INTERLUDE: david lynch and a strangest dream

mourning a visionary, introductions, and the secret world.

My first ever experience with arthouse cinema was Eraserhead (1977). I must have been about fifteen years old. There are probably better ways to be introduced to arthouse, especially considering the notorious opaqueness of the genre, but I didn’t know that. And it doesn’t really matter, does it? Because that was my introduction. It was what happened, and it worked as far as getting me into alternative film goes. Even if I could go back in time and choose something else, something easier to comprehend or look at or digest, I wouldn’t. Eraserhead was a dream I found myself inside. It was the first time I noticed the sound of a movie— not the soundtracking or the score, but the sound. I remember the hum of the radiator, the way the dull noise sat in the air, the feeling of being suspended in time. I remember the dream, the one within the movie that I saw within my own dream. Chipmunk cheeks. Dead babies. In Heaven, everything is fine.

The next film of Lynch’s that I saw was Blue Velvet (1986), because Blue Velvet by Bobby Vinton was one of my favorite songs at the time. It felt like confirmation. It was like everything that I had secretly suspected about the world— the magic, the wild decay, the beauty and the savage garden— had been proven true and proven in art, art made by other hands, which meant that I was not alone in vision or experience. Someone else had seen it. Someone else had articulated it. Someone else knows, knows about the world under the world, knows exactly what the color red really means. I could have leapt for joy.

And that was it, you know? That was it for me. I was hooked on David Lynch. Instantly, irrevocably hooked.

Of course I was. Of course I was! I was a crooner-obsessed, isolated, old-fashioned teenager who, like many of Lynch’s protagonists, was suddenly becoming capable of touching the diseased underbelly of everything I knew. Neon signs infected everything with a postmortem lividity; life oscillated between a suburban norm and the kind of things that give parents nightmares. It had been like this my whole life. I had known it since I was a child, dressed neatly with a handmade doll while I listened to adults fuck just out of sight. I had known it while sitting on the stairs in time out and looking up to the landing at the top, the harsh overhead light, the delicate sconce-like glass around it. Fear of electricity. Fear of men. It was the secret filth of the world. I was learning that I looked older than I was if I put enough makeup on, about how some of my artistic role models were mean drunks or wife beaters or pedophiles, about how every person has something they don’t want other people to know. Our societal beacons of morality were turning out to be downright rotten. The rot was everywhere. The rot was in everyone. The rot was in me. Glory, glory, hallelujah.

There was a world within the world, though, something under the secret filth. There was goodness. Lynch’s directorial eye was deeply empathetic towards the suffering of others, a trait that apparently followed him from childhood. In the 2016 documentary David Lynch: The Art Life, he describes a childhood encounter that, in my opinion, seems to have shaped his work:

One night, I kind of have the feeling it was in the fall, and it was pretty late… I don’t know what we were doing, but from across Shoshoni Avenue, out of the darkness comes this— like, kind of like a strangest dream. Because I’d never seen an adult woman naked. And she had beautiful, pale, white skin, and she was completely naked. And I think her mouth was bloodied. And she kind of came strangely— walking strangely across Shoshoni and come into Park Circle Drive. And it seemed like she was sort of like a giant. And she came closer and closer, and my brother started to cry. Something was bad wrong with her. And I don’t know what happened but I think she sat down on a curb, crying. But it was very mysterious, like we were seeing something otherworldly. And I wanted to do something, but I was little— I didn’t know what to do.

There’s a quote from the original run of Twin Peaks that of all the people in the world, the worst and the best are drawn to a dead dog— most people turn away, but the pure of heart feel its pain. You get the feeling from the context of the show that you’re supposed to feel the pain, to welcome it and use it to help others, no matter how scared you are of it hurting. So yes, there’s a lot of fear in Lynch’s work; with this fear comes love and faith. Despite the violence he depicted, the core tenant of his work seems to be staunchly anti-indifference and anti-despair, firmly advocating that good intent should become good actions. Lynch and his protagonists seem to operate under the knowledge that although it is inevitable in some ways, we do not want to hurt each other. We want to be happy. We want to be good.

Goodness! Isn’t that something? Without going into too much detail, goodness was not something I put stock in by the time my childhood ended. It existed, sure, but there were other things I felt more comfortable relying on— mainly, the existence of the secret filth. I did see goodness everywhere I went, and I relied upon the goodwill of others the way that children are forced to, but knowing it and trusting it are two different things. I was like that when I stumbled upon Lynch’s work, you know. And I won’t go so far as to say that David Lynch made me put faith in goodness— that was a multi-year ideological process— but I cannot deny that his work had a part in it. Everyday objects were transformed into talismans. Comforts like coffee or cherry pie were wards against evil; flowers and robins become a sign of hope in the future.

And there was hope. In every film of his that I’ve seen, no matter how dire the situation or ending, there is always hope and love. It only saved people when it was used as a call to action, but it’s there nonetheless.

There’s a lot of things about Lynch to memorialize— I couldn’t even begin to name everything that I adore about his work. He was a master of surrealism. He got into film making because he wanted to make his paintings move. On that note, his paintings and sculpture are still incredible to me, communicating smallness and love with a rare ability (and a solid talent for creating truisms). The film of his that many consider to be his masterpiece is about the days before an incest abuse victim’s death. He was an ambassador for the secret world under our world. He was born in Missoula, Montana, where I once saw a dead dog of my own lying on the side of the highway. He talked with a flat, broad-voweled, Great Plains voice. He had a Thing, the way so many people in the modern era seem to lack; signature hair, signature cigarettes, signature style, signature soda. He knew the secret filth of the world. He saw the color red. It’s very important to me that he really, truly saw the color red.

His visionary will be missed on several accounts— I will forever regret that he won’t be creating any more worlds, worlds that I found great peace and reassurance within. Lynch gave voice and visual power to things that I still struggle to articulate as an adult. I can’t speak on anyone’s relationship with his work aside from my own, obviously, but I do know that I’m not the only one who deeply resonated with his work and the themes present within it.

The news of his death struck me the same way the news of a beloved uncle dying would. I didn’t quite know what to do; the grief had caught me off guard, as grief is wont to do. I decided to live a David Lynch day. I painted my nails red and the sudden paleness of my hands surprised me. I had a cup of tea, and then another. When I walked out into the street— it was sunny, almost horrifically sunny, the type of sunny that turns the sky the visceral shade of blue Lynch frequently used— I smiled at the people I came across. I listened to Bobby Vinton like I was fifteen again. I watched for birds in the trees and, like a little miracle, found a ruby-throated hummingbird sitting on a branch that I would have never seen had I not been looking for it. I ate breakfast for dinner, thick pancakes with a side of bacon. Kindness is a funny thing. You never expect how much it can do, do you? It does it anyways.

Yes. One day, the sadness will end. But, in the words of Lynch himself, I don’t think today is the day.

I never studied. The only thing that was important was what happened outside of school— people and relationships, slow-dancing parties, big, big love, and dreams— dark, fantastic dreams…