David Lynch and the Dimensions of Art
The Legend, Rest in Peace
So many people are sad today at David Lynch’s passing.
I do not feel qualified to write much, but I am sad too. He would certainly approve of the grappling of confused feelings in media. He would also approve of me writing the Friday post on time!
The Friday posts are supposed to be fun, and I think he would still count this as a fun article because all things considered, I am writing about something I like. (An interesting Lynchian thing to realize in the process of writing.)
Many people will be writing about his legendary body of work and what he was like as a person.
I will write about two things I know about: The David Lynch parties, and the David Lynch Masterclass.
David’s creative vision inspires such devotion that for years, fans celebrated his work through elaborately themed parties with confusing foods, intense soundtracks and obscure costumes — sometimes with no prompting for the guests other than his name in the party theme, “David Lynch Halloween Party” and everybody would understand.
Then people make inside jokes and bond over noticing the small details from the movies. They would also have fun with the ontologically necessary added individual creative spin from the party guest in transforming something they saw on the screen into something to inhabit at a party. (How do you turn the rose fence from Blue Velvet into an outfit?)
In this way, no two Lynch parties are the same, becasue the attendees would each have figured out something different to do.
This engagement with creativity is what stood out and impressed me among the David Lynch fans. Given the ways that he played with time, his movies inspired either boredom and rage at their incomprehension, or curiosity about what exactly one is looking at, when one is in the act of looking at his movies. In this way, he is a true artist, really grappling with his medium.
“Every medium is infinitely deep. And when you get to know them, they’ll let you go deeper.”
He has a course on Masterclass which I had used before to cheer myself up when I was confused, but wanted the confusion to also be fun.
“How to go deeper into the confusion, in a way that is grounded and textured, and not lead to further insanity” is something that Lynch’s body of work is good at. He has talked before about creating his work to explore his own memories — they are dreamlike, but have a point and have a baseline in reality. As serious as he is as an artist living an artist’s life — he would not be able to pull off the groundedness of his dreamscapes if he was not also very funny.
I also enjoyed the way he portrays California. He goes deep into the large expanses — the highways, the brushwood, the deserts — and shows us the horrorscapes he finds even in seeming emptiness. He builds large personalities that have nowhere to hide except in their cars — and then goes deep with them. “Self-creation” as part of a western ethos — newness, transparency, difference even in consistent weather and no seasons — these were things that had confused me about California for a long time that I had learned to notice and appreciate.
(My east coast adaptability to one day’s thirteen different weather conditions and the forests means that there is a lot to move with or hide behind as part of mere daily navigation — even if one isn’t trying to be unseen.)
His course is on creativity and film.
I would say it alone is worth a Masterclass subscription.
I had attended a David Lynch Halloween party in 2022. I went as the Dorothy half of Frank and Dorothy from Blue Velvet.
I happened to have a blue velvet dress, and my costume-half had a leather jacket and some sleep apnea machine components.
If you know the movie, you would know this is an intense costume pairing! But at a David Lynch party, it was appreciated and was quite funny!
I do not understand all of his movies (yet), but I’d been loving exploring each movie as well as the shared themes between movies in his discography, and he is in my heart as one of my favorite filmmakers.
I remember when I was younger, I really wanting to meet somebody who could show them to me and explain them to me. I wanted to be somebody who “liked David Lynch.” I wanted to watch more “artsy” films with fun colors that made me feel deep feelings. I had never seen a David Lynch film when I had decided I wanted this — this was by reputation alone that I had assumed this set of features must exist and must be exciting.
His work satiated my cravings for all of this and more — and instead of being an end point after which I turn back to whatever I was doing before, showed me a pathway for even deeper investigation.
As for David Lynch being “artsy” — he had been teaching me what it could mean if I took up the serious and difficult mantle of living as an artist.
