CULLI. // CONTROL_: Wearing The Crown of Chaos + Surrender
The song that sat with me in my bloodied memories, Village spirals, and the faith//fate of Gloria’s cosmic design.
Written by: Syn Devereaux
Photo courtesy of Culli.
Bloodied hands. Barbed wire. Enough existential questioning to fuel a thousand suns. A renaissance painting of the mental mess I keep caged between my ears. Grappling and fighting with self and surrender, Culli.’s new song, CONTROL_ is a brutally honest look at the questions that plague us all. The visualizer? Even more devastating. It’s unapologetic– arsenic and lace, straddling the line between deadly and delicate.
A sonic brain bender that leaves you (me) feeling seen, CONTROL_ hits you hard and fast. But not before reverbed intro, “Are these ideas my own?/ Or fragments of those who came before?/ Is this Path where I should go?/ Or is it the only thing I know?” After the soft, almost fairytale dreamlike acapella intro, the song kicks with a rousing drum beat followed by a filthy bassline. The reverb on Culli.’s lyrics is enough to send chills down your spine.
“I'm speaking a language that I didn’t create/ I sit in a house that I didn't make/ Didn't choose this body nor face/ Thrown into a world to just find a way” Culli., a Netherlands based artist doesn’t mince words when jumping right in, head first, clothes and all. He wastes no time getting straight to the point, setting the scene to let you in on his mental landscape. Walls plastered with question marks on identity and placement in the world, saying: “I didn’t choose this. I didn’t want this. Yet it’s mine. I want the control, but I don’t.”
I am a firm believer in “no accidents” and music finding you exactly when you need it. CONTROL_ and Culli.’s music is no exception. As a Sagittarius sun and Cancer moon deadly combo, out of the gate, I fundamentally have control issues. Add in a lifetime of childhood trauma, well, it’s a recipe for disaster. Since moving to the east coast, I’ve been having one existential crisis after another. Wondering who I am, why I’m on this path, xyz, la la la.
So you could imagine my absolute delight when I heard the teaser for CONTROL_ on tiktok. The visualizer just as punchy and potent as HOW_TO_LIVE_FOREVER_, scratching that brain fold just right– not just visually or musically, but in the underlying tone and message of the song itself, something we all ask ourselves.
A strong theme the last nine months (and really all 32 years) of my life has been “faith//fate”. Wanting to control certain outcomes that are predestined with fate, yet having faith that it all works out. My personal main character arc having multiple “I WANT CONTROL/ I WANT NOTHING TO DO WITH IT AT ALL” moments, stomping my bleeding, blistered, aching feet on the gummy NYC sidewalk and shaking my (metaphorical and not) bloodied fists at the sky at Gloria (God) and her cheeky sense of humor.
In January, I was in my personal “Bermuda Triangle Hot Zone” on 1/11– IYKYK. I told my best friend Mavis that I wanted to see a psychic. I was rounding the corner of 6th Ave and 8th St and literally walked into one. I won’t get into the details of that experience but do know, that magic and kismet intersected in my life at that exact moment, launching me into something both terrifying and exhilarating in equal measures.
Later that evening, I was walking across the street on Waverly Pl and 6th Ave to get into an Uber and tripped. I fell, hard, scraping my elbow, palms and knees (emotionally, I’m still bruised). My evil eye bracelet broke (I don’t want to talk about it) and a group of people swarmed me to see if I was okay. I’m still not. Bloodied and bruised– in more ways than one– I joked with my friends that I died that night because the following months, leading to now has been nothing short of insane. Talk about lack of control over your life.
But something shifted when I sat with CONTROL_ long enough. Not just once in passing, but really let it hum through my bones on repeat, walking around the Village like a woman possessed. Suddenly, the mess in my mind didn’t feel so isolating– it felt holy. It felt earned. When I heard the first clip on Tiktok, something shifted in me. I was no longer just a woman possessed, speaking in tongues to her best friend on the phone– I was someone who could make sense of the chaos inside.
I finally had a name, a language to understand the complexities of what I was feeling and experiencing in real time. Even if I couldn’t will Gloria to give me what I wanted, exactly as I wanted, I could at least give the chaos a name, starting there. I could honor it by writing it out, releasing, lighting a candle and thanking the universe for what control I did have. I could finally learn how to honor the ache of wanting power in a powerless world. And I did. Afterall, control is an illusion.
Culli.’s CONTROL_ doesn’t preach or offer solutions and that’s what gives the song in all its barbed and bloodied glory so much raw, authentic power. It’s not a playbook on how to get what you want, but a mirror– validating and showing you you’re not alone. The quest for control is just that of one of our many human quirks and we, as humans, often feel isolated in this. This track strips away any lingering feelings of isolation. It doesn’t tell you how to claw your way out of the spiral, it sits with you in it and all its four minutes and thirty-nine seconds.
The power lies in building a throne from all the mental static and says, “here, wear the damn crown anyway”. With this track, Culli. gives you permission to crash out for a second, unapologetically– scream into the abyss or in my case, corner of 8th St. and MacDougal Alley. To have faith in fate anyway, even if every molecule in my body screamed in protest against the idea. To question every brick laid in the foundation of our lives, every thread woven in the cosmic fabric of my make up– and even so, still find the beauty in the mystery and questioning.
CONTROL_ isn’t just a song—it’s a manifesto. A reminder that the fight for control is less about winning and more about surviving. Surrendering– the power is in surrender. It reminded me that control is an illusion, but awareness is not. And maybe that’s enough. Maybe that’s the power: not to steer the storm, but to dance in it anyway.
What would happen if we all surrendered a little more? Or, will you take the crown made of chaos and wear it too?
