ presidential campaign has a presence in Second Life.
Houses are “built” from basic textures purchased in-world, virtual land is bought and sold, businesses thrive and Second Life’s currency — named Lindens, after the world’s creators — can be converted to real money, if at pennies on the dollar. And people assume all manner of avatars, including giant gingerbread cookies, presumably just because they can.
“Every once in a while you get someone who comes in as a huge purple monster, or a huge Mario” the Nintendo game character, Michaels says. “One lady wanted to be a skunk. She just wanted to be a skunk for a month.”
A little eccentric, perhaps? Michael doesn’t really disagree. He says he played his share of “Zelda” and other computer games in their time, solving and moving past them quickly. This is different, he says — it’s a chance for him to expand as a musician and a performer.
“The vast majority of people come (to Second Life) to experience it, but I am unique in that I came in with a single-minded purpose — to play live music,” he says. Live, that is, via his guitar-strumming avatar named LyndonHeart which, unlike his real world self, is a 6-foot-9 African American. And so far, Michael says, he is succeeding in the virtual world in ways he never did in the real one.
Michael, who is 55, says he’s been a musician since his teens, “playing in every kind of band imaginable,” including folk and funk, hard rock and the acoustic rock/pop and what he terms “soul folk” he mostly now writes and performs. He says he has “been close so many times” catching on as a musician only to see his recording company get sold or promises made otherwise evaporate. He currently works with two different real world bands, one called Twee Ty and the Tomcats and the other called Shadrack.
Second Life gave his music a second chance, he says.
“It levels the playing field and makes me as good as anybody else,” he says, allowing him to show off his vocal and guitar-playing abilities. “It gives me a level of success I knew I could get to — I knew if people heard me they’d like me, and sure enough, I pack the club every single show.”
Michael began life as George Michael Eder, but used his middle name as his last when working as a musician. He made the change legally in 1970 — years before, he notes, a certain British pop singer of the same name, lately something of a magnet for negative headlines, arrived on the public scene. Michael chose the single name of LyndonHeart for Second Life, thus avoiding annoying discussions of his real-world name.
“George Michael?” he says with a chuckle, “Let’s face it, I’ve taken enough abuse in the real world, I didn’t want to start it with Second Life right away.”
He learned about the online alter-world while browsing through a technology magazine on a break at work, reading of someone else “playing from his home into his computer and broadcasting it to the world. And I thought, ‘That’s intriguing!'”
Michael says he was something of a Second Life stumblebum until learning the basics of moving around and handling objects such as the guitar his avatar holds in concert. He lucked out by quickly running into the owner of a virtual club called The Lily Pad, where his Second Life performing career began.
It was during one of his concerts that the gingerbread cookie monster showed up, Michael says, an unusual online character he thinks may have represented one of the world’s inventors. “He was brown with a happy face of frosting and he just came lumbering through — galumph, galumph! He was about 10 times the size of a normal avatar.”
Most participants are friendly and helpful, Michael says, but there also are “griefers,” or those whose aim is purely to cause trouble. A few showed up at a recent online concert Michael gave, peppering the graphic scene with pornographic images and “bumping” his character — a violent and aggressive move in this world — off the stage. “Three of my shows were ‘griefed’ in a row, but we got the names, and those participants were quickly banned.”
Not surprisingly, there also is a sexual element to Second Life. “That was probably one of the driving forces behind the world,” Michael says. And though he does not participate, he says all the avatars are, ahem, anatomically correct, and the imagery is “phenomenally real-looking.”
If Second Life gives Michael’s music a new direction, it does much the same for some of his admirers challenged with physical disabilities — obstacles that vanish in the freedom on the online world. One of LyndonHeart’s in-world fans, Michael says, is a 23-year-old paraplegic woman who is making money designing and building things for others in the world; another female friend has an immune deficiency that prevents her from going outside, he says. “Her only connection to the world is her three computers.” Both lead active and mobile lives in the alter-reality of Second Life.
Michael admits that Second Life is “highly addictive.” The first night he visited online, he realized only later that he’d sat and stared at his computer for six hours straight. And he knows people who have had trouble balancing Second Life with their first one, sometimes with sad results. But he says he has settled into a fairly normal schedule that is driven by his performances, for which he receives pay or tips, or both.
“I wasn’t in it for the money at the beginning,” he says. “The first three months I was just playing whenever I could, staying up late at night, driving my wife crazy, telling my friends in real life to get on this.”
Michael said his wife grew more supportive of his online performing the first time he cashed a check received for such work. “I said, ‘You know how I made that money, honey? I made it playing music in my pajamas in the back room!’ ”
On occasion, his real and online lives intertwine, as when Michael gives presentations on Second Life at UW Bothell. He participated in a workshop he titled “Pursuing Your Passion in the Virtual World” for the UW’s Career Discovery Week in January, and gave a similar presentation at the UW Bothell Office of Student Life.
Second Life is constantly growing and deepening, and its future is anyone’s guess, though Michael has his thoughts on the matter. “The Internet connection will only get better. Eventually you’ll be able to hold Second Life in your hands.”
But for Michael — that is, for LyndonHeart — “the magic is in the music. I have heard the most phenomenal musicians you can even imagine.”
And however Second Life evolves, Michael hopes to continue what he came there to do in the first place, entertain people with his music.
“It’s unfolding as we go,” he says. “I’m just taking it a day at a time.”
