Speaker 1: You're listening to Alive Again, a production of Psychopia Pictures,
Speaker 1: an iHeart podcast.
Speaker 2: In two thousand and six, I had a freak accident.
Speaker 2: I was pulled under the wheels of a speeding train,
Speaker 2: and as the surgeon's thought to save me, I had
Speaker 2: a profound out of body experience. I take myself back
Speaker 2: to that realm where time did not exist. For the
Speaker 2: first time in my life, I was complete, and I
Speaker 2: was in the present moment.
Speaker 3: Something more powerful than me.
Speaker 2: Was at force that was at save me, that take
Speaker 2: and all I could think was, I've got to share
Speaker 2: this with everybody.
Speaker 3: Everyone needs to know about this.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Alive Again, a podcast that showcases miraculous account
Speaker 1: of human fragility and resilience from people whose lives were
Speaker 1: forever altered after having almost died. These are first hand
Speaker 1: accounts of near death experiences and more broadly, brushes with death.
Speaker 1: Our mission is simple, find, explore, and share these stories
Speaker 1: to remind us all of our shared human condition. Please
Speaker 1: keep in mind these stories are true and maybe triggering
Speaker 1: for some listener, and discretion is advised.
Speaker 2: I grew up well in the Midlands of the UK
Speaker 2: and I had a very happy upbringing.
Speaker 4: Them.
Speaker 2: I was in a really good place, to be honest
Speaker 2: with you. My family was good, and I felt really
Speaker 2: good about the world, and all that was about to
Speaker 2: change when I started at the state school.
Speaker 3: We call it comprehensive school over here.
Speaker 2: And that's really because I'd got learning difficulties inasmuch as
Speaker 2: I'm dyslexic, and I was never actually diagnosed with dyslexia,
Speaker 2: and so once I got into that system within the school,
Speaker 2: I was immediately sort of seen as being sort of
Speaker 2: like a not only a slow learner, but like I
Speaker 2: wasn't interested, you know, that I got no interested in learning,
Speaker 2: which is completely untrue. You know, I wanted to learn
Speaker 2: as much as I could about life. So that was
Speaker 2: kind of like a blueprint really for the rest of
Speaker 2: well for a long time, you know, into my adult
Speaker 2: years that I felt like a failure and I felt
Speaker 2: like trouble, and it hit me hard throughout my teens
Speaker 2: and so into my late teens, I suddenly decided that
Speaker 2: I wanted to go out and enjoy myself and party
Speaker 2: dislike everyone else, I'm sure, but I kind of took
Speaker 2: it slightly to the next degree, you know, and that
Speaker 2: carried on throughout my twenties, so I moved to London.
Speaker 2: You know, I figured that London was going to be
Speaker 2: the land of opportunity. So I thought, it's not working
Speaker 2: for me here where I'd grown up. And I did
Speaker 2: fall into some really interesting circles of friends, which was great,
Speaker 2: but that became tougher for me in a sense because
Speaker 2: most of those friends, well pretty much all of them
Speaker 2: were successful in whatever they were doing, and quite a
Speaker 2: few of them happened to be working in the music
Speaker 2: industry and photography and things like that, and I really
Speaker 2: wanted to get in. I tried to keep pushing that
Speaker 2: door open, as it were, but nothing ever happened. It
Speaker 2: just wasn't working for me either. It was a bit
Speaker 2: of a double edged sword because as much as they
Speaker 2: were a brilliant bunch of friends to have around me,
Speaker 2: it was also like having this mirror again in front
Speaker 2: of me, saying, David, you are still a failure. You
Speaker 2: were still not even able to succeed at this and
Speaker 2: these people are why not. I was picking up work,
Speaker 2: you know, sort of like working on construction sites, working
Speaker 2: in kitchens, washing up anything I could do to make money,
Speaker 2: and I also discovered I wasn't really that good, that
Speaker 2: kind of stuff, especially construction work. Anyhow, I started to
Speaker 2: think a lot about the past. I started to think
Speaker 2: about opportunities that I messed up on, and all I
Speaker 2: could feel was absolute despair. I was struggling, and so
Speaker 2: I would say, I started to drink to try and
Speaker 2: quash this feeling of inadequacy and fear of running out
Speaker 2: of money. I was about to lose my apartment. I
Speaker 2: remember getting a viction notice coming through the post, and
Speaker 2: I spoke to my sister on the phone and she said,
Speaker 2: come on stay with us for a few weeks. She
Speaker 2: lived out in the countryside with her young family. So
Speaker 2: I went up there for a couple of weeks just
Speaker 2: to try and get my head around what I was
Speaker 2: going to do to be able to live in and
Speaker 2: fit into life. This was in two thousand and six.
Speaker 2: I don't think I could could have sunk any load
Speaker 2: than I had at that point. It was pretty pretty
Speaker 2: depressing and frightening as well. There's an interesting story when
Speaker 2: I was just going up for a weekend and I
Speaker 2: was on the train and there was an elderly couple
Speaker 2: sat opposite me, and I remember that particular day, I
Speaker 2: was not feeling in a great place, and I didn't
Speaker 2: really feel like firing up conversation, but she was really
Speaker 2: keen to open up this conversation about the fact that
Speaker 2: they were going to see this medium in the town
Speaker 2: where my sister lived. And I said, okay. She said, look,
Speaker 2: take this flyer. She's really good, and I went, okay.
Speaker 2: So I just put it in this flyer in my pocket.
Speaker 2: And I remember turning up at my sister's house and
Speaker 2: there was a lot of mayhem. The kids were running
Speaker 2: around stuff like this. So I said, look, I'm just
Speaker 2: going to go and have a drink at the local bar.
Speaker 3: So I went down.
Speaker 2: I went and I sat there and I bought myself
Speaker 2: a beer and I opened up this flyer and looked
Speaker 2: at it and I thought, do you know what I'm
Speaker 2: going to go? And I walked in and it was packed.
Speaker 2: And then it got towards the end of the session
Speaker 2: and she started pacing around, I remember, and she was
Speaker 2: very animated. She was walking backwards and forward. And then
Speaker 2: she turned around and she said, gentleman in the blue sweater,
Speaker 2: which was me. She said, your life is about to change.
Speaker 2: And I thought, you know again, me back then it
Speaker 2: was all about you know, I need the money, you know,
Speaker 2: I said, it was fantastic. Am I going to win
Speaker 2: the lottery?
Speaker 5: What?
Speaker 2: What is it going to change? She said, oh, they're
Speaker 2: they're not telling me. She said, just be prepared for
Speaker 2: it. It's going to be a very big change, but you
Speaker 2: will be protected. And that's what she told me. I
Speaker 2: met up with somebody actually, and this was just a
Speaker 2: few weeks prior to me going up and staying with
Speaker 2: my sister and her family, and I've got this connection
Speaker 2: with her. It was just like one of those She
Speaker 2: had a grounding effect on me. And when I went
Speaker 2: to stay with my family, with my sister's family, that is,
Speaker 2: she said, well, I come and hang out with you
Speaker 2: for a few days. This is my friend Anna who
Speaker 2: i'd met, and I said that, yeah, that'd be great.
Speaker 3: So she came up.
Speaker 2: To see me and we hung out for a few
Speaker 2: days and we had a brilliant time. Then she had
Speaker 2: to get back to London. She got an appointment to
Speaker 2: get back for so I took her down to the
Speaker 2: rail station to see her off. That was the day
Speaker 2: that my whole life was about to change. It was
Speaker 2: a cold February day in two thousand and six, it's
Speaker 2: a bright blue sky that was hardly a claud in
Speaker 2: the sky. And we stood there. The train came down
Speaker 2: the track. I remember seeing it coming down, and then
Speaker 2: I helped her onto the car with her bags and
Speaker 2: I gave her her going to kiss say goodbye to her.
Speaker 2: We both heard the automatic doors buzzers going, so she
Speaker 2: said you'd better get off. I said, yeah, sure, I better,
Speaker 2: and I stepped back and it was at that point
Speaker 2: that those automatic doors closed on my coat. So I
Speaker 2: was wearing like this three quarter length sheepskin coat which
Speaker 2: is quite thick in quality, so it jammed right in
Speaker 2: there and I just couldn't pull it free, and I
Speaker 2: thought this is not good. I yelled out for help,
Speaker 2: hoping there would be a guy, and I didn't realize
Speaker 2: there was no god working on this actual network. So
Speaker 2: I started banging on the windows and carried on corning,
Speaker 2: hoping that the driver may be able to see me
Speaker 2: through the window or something, you know, But this just
Speaker 2: didn't happen. There was only one other guy on the
Speaker 2: platform that day, and he was also seeing off his girlfriend,
Speaker 2: and I remember he actually turned around to me and
Speaker 2: shouted at me, take your coat off, mate, take your
Speaker 2: coat off, but it was just too tight. I started
Speaker 2: to feel pretty scared. At this point, I could see
Speaker 2: my friend Anna. I could see her through the glass
Speaker 2: of the car. The look of horror in her eyes
Speaker 2: filled me with absolute inevitability that this could be the
Speaker 2: end for me. I suddenly felt well. I felt like
Speaker 2: I was staring death in the eyes. At that point,
Speaker 2: It's like time had stretched. It didn't slow down, it
Speaker 2: wasn't like slow emotion, but at times stretched, and I
Speaker 2: I thought, how am I going to cope with this?
Speaker 2: The train's engine started to rev up and started pulling
Speaker 2: out the station, and I heard and felt every gear shift,
Speaker 2: and I suddenly lost my footing. Then I was dragged
Speaker 2: at great speed along the platform, and then I was
Speaker 2: sucked between the edge of the platform. Then I under
Speaker 2: the train itself, and I still got this sense of
Speaker 2: time stretched, and I just remember saying to myself, relax.
Speaker 2: I'd seen this news article a couple of weeks back,
Speaker 2: and it came into my thoughts, and it's where a
Speaker 2: young infant had been thrown from a burning apartment block
Speaker 2: from the third floor, and they said that that infant
Speaker 2: survived because because children don't tense up like we do
Speaker 2: as adults. So that's what I did. I relaxed my
Speaker 2: whole body, and suddenly the train became more like this
Speaker 2: mechanical beast as I got sucked down between this gap,
Speaker 2: and I'd gone from that moment into what felt like
Speaker 2: absolute hell. It was like being thrown into a washing
Speaker 2: machine at full spin. But it was violent, and it
Speaker 2: was dark, and there was just the smell of oil,
Speaker 2: and you know, the sensation the feel of the metal
Speaker 2: was really terrifying. And then I was finally thrown down
Speaker 2: to the ground in between the tracks.
Speaker 3: I was in absolute agony.
Speaker 2: The train was still continuing on, and I thought to myself,
Speaker 2: it's not over yet. You know, part of the undercarriage
Speaker 2: of that train could hit me because it was a
Speaker 2: long training. It was still continuing on, and I still
Speaker 2: got this sense of time slowly expanding, and I thought
Speaker 2: to myself, remember all the double O seven James Bond movies,
Speaker 2: or the Indiana Jones movies. What would they do now?
Speaker 2: They would put their face right down into the gravel.
Speaker 2: So that's what I did. So my face was in
Speaker 2: that gravel, and the train eventually moved on, and there
Speaker 2: I was in complete agony. I remember seeing my arm
Speaker 2: completely ripped it right open as well, and ah, the
Speaker 2: pain was just really intense, but I was just so
Speaker 2: glad to be alive because I didn't think I was
Speaker 2: going to survive this. It still amazes me to this
Speaker 2: day that I was so calm at the point of
Speaker 2: this whole thing unfolding.
Speaker 3: It really is.
Speaker 2: I understand the whole phrase now of ftal flight, but
Speaker 2: not only that. I saw a documentary only recently of
Speaker 2: this neuroscientist called Dr David Eagleman. Basically, the mine goes
Speaker 2: from if you like, the best way he described it
Speaker 2: was being if we view day to day life through
Speaker 2: a VHS old video camera, then it's like going from
Speaker 2: that to super cinematic wide angle film. And that's what
Speaker 2: it is. So it's not only visually do you take
Speaker 2: everything in, but you're able to hear more, you're able
Speaker 2: to think more, and you're able to process exactly.
Speaker 3: How you're going to deal with this situation.
Speaker 2: So me as a person, I'm no superhero and I'm
Speaker 2: not you know, when things do go wrong in all fense,
Speaker 2: I'm not that kind of cool collective person. Normally I'm like,
Speaker 2: oh well, no, wow, yeah. Within minutes it felt like
Speaker 2: the paramedics arrived, and I remember the doctor in the
Speaker 2: back of the ambulance turned around to me and he said, look,
Speaker 2: we've just come from a war hospital around the corner.
Speaker 2: That's how we were able to get here so quick.
Speaker 2: But the hospital is going to save your life is
Speaker 2: a twenty five minute drive. And so the sirens went
Speaker 2: on and we took off like a rocket down the highway.
Speaker 2: We arrived at the hospital and I remember there was
Speaker 2: a whole.
Speaker 3: Team of nurses and medics and doctors are waiting there.
Speaker 2: They got to work on me, and I knew that
Speaker 2: I was losing a lot of blood. I'd see just
Speaker 2: how much blood I'd lost on the track. And the
Speaker 2: surgeon he was a lovely guy, you know, and he said, look,
Speaker 2: your family are here. Would you like to see them
Speaker 2: before we wheel you into theater? And I said yeah.
Speaker 2: So they came in and obviously all of.
Speaker 3: Them were completely shocked and in distressed.
Speaker 2: And I was saying to my mom, Mom, I'm so sorry.
Speaker 2: It's always me bringing the dramas to this family, isn't it.
Speaker 2: It's always me messing up.
Speaker 3: So there you go.
Speaker 2: Still got that sensation and have been that person and
Speaker 2: of course she put her hand out of my mouth.
Speaker 2: She said, it's not your fault, it's not your fault,
Speaker 2: which it wasn't, of course. Well, then I was keen
Speaker 2: to speak to my friend Anna, who I could see,
Speaker 2: who were sat at the back, and she came over
Speaker 2: and I remember she was just shaking her head from
Speaker 2: side to side, and she was saying, I can't believe.
Speaker 3: You were alive.
Speaker 2: They actually announced that you were, that you were dead.
Speaker 2: I also saw you go under the train. It was
Speaker 2: at this point, just before I got whirled into theater,
Speaker 2: that I left all the agony that I was in.
Speaker 2: I left the drama of the hospital and all the
Speaker 2: noise and the Fruessian light in my eyes, and I
Speaker 2: was suddenly in a much calmer place. I'd left my body.
Speaker 2: I was in a different realm altogether.
Speaker 3: I was.
Speaker 2: It felt like a small, darkened space, not like a
Speaker 2: foreboding sort of darkness, but a very comforting sort of darkness.
Speaker 2: And I felt safe instantly, and I figured that I
Speaker 2: was dead. I thought, well, this is it. I didn't
Speaker 2: make it, so this is death. I was made to
Speaker 2: feel calm in.
Speaker 3: This realm, you know.
Speaker 2: I was like suddenly greeted by all these beautiful, pulsating
Speaker 2: colors of light all around me, yellows and ambers and
Speaker 2: golds and green, and I tried to get my bearings
Speaker 2: because I realized I was no longer laid on the
Speaker 2: hospital trolley. I was laid on this huge granite rock.
Speaker 2: It felt so comfortable to lay on, even though it
Speaker 2: was just it was a hard rock. And I realized
Speaker 2: by this point I was no longer clothed either. I
Speaker 2: was just covered in this really lovely sort of material.
Speaker 2: And I felt comforted by this beautiful material that was
Speaker 2: covering my body, and there was light reflecting off it,
Speaker 2: and it was just like a beautiful light blue.
Speaker 3: It's strange, but I.
Speaker 2: Just felt great to be suddenly calm and comfortable. I
Speaker 2: laid there for a while, and then I started to
Speaker 2: see light coming through my eyelids. There were three symmetrical
Speaker 2: grids of white light slowly closing in on me, and
Speaker 2: I just couldn't take my gaze away from it. I mean, normally,
Speaker 2: in this realm that we live in there, I wouldn't
Speaker 2: be able to look into that kind of intense white light,
Speaker 2: but I could hear. And the reason I kept looking
Speaker 2: into that light. I realized there was a healing energy
Speaker 2: coming from this light. There was healing the trauma that
Speaker 2: my body had just been through, you know, this horrific accident,
Speaker 2: and I felt like it was just slowly calming or the.
Speaker 3: Trauma of it all.
Speaker 2: Then I felt the presence of somebody near and just
Speaker 2: there stood at my feet was a beautiful sort of
Speaker 2: androdging this person. I had never seen somebody filled with
Speaker 2: such purity and light as this person. But I knew
Speaker 2: this person and I couldn't figure where from. And I
Speaker 2: actually said that, lad, I said, I know you don't
Speaker 2: where do I know you from?
Speaker 3: And this person just.
Speaker 2: Kept smiling back at me and didn't say a word.
Speaker 2: But that was fine because I felt that this person
Speaker 2: was my keeper, if you like. This person was here
Speaker 2: to protect me and guide me. And then I felt
Speaker 2: the presence of more people either side of me. There
Speaker 2: were two female forms and they had their hands slowly
Speaker 2: hovering over the contools of my body. They weren't actually
Speaker 2: touching my skin, but they would going over the whole
Speaker 2: of my contour. The energy that was coming from their
Speaker 2: hands was so powerful. It was very very intense, and
Speaker 2: it was an energy of love. It was like unconditional love.
Speaker 2: They were healing all those years of feeling like a failure.
Speaker 2: They were healing all the years of feeling hurt and
Speaker 2: fearful about my life. They were taking off one layer
Speaker 2: at a time, and they were just getting right down.
Speaker 2: And the closer they got to that puristence of my soul,
Speaker 2: the lighter I felt. And I'd never felt so complete ever.
Speaker 2: I'd always looked for other ways of finding happiness in
Speaker 2: my life, but here was happiness in its completeness. I
Speaker 2: started to think about my family at this point, because
Speaker 2: I thought, well, clearly I didn't make it and I
Speaker 2: am dead, so they're going to be even more upset now.
Speaker 2: And I wanted to try and see if I could
Speaker 2: see them. So I edged my way over the side
Speaker 2: of this huge rock and look down.
Speaker 3: I was hoping to be.
Speaker 4: Able to see them.
Speaker 3: I didn't see them at all.
Speaker 2: What I did see was a waterfall, a waterfall of
Speaker 2: stars the size of Victoria Falls on Niagara Force. It
Speaker 2: was like absolutely vast billions of sparkling stars. It felt
Speaker 2: like I was looking through one galaxy into another. I
Speaker 2: was there in this universe, our universe, and that connection
Speaker 2: I felt with the universe was so powerful, something I'd
Speaker 2: never felt throughout the whole of my life. But the
Speaker 2: most profound moment of the whole of this experience was
Speaker 2: about to happen. That was I felt as I laid there,
Speaker 2: this energy of love had suddenly turned like somebody had
Speaker 2: turned the dial up, and I felt this energy was
Speaker 2: like causing every single molecule of my body to vibray
Speaker 2: with love. And I lifted my head slowly, and just
Speaker 2: beyond the being of Light who stood there at my
Speaker 2: feet still was this huge tunnel of white light that
Speaker 2: was slowly closing in on me. It was coming through
Speaker 2: the universe, It was coming.
Speaker 3: Through the stars.
Speaker 2: It was white, it was intense, and it was surrounded
Speaker 2: by all these dramatic flames that were slowly circulating around
Speaker 2: the edge of that white light. I was then being
Speaker 2: told that what I'm looking at here is the source
Speaker 2: of all creation. This is God, not God as I'd
Speaker 2: believe God would look like, in some kind of human form.
Speaker 2: No matter what faith we follow, there's usually some kind
Speaker 2: of human form.
Speaker 3: For me.
Speaker 2: From my school books and stuff, it was always the
Speaker 2: image of Michaelangelo's God on the Sistine Chapel. But this
Speaker 2: wasn't the guy with a long gray beard a tour.
Speaker 2: This was just intense white light and the power of
Speaker 2: the love that was coming from it just made me
Speaker 2: feel so complete and joyful. My head went back once more,
Speaker 2: and I remember I was actually laughing with joy. I
Speaker 2: had never laughed in the hole of my life. And
Speaker 2: it was at this point that I came crashing back
Speaker 2: into my body. I was back in the hospital. All
Speaker 2: the pain came rushing through every single vein of my
Speaker 2: body and muscle and bone. The noise level was like
Speaker 2: it fell he was screaming into my ears. Yeah, it
Speaker 2: was quite sort of shocked. I was wheeled into the
Speaker 2: theater that at that point. So I was under anesthetic
Speaker 2: for eight and a half hours with the first operation,
Speaker 2: and I woke up in the middle of the night,
Speaker 2: and of course a huge part of me was dealing
Speaker 2: with with the with the horror of the accident, which
Speaker 2: is completely natural, but the main part of me was
Speaker 2: more absolutely trying to process this incredible experience that had
Speaker 2: happened to me. Because I knew nothing about neo death experiences.
Speaker 2: I'd never heard anything about this, and all I could
Speaker 2: think was I've got to share this with everybody, everyone
Speaker 2: needs to know about this. So I thought, because I'm dyslexic,
Speaker 2: I thought that I'm never going to be able to
Speaker 2: write about this. I thought, I'm going to paint it.
Speaker 2: I'm going to do the painting like the ones the
Speaker 2: Renaissance artists did, those big dramatic biblical scenes. That's how
Speaker 2: it's got to be, even though I'd done nothing like
Speaker 2: this before in my life. The British rail Police had
Speaker 2: to do an inquiry on't it because of the nature
Speaker 2: of the accidents, and the head of the rail police said, David,
Speaker 2: we're still scratching our heads because we don't get it,
Speaker 2: because by all our figures, you should be dead, you
Speaker 2: should not have survived.
Speaker 3: That we don't understand it.
Speaker 2: We see these kind of these kind of accidents happen
Speaker 2: and people never ever survive, and if they do survive,
Speaker 2: they come off a heck of a lot worse. So
Speaker 2: something more powerful than me was at force that that
Speaker 2: was out to save me that take. It took me
Speaker 2: a week to tell my parents about it, because them
Speaker 2: both being Christian, I thought it's just gonna jar with
Speaker 2: their teachings. And when I told them about it, my
Speaker 2: mom turned around at the end, and she said, David,
Speaker 2: we know and I said, you know, you know you
Speaker 2: know about this?
Speaker 3: I said, how He.
Speaker 2: Said, well, every time we come in to see you,
Speaker 2: you've got all these tubes and wires coming out of you.
Speaker 2: You know, you're laid there with all the nurses constantly
Speaker 2: caring for you, and you're glowing like we've never seen
Speaker 2: you glow before, and you're just so positive, and you're
Speaker 2: caring for everyone around you, whereas everyone should be caring
Speaker 2: for you. And so I said, well, that's amazing. So
Speaker 2: I was really pleased anyway that they got it, you know,
Speaker 2: because it was important for me. There was no stopping
Speaker 2: me from that point onwards, and I was out to
Speaker 2: tell as many people as they could. A lot of
Speaker 2: synchronicity started to come into my life. And one of
Speaker 2: these moments of synchronisty was that a friend of my sisters.
Speaker 2: Because I recuperated out my sister's home, you know, they
Speaker 2: give me my own room, and so she came in
Speaker 2: and saw me and she said, when are you going
Speaker 2: to start this painting? And I said, well, you know,
Speaker 2: there's not enough space in here, there's not enough light
Speaker 2: and all things like this, and she said well, well,
Speaker 2: we run a yoga Plartis center and we've got a
Speaker 2: spare studio. You can come and do your painting there.
Speaker 2: So I said, oh great. I became known as the
Speaker 2: artist in the attic and people would come up and
Speaker 2: they'd want to see what I was doing. And one
Speaker 2: personal that came in, she was a cello player, and
Speaker 2: she said, there is a spiritualist church. So I thought right,
Speaker 2: and I'd just gone in and it was one of
Speaker 2: their church meetings, and at the end of that meeting
Speaker 2: got chatting with them and they said, oh, you had
Speaker 2: a near death experience. And they said to me at
Speaker 2: that very first meeting, they said, look, we do spiritual healing.
Speaker 2: And I said great, went kind of come, so I
Speaker 2: said on Thursday, So off I went. And in those
Speaker 2: healing sessions, a couple of the healers are Claire Warrington,
Speaker 2: and they give very small brief messages at the end sometimes,
Speaker 2: and each one of them started to say I was
Speaker 2: picking up Wagner and Beethoven and Chopin wrote why would
Speaker 2: that be?
Speaker 3: And I said, I have no idea.
Speaker 2: And then one of them turned around and she said,
Speaker 2: they were telling me that you're going to write a
Speaker 2: piece of music about your experience. You're near that experience.
Speaker 2: I started working on what I thought was going to
Speaker 2: be a song about this experience. Nothing was coming, nothing
Speaker 2: was happening. Then one afternoon, I was just watching an
Speaker 2: old movie on the TV, and then this core progression
Speaker 2: suddenly came.
Speaker 3: And I thought, wow, that's really lovely, you know.
Speaker 2: So I got it down onto this cassette recorder, you know,
Speaker 2: went off and made a coffee, came back, played it back.
Speaker 2: I thought, this is really beautiful. And I thought, this's
Speaker 2: not a song that they're asking me to write. It
Speaker 2: needs to be played by an orchestra. So I met
Speaker 2: with my friend, the cellist, and we were having coffee
Speaker 2: and I told her about what I was up to,
Speaker 2: and she said, oh, maybe our orchestra could form it
Speaker 2: one day, and laughed, you know, and I thought, yeah,
Speaker 2: that would be great. I was self taught, like a
Speaker 2: lot of teenagers, you know, I needed to express myself.
Speaker 2: Thought what am I going to do in my life?
Speaker 2: So I thought, I'm going to join a punk band.
Speaker 2: I could probably like a lot of kids that bang
Speaker 2: out three corps, but that's all you needed to join
Speaker 2: these kind of bands, And those really were my grounding
Speaker 2: days for later writing music, which is crazy because I
Speaker 2: remember when I met with a conductor with the final score.
Speaker 2: He said, David, you don't understand the enormity of writing
Speaker 2: a symphony, which is what you've done, even if you've
Speaker 2: been to the university and you'd studied it. It's a
Speaker 2: huge task and you've done it. He didn't even know.
Speaker 2: I can't read or write music. I still can't read
Speaker 2: or write music to this day.
Speaker 3: But you know, I was thinking, wow, is this is
Speaker 3: this gonna work?
Speaker 2: I have no idea. I didn't know whether it's going
Speaker 2: to work or not. I remember the conductor lifting his
Speaker 2: button as it came down. Those opening chords came, and
Speaker 2: they were the opening chords that I'd written that one
Speaker 2: afternoon on that cheap little synthesizer. You know, it was
Speaker 2: like three dimensional sand.
Speaker 4: It was wah.
Speaker 2: And after that first rehearsal, they said to me, oh, look,
Speaker 2: would you mind saying a few words to the local
Speaker 2: press about your piece?
Speaker 3: I said yeah, sure.
Speaker 2: So I spoke to the local press on the phone
Speaker 2: and they said, hang on, you're the guy who went
Speaker 2: under the train, aren't you?
Speaker 3: And I said yeah.
Speaker 2: And then the BBC so we'd like to interview you
Speaker 2: at a rehearsal.
Speaker 3: I said sure.
Speaker 2: So the concerts sold out two weeks in advance because
Speaker 2: of the BBC basically turning it. And it was amazing
Speaker 2: because there was no sense of me feeling like the
Speaker 2: great I am like, it's like, wow, this is my
Speaker 2: big moment. I'm going to be like a huge star.
Speaker 2: There's nothing to do with that. All I could think
Speaker 2: was Great, We're going to have a full house and
Speaker 2: I'm going to everyone's going to be able to and
Speaker 2: I'm going to get this.
Speaker 3: Story across to even more people.
Speaker 2: I remember, just as they started the opening bars, I
Speaker 2: saw a dove landed on the stone window sill outside
Speaker 2: and I thought, wow, that's that's really beautiful. And I
Speaker 2: thought it was just me saw it, but so many
Speaker 2: other people in the audience saw it as well. I
Speaker 2: very rarely think about where my life would have gone
Speaker 2: if I had not had this accident or of this
Speaker 2: near death experience. I hardly ever think about the past.
Speaker 2: I hardly ever think about the future. Before the accident,
Speaker 2: that's all I ever did. I realized when I came
Speaker 2: back from that experience that I'd spent so much of
Speaker 2: my life, concerned with past mistakes or opportunities, doorways that
Speaker 2: I could have gone through that I've messed up on.
Speaker 2: I was concerned with the future, especially the point before
Speaker 2: the accident, because I was about to be evicted from
Speaker 2: my home, from my apartments, I was about to lose everything.
Speaker 2: So I was concerned about the future and where my
Speaker 2: life was going to go. But I very ay think
Speaker 2: about either now. Yes, of course, like I said, I'm
Speaker 2: not superhuman, there are times when anxiety get to grip,
Speaker 2: But I take myself back to that realm where time
Speaker 2: did not exist. For the first time in my life,
Speaker 2: I was complete and I was in the present moment,
Speaker 2: and I realized that being in the present moment is
Speaker 2: the best place to be. So every time that fear
Speaker 2: starts to happen, now, you know, especially the world is
Speaker 2: you know, is not in a great place at the moment.
Speaker 2: So there's there's fear that comes into all of us,
Speaker 2: all of us and anxiety. But I just try and
Speaker 2: say to myself, look, stop, you're okay where you're sat
Speaker 2: at the moment. You're not under threat as it were
Speaker 2: at this moment in time, and this is the present moment.
Speaker 3: We don't I mean, we don't talk about death.
Speaker 2: That's the other thing that I found I now find astonishing.
Speaker 2: You know that death does not come into our we
Speaker 2: don't plan for it. We plan for everything else, birth, marriage,
Speaker 2: driving tests, but not death. And I don't think that
Speaker 2: we should be sitting around talking about it all the time.
Speaker 2: But you know, it's going to happen to us all
Speaker 2: it's going to come, and we may as well address
Speaker 2: it and then at least take away that fear element
Speaker 2: of death, because I firmly believe that death is not
Speaker 2: the end for us, that it's only the next stage
Speaker 2: of the journey. And that's not me being romantic, it's
Speaker 2: absolutely true.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to This is Alive again, joining me for
Speaker 1: a conversation about today's story or my other Alive against
Speaker 1: story producers Kate Sweeney, Nicholas Takowski, and Brent Day, and
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Dan Bush. So, Kate, that story is
Speaker 1: harrowing and almost unimaginable, but what comes out of it
Speaker 1: with his art and his creating a symphony without any
Speaker 1: formal training and just sort of all of the events
Speaker 1: surrounding this that point at not only his the precursor,
Speaker 1: which is somebody warning him that his life's about to
Speaker 1: change a few weeks before this incident, but also afterwards.
Speaker 1: What are some of your takeaways from this?
Speaker 6: I mean, yeah, right, like similar to Rodney White, I'm
Speaker 6: struck again by the sense of confidence that this experience
Speaker 6: opens up with David to take on these new enterprises
Speaker 6: painting and composing with no formal training of either. And
Speaker 6: I kind of wanted to like even like throw this
Speaker 6: back to you, Dan, because you have done extensive reading
Speaker 6: about near death experiences. Is this a common thing? Is
Speaker 6: this something that happens to folks with these spiritual experiences?
Speaker 1: I mean all of the experiences that in the classic
Speaker 1: experiences that are noted in some of the more famous
Speaker 1: books about near death experiences, where you actually flat line,
Speaker 1: there's a consistency across the stories with certain experiences like
Speaker 1: a feeling of complete warmth and a and a and
Speaker 1: a feeling of of and sometimes they describe a white light,
Speaker 1: which we all know about. And then there's other experiences
Speaker 1: where they experience, you know, a life review, but there's
Speaker 1: there's there's there's consistencies in these stories, which is fascinating.
Speaker 6: That and just sort of you know, as I was saying, before.
Speaker 6: I love how the story sort of marries the mystical
Speaker 6: and sort of the everyday life experience because we see
Speaker 6: here right like earlier in the story, before this happens,
Speaker 6: he feels like a failure in life, and he doesn't
Speaker 6: realize yet that that's due to the fact that he
Speaker 6: has this neurodivergence. In his case, he has a which
Speaker 6: by the way, we will see again dun dun duh
Speaker 6: later this season when a completely different kind of story.
Speaker 6: But in his case, this near death experience sort of
Speaker 6: sets off this series of events that helps his perspective
Speaker 6: to shift. He sort of takes on these new talents.
Speaker 6: And one thing that I love about that is how
Speaker 6: he refuses to take the credit for this work that
Speaker 6: he produces, or really for anything that happens in his life.
Speaker 6: He says, Oh, it's not me, it's me plus my guides,
Speaker 6: it's me plus the universe. And I find that really
Speaker 6: compelling because I think it's really easy to feel alone,
Speaker 6: and I think, especially these days, right it's really easy
Speaker 6: for us to live our lives in lots and lots
Speaker 6: of solitude, and I think that can put a lot
Speaker 6: of pressure on creative endeavors. So to believe in something
Speaker 6: you know, whether it's your guides or muses, as artists
Speaker 6: have sort of traditionally done for eons, whatever it is,
Speaker 6: can be really helpful to kind of take the pressure off.
Speaker 6: And in David, I think we kind of see a
Speaker 6: really strong example of that, like, oh, it's not me,
Speaker 6: it's the universe and who That just feels like a
Speaker 6: breath of fresh air.
Speaker 1: Next time on a Live Again, we meet Rodney White,
Speaker 1: an artist and musician who survived a life altering car
Speaker 1: crash in two thousand and eight. He flatlined twice and
Speaker 1: required a medically induced coma, during which he had a
Speaker 1: near death experience that transformed his life.
Speaker 5: The car that hit me was a Honda City, So
Speaker 5: to hit a jeep Cherokee and flip it and then
Speaker 5: push it, those are spring speeds. I wouldn't change anything,
Speaker 5: because the other side.
Speaker 3: Of all of those experiences is.
Speaker 5: This life I'm living right now, and it is.
Speaker 1: Our story. Producers are Dan Bush, Kate Sweeney, Brent die
Speaker 1: Nicholas Dakoski, and Lauren Vogelbaum. Music by Ben Lovett, additional
Speaker 1: music by Alexander Rodriguez. Our executive producers are Matthew Frederick
Speaker 1: and Trevor Young. Special thanks to Alexander Williams for additional
Speaker 1: production support. Our studio engineers are Rima L. K Ali
Speaker 1: and Noames Griffin. Our editors are Dan Bush, Gerhartslovitchka, Brent
Speaker 1: Die and Alexander Rodriguez. Mixing by Ben Lovett and Alexander Rodriguez.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Dan Bush. Thanks to David Ditchfield for
Speaker 1: sharing his story. For more about David, visit Shine on
Speaker 1: Thestory dot com. Alive Again is a production of iHeartRadio
Speaker 1: and Psychopia Pictures. If you have a transformative near death
Speaker 1: experience to share, we'd love to hear your story. Please
Speaker 1: email us at Alive Again Project at gmail dot com.
Speaker 1: That's a l I v E A g A I
Speaker 1: N p R O j E C T at gmail
Speaker 1: dot com.