Wounded, Fertilized: Reflections on "Feel It"
A collection of scattered thoughts on the song's origins and creative process
August 2022
The heat pressed against the streets of Berlin during a summer stretched out longer than expected. I tried to process what had happened a couple weeks earlier—one of my closest childhood friends had passed away.
Grief arrived like fog on a highway, making the world seem like a film without sound. I moved through it as if I’m in the passenger seat, letting life steer itself. The only solace I found was listening to Nick Cave’s Ghosteen, being with the friends and family that knew and missed him too, and having my partner stay with me for the summer.
It had been a long and exhausting process for my partner to get a visa for his internship in the EU. He had to deal with endless paperwork and uncooperative authorities, facing multiple rejections before securing approval just a day before his flight. When he finally landed, it all weighed on him, but he made it. That was all that mattered.
While he was working, I found myself adrift, subconsciously seeking a way to distract myself. Scrolling through Kleinanzeigen became my go-to escape; a form of retail therapy to fill a void that can’t be filled. I stumbled upon a Yamaha reface DX synthesizer for a decent price. I already owned a DX7, but I justified this one for its portability. I guess the main reason was that Warren Ellis had used it throughout Ghosteen, an album that had become my sanctuary during those hollow days, its ethereal words and soundscapes somehow translating what I couldn't express.
After messing around with stock presets, I wanted to dive deeper into what the instrument has to offer. I found an online community for Yamaha synths where users create, share and discover sound presets, and as I browsed through various creations, I came across a patch named FeelIt.
It had this delicate but touchable quality—soft, yet somehow cutting through my numbness. A subtle delay effect pulsed beneath its surface. Instinctively my fingers formed simple D major triads, and I let the delay's natural rhythm determine the tempo, pulling me into the world it wants to become.
A while later, the door opened and my partner returned. I was still lost in the sound when he walked in.
“That sounds nice,” he said.
I agreed. It had such a different energy from the song I had written just a few days before—a dark, personal piece reflecting my early childhood. But this felt light. Alive…
I think of my friend’s smile, his laughter, the regrets I carry for not being there for him in the end—and all I see is a blue screen, urging me to feel it.
Like a long-lost message appearing out of nowhere, or a token from the ether, offering guidance in a moment when nothing made sense. It felt as though someone had given me a task. A stranger’s creation, longing to be brought to life.
I let it rest for a while. Some songs demand immediate attention, others need time to breathe. This one asked to unfold naturally. I decided:
Whatever this becomes will be called Feel It
The FeelIt patch will be the main carrier of the song
It felt strange but exciting to have a title and a patch as the foundation. Something that keeps me going, I guess.
I sat at the keyboard, started singing and let the first ideas emerge:
I listened back to the voice memo, trying to decipher words from my gibberish singing. I pieced together fragments of melody and meaning, and began writing down these lines:
I crave your eyes
I live for your smile
That’s all there is to me
Now for a while
It didn’t take long for me to realize that this song was becoming a love letter to my partner, to the joy I experience daily of having him in my life—whether in person or on FaceTime. His presence that summer became a lifeline, a reminder that even in the midst of grief, there was stability and love. The world felt a little lighter with him beside me. Much lighter, in fact.
February 2023
In late winter, I played a small concert at our studio with my band, Riverbld. I opened the evening with a few of my own songs, ending with an unfinished version of Feel It.
Afterwards, a friend came up to me and said, “That line—‘When I got stoned for love, I found lousy heights’—really struck me.”
Showing your wounds and having people resonate with them will never cease to amaze me. There’s so much strength in sharing a piece of yourself, throwing it into the air, and watching someone else catch it. I’ll always be grateful for that1. Especially in the following months I kept coming back to this notion, that someone out there already reacted to these words I’m still trying to refine. The true meaning of a song unfolds in the hands of others.
Me and Hendrik playing an unreleased ID song at our studio, February 2023
November 2024
By the fall, I still had this semi-recorded draft in a forgotten Ableton session. I felt like it was time to finish it.
I reworked some of the lyrics and started tracking the vocals using a Neumann TLM 103 microphone, that Kev so generously lent me. Once I was done with the vocals, I experimented with production. I originally imagined a drum groove for the second part—something similar to Toto’s Africa—but it just didn’t work. Maybe in a live setting, but in this intimate and fragile performance of the song, the synth already carried enough rhythm to me.
What I did have in mind was three different melodic themes for the instrumental. I asked my friend Willi if he’d be down to record some string parts, and he agreed.
We met at my home studio, first recording the rhythmic pattern that follows the synth and experimenting with body percussion.
In preparation for the next session, I sent him the following melodic sketch so he could get familiar with what I envisioned.
We laughed a lot. From an outside perspective this clavinet sounds so ridiculous. But I knew it would work. It’s so inspiring to me when people hear the potential of an idea rather than focusing on how it sounds in its current form. But then, sometimes it’s just fun to hear it for what it is.
We recorded the strings at a lower speed2 and then pitched them back up, layering harmonies and playful lines around the main theme. I ended up with around 60 tracks of his violin playing in different positions, some muted and sustained takes, and recorded each variation around four times to spread them across the stereo field. I added background vocals of short, rhythmic breaths and sang harmonies in sustained notes. For the ending, I used a gate trigger, allowing the vocals to open up in sync with the strings—so only when the strings played, the vocals became audible.
The next morning, I created a rough mix, added some depth using Convolution Reverb and listened to the result in awe:
Willi gifted the song the rawness and air it needed. It didn’t feel overwhelming or overly processed. It felt like a deep exhale; a release of something I was carrying with me for a long time.
After mixing the many string layers, Kev added subtle effects and helped finalizing the mix. At this point, I had tweaked so many tiny parameters that only fresh ears could make sense of what mattered.
There’s all these complex emotions and memories tied to a song’s history that it becomes nearly impossible for me to finish the mix alone. Having someone that I trust listening to the song for the first time and acting on their instincts became essential to completing a project. I’d keep tweaking small details that no one would notice anyway.
Sometimes I forget that a record is only a moment captured in time, and a song will always evolve in its form—the way it can feel complete on a piano yet take on new life when played by an orchestra. You can change the ornaments, but the tree remains the same.
Full Circle
Driving down the country road, the first snow of the year had just fallen. The new strings poured through the speakers and I stared at the open fields. For a brief moment, everything felt suspended, like the world had stopped spinning just long enough for me to take it all in. A wave of gratitude and the sheer beauty of nature washed over me, a quiet affection for this strange, little life…
I think back to driving down the exact same road almost five years earlier. Assume Form had just been released, and as I listened to these opening piano notes, something inside me collapsed under its weight. It was too much to process then. Sitting beside friends, all of us bound by the same fleeting moment, yet each of us lost in our own versions of events.
“Now you can feel everything
Doesn't it seem unnatural?”
The cold air of winter. The white-covered fields. The silence only snow can bring. Nature on hold, waiting to come back to life. Snowflakes gather on the windshield, reflecting a face that won’t ever fade away…
Whatever weight I was carrying back then, I’m grateful for what came after: the love that took root in my life. A quiet strength, a steady light cutting through the chaos. Even in absence, it remains, a constant support that follows me wherever I go.
It’s this love that carries me, that led me to this song; that will continue to guide me through each day, wherever it may take me.
And maybe somewhere out there, someone will listen and feel it, too.
I’m Niklas, a music producer and artist based in Berlin, exploring music under the name Instant Distant. You’ll find this song and more of my music below. Thanks for reading and hope our paths cross again soon :)
Later that night, a guy approached me and told me he had experienced a panic attack during one of my songs. I’m equally grateful for that reaction, too.