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Wednesday, 25 March 2015
Mad Mike, the homeless blogger who became a millionaire overnight
Missing
the Austin ditch in which he’d slept most nights for the last two
years, Mike Wille curled up on the front lawn of the large house his
mother had just left him via her suicide note. Her death meant that Mike
– known to fans of his street music and his homelessness blog, The Ground Score,
as Mad Mike the Hippy Bum – would soon be a millionaire. Mad Mike
worried that, given his love of drink and drugs, he could not survive
such a lifestyle shift.
At birth, Mike’s left leg was shorter than his right by an inch, with no defined calf muscle and an under-formed foot sans big toe. When I visited his mother’s former home near New Orleans
recently, he showed me a box of family papers he’d unearthed regarding
the lengthening of his leg by the famous doctor Gavriil Ilizarov, who invented the procedure.
Still, the bum leg helped Mike nurture a negative outlook that, once
he became teenager, fractured his relationship with his already volatile
parents. “My mother was a fairly erratic person. Sometimes extremely
benevolent and generous, other times scathingly cruel,” Mike told me.
“When I was in the seventh grade, she tried to kill herself in front of
me because I got a D in history and I said I didn’t care. Later we found
her passed out in the garage with the car running and my dad freaked
out, showing more emotion than I’d ever seen out of him.
“Things came to a head when I was 17 and had a fist fight with my
dad, causing him to have me arrested. This was my first time in jail,”
says Wille, who immediately moved out of his house. Mike has more
recently written exquisitely about subsequent trips to jail (most for
public intoxication) at The Ground Score:
Immediately upon entering, one of the prisoners, a skinny guy about
my age, walked up to me, looked me in the eyes, extended his hand, and
in a welcoming voice said, “Hi. My name is “John.” Now I knew I was in
luck. Not only had I stumbled upon a harmonious pod, but also one which
contained at least one smart inmate. If you ever go to jail, I recommend
doing just what he did, and greet any unfamiliar inmate coming into
your living space in exactly this way (almost any). You can learn a lot
from a guy by presenting him with the option of civility.
I gave this gentlemen amongst the despondent a firm handshake and
said, “Hey man. I’m Mike.” Over the next two nights I ate, slept,
watched TV, read a book about Marlon Brando, and talked to John. A
decent conversation is hard to find in jail, and I could tell he hadn’t
had one in a while. As for me, it had probably been even longer. In this
town, the only class of people less worthy of respect than prisoners,
are the homeless.
Thanks to his blog, Mike received fan mail from Scotland, New Zealand, Latvia and the Ukraine. To a homeless bum, this meant everything.
Wille, now 36, lived rough on the streets of Austin. Photograph: Jonathan Traviesa
Mike’s deceased mother’s house, a nicely appointed junior McMansion
45 minutes east of New Orleans, represents the first roof over Mike’s
head in four years. Mad Mike spent the last 15 years blowing back and
forth from Texas to his home state of Louisiana, surfing both couches and park benches.
Mad Mike: ‘Facebook and my blog were forums where I wasn’t judged by my financial situation.’ Photograph: Jonathan Traviesa
Mad Mike still has not told the thousands of readers who keep up with
The Ground Score that he is now a multi-millionaire; he fears they will
judge him differently.
“People talk so much about how Facebook is garbage, and just some
cheeseball thing you shouldn’t take seriously, but … Facebook and my
blog were forums where I wasn’t judged by my financial situation,” says
Mike. “In Austin, people were cold to me, people didn’t look me in the
eye. Women didn’t look me in the eye for years. Police would put me in
jail every chance they’d get. The internet was the perfect escape.”
His first computer was quickly stolen, along with his guitar during
one of his blackouts on Austin’s world-famous 6th Street. He managed to
continue writing within the two hours allotted by the public library’s
computers. “I’d post something in one hour, then go back later in day to
see how it was received. When I wanted to get more done in a day, I’d
write it all out in longhand first.”
It is tough to corroborate the stories of a homeless loner. But I’ve
shared just a few degrees of separation from Mike in real life for
enough years to believe his Ground Scoretales.“In
real life, I was a heavy drinker who rubbed people the wrong way,” said
Mike. “But I always thought that if everyone could understand what I
was thinking they might understand me and like me better. So
hitting it big on the internet validated my feelings on that.” Fans out
of nowhere also helped him live: “I’m obviously some kind of big shot
artist to these guys – but then I’d look away from the screen and
remember that I’m a pariah. It helped me to survive under those
conditions. I made light of it in my writing,” he says, “but life in the
ditch was fucking rough.”
Mike finally went against his own rule and asked his internet
followers if anyone had an extra laptop he could have. His next two
computers and a smartphone came from readers. “It was an amazing thing,
the moment I realized I would always have a computer, just so long as I
kept writing …”
A university press even reached out and offered Mike a one-book
contract – which I advised him not to take because I thought his writing
could touch more people than a university press could reach. Having
published a couple books with universities myself, I knew that route
wouldn’t lift him out of the ditch. “Hold out,” I advised him. “You
could make real money with your writing.”
Soon though, money wouldn’t be a problem for Mad Mike.
Mike replaced his mom’s furniture with thousands of dollars worth of brand new musical equipment. Photograph: Jonathan Traviesa
“Three out of five of our siblings have committed suicide. Mike’s
mother is the third,” says Danny Branighan, the arbiter of his sister’s
will, though they’d been estranged since 2001. Danny has a turbulent
relationship with his brother as well, and another sister who was so
horrified to read Mike’s blog that she cut him off, and demanded he
never write about her in even the most veiled of ways.
Danny’s most recently deceased sister had argued with her boyfriend,
told him to leave the house, then went to sleep in the garage with the
car running. “She had a will drawn up before that, but the one that she
wrote that day was considered more valid, and it held up in Louisiana
district court,” says Danny, who ever since has been giving Mad Mike
rides and amateur legal advice. He confirms Mike will inherit $1.8m in
investment money, plus his mother’s big house. “I’d have been upset if
it all hadn’t gone to Mike,” he claims.
After the loss of his mother, Mike wasn’t heard from for weeks. When he resurfaced a month later,he
told me that he was “very happy about the money, but I don’t like the
way I got it. I wish she would have given me 10% of it and had a deeper
relationship with me.”
Though still smoking weed and dabbling in other drugs – and worst of
all, ripping the filters off his Pall Mall cigarettes – Mike is
attempting to quit drinking. “I simply can’t afford to fuck this up, and
if I’m drinking, I certainly would. Either I would waste all the money
or kill myself,” he believes, pointing to his last drinking binge this
past New Year’s Eve, when Danny ended up driving alcohol poisoned Mike
to Tulane Hospital. “Abject poverty had kept my drinking reasonably
contained,” says Mike, “but with a full bank account I tend to drink
until I get sick.”
Instead, he’s indulging in music. Mad Mike immediately moved his
mom’s sofa, love seat and ottoman out of the living room and replaced it
with thousands of dollars worth of brand new, gorgeous musical
equipment: a cherry wood Les Paul guitar and a Fender Deluxe Reverb amp;
a giant, black Korg keyboard and a huge multi-channel Roland amp; a
sleek, black Fender Jazz Bass; several microphones and the six-piece
drum kit. As we sit around jamming, he tells me: “This morning off of
eBay I ordered a $2,500 Martin acoustic guitar, a standup bass, a
Deering maple Banjo, and an Irish Bouzouki Mandola.” I had to look that
last one up.
He promises that now, after he buys his first car as an adult, and
then helps Danny’s family pay off tens of thousands worth of debt, Mike
will keep the rest of the money invested. “This looks like rash
consumerism,” he recognizes, moving into the kitchen, which now serves
as his recording studio’s control room. “But I am just acquiring the
specific tools for my needs. I intend to spend the rest of my life
writing, producing artwork, and recording music. I suppose I might even
consider starting a family now that I have the resources to take care of
one.”
Wanting me to try the weed he stashed out in the guesthouse, we must
first cross his vast, verdant yard. The guesthouse is tiny but, with a
bathroom, bed and TV, inheriting it alone would have wildly changed
Mike’s life. Now, it is just another place Mike keeps weed.
I ask him if he’s worried people will treat him differently. “Oh yes,
it happened immediately,” he says. “Now people invite me into their
parlors, their guestrooms, they offer to let me sleep on their couch.
Though this also has to do with the fact that I’m not drinking…”
Despite that he’s currently embroiled in something even more
interesting than finding drugs on the ground, Mike hasn’t posted on The
Ground Scoresince he moved in here. He did tell his followers
that he’d inherited a nice house and is no longer homeless. But he fears
the word “millionaire,” will alienate his fans. “They like an
underdog,” he understands. “So I’m kind of nervous as to how they will
react.”
He admits that the house is too distracting for blogging. “But more
importantly, my family is now all really paying attention to my posts,”
he says, blowing smoke in the breeze’s face. “And what I have to write
about lately is stuff that would ... not offend them
necessarily, but … they’re from a different lifestyle than me. To be
honest I haven’t been writing because I finally care what someone
thinks.”
The original source of this post is http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/mar/24/mad-mike-homeless-blogger-millionaire
I think this is an amazing story it is very sad but has a kind of ok ending.Things can turn out alright in the end of a very stormy life.
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