Why David Lynch?

I am 34 years old and my relationship of 5 years is ending. I am in pain but I am able to control it better than when I was a teenager or in my twenties. I am aware of the process. I have been through this before. There are different challenges and different reasons for the separation but the end result is the same… I am on my own. I can do what I want. I only have to focus on my own needs. It has not been this way in a long time.

Now that I am able to focus on my needs and impulses I am aware that something in me is drawing me to a David Lynch film. I have no idea why. I have gone through phases with directors many times through out my life. While in my teens I was attracted to Speilberg, Zemeckis, Kubrick and Scorsese. I watched every film in their filmography from their first to their most recent. The weird thing is I have done this with Lynch before in college. With Lynch though it is different - I could not just sit through a week of his films and expect to come out any sort of sane. I have had to stretch his filmography out over years. His films are dark and take his audience to places within themselves that are not always comfortable places to go. Even though I am in pain from a break up I am not a person who watches something dark for darks sake. Usually I would watch something much lighter or optimistic. If wanted to watch a painful movie about a break up I could watch “Blue Valentine, 500 Days of Summer or Revolutionary Road.” So it is strange to me that for some reason I am thinking about David Lynch right now. 

I am going to watch Eraserhead. I have never seen Eraserhead and I am honestly nervous to watch it. I have never been nervous to watch a movie before but with this one I am. It is the only film of his I have not seen. Everything I hear about it has made me avoid it for years. I feel I must be in the right state of mind and mood to be able to watch this film. I don’t know if that is right now - I do feel a on edge and my wounds are still fresh but there is something in me that is telling me this is the time. So I decided to write my thoughts and state of mind before I start this movie. This way I may be able to figure out why I have the urge to finally watch this film.

The sun is still out but will be down in about a half hour. I don’t have the courage right now to start this movie in the dark. I will ease my way into it in the light and let the dark come gradually. Nothing in my life makes complete sense right now but at the same time I feel like everything is happening for a reason. I know that is clique but I have been feeling this way for months. I feel like I am on a path that is taking me to a place where I want to go- so I am making and active decison not to fight my inclinations. Whatever is telling me to watch this film- I am just going to embrace it.

Since Lynch has been on my mind, earlier in the day I watched the documentary The Art Life. Through out the documentary Lynch tells stories of his childhood and you discover his path as an artist. He works on paintings and we watch him create. His work is so bizarre but watching him he seems to know exactly what he is doing. He is creating exactly what he wants. He has such purpose and control in the textures, colors and mediums he uses. He is not acting on whim or making things that don’t have a purpose. He is very aware of what he wants and how he wants his work to feel. I just have so many questions as I watch him create. His work is so foreign to my rational brain, yet I am attracted to it. I would never want one of his paintings in my house or to look at one often but I find the fact they come to him so naturally very fascinating.

Looking at Lynch and seeing how interacts with people and children he is such a nice guy. He is so peaceful and comfortable but that is not what his work evokes. It is hard to compute. It is hard to understand but yet easy to appreciate. That is exactly how I feel about his films. Images from his films have stayed with me for years. I recall them out of the blue and it is unexplainable. His work has seeped into my subconscious. He knows exactly how pull out these emotions and thought flows in such a deliberate way that it makes me question the deepest parts of my reality. He has tapped into something I will never fully understand but find so much fascinating about his ability to make this grotesque art that in the strangest way makes so much sense but yet none at all. He is tapping into something I have not explored with in myself (As i am writing this down these words are not even doing justice to what his art actually evokes. It is nearly impossible to explain with words.) 

Well the sun is setting and I need to start this movie before it is gone. Why do I feel this is the time for me to watch this movie? Why is Lynch the artist I am drawn to right now? Maybe these questions will be answered when I am done. 

I just finished the film and honestly it was not that bad (if you are used to Lynch films). I can see how back in the 70’s when this was originally released and no one knew who David Lynch was this could have shaken people to their core. I have grown up watching Twin Peaks, Mullholand Drive, Blue Velvet and Lost Highway- so now in my 30’s watching Eraserhead it felt exactly like what I expected. In fact it was kind of enjoyable seeing that a lot of the ideas and styles Lynch still does today he was exploring in his original film. There are so many of the same elements, styles, techniques that are now described as “Lynchian” that it actually felt more fun watching it than disturbing. Fun isn’t the right word it was disturbing and gave me anxiety and there were some haunting images but I was more impressed with the fact that this was his college film. I can see how this was the catalyst for his career. When this was first released people probably walked out of the theater wondering “What the fuck did I just see.” Then they began to talk about it, it sat with them for days maybe months and slowly they began to wonder “who the fuck is David Lynch and why did he create this movie? I need to know now!”

I don’t love Lynch films but I can absolutely appreciate them. He has tapped into something that no one can exactly put their finger on what they are experiencing. This makes him a genius in every sense of the word. He is purely original and has so much confidence in his work. I can’t help but find him fascinating. I want to reject his work and I always do initially but then I always come back to it. My logic is so grounded in a three act structure that wants a nice clean ending that it is hard for my brain to get where Lynch is taking me. I decided I will just feel his movies. That is it. I honestly don’t even try to make sense of them or try to analyze them. I know he has a lot of fans that do exactly that and initially I found it fun reading the fan theories but I no longer do. I think of his films like waking up from a dream. I know generally what my dream was about and how I feel when I wake up but it is not logical. I am just left with a feeling.

I think that is why I wanted to watch a Lynch film as I am dealing with my break up. I don’t think it mattered that it was Eraserhead, it could have been any surreal Lynch film. I had just never seen Eraserhead so the idea of the unknown was what was attracting me to it. I wanted to make sense of this situation. My break up is something I can rationalize and I can understand all the reasons it is ending and I will move forward knowing it is the best thing for us both but... it still hurts. I still don’t really understand it. I can’t put all the pieces together and know its meaning but it still does not make sense. I am just left with this feeling. It is the feeling I get from a Lynch film. 

Break ups are always dark even when you know it should happen. The relationship starts out as one thing and ends as something else. It is hard to pinpoint exactly where things started to slide in the new direction. I am left with a mixture of emotion that will pan out over time and one day when I look back on my life I might be able to understand it more fully. Then again why does everything have to make sense? Why do emotions have to be rationalized and analyzed. Great art comes from the purely subconscious. Do you think Lynch could honestly rationalize and verbalize to us where the images and ideas he has come from or how they developed? No. It is inspiration. It is creation and destruction. These are powers we do not understand. How do you conceptualize, analyze and verbalize the human soul? It is just something you feel. There are no words to that can explain where inspiration comes from. It is a thought and a feeling. It comes from the divine. It is not something that can be spoken in the physical world. We can grasp at concepts but still not fully realize what they mean. That is why as much as I can rationalize my break up and move forward confidently I still feel pain. After watching a lynch film I can feel what he is getting across more than anything else. There is no way to verbalize it and I also don’t think you should have to. Just feel it.