Messages appeared on the billboards of movie theaters in New York City, bidding farewell to David Lynch. More than anything, they were thanking him for being a kind and decent man. The genius of image and sound has died. So loved and revered in the world of cinema, television, art in general, and much beyond.
The last time I saw him on YouTube, it was during the lockdowns of the pandemic, when he appeared cooking. And of course I immediately fell in love with that cooking recipe. He taught us how to prepare couscous. In such a beautiful black and white staging, with precise lighting on both his face and in the couscous pot. A widely saturated environment. Everything was shining. The camera angles in close-ups, with the camera never in front (always diagonal, lateral). David showed his beautiful face only occasionally. With his voice teaching us once again how to prepare that delicious and simple African rice.
Lynch tells us that he likes the abstract, with images that generate abstraction. It’s also in the structure, although it is very difficult to try to grasp the stories of his TV series and movies. They are fragmented narratives, not linear at all. The viewer has to figure it out by himself, since Lynch leaves it to the audience to grasp like a puzzle. To this day, we do not know who killed Laura Palmer — it remains an open mystery in that most groundbreaking television series, Twin Peaks. Lynch taught us that aesthetics and beauty and our own creativity can and must be part of television.
In one of the many interviews he gave (which are themselves classes on how to create audiovisuals), he taught us that it is very easy to construct a story, to build/develop a script. One needs just seven note cards, writing down one idea at a time. When you finish with the seven cards, you will have the complete structure for your story or script. Each of those cards is a complete scene. But, of course, he alerts us that we are nothing without an idea. Ideas are everything.
Okay David, then the question would be how to get ideas? By accessing the unified field, he answered, an ocean of pure consciousness that exists within each of us. Everything that matters, all things, emerge from that field, he said. And that field has qualities: intelligence, bliss, creativity, universal love, energy, peace. When one accesses that field, called enlightenment, intuition grows. It is an ocean of solutions, and the joy that comes from that practice is unmatched. Once you experience the practice of meditation, he said, you will want to do it again. It is pure self-knowledge. And the enjoyment of life grows.
Ideas, said David. The first movie I saw was Lost Highway and, my God, it was an explosion of sensations: beauty, fear, anguish, bewilderment. Extremely interesting. After seeing the film, we walked through the small cobblestone streets of Bergen, laughing and surprised, deeply impressed by what we had just seen. We were just students and a world opened up before our eyes. Then of course we wanted to see more and more and more David Lynch films.
Then came The Straight Story. What a tender and beautiful road film. So touching and wonderful, like living itself. With such a surprising narrative line, so unexpected, almost simple. Yet so deep that it touches you and makes you vibrate with an everyday, magical story. It’s almost as if nothing happens in the entire movie, but you end up with tears in your eyes from so much beauty.
Why do we ask for logic from art, David queries, when life itself does not have it?
David Lynch practiced the discipline of transcendental meditation. Most importantly, he taught us through his films how to do it.
When people discovered that he was sick, of course the media asked him what treatment he was pursuing. He answered that he was doing fine, and that most of all he was happy.
He said simply that he was happy.
