David Lynch - In Memoriam

January 20th, 1946 - January 15th, 2025

David Lynch has died.  Often times, a loss comes with a bit of warning.  Lynch had opened up in August of 2024 about his emphysema diagnosis after roughly seven decades of indulging in a heavy smoke addiction.  His love for tobacco was made obvious in countless photos, on set footage, and interviews where he puffed away at the cancer sticks, stating at the time of his diagnosis, “I enjoyed smoking very much … but there is a price to pay for this enjoyment, and the price for me is emphysema.”.

This matter-of-fact attitude towards his ultimately fatal addiction says a lot about not only the man's lust for life, but also of the body of work that he left behind.  For someone who's cinematic oeuvre embraced the surreal as well as epitomized the type of immersive storytelling that viewer's had to do all the work in deciphering, (if "deciphering" was ever even the point), there is a direct communication of ideas that he enforced throughout his career.  Lynch was a man who was turned on by ideas, and ideas guided his films, his art, his music, his writing, and the overall way in which he presented himself as a public yet private figure.

 

Pictured: David Lynch presenting himself.

He was born in Missoula, Montana of all places, (which is also where Dana Carvey stems from), and he had that distinctly Midwestern cadence and temperament.  One can go down an endless rabbit hole watching interviews of people who have worked with him, regaling us with tales of his polite mannerisms, quirky sensibilities, and steadfast adherence to his own artistic ideas.  Lynch called the gathering of ideas "fishing", which was like tapping into a well of concepts that he was more easily able to access via his other lifelong addiction; transcendental meditation.

 

In 2005, he started the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace, whose goal is to teach and spread information about such meditation techniques to as many people as possible.  There are countless long-form interviews out there where he spoke about his relationship with meditation and the benefits that it instilled in his own life, and even for those of us who are too lazy and/or scatterbrained to devote the necessary time in mastering the technique, (this author included), the man's dedication to such a positive and beneficial practice is one of the many things that remains so admirable about him.

 

I'll let the man explain it himself.

This also sheds light on his artistic output.  Lynch was just as interested in the darker subconscious of human beings as he was their emergence to a higher plateau of existence.  His film's juxtaposed beauty with gloom, just as his paintings would often times use raw meat or dead insects yet still turn out enticing instead of merely grotesque.  Life's full spectrum was what he regularly tapped into, and the way that it came out in his work was singular to only his delightfully warped train of thought.  David Lynch's movies are not for everyone nor will they ever be, but for those of us who can embrace if not comprehend his aggressively puzzling narratives and equally aggressive surreal motifs, there is so much strangeness and allure to delight in.

David Lynch only made ten full-length movies, one of which he disowned, (1984's Dune), one of which he did not write, (1999's The Straight Story), and one of which was a comparatively coherent biopic about the Elephant Man Joseph Merrick, (1980's apply titled The Elephant Man).  The rest of his filmography, (as well as arguably his crowning achievement in the Twin Peaks television series and 2017 continuation, plus many shorts), strictly adheres to a style that audience members and critics were dumbfounded by, leaving them no choice but to dub it "Lynchian" out of mere desperation.  Other movie-makers tap into Lynch's penchant for lava-like atmosphere, nonsensical set pieces, oddball hilarity, a type of sinister noir-like aesthetic, stories about supreme evil lurking within American suburbs, and his particular brand of evocative sex and brutal violence, yet they are all simply channeling one man's unprecedented vision.

 

Who of us can look at a white picket fence the same way again after seeing Blue Velvet?

He did so many things so uniquely that anyone who borrows something from ANY of them can be easily called out.  To Lynch though, there was no other way for him to present his ideas.  He often went long periods without producing any cinematic works, (largely because the finances were not so readily available to his often times challenging projects), but he never stopped fishing for those ideas and never stopped creating.  One could look at the output that he left behind as a puzzle that can be cracked, whether for mere comprehension's sake or to try and understand what made the man tick so authentically to his own clock.  After all, I have yet to met a single person who did not pull their hair out in frustration after experiencing Lost Highway, Erasherhead, or Mulholland Dr. for the first time.

 

Yet the more that you read about the man, the more you listen to him speak, and the more you consume his art, the more clear it is that he was operating on a level that none of us could ever reach.  Speaking for myself, David Lynch taught me how to watch movies.  His refusal to hold my hand along such peculiar treks was like a lightning bolt to someone, (like many of us), who was all too used to the common point A to point B method of storytelling.  Nothing was more invigorating for me than experiencing his films for the first time.  The only thing that comes close is experiencing them every time again after that.  Lynch makes you do the work.  Lynch makes you think for yourself.  Lynch makes you come to your own conclusions, and all of those conclusions are both equally wrong and equally correct.  Lynch makes you understand art, and in the process, makes you understand that life has so much more lurking in its shadows and its cherry pie than you ever thought possible.

We salute you too Mr. Lynch.