David Lynch’s life was built on incredible vulnerability — not the emotional kind, but the vulnerability to have an open mind. You may know him from the clip he posted on social media saying, “Today I was thinking about the song ‘Fade Into You’ by Mazzy Star from the year 1994,” his plethora of music projects, or by his revolutionary artistic endeavors such as “Eraserhead,” “Twin Peaks” and “Blue Velvet.”
Lynch had a clear vision of everything he did, and ambition that could not be morphed or quelled. One of my favorite moments of his was his reaction after a bad take. In the director’s cut, he said, “Okay, let’s try that again, but this time good.” In a serious yet humorous way, he managed to change the film industry, combining it with the art of mindfulness and meditation.
Something that intrigued me about Lynch was his devotion to transcendentalist meditation: a meditation technique where you mentally repeat a word, phrase or action until you reach a state of inner peace. On the David Lynch Foundation website, he says that he has “not missed a single meditation ever since. Twice a day, every day,” and further elaborates on how it has impacted him in his artistic practice: “It has given me effortless access to unlimited reserves of energy, creativity and happiness deep within. This level of life is sometimes called ‘pure consciousness’ — it is a treasury. And this level of life is deep within us all.”
After looking more into this, I began to see a recurring theme in his work, an almost dream-like sporadicness and awkwardness in many of his characters’ dialogues. During an interview with Patti Smith with BBC newslight in 2014, Lynch said that he thinks in fragments. That when he gets an idea, or a piece, he keeps it and writes it down awaiting for it to amount to something more. “Having a fragment is more bait on the hook, and it pulls in more and the more faster the rest come in,” he said. By allowing himself to sit still and be patient, or fishing quietly, eventually his ideas came to him, or he would bite the bait. This relates to a piece of advice he gave to aspiring artists, “Stay alert, do your work. Don’t worry about the world going by.”
By applying his meditative philosophy to his career, he allowed audiences to indulge in seemingly mundane conversations and scenes that actually hold deeper meaning and stories unbeknownst to half-watching viewers. Lynch was un-apologetic in his willingness to share openly the struggles of being human. Some of his writing and scenes presented can seem confusing, awkward and bizarre, but in reality, they are irrevocably entrancing and inspiring.
For example, the simple words in “Blue Velvet,” “Now it’s dark,” represent something much deeper for Frank (the protagonist, or antagonist) in a painfully uncomfortable karaoke scene. The quote is all about how he has so much emotion buried inside him, but he can’t deal with it. Lynch, who is usually aloof about what he means in any given scene, in being so direct, digs into the soul.
“You’ll never have me,” is a line from “Lost Highway,” when Alice rejects Pete, so he then ‘transforms’ into Fred. It’s just about the most succinct summary there is of the themes Lynch deals with in his work, in this case, the uneasy intersection between fear and desire and what takes control before acceptance. Another line from “Lost Highway” replays in my head constantly: “I like to remember things my own way. How I remembered them, not necessarily the way they happened.”
David Lynch’s films defy conventional logic, instead inviting viewers to confront the surreal, the uncanny and the sublime. His work serves as a meditation on the fragility of identity, the search for meaning and the dark undercurrents of human existence. Lynch’s genius lies in his ability to take us to the edges of understanding, forcing us to confront the mysteries of life and the subconscious. His films are not puzzles to be solved but experiences to be felt, leaving us haunted by their beauty, terror and profound ambiguity.
Although he may be in another universe, his creative legacy still lingers in ours.
