The other day I was listening to Pierre-Laurent Aimard play Musica ricercata by Ligeti. Some of these pieces seem to me to resonate rather strongly with the feeling of being trapped by one's own needs, one's own pathologies, and as such present a somewhat etiolated feeling of free will.
 
We obviously do enjoy a degree of free will, I for example can suddenly type 'willie', and then go into the kitchen and spread Marmite on my feet if I want to, but underneath such superficial actions it is rather inescapably obvious that I am tied to such fundamental things as hunger, thirst, fatigue and so on that I have no control over at a basic level. And emotions - we don't really have a lot of control over those do we, I mean they on the whole run us, not us them. Needs run us. Proper philosophers have written far more elegantly on these matters I know, but the provocation of the Ligeti and this thread means you get this shallow precis, as it was what cropped up as I my mind staggered around, thinking freely. (And actually would I have had these feelings at all without having seen Eyes Wide Shut, where some of this music accompanies the films horrible denouement? Are these really my thoughts or am I just under the impression that they are? Is the power of advertising (or a form of it, propaganda?) just leading me to think the thoughts that the film is telling me to think?)

As I was listening to the Ligeti a number of things crossed my mind. They were - seagulls set against a clear blue sky -  racing across cobbled streets in Paris in a rusty but willing 2CV on a frosty day - emotional sickness brought about by being forced to cope with a meretricious and dehumanised environment - and Bartok, and sth else I can't quite define. And my next thought (oh no!) that seemed to be vaguely connected, was that I am quite likely to experience visual imagery when listening to such music, but I'd say that I don't often get visual associations when listening to Renaissance vocal music. It doesn't seem to stimulate them for me. The music doesn't seem to invite them in the same way, and my thought (a free one!) was that this music might for some reason be the least metaphorical, the purest (musically speaking), because the personality of the composer is least in evidence, there seems to be, relatively speaking, a lack of ego in it. And that the reason why such music feels sometimes to be purifying or clarifying, might come from the example of the music's loss of ego - perhaps one is freed even from the tyranny of identity to feel more 'spiritual' by the loss of identity that an ignored ego might allow you.

Ramble over. Actually, I'm not sure I even know what free thinking means now I think of it.

It is also worth considering though that you don't have to read a certain book, or even listen to what is around you or to music. You can think what you wish, go where you wish, and read and listen to what you wish.
Surely this is freedom?

A

The particular term 'free thinking' seems to be getting slightly mired in discussion of 'free will'.