“I learned that just beneath the surface there’s another world, and still different worlds as you dig deeper. I knew it as a kid, but I couldn’t find the proof. It was just a kind of feeling. There is goodness in blue skies and flowers, but another force – a wild pain and decay – also accompanies everything.”
David Lynch, the artist and filmmaker whose works include Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks and Mulholland Drive, has died aged 78. His family announced his death on Facebook, saying 'There’s a big hole in the world now that he’s no longer with us. But, as he would say, “Keep your eye on the donut and not on the hole.” It’s a beautiful day with golden sunshine and blue skies all the way.'
Lynch was an artist, his abstract canvas extending into film, music and television. His visions are imbued with a deeply haunting, dreamy quality, both wonderful and strange. From his feature debut Eraserhead - his “dream of dark and troubling things” - to the small town horrors of Twin Peaks, and the enfolding darkness of Hollywood's Dream Factory in Mulholland Drive, he uncovered the macabre nestled within the mundane; the rot beneath the white picket fence, the quiet devastation behind a prom queen's smile.
When I was 18 I worked weekends in a poultry meat factory, packing cooked chicken into trays passing along a conveyer belt (in hindsight it was very Eraserhead). I had seen Scream and The Craft (my gateway horror films) a couple of years prior, and was still excitedly exploring the genre. A colleague, a teacher in training, suggested I watch Eraserhead, noting (with a hint of esoteric knowing), that I would never forget it. Not only was he right, but he also inadvertently set me along a filmic pathway that I continue on today, seeking out the weird, the obscure, the transgressive. Lost Highway and Blue Velvet followed (introducing me to the work of This Mortal Coil and Julee Cruise). I had seen The Elephant Man as a child, and returning to it as an adult, I found it to be just as powerful and heart wrenching. And then I delved into Twin Peaks. My goodness. Twin Peaks changed how I looked at the world.
Aside from my own personal relationship with his work, there's also an element of it that is deeply entangled in my friendships and with feelings of nostalgia. When I left home for university, Lynch's work was an integral part in the beginnings of several important friendships. So many late night discussions about Twin Peaks and Fire Walk With Me. Whole conversations consisting of quotes from his films. Along the way I fondly remember seeing Lost Highway at the Tate Modern with my cousin; I still have the stubs from the various times I saw Mulholland Drive at the cinema; meeting so many kindred spirits at Twin Peaks Fest in Belfast; buying coffee from his website; going to see the man himself at Queen's University when he was promoting his book, Catching the Big Fish, and talking about transcendental meditation.
And then, when it returned to our screens in 2017, a weekly Twin Peaks night with a couple of friends (memories of which I still cherish dearly). I remember waiting for the first episode. The unbearable anticipation throughout the day. The wave of emotions during the opening credits; those first rich, sombre chords of the theme music (by Lynch's long-time collaborator Angelo Badalamenti), a portal into another world, into which we will float away. And then having to wait a whole week to see the next episode (a novelty, given streaming had by this stage already changed the way we watch TV shows). And, of course, those haunting final moments of it all...
The stories Lynch told, the characters he populated them with, the moods he conjured, and the memories I have of experiencing them with my nearest and dearest, will stay with me always. And isn't that the mark of a true artist and storyteller? Binding us together, forever.
I hope wherever he is, he's in a place both wonderful and strange.
The photo of the little shrine to Laura Palmer was taken by my friend Caroline. It was a fixture in my living room during our weekly Twin Peaks nights in 2017, along with cherry pie. And sometimes espresso martinis.