How a letter to his late brother grew into a worldwide mission

Fraser Morton was a child when he first saw someone have a seizure. It was his own brother. He was standing in the family garden in Scotland and his older brother, Blair, had been chasing him around with a toy sword. They were playing some imaginary battle that only children understand. Then Blair stopped moving. He began walking slowly in circles, making a strange humming sound. Fraser remembers shouting for their mother. He remembers the confusion – and his brother collapsing.

This was the first sign that something inside his brother’s brain was not behaving the way it should. Blair was diagnosed with epilepsy not long after. Years later, he died suddenly and unexpectedly from SUDEP, aged 19.

Fraser, now a filmmaker and journalist, says epilepsy is part of his own story, as well as his brother’s.

He said: “Over the past several years, I have travelled to many countries speaking with people living with epilepsy — families, scientists, athletes, healers and doctors. From Australia to Bhutan, from the Amazon rainforest to the mountains of Nepal, each story reveals a different way people learn to live with the unpredictable nature of their own brains. These encounters have slowly revealed something deeper to my family and me. That epilepsy forces people to find peace in the spaces between controlled and uncontrolled states of being.”

Fraser’s ‘A Life Electric’ project grew out of a single letter he wrote to his brother after his death. He says the words came to him out of his subconscious and really felt like a letter to himself from his brother. He said: “It addressed unresolved things that I’d left alone. It was a big moment.”

From there, he began interviewing people all over the world, making his interviews available on his website. Now, he plans to release a book and a documentary film by 2027.

He said: “I realised how diverse epilepsy is, how underreported it is, how journalists and filmmakers don’t really touch the subject. Because of personal family connections I felt inspired to start interviewing people.”

And what of his hopes for the project’s expansion, with the upcoming book and film?

Fraser said: “We are living through a moment when our understanding of the brain is changing rapidly. New technologies are revealing the electrical foundations of consciousness itself, while breakthroughs in epilepsy research are offering new possibilities for treatment and prevention. At the same time, global conversations around neurological health, mental health and disability are expanding. Yet epilepsy remains largely invisible within those conversations despite affecting tens of millions of people worldwide. I want this film to reshape how epilepsy is understood.”

Watch the film trailer

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