The Theater of the Absurd
Catching Big Fish with David Lynch
When I got news that David Lynch died last week, I was surprisingly emotional. I don’t usually get worked up when a famous person passes, but this one came as a shock. Perhaps it was the fact that Los Angeles was on fire, and David Lynch is considered the patron saint of the city of angels. In some ways, I never imagined he would die. Of course, it’s a fate that awaits us all, but something about David Lynch feels eternal.
My reaction was unexpected because I don’t consider myself a big fan of David Lynch’s films. It seems sacrilegious to admit that, as he’s deemed one of the best filmmakers ever. But the same way that we can love someone’s art and not the artist (see: ‘Beautiful Monsters’), I realized that we can also love an artist, even when we don’t resonate with their work. Though wildly different, Lynch reminds me of the Dolly Parton of the film world. They’re authentically themselves, and beyond their art, they’re both loved for who they are.
As someone who favors the absurd, in all art forms, it would appear that Lynch’s films would fall in my wheelhouse. I’ve always been attracted to beauty infused with weirdness. I love the world created by Dr. Seuss, the films of Yorgos Lanthimos, and the bizarre art of Maurizio Cattelan. But there’s a fine line when it comes to absurdity, and Lynch likes to cross it into the grotesque. He admits being fascinated by blood, bone, and body parts. He would buy mackerel from the fishmonger so he can dissect them at home. He once said: “What the average person sees as grotesque isn’t grotesque to me.”1
That’s where our sensitivities differ. But what I dislike about his films is what I love most about the artist: that he’s stayed true to his ideas, no matter what others think. He’s stated that “Compromise is the worst thing. It’s a bad, bad word. You can’t work without freedom. Freedom doesn’t mean you don’t listen to some suggestions. But you don’t have to take the suggestion. You can listen, and I say never turn down a good idea but never take a bad idea.”2
He was extremely disciplined in his work, yet remained unattached to the outcome. As he told
in a BBC interview: “The number one thing is to do what you believe in and do it the best you can and then you see how it goes in the world.”Lynch seemed to be an anomaly in Hollywood. He somehow found success without any trade-off. The closest time he came to “selling out” was directing the film ‘Dune,’ which was a commercial and artistic failure he openly talked about. The one lesson he garnered from that was to always have Final Cut – the last say on how a film is edited.
Even when given the chance to be catapulted into financial heights, he refused to do so if it didn’t align with his artistic values. When George Lucas offered him to direct Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, Lynch graciously turned it down.
He also didn’t participate in the conventional social expectations of the industry. He was rarely spotted attending the fancy dinners, film premieres, and networking events that most film people partake in. It seems miraculous that Lynch found success without ever playing that game. A recluse, he spent most evenings at his home in the Hollywood Hills, immersed in his various projects.
At a time when artists are asked increasingly to reveal more about their work or themselves, Lynch refused to explain the meaning of his films. “When you finish anything, people want you to then talk about it. And I think it’s almost like a crime [...] I don’t ever explain it. Because it’s not a word thing. It would reduce it, make it smaller.”3
The same goes for his life, which he kept mostly private. Even in his memoir ‘Room to Dream,’ co-written by Kristine McKenna, the enigma of Lynch prevails. As McKenna puts it, "Lynch prefers to operate in the mysterious breach that separates daily reality from the fantastic realm of human imagination... He wants his films to be felt and experienced rather than understood."
He didn’t partake in many interviews, and when he did he’d only answer questions he was willing to discuss. I’ve never seen an artist with firmer public boundaries, yet always spoken in a soft way. He never came across as irritated or impatient with the press, but rather clear about what he was willing to divulge.
David Lynch played by his own rules – and artistically, they knew no bound. He was a multi-hyphenate before there was a word for that. He painted, made music, built furniture, and meditated.
His 51 year-long daily practice of meditation might explain his calm and centered attitude (despite his high intake of coffee). Below the serene surface lied a deep well of emotions, which he wasn’t ashamed of. In an interview, he admitted that he “cried so much during The Straight Story and The Elephant Man. Some of my reviews made me cry as well. My editor will tell you I sit sometimes in the edit room and weep. Emotion is a thing that cinema can really communicate, but it’s tricky.”4
David Lynch never exhibited overt pride or shame. And that might be one of his most beautiful qualities. In the world of entertainment, the saturation of social media, the constant approval seeking, David Lynch seemed to float above it all. As someone who worked in the world of make-belief, he was never performative. Watching him was like witnessing a strong oak, firmly rooted and standing tall, amidst a storm of disturbances. He knew how to cut through the noise and aim for the truth. Or as he often said “Keep your eyes on the donut, not on the hole.”
When asked about how he knew which creative ideas to catch and which ones to throw back, he answered: “Love - love drives the boat. Many ideas come but some come that are very special and we fall in love with those ideas. I always say that I fall in love for two reasons: one, the idea. And the second is what the medium could do with that idea.”
There are so many reasons to love and mourn the loss of David Lynch. But perhaps this is the strongest of all: beyond his artistic genius, he had his feet firmly planted on this earth and knew how to find the divine within our mundane lives.
As someone who believed in reincarnation, he once stated:
“Life is a short trip. We’ll all meet again.”
We sure hope so David, we sure do.
I’ve decided to dedicate this week’s Present Sense edition to David Lynch, with 7 sensory Lynchian suggestions, something to SEE, HEAR, SMELL, TASTE, TOUCH, BALANCE and ENVISION.
In Joy,
Sabrina
PS: this is the 77th published piece on Seven Senses — which feels symbolic and significant. Thanks for having me in your inbox ♥️
SEE
‘Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity’ | book by David Lynch
Available at indie bookstores and online
Beyond his films, David Lynch has written a number of books and this one is a must-read for anyone on the creative path. Lynch equates his creative process to “catching fish.” He explains that “Ideas are like fish. If you want to catch little fish, you can stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch the big fish, you’ve got to go deeper. Down deep, the fish are more powerful and more pure. They’re huge and abstract. And they’re very beautiful.”
HEAR
The Big Dream | music album by David Lynch (2013)
Listen on Apple Music, Youtube Music, Spotify
Lynch has made music for as long as he’s created films. His first featured release was the soundtrack to his 1977 debut feature film Eraserhead, where he recorded the album with sound designer Alan Splet and co-wrote the song ‘In Heaven (Lady in the Radiator Song).’
He went on to create three studio albums, two collaborative studio albums, six soundtrack albums, and two spoken-word albums. In 2001, he released his recorded debut, BlueBOB, followed by Crazy Clown Time in 2011 and The Big Dream in 2013, which included collaborations with Karen O. and Lykke Li. His last album was Cellophane Memories, his third collaborative studio album with Chrystabell, which came out a few months ago.
When asked what holds ‘The Big Dream’ together, he answered: “The big dream has got to be love. That is what it’s all about.”5
Beyond music, Lynch was also known in L.A for his daily weather reports, which one could hear on the local KCRW radio and Lynch’s YouTube channel. I wrote about last year, in my edition dedicated to Weather.
SMELL
Night-Blooming Jasmine | Lynch’s favorite L.A scent
One of the flowers that Lynch often brough up is jasmine, a scent he associated with Los Angeles. In many interviews, he would state that "It's got a feeling, this place. I always say when the night-blooming Jasmine comes out you can go to some places in LA and feel the golden age of Hollywood still.”6
TASTE
Bob's Big Boy Chocolate Milkshake | Lynch’s food routine
Last year, I wrote about Lynch’s eating habits in the context of artist’s routine (‘Wiggly Consistency’). Lynch had specific routines when it came to his meals. As he stated: “"I'll have the same thing every day for six months maybe, or even longer," he says. "And then one day I just can't face it anymore.”7 For a long time, he wouldn't allow any food in the house as he hated the smell.
He went through a phase where he would have “a cappuccino in the morning, many coffees during the day, and salad that's put in a Cuisinart so each bite tastes the same. No meat. This has got nuts and eggs and some lettuce and different kinds of greens. So it's a little bowl of Cuisinart salad with Parmesan cheese on top. And then at night I have a block of Parmesan cheese, maybe a 2-inch cube, and red wine. Mary [Sweeney, his third wife] cuts it up for me into little chunks and gives it to me in a napkin."
He also went through a bout of “eating tuna with lettuce and cottage cheese” but got tired of it after three months. Then it was “tomatoes, tuna fish, feta cheese, and olive oil” for lunch, and “little pieces of chicken, broccoli and a little soy sauce” for dinner. He also made the dinner chain Bob's Big Boy famous by going there everyday for seven years at 2:30pm to have a chocolate milkshake.
TOUCH
‘The Angriest Dog in the World’ | Comic Strip by David Lynch
View them online
Before becoming a filmmaker, Lynch started off as a painter studying painting at Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. He continued throughout his life to work in various visual mediums, including a comic strip that he made between 1983 and 1992.
Lynch’s comic strip ‘The Angriest Dog in the World’ ran in the LA Reader and in a handful of other publications. The premise was on the surface simple: four panels in which a dog strains against a rope staked down in a suburban backyard. He’s introduced to readers as a dog “so angry he cannot move. He cannot eat. He cannot sleep. He can just barely growl. Bound so tightly with tension and anger, he approaches the state of rigor mortis.”
Each week the visual was the same and the only variation came in the word bubbles that occasionally emerged from the window of the house, presumably representing the voice of the dog’s owners. In a classic Lynchian way, the word bubbles were both mundane and odd, veering between humorous and hiddenly profound.
In David Breskin’s book ‘Inner Views,’ Lynch explains: “ “I had tremendous anger. And I think when I began meditating, one of the first things that left was a great chunk of that.”
BALANCE
Transcendental Meditation
David Lynch’s birthday was on January 20th. He would have been 79 years old. His four children put a worldwide call out to all sit in meditation at noon that day. My partner and I participated, and I couldn’t think of a better way to honor him. If there’s anything that Lynch loved as much as filmmaking, it was meditation.
He meditated twice a day for 51 years, never missing a sitting. He was a huge advocate for Transcendental Meditation (TM), as taught by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. He even founded the David Lynch Foundation, which “for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace to ensure that every child anywhere in the world who wanted to learn to meditate could do so.”
Even though Lynch was reserved about speaking of his films, he never held back when it came to meditation. His passion for the practice and his desire to share it with others always came through. When asked what TM does, he explains:
“When you dive within, you experience subtler levels of mind, subtler levels of intellect and then you transcend and you experience pure consciousness, absolute consciousness, bliss consciousness, absolute intelligence, creativity, universal love, energy, power, dynamic peace – all right there at the source of thought.”
ENVISION
Poetry by David Lynch
Lynch’s talents span so many forms, and I even discovered some of his poetry. As a final note, here’s an original poem (title unknown) he read at the Festival of Disruption in 2018:
There was a time
when I had silver visions.
They were large
and small.
The small visions
twinkled
and sparkled
like jewels.
I wanted to
epoxy them
to my nose
so I could
see them 60
times a minute.
The large visions
would come up
into my
esophagus,
And I would
think about
all the
animals I had known
and the
panoramas,
which at the time
weren’t
apparent,
weren’t
even
married,
as they were only
nine at the time.
It was sweet, the
way they crawled
on the wall.
I never put
it together
until later
that this
was on a Friday,
like today.
The Guardian, written by Xan Brooks (2018)
‘David Lynch on Meditation and Genius’ podcast ‘Under the Skin’ (2022)
The Guardian, written by Xan Brooks (2018)
i-D magazine, interview by John Dunning (2002)
BOMB magazine interview by Michael Saur (2013)
The New Zealand Herald interview by Dominic Corry (2017)
LA Weekly interview with John Powers (2001)
Beautiful tribute, Sabrina.
Loved this post!