Félix Dupuis began writing ‘Stared at from a Distance’ when he felt a profound need to articulate the overwhelming emotional distress he was experiencing. ‘Everything felt disjointed or abstract. Sometimes I’d write lines so brutally honest they were uncomfortable. They brought me solace, but I had no intention of letting anyone hear them,’ he recalls.
This isn’t the place to delve deeply into the backstory of this album or its most harrowing details, as doing so might verge on voyeurism. ‘In 2020, when I had just come of age, someone over 30 who had known me for two years sexually assaulted me multiple times after years of conversation and grooming. A void opened up in my stomach and never closed. I began to self-destruct, losing the will to live. When I started writing this album in 2020, my pain was at its peak. Writing has always been essential for me, a way to divert my thoughts and make sense of the terrible things happening to me.’
The album took shape, painfully. Cold ambient tracks followed noisier compositions, with more rock-oriented pieces eventually emerging. ‘Songs began to form suddenly when I stopped forcing myself to write about other things or sugarcoat my experience. I wrote these raw, cold, deeply intimate lyrics, added the instrumentation, and turned them into tracks.’ After this emotional upheaval, doubt set in. Should he release these songs? Make this trauma public? Support from loved ones convinced the musician. These compositions should be seen as a necessary catharsis – narrating the unspeakable – and Félix’s desire to bear witness, for himself and others.
Feldup - “Stared at from a Distance” : 1. Waters - 2. Stared at from a Distance - 3. Naked and Afraid - 4. Dizzy - 5. Fear of Abandonment - 6. Shove It - 7. Moments of Sobriety - 8. Crying as a Weapon - 9. Death of an Illusion - 10. It Never Leaves - 11. To Love Again
- Feldup
- Stared at from a Distance
- Album , CD, VINYL (2LP), Digital
- TAL131 — 2023
- FELDUP
- A Thousand Doors, Just One Key
- Album , CD, LP, Vinyl
- TAL117 — 2020
