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A Fan’s Tribute to DAVID LYNCH – A Modern Artistic Genius & Explorer…

David Lynch funny

It was really sad hearing the news that legendary filmmaker and artist David Lynch had passed away. 

He has been not only such a great artist, but such a great character, in my or our creative landscape for so long that he almost took on the aura of someone who simply wouldn’t be subject to mortality.
 
That’s a mistake we sometimes make: thinking that artistic immortality could somehow equate to actual exemption from the temporary nature of life.
 
If anyone could acquire that strange aura of immortality, it would be Lynch, with all of his offbeat, sometimes occultish, visions depicted on-screen, and even his real-world passion for transcendental meditation and the nature of human consciousness.

I say he was an also an explorer: not in a geographical sense, but an explorer of the psyche, the consciousness and the possibly dark shadows behind the light of perceived reality.
 
I can’t remember where or in what context, but I’ve heard the term ‘psychonaut’ used before: and I think maybe it can be applied to Lynch.
 
A lot of artists get called ‘genius’, very often without much validity or meaning. But David Lynch was genuinely a filmmaking genius – in an age where there aren’t really any comparable masters of the medium.
 
There are very few filmmakers whose creations truly get under your skin, embed into your consciousness or subconscious, and leave a long-term impression the way Lynch’s work does – usually in an uncomfortable way.
 
I’m still disturbed by Mulholland Drive – having only watched it once and that being years ago. The traumatic final scene of that film still pops into my head at random times – uninvited.
 
I’m still obsessed with Twin Peaks: and find myself thinking about various aspects of that surrealist nightmare/wonderland on a regular basis, even though I haven’t been actively rewatching any of it for years.
 
Twin Peaks to this day makes me uncomfortable: but remains an eternally fascinating and perplexing enigma. It has embedded itself into my consciousness in a weird way that’s hard to define.
 
Sometimes I wish it never existed. Other times I make plans to do another rewatch of the box-set: but always hesitate and then put it off – because I know how psychologically taxing it’s going to be.
 
My first exposure to Lynch’s work was actually The Elephant Man: which I happened to watch – probably inappropriately – as a child because my Mum was watching it on TV.
 
That film upset and unsettled me as a kid. As a grown-up, I realise Elephant Man is actually not that disturbing, actually more poignant. It’s really the most straightforward and least demanding of Lynch’s works.
 
I’m even one of the only people on earth that seems to be a fan of Lynch’s 1984 Dune movie – even Lynch himself wasn’t a fan of that.
 
But, for all its oddness and shortcomings, I still prefer it to the contemporary blockbuster Dune film franchise. Maybe it’s not precisely the messiness and oddness of it that I like more – no matter how much Lynch himself disavows it.
 
But it’s probably always been appropriate that David Lynch’s only real foray into big-budget ‘hit’ cinema is generally seen as a failure, and by Lynch himself as a negative experience.
 
He probably wasn’t built for that kind of project as an artist.
 
Though I still think it’s one of the great ‘what ifs’ of cinema to wonder what Lynch’s version of Return of the Jedi would’ve been like – as he was famously being sought by George Lucas to direct that movie prior to Richard Marquand getting the job.
 

But Twin Peaks is still the Lynch work I have the strongest attachment to.


 
I still maintain that Twin Peaks is the scariest thing ever produced: because the anxiety it engenders is a consequence of Lynch’s singular style of hyper-surrealism and esoteric uncertainty.
 
The kind of unsettling that you get in Twin Peaks is on a whole different level to anything else: including all kinds of other films or shows that purport to be ‘scary’, but don’t even come close.
 
It’s a kind of transcendental disturbing.
 
 
Twin Peaks art
Artwork by Joshua Budich.
 

And it’s one of the greatest television shows of all time. Probably the greatest work of American television specifically – I can’t think of anything better or even comparable.

 
And there’s always the sense that there’s something profound and revelatory in Twin Peaks that needs to be understood – but it’s perpetually just out of reach.
 
Like you know it’s there, but you just can’t quite grasp it.
 
This was even more the case when Lynch brought Twin Peaks back for a limited series event in 2017, some three decades after the original series ended.
 
Fans treated it like the Second Coming. I actually didn’t find Twin Peaks: The Return as satisfying as I hoped.
 
But Lynch had no interest in meeting my expectations or making things easy.
 
And the key cinematic moments from that series were so visually or viscerally impactful that they alone were worth the experience: particularly I’m thinking of Lynch’s unique and mesmerising depiction of the first atomic bomb detonation.
 
Had that sequence alone been part of a cinematic release, it might be considered one of the most intense or compelling sequences in film history.
 
As it is, it’s extraordinary that it’s merely a sequence from a TV episode.
 
The Return actually offered few answers to the enigmas left hanging from thirty years earlier: and, if anything, raised more questions.
 
But then Lynch’s storytelling is never about answers or tidy narratives.
 
But that’s probably part of why people are so obsessed with his work: we tend to want clear narratives, answers and explanations from our fiction. And when we don’t have them, we can get obsessive.
 
In the hands of bad storytellers, this ambiguity can frustrate or even annoy us. With Lynch, it seemed to be part of the dance – an understanding between storyteller and audience that it’s not going to make sense in a way that’s easy and comfortable.
 
Assuming it makes sense at all.
 
But it seemed like he revelled in that. And that he was inviting us to embrace the insanity, even the bewilderment, of reality: as if implying that if there is some great truth to be divined about the world or reality, it isn’t going to be straightforward or even comprehensible.
 
That’s probably more true than any structured belief system will allow itself to admit. Especially when dealing with the enigma of consciousness, the subconscious and the dream-world – which is the medium that some of Lynch’s most loved works, from Inland Empire to Eraserhead, are swimming in.
 
I doubt anyone now or in the future is going to be able to tap into or explore that esoteric medium the way Lynch has done: neither as a visual director nor as a conceptual storyteller.
 
The dude was entirely unique: and without equal or rival.
 
 

 
 
And that’s partly why it’s so sad to hear of his passing. Because it’s sad to know we’ll never get anything more from him. And the artistic or cultural landscape will feel emptier without him.
 
He was also just fun to see every now and then, not even as a filmmaker, but just as a personality. Seeing him muse and conversate in his unique style is always enjoyable.
 
He’d be the perfect Uncle that you might hang out with a couple of times a year to listen to his contemplations and ideas.
 
He could’ve easily been a comedian in another life. A lot of the time, he basically was a comedian – a satirist, at least.
 
The fact that he built a reputation on compulsive, unsettling,  enigmatic storytelling and masterful visual techniques, and yet could also appear as a regular on something as light-hearted as the Cleveland Show cartoon illustrates that he didn’t take himself as seriously as his fans and analysts take him.
 
People have written essays and made  documentaries trying to interpret or define Lynch’s art: and he probably couldn’t have been less interested in reading or watching any of it – or in engaging in self-analysis or high-minded pontification.
 
A documentary film I recently saw – called Lynch/Oz – analysed his films in the context of the Wizard of Oz being a major template or archetypal model. It was interesting, but notably lacked any input from the man himself.
 
Because, again, Lynch was a staunch advocate for the art itself doing all the talking: and not the artist pontificating about interpretation or meaning.
 
Which is entirely true. You can’t help but feel that if Lynch had spent years ‘explaining’ Twin Peaks, it would’ve added nothing of value to the experience.
 
What he did seem to enjoy talking about, especially in more recent years, was the exploration of consciousness and reality.
 
Some of his talks on the value of transcendental meditation are well worth the time.
 
Anyway, God bless that guy. And may his legacy endure.
 
 
 
 
 

S. Awan

Independent journalist. Pariah. Believer in human rights, human dignity and liberty. Musician. Substandard Jedi. All-round failure. And future ghost.

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