13 | How Do You Feel?
The next morning, I returned to the studio determined to behave as though Kadir had not put me on the console and introduced himself to every nerve ending I possessed.
The console disagreed.
I noticed it the moment I walked in. The cool black surface, the row of glowing controls, the exact section where my hands had gripped the edge while Kadir knelt between my legs.
I chose a chair on the opposite side of the room.
Kadir arrived carrying his bass and coffee, composed enough to suggest he had spent the previous night reading instead of ruining my ability to concentrate in professional environments. His gaze moved briefly toward the console, then toward me.
Wesley entered behind him with drumsticks tucked into his back pocket. Leo came last, wearing sunglasses despite the fact that the studio had no windows facing direct sunlight.
The band had completed one rough track. The label wanted more progress. Kadir had agreed to share an idea he had already spent several days hiding.
I was interested to see which achievement collapsed first.
Kadir connected the bass without introducing the riff or apologizing for it. That alone felt different. He adjusted the volume, sat near the amplifier, and began playing the version we had recorded the night before.
The opening filled the room.
It stayed dark and unresolved, the first notes carrying enough weight that everything else would need to approach carefully. Kadir repeated the central phrase and let the final note hang.
Wesley started tapping a rhythm against his thigh before the second pass ended.
Leo remained still.
I watched his face.
His attention sharpened in the familiar way that usually came before he identified every section requiring correction. He listened through the riff once more, head tilted slightly, already searching for an entrance.
Kadir finished.
Leo inhaled.
“No.”
He looked at me.
“You don’t even know what I was going to say.”
“I know what your face was going to say.”
Wesley laughed quietly. Kadir kept one hand over the strings, waiting.
Leo lowered his sunglasses. “There’s nowhere for the vocal.”
“Okay.”
He seemed surprised that I agreed.
The problem was real. Kadir’s riff didn’t offer Leo an obvious space. It moved like it had already begun a conversation without him. Every natural entrance arrived either too late or directly over a change that deserved to remain exposed.
Leo had spent years solving that kind of problem by reshaping everything around his voice.
I wanted to see what happened when the problem stayed.
“What does it make you feel?” I asked.
Leo looked toward the bass as though I had asked what color it tasted.
“Musically?”
“No. Whatever happens before you turn it into music.”
He leaned back against the wall and considered the question with visible reluctance.
Kadir played the riff again. This time, Leo didn’t interrupt. He listened through the first phrase, then the second. His fingers moved absently against his leg, but he did not begin humming.
“It feels like I’m standing outside it,” he said when Kadir stopped. “I can hear everything it could become. I have ideas, but there’s nowhere to put them. Every time I try to enter, my hot bitchy manager stops me and talks to me like I don’t know what I’m doing.”
I sighed as Wesley and Kadir tried to hide their laughter.
“That’s actually very useful.”
Leo seemed disappointed that I wasn’t more offended. “How?”
“You’re still trying to fix the feeling instead of using it.”
Leo folded his arms.
I continued before he could dismiss the entire exercise as therapeutic management nonsense.
“People know what it feels like to want something and have nowhere to put it. A relationship. A person. A future they can see but can’t reach. Keep it broad enough that they can decide what it means.”
His expression shifted. The distance Kadir’s bass created was no longer only a technical problem. It could become the point of the song.
Leo reached for the notebook beside the microphone stand.
Kadir began again.
The first several passes produced little beyond crossed-out phrases. Leo wrote a line, listened to it against the riff, then removed half the words. He tried to enter too early and stopped himself. The bass continued without accommodating him.
Wesley sat at the drum kit, tapping lightly against the rim while he listened.
I could see him doing his own version of the same thing. He was searching for the safest rhythm, the one that would support whatever Leo eventually chose without demanding too much attention.
“What does it make your body want to do?” I asked him.
Wesley looked down at the sticks. “That sounded inappropriate.”
“It wasn’t, but thank you for preserving the atmosphere.”
He grinned, then listened while Kadir repeated the opening.
His first beat was restrained. It stayed beneath the riff and waited politely.
I shook my head.
Wesley stopped. “Too much?”
“Too careful. Let loose.”
He looked toward Leo automatically.
“Stop protecting a vocal that doesn’t exist yet.”
Leo glanced up from the notebook but showed enough restraint to not argue, which may have been the most encouraging development of the morning.
Kadir started again.
Wesley entered with a rougher rhythm, something physical and impatient that pressed beneath the bass instead of trailing behind it. The combination changed the room. Kadir’s line still felt distant, but Wesley gave the distance movement.
Leo looked down at the page.
Then he began to sing.
“I’m fighting feelings…”
The melody was incomplete, more instinct than decision.
Kadir kept playing.
Leo tried the line again, changing where the words landed.
“I’m fighting feelingsThat I can’t control…”
The simplicity worked. It did not explain anything. It gave the frustration somewhere to live without solving it.
He wrote the next two lines while Kadir continued.
“Pulling me closerTo what I can’t hold.”
The phrasing missed the end of the riff.
Leo stopped singing and looked toward Kadir, ready to suggest a change.
I raised one finger.
He exhaled through his nose and returned to the page.
The next attempt fit better because Leo changed himself. That was the entire reason the song began working.
Wesley found a restrained pattern beneath the verse, then pushed harder as the final line approached. Kadir kept the opening intact. Leo delayed one word, cut another, and entered the last phrase through the space already available.
The distance remained.
Now it sounded intentional.
They played the verse through twice.
On the third attempt, Leo stopped trying to dominate the empty space. His voice sat apart from the bass, reaching toward it without fully joining.
The lyrics and arrangement began describing the same emotion.
I leaned back in my chair. The method was simple enough that I felt mildly offended no one had tried it before. Kadir created the tension. Wesley responded physically. Leo translated the frustration into language.
Each man answered the idea before anyone was allowed to edit it.
The chorus took longer.
Leo’s first instinct was to make it larger and cleaner. Wesley immediately softened his rhythm to accommodate the change. Kadir reduced the end of the riff.
Their old pattern returned so quickly it almost felt rehearsed.
I stopped them.
“What happens after someone keeps moving toward something they can’t hold?”
Leo looked annoyed by the question until he started answering it.
“They lose control.”
“How about… let go?”
Wesley leaned forward over the drums. “Or they keep doing it because some people enjoy suffering.”
“That could also work,” I said.
Kadir played the riff again, altering only the last two notes.
The change created an opening without sacrificing the original shape.
Wesley heard it immediately and widened the rhythm beneath it.
Leo tested several phrases before landing on a rough chorus:
“Pushing and pullingI should let goKeeping you near meDon’t wanna let go…?”
The last line was imperfect. Leo knew it. He made a face but kept singing.
The chorus didn’t need polished lyrics yet. It needed an emotional direction, and for once, all three men were moving toward the same one.
By early afternoon, the song had a complete rough structure.
Kadir began alone. Wesley entered beneath the second repetition. Leo waited through the opening and arrived with the first verse. The chorus expanded without erasing the bass line that created it.
They still argued.
Leo wanted to shorten the intro. Kadir refused. Wesley changed the transition three times and defended the second version. The difference was that none of them disappeared from the discussion.
I was no longer dragging three separate men toward cooperation.
They were beginning to demand it from one another.
The label had asked for another progress file. A basic studio recording would have satisfied them, but the song worked best when the men played it together. Separating every part into clean tracks would make it easier to polish and easier to damage.
I decided to record a stripped-down live performance in the main room.
They moved the minimum amount of equipment upstairs. Wesley used a smaller setup. Kadir connected to a compact amp near the fireplace. Leo positioned the microphone between the tall windows overlooking the snow.
The camera stood several feet in front of them.
I remained behind it, checking the frame while they adjusted levels.
“This one is actually going to the label,” I reminded them.
Leo looked toward the camera. “So no bedroom tour?”
“No references to my sex life, my father, or any surface in this house.”
The teasing faded once they were ready.
I started recording.
Kadir played first.
The bass line sounded different in the larger room. Less contained. The low notes moved through the wooden floor and reached me behind the camera.
Wesley entered second, watching Kadir instead of Leo.
Leo waited.
That pause mattered more than any lyric.
Then his voice came through the microphone.
“I’m fighting feelingsThat I can’t control…”
He looked toward the lens. Or me.
The camera stood directly between us, which gave both possibilities enough credibility to become dangerous.
Wesley smiled when the rhythm settled into place. His attention shifted toward me for half a second before returning to Kadir.
Kadir watched me more openly.
His fingers moved along the strings with the same steady control I remembered from the night before. Nothing in his expression suggested he was thinking about the console.
The chorus arrived.
“Pushing and pullingI should let go.
Keeping you near, soI’m not alone.”
Wesley responded by striking the next transition harder.
The band kept playing.
That was the part I would remember.
Leo changed something in the moment, Kadir accepted it, and Wesley strengthened it. No one stopped to decide whose version had become correct.
The final note faded.
I reviewed the footage at the dining table while they moved the equipment back downstairs.
The performance was raw. The lyrics needed work. The chorus would probably change several more times before production.
The identity was there.