In the 1950s through to the early 1970s, the American government ran a secret CIA program known as MK-Ultra. It involved a wide range of human experiments carried out on people who often had no idea they were participating at all. Prisoners, hospital patients, people considered “expendable,” children, vulnerable adults and others pulled into a long-running psychological experiment without consent.

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The purpose was to test and fracture the human psyche. Methods ranged from psychological manipulation to sensory deprivation, drugs, coercion, and prolonged trauma — much of it still undocumented or deliberately destroyed before it could ever be fully investigated. What we do know is that the findings were later fed into propaganda, media, advertising, and systems of influence. Many of those techniques are still in use today.

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Every single participant was left a victim in one way or another. Mentally, emotionally, physically. And all of it points to one thing: how precious and sacred the human system actually is. When our sensitivity, our emotions, our humanness are weaponised by those meant to be caretakers, used as tools for power and control, at what point do we wake up and say no?

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I wasn’t trying to write about MK-Ultra directly. WATERCÅLL came after watching an episode of Japanese Queer Eye, where a couple realised they had never had a truly honest conversation with each other. Sitting face to face, they broke down completely. Watching a man sob — sounds leaving his body that seemed never to have been allowed before — carried something far bigger than their situation alone.

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We often point to the world’s horrors — war, greed, cruelty — as isolated evils. But beneath them is a deeper question: when does a deeply feeling, emotionally sensitive child learn to switch off and become capable of directing, or taking part in, these things? In most cultures, emotion is framed as weakness. Suppressed emotion doesn’t disappear. It turns into illness, disconnection, depression, or violence. In that light, the state of the world feels less mysterious.

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Our emotions are the original technology. Life force itself. They connect us to nature, to each other, to meaning and heart. In the video, you’ll see the Kogi tribe, who don’t distinguish between water and spirit. To them, they are the same element. We are made of water. Water is consciousness. So when we disconnect from emotion, we disconnect from life itself. 

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Even if we aren’t personally directing wars or actively abusing others, emotional disconnection often shows up closer to home — as a cruel or neglectful relationship with ourselves. Through food we know harms us. Through consuming violence as entertainment. Through not moving our bodies, speaking to ourselves with contempt, or placing material success above connection and care. Rewiring these embedded patterns isn’t easy, but it begins with listening, capacity, and presence.

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And of course, it’s easier to speak about this from a place of relative privilege and safety. The idea that “we all just need to get in touch with our feelings” doesn’t account for the reality that much of the world is living in survival, and survival leaves little room for introspection, if any.

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But for those of us who do have the capacity — the space, the support, the relative stability — there is a responsibility there. Not necessarily to fix the world or preach emotional virtue, but to face what we carry honestly. To meet our own pain, hurt, anger, depression, regrets, addictions, and sadness with curiosity and kindness — as we would a dear friend — rather than suppressing it and passing it back out into the world unconsciously. We don’t need to wait for a life review at death. We can begin here, today, piece by piece.

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If it’s true that we are all connected by an invisible web — as Indigenous cultures have always said, and science is now beginning to echo — then every internal shift sends a ripple. Every truth we face, every pain we integrate, lightens the collective load.

 

When we bring our personal darkness into awareness, the external world has one less place to mirror it from.

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I didn’t have all of this in mind when I made the song or video. It’s been arriving in fragments. A four-year puzzle I’m still piecing together.

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When you watch the video, notice what moves through you. Your breath, your skin, where you tense, where you soften, where you feel fury, freedom or a rushing sensation. It's all relevant.