Today, I am thinking about David Lynch.
When Lynch sadly passed away last month, the world lost a brilliant creative mind. However, I have no doubt his influence will remain on American cinema forever.
Though I am by no means a film expert, I want to briefly contextualize what Lynch meant to American film history. The release of “Easy Rider” in 1969, created by Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper and Terry Southern, was the catalyst for a new generation of American directors and filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese, John Cassavettes and Peter Bogdonavich, who were pushing the limits of the industry and what types of stories could entice a commercial audience. Then, in 1975, “Jaws” hit the screens. The massive power of the blockbuster was undeniable, and it seemed that Hollywood once again had no room for the weird or experimental.
In the late ’70s into the ’80s, Lynch starts putting out films like “Eraserhead,” “The Elephant Man” and “Blue Velvet” — films with strange plots, an odd, jarring characters. Films less concerned with digestible storylines than they were with the ideas behind them. In doing so, he opened the space for being strange in cinema. His filmography is epic, including “Mulholland Drive,” the famous 1984 “Dune,” and, of course, the TV show “Twin Peaks,” set right here in our lovely Pacific Northwest. He was also responsible for some pretty iconic ads for brands including Playstation, Adidas and Calvin Klein. Lynch created a niche within the industry for people to make films that departed from the conventions of Old Hollywood, and in doing so, helped rebirth American independent film.
Lynch’s influence is everywhere. Some of the best, most bizarre, most surreal TV we all grew up on are Lynchian — “Gravity Falls” was heavily influenced by “Twin Peaks.” Donald Glover has similarly cited Lynch and “Twin Peaks” as one of his main inspirations in creating “Atlanta.” And on a personal level, some of my fondest memories are watching “Twin Peaks” with my brother. The version of this region that Lynch created is at once nostalgic and alien, familiar and terrifying. In hindsight, I probably decided to come to the PNW for college at least in part because of my love for the show.
The thing that I am trying to get at right now is that both David Lynch and his work are really, really weird. But also, at their core, profoundly recognizable and familiar. The genius of Lynch is in the way he captured the absurdism of life, the absurdism of death, the absurdism of tragedy, of grief and of love.
Lynch would often describe a vast ocean of consciousness within every human being, a creative force within us all. In a word — magic. He spoke of fishing in this ocean, of asking questions and of following ideas to their end. In an interview with the American Film Institute, he said that “we don’t create an idea … we catch them like fish,” and that when you catch an idea, you are catching a scrap of magic from that creative ocean within you.
The point of Lynch’s work — which I would broaden to that of art itself — is to keep asking questions about it. The second that you come to a finished conclusion, you stop thinking about the work, and the magic of imagination — of exploration — is lost.
So, dearest Lewis & Clark community, my final words to you are this: Go fishing for thoughts. Get off your phone, go on a walk with no aim. Get lost. Ask questions with no answers. Argue with yourself. Get comfortable with the strangeness of being alive. Buy yourself a damn fine cup of coffee.
Just like Lynch would, stay weird and whimsical LC.
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