A year ago today, one of my favorite artists, the legendary filmmaker and philanthropist David Lynch, passed away.
His name has morphed into an adjective in its own right—Lynchian—describing, depending on who you ask, something that comes close to a depiction of everyday American life but in a way that feels dreamlike, uncanny, and maybe even a bit nightmarish. The writer David Foster Wallace, who tagged along on a movie set of Lynch’s once for an article, wrote that he was unsure if the director was a genius, or insane.
Even if you don’t love his movies, or find them strange, or difficult to understand, consider the advice of Marcel Duchamp who said “I don’t believe in art. I believe in artists.”
And as artists of any kind, whether you draw, paint, make films, or, like me, write, we owe a great deal of gratitude to David Lynch for pushing the boundaries of his craft, and taking us along on his process for creativity.
He was a tireless advocate for meditation, specifically Transcendental Meditation, and wrote a book on his creative process titled Catching The Big Fish, which I’m currently reading.
Over the holidays, I read Dennis Lim’s David Lynch: The Man From Another Place, which was a short but wonderful biography about the evolution of Lynch’s career and how his upbringing and unique approach to art impacted his creative decisions.
The Genesis of The Art Life
When Lynch was 15 years old, his girlfriend introduced him to her friend Toby, whose father, Bushnell Keeler, was an artist. Visiting the elder Keeler’s studio, he was “shocked to learn its possible to make a living that way.” Before he left, Keeler gave him a copy of The Art Spirit by Robert Henri.
Lynch was captivated at that point by the symbol of possibility, and in that moment committed to himself that he would live what he called The Art Life.
The Lynchian Doughnut Hole
Lynch was often asked to define the term, Lynchian, as if he was the one who had coined it. And each time, he would decline, or give an evasive answer. Often, he would bring up his favorite phrase:
“Keep your eye on the doughnut, not the hole. A concept like Lynchian is more like the hole. If I start thinking about that, it’s dangerous.”
David Foster Wallace wrote that Lynchian is:
“…a particular kind of irony where the very macabre and the very mundane combine in such a way as to reveal the former’s perpetual containment within the latter.”
Leave Room To Dream
In many interviews, Lynch was asked if he could expound on the meaning of his film’s and he would always respond with a precise “No.” Lim writes in his biography:
“Words for him are not just reductive, they are dangerous, anathema to his view of art as fundamentally enigmatic.”
Instead, he believed his films should “leave room to dream.”
Where Ideas Come From
For David Lynch, ideas have an almost mystical notion to them.
“They have a life of their own, independent of the artist, waiting to be plucked from the ether.”
He likened himself to a radio, “tuning in inspiration on odd frequencies.”
Uncertainty Is The Allure
Both Stephen King and Haruki Murakami have talked about not outlining or plotting before writing their books, believing that if the author is surprised by where the story goes, the audience definitely will be.
The same was true for Lynch for whom the uncertainty was the allure.
“Part of what makes David’s films unique is that they’re mysteries he’s trying to solve.”
We, the audience, get to watch him discover what happens as the story unfolds.
Work To Support Your Art
Aspiring artists love to romanticize the “struggling artist” who devotes all their time to their craft, even if that means living below the poverty line, when in reality, this couldn’t be further from the truth for many of the greatest writers and artists in history.
This was certainly not the case for David Lynch. When his grant money for Eraserhead ran out, filming came to a halt and he scrambled to find work in order to pay his rent. He landed a gig delivering the Wall Street Journal at night, and it would take a total of four years for him to have enough money to complete the movie the way he wanted. He would study maps and routes to find ways to finish his deliveries quicker so that he could go back to his art.
Make Art That Engulfs
While in art school, Lynch called his paintings “symphonies”, a sign of the synthesia that characterized his approach to art. His goal was not only to bring his paintings to life, but “to become an environment that engulfs the spectator.”
Think of Philadelphia
The places we live in have an enormous impact on our creativity. Both Edgar Allen Poe and David Lynch, artists of the macabre and dread, spent significant time living in Philadelphia.
For Lynch, just thinking about the city he called home during his art school days was transportive.
“I just have to think of Philadelphia and I get ideas.”
Create Fully Furnished Worlds
“Lynch sees his movies as worlds to inhabit; for devoted fans they are often environments that encourage lingering.”
The author Umberto Eco once wrote that the pre-condition for a film to attain cult status is for it to create “a completely furnished world.”
Great Work Needs Nursing
Sometimes your art needs to be nursed along until people finally “get it.” Barenholtz TK opened Eraserhead in the fall of 1977, at the Cinema Village in downtown Manhattan. Only 25 people showed up on opening night.
But enough people kept coming for it to hold onto its midnight spot. To those early viewers, the film must have seemed to possess the potential to “derange the senses and confuse dream and reality.”
Open The Lid
Lynch, as I mentioned above, was always coy about what his movies were about. In an early interview in 1977, he caved and offered a subtle hint:
“Everybody has a subconscious and they put a lid on it. There’s things in there.”
On it’s face, this says very little. But read it again, and it says a lot, about his movies’ themes, and his recommendation to creating art
Do Something With Your Hands
After Eraserhead, Lynch spent his time building sheds.
“He built obsessively, constructing a garage, a painting studio, sheds for storage. It was tactile, satisfying work—a more intimate and utilitarian form of world building.”
When asked about his love of sheds in one interview, he said:
“They can be used for storage, and they can be used for little places to be.”
Show Things Normally Hidden
Blue Velvet had such a profound impact on David Foster Wallace, he wrote that the film brought home to he and his grad school friends
“…that the very most important artistic communications took place at a level that not only wasn’t intellectual, but wasn’t even fully conscious.”
Dive Deeper and Catch Bigger Fish
“His movies are the weird tales that give form to the submerged traumas and desires of our age, perhaps even to questions that have haunted artists and thinkers for centuries: how to explain evil, how to live with fear, how to hold the self together, how to keep reality as we know it from falling apart.”
In the end, what he became known for, and what we all can take as a lesson for our lives, for our art, is to dive deeper to catch the bigger fish.