David Ditchfield

I was born in the UK, Blackpool but raised in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire. I left my inner city comprehensive school with only one qualification having failed almost everything due to undiagnosed severe dyslexia. The only option open was a course learning how to draw letters for adverts, not a great career choice for someone profoundly dyslexic. After being sacked from my one and only proper job, I moved to London and played three-chord guitar in various rock 'n' roll punk and pop bands and co-wrote a couple of pop songs with Kevin Rowland. Eventually, I drifted away from playing in bands and things went on a downward spiral in my life. I ended up surviving as a manual labourer, my life empty and directionless. It was at this low point that I had a freak accident and was pulled under the wheels of a speeding train. In the hospital afterwards, I had my amazing near-death experience (NDE). The NDE changed everything for me and inspired me to reach a level of musical and artistic creativity that I had never been capable of achieving before. At first, I felt compelled to produce paintings of what I’d seen in the Afterlife and then I felt moved to compose classical music, even though I've never received any training in classical music and never composed such music before my NDE (in fact, to this day, I still cannot read or write a single note of music at all). My debut symphony, The Divine Light, was inspired by my NDE and I was lucky enough to have it premiered at a sell-out performance. Since then, I have composed a follow-up symphony, ’The Falcon’, which was also premiered at a sell-out concert, as was my Cambridge Clarinet Choir commissioned piece ‘Awake’, conducted by renowned Clarinet player Andrew Webster. I am currently composing a new symphony entitled ‘I Wasn’t Expecting This’. I came back from the Afterlife charged with an incredible energy, a burning desire to tell everyone there is nothing to fear after death, life continues on. Before my NDE, my life had been completely ruled by guilt and lack of self-worth. But my NDE gave me the self-love and confidence to go and try whatever I wanted to do in life and that’s a wonderful feeling and I want everyone to feel that way.