28 May 2025 – Even More Feelings about ‘The Will’ with Heart-warming Experiences’

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I was delighted to receive from one of you an encouraging message about my ‘Will’ reflections.  You wrote:

 ‘……….. that ‘Will’ would not seem to be about power over something, but what enables us to enter into this relational experience with the field of mind (god), and experience the universe, world, life unfolding in a co-creational way – ie: neither it nor us controlling it, but experiencing it together’.

 You mentioned that you were indebted to the philosopher Iain McGilchrist for his insights.

It is so helpful to emphasise this ‘relational experience’, and this message has renewed my interest in the relationship between me (as instrument) and my player, and how feelings and emotions might unfold ‘in a co-creational way’ as they flow between our bodies and out beyond us.

At this time of year, the world Methodist family celebrates a special ‘unfolding’, flowing experience in the life of John Wesley in 1738.  He recorded in his diary on 24 May ‘……my heart was strangely warmed’.

I’m remembering my extraordinary encounter in 1827 in Norwich Mental Asylum, when John Wesley’s nephew Samuel took hold of me and played the ‘Chaconne’ by Johann Sebastian Bach. [See my Diary Entry on 11 November last year: ‘1827 – Meeting Samuel Wesley’]

There is no doubt that something distinctive was ‘flowing between us’ – between player and instrument.

  1. Was it linked to Samuel’s connections with the profound emotions of his uncle John in that special transforming moment?
  2. Was it linked to Samuel’s newly discovered passion for J S Bach’s music?
  • Was it linked to a common awareness of a Christ-shaped form to his music and its notation (with death & resurrection), which many musicians have subsequently recognised?
  • Was I resonating in my body with these feelings and emotions flowing through the life of Samuel Wesley?

So when I come to think about my bodily feelings, experiences and sense of ‘flow’ during a performance of Delius’s ‘A Mass of Life’, I wonder to what extent do we, as instrument and player, each need to be aware of the philosophical/theological ideas echoing in the poetry of Nietzsche’s ‘Also sprach Zarathustra’ and this monumental music score of Delius?

In order to play the music fully and meaningfully, how far do we both need to ‘go with the flow’ by:

  1. affirming ‘the Will to power’?
  2. celebrating ‘the Superman’ (’Uebermensch’)?
  3. accepting the ‘Death of God’?
  4. abandoning ourselves to the Dionysian song and dance (Nietzsche calls this ‘the dithyramb’)?
  5. recognising the dominant theme of ‘eternal recurrence’?

…………Or are there deeper aspects of each of these themes to be discovered and ‘unfolded’ by instrument, player and listener that are revealed in the performance, and that can take us beyond even the aspirations of Friedrich Nietzsche and Frederick Delius?

How far are we shaped in performance by the presenting ideas of composer and lyricist, or does the ‘sonic flux’ flowing through our bodies, our emotions, our thoughts bring us to a new and richer place of transcendence – to that place of ‘strange warming’?

I need to explore this further next time……………

(Do get in touch if you want to share anything!)

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