The impact David Lynch had on me took place over time. It started with a Siskel and Ebert review of Blue Velvet when I was 21. Though it planted a seed it was planted deeply. It would be years until I saw the film. But even before that Lynch had gifted me with the knowledge that the world I saw around me wasn’t the whole story. There were dark things under the surface goodness so obvious it was easy to miss them. I have too many memories attached to his films to go through all of them here. But let me offer a few. My friend Kevin McCerney and I snowshoeing 1/4 of a mile through thigh deep snow to a screening of Dune. We had called the theater on a lark to see if it was still open during the blizzard. They said they were contractually obligated to at least run it through the projector. We were the only ones in the entire theater. Im talking all the screens. I remember The Elephant Man finally leaping from the pages of my worn copy of Very Special People. He was even more alive in Lynches camera. More beautiful. The part of me that felt I was so very different from others had discovered not so much a patron saint but a fellow traveller. Many years later, in Chicago I and all the other local Chicago critics were seated in the Lake St. Screening Room to see The Straight Story. The screen lights up blue with the cheery white castle and star rainbow of the Disney logo only to go suddenly black as the phrase, “A Film by David Lynch” appears. Laughter all around at the irony. But of course this was the Lynch-iest of ironies. The pure innocence of an old man’s quirky attempt at reconciliation with his estranged brother conjured by the same heart that had created the warped Frank Booth of Blue Velvet. A character of criminal ravings and cravings for nitrous oxide and sexual violence. But in Lynches capable hands even Booth took on a humanity that seemed utterly plausible.

I discovered Twin Peaks via a set of worn VHS tapes that had been endlessly passed around by friends. After that I was never the same. It was less a television series to me than a resonant portal where good and evil finally took on their true significance refusing to be mitigated by the mundane. If real life too often resembled a soap opera then Twin Peaks was the reminder that however tawdry and cartoonish the situations became, life was still a dangerous and beautiful business populated by beings inherently transcendent. I remember weeping several times as the melodramatic waves washed over me carrying assurance, saying that it was possible to be washed clean even when lost in the deep darkness. 

But much of Lynch’s work took place in that darkness. Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive both mocked the superficiality viewers often bring to cinema. Viewers often want to believe their lives can be like a movie. But the movie gods don’t care about your hopes or dreams and the main characters in those films learn a terrifying lesson. If you aren’t careful you get trapped within yourself wandering between illusions and all too real torment. Watching those movies was like holding a phantom hand determined to drag you through hell. Who knew that was the way to self-recognition. 

And Lynch, most definitely recognized himself. I haven’t mentioned Eraserhead yet. Lynch reportedly made the film at least in part, as a response to his daughter Jennifer being born with severely clubbed feet. Eraserhead seems to take place in exactly the sort of universe where such random cruelties would be de rigueur. But it was never the case for Lynch that the darkness could exist without the light. People have argued about the ending of Eraserhead ever since Henry, a cinematic surrogate for Lynch himself found a warm embrace at the end of much suffering. Perhaps this accounted for the enigma Lynches true identity. 

To look unflinchingly into the darkness, one must bring a light. The light reveals, illuminates, and may even burn. But in the end it carries us when the darkness threatens to overcome. There is no darkness that can overpower it when it is wielded with the willingness to know oneself. Eventually the darkness is banished. It is not what we were created for and if we are wise we see it for what it is. As time went on it was fascinating to watch Lynch pop up online or in print now and then to deliver some whimsical or mysterious comment on art, creativity and just plain living. His ability to peer into the darkest corners of the human heart and mind belied a larger truth of inner calmness, peace, and a sort of midwestern simplicity. In my mind’s eye I still see him sawing a log. It’s an image that could have come from one of his short films, or internet posts. I’m not sure of it’s origins but I know it impacted me immediately when I first saw it. Here was one of the most creatively gifted people of the twentieth century shaping a log. What would he do with it? Was it merely the sensation of working with the wood that called to him. Was it a way of saying, “I am here. But here is part of me as well. It’s what I build with. It’s where my dreams , my words, the strokes of my paint brush and imagination can fly. It is anything but mundane or plain. It is a miracle.”

I only have one Lynch film left to see. It’s Wild At Heart. But I don’t know if I can watch it just yet. Right now Im thinking about Dale Cooper in the red room. About mystic giants, dwarfs dancing backwards and the ghastly screaming red-eyed face of Laura Palmer. I see a man taking his riding mower on a multi-state mission of mercy. I see a flying fat man and a bloodied human ear hidden in the suburban grass. A meat baby and angels that are simultaneously deformed and radiantly beautiful. Right now Im in the Black Lodge. Bob is around here somewhere and I mustn’t let him catch up to me. All he does is eat souls and destroy bodies and wrap pretty girls in plastic. I know all this because David Lynch told me. But he also told me about the light. He smoked. He laughed. He sawed wood. It’s in a pile in my mind and I want to stare at it awhile before I try to build something out of it.