Thank you, David Lynch
A hand in the dark
I made the mistake of checking Instagram while on a work call. The first thing I saw was a tribute post to David Lynch and that’s how I learned the world lost one of its great ones. I had to scramble to turn off my mic and camera before I started crying. I know he was 78 and lived a longer and fuller life than many of us will, but it still feels too soon, doesn’t it?
He’s part of my holy trinity of Davids: Bowie, Lynch, Attenborough. Each taught me to see and know and love the world in a different way. Their work found me (or I found it) at points in my life when I felt lost, confused, despondent. They shepherded me through. They taught me to marvel and find beauty in all things, even ugly, brutal things; even horrifying things; even death. They taught me that life is bigger and wilder and weirder than anything we can every truly understand and that my role in it all is so infinitesimal as to be practically nonexistent. And that’s ok, it doesn’t make being here any less astonishing.
Lynch stoked within me a deep, abiding love for mystery, a love that has brought me more peace than almost anything else in this world. Sitting with unanswerable questions has been a way of navigating pain that defies comprehension. A way of releasing the need to define and explain and solve unsolvable problems. A way of opening myself to experience and saying, wow. Facing the pit and saying, thank you.
Blue Velvet was the first Lynch I saw. I watched it for an American Gothic class in college. A few months later I watched Twin Peaks. I was utterly baffled by both but I got the feeling deep in my chest, deep in my gut, of something unfurling. The slow release of a long held breath: recognition. I didn’t get it, but I got it. Red velvet curtains started showing up in my dreams and never really stopped. He’d infiltrated my subconscious, my unconscious. And when an artist offers that who cares about plot? Who cares about making sense?
He didn’t teach me to meditate or pay attention to my dreams, but he helped me take both practices more seriously and not care so much when someone scoffs.1 (Side note: if anyone wants to track down and purchase one of these out of print Twin Peaks tarot decks for me, I’d love you forever.) Over and over, his work invited me to give up the idea that I knew anything at all and to understand this not knowing as a starting point, as home base. I took and continue to take great inspiration from his deep, genuine curiosity and pleasure in the everyday. He shaped the way I bring myself to art and the expectations I place on it.
I was raised Catholic and while I’m sure it continues to influence me more than I give it credit for, I knew early on that I didn’t have what it takes to be a true believer. I liked some of the stories, but faith eluded me. I’ve yet to find a belief system that made my whole being reverberate with yes. I guess part of faith (from what I gather) is casting this doubt aside and choosing to believe anyway. But I don’t have whatever it is that allows someone to say I believe anyway without it being a lie.
I know believers and atheists alike tend to brush off agnosticism2 as unserious and not fully considered, a cowardly position. But the only thing that’s ever felt true to me is that I don’t know — can’t know — what any of this is, how or why we’re here, why we are the way we are, what happens next. This doesn’t feel like a cop out to me. I’ve often wished for faith — in a god or the absence of one. But I just don’t trust any of the answers on offer. I used to find that much scarier than I do now. Now it feels like a sweet sort of surrender. When I let it, it brings me to a state of wonder, of deep gratitude. I don’t know what any of this is, what any of this means. I don’t what I’m doing, or how or why we’re here. But we’re here. Isn’t that terrifying? Isn’t that wonderful? Isn’t that enough?
Lynch’s art provided a way of communing with this mystery. He created spaces that transcended reason and explanation and order — expansive, fantastic thresholds. And yes, I love a fan theory as much as the next person. I’ve spent my fair share of time poking around the forums dedicated to his work, wondering what exactly he was on about when it came to certain characters and plot points and symbols. The genres he borrowed from invite this and, in part, it’s what makes his work so fun. That, and his refusal to define it for us. I have no idea what’s going on, is my most standard reaction to his films, but it’s never bothered me because what’s going on (by which I mean specific plot points) never really matters when it comes to him.3 What matters is the experience. What matters is your willingness to inhabit the shifting, fluid space between emotion, intuition, and logic — where something happens within you — that sensual, experiential space where words will always be inadequate.
There’s no YouTube explainer for experience or emotion or connecting on a visceral level with a work of art. You either feel it or you don’t. You can’t fake that kind of abandon, not really. There’s no cheat for it either. You have to actually show up and open up, let it work its magic.
Stepping into these spaces is not always easy. Some of what he created went beyond nightmare. But this is also why I loved him. He understood fear — and not just the day-to-day fear of pain and misery and heartbreak (though he understood those too). He understood the bedrock fear. The fear we spend so much of our lives trying to ignore, erecting elaborate facades to distract and protect us from. We learn our roles, we play our parts, we sleepwalk through our days. We do everything in our power not to even glance in its direction. But he asked us to stare at it head on, to invite it in and let it move through us, change us.
I finished a Twin Peaks: The Return rewatch this past weekend. I found the final moments just as disturbing this time around. It’s a dark and tragic end to Laura Palmer’s dark and tragic story. It’s a terrible place to leave us, but I also don’t think it diminishes the rest of what we’ve experienced. Ed and Norma’s love story (as just one example) is no less meaningful or sweet, even if it is all the figment of a dying girl’s dream or just one out of an infinite number of parallel realities or however you interpret what’s going on in this series. Even knowing what was coming, I still squealed with delight when Norma’s hand slides on to Big Ed’s shoulder and that Otis Redding song kicks back up and he turns to face her and they finally get their happily ever after. Even if it never really happened (which it didn’t, it is a tv show after all, a work of collaborative imagination) it matters. Their story matters, stories of love and tenderness and hope amidst unimaginable evil matter.
I don’t know. Maybe this is all just a blip and nothing comes next. Maybe it’s dreams within dreams within dreams all the way down. Maybe we can’t save each other, but I think it matters that we try. It matters that we face the terror and turn toward each other, not away.
The final scene and the truly haunting end credits will never leave me, but the image I keep returning to is that of Dale walking hand in hand with those he cares about through the dark. We see this twice in the second to last episode. Once with Diane and Gordon, and again with Laura. This is what navigating Lynch’s work often felt like. He stood at the precipice of darkness and offered us his hand. He reminded us that as awful as it is, as scared as it made us, we were not alone. We’re in it together (whatever it ultimately is) at least as far as we can be. We have to take the last few steps on our own, but with any luck we’ll greet whatever comes next with an open curiosity and a heart full of gratitude for all that carried us there.
Thank you, David Lynch, from the bottom of my heart.
A brief aside:
I finished my rewatch after work on Friday and while I wanted to just lay in a sensory deprivation tank for awhile and feel things, I was very hungry, so I offered to go get takeouts. We live about 20 minutes from town, 15 of those minutes are on a long, winding road lined on both sides by classic PNW pines and ferns. (Side note to my side note: I know Bellingham isn’t the inspiration for the town of Twin Peaks, but it sure feels like it should be.) It was already dark by the time I left and there were surprisingly few other cars on the way.
I thought I’d try the new Ethel Cain album. I haven’t listened to her much, but had loosely associated her with a moody, dark Americana so it felt appropriate and I’d heard this album was especially strange. I was about 5 minutes into the first track, my headlights spotlighting the road, when I started thinking: Am I hallucinating? Am I dead? Did I somehow slip into an alternate reality where I’m actually in an episode of The Return?
It was such a perfect case of serendipity, it felt transcendent. I felt like I left my body and time and space (but also I’m a good and attentive driver, don’t worry).
I got our food and scurried back to the car, not wanting to break the spell. About 20 minutes later I pulled into our driveway at the exact second the fourth track ended. I was euphoric and a little freaked out. But then I went inside and it was cozy and warmly lit and Otis ran up to greet me and Ben gave me a kiss and I remembered how hungry I was.
I’m not a TMer, I’m too cult-averse, but I can’t deny I’m curious what mantra they’d give me.
To be clear: I’m speaking for myself, I’m not saying Lynch was agnostic. He clearly had beliefs about all this and what comes next. Maybe if I keep at it I’ll find my way to something similar in a few decades.
Although if anyone wants to talk about what’s going on, in any of it, I’m game. Top of mind right now after a rewatch is just what is going on with my girl Audrey?? Did she never wake up from her coma?