Fishing with David Lynch
February 18, 2007 | 12:00am
Catching The Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness & Creativity
By David Lynch
177 pages
A few things you may not know about filmmaker David Lynch:
• For years, he had a syndicated comic strip in LA and Baltimore newspapers called "The Angriest Dog in the World."
• He has been a devoted practitioner of transcendental meditation (TM) for decades.
• He "doesn’t have a clue" what the weird little box and key are in Mulholland Drive.
It’s a bit odd to find these factoids imbedded in a sleekly designed book that almost comes across as a New Age self-help manual  that is, if such a manual were prepared by the director of Eraserhead and BlueVelvet. It’s almost as odd an occurrence as Lynch’s films themselves. But you soon grow to take Lynch’s sound bites and candid statements at face value.
After all, he’s arguably been one of the most original and influential filmmakers of the last 30 years, a man for whom the term "Lynchian" was coined to describe a certain dark, macabre or surreal quality.
Yet Lynch comes across as a perfectly well-adjusted Californian here, a citizen of Los Angeles who, like many others, finds peace and tranquility in the meditative techniques pioneered by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Yes, Lynch sits for 30 minutes twice a day and pulls out his mantra  it helps him "dive within" to his inner consciousness and return to the waking world fuller, sharper, ready to snag the next "idea" that may form the basis of an emerging film.
Ideas are the building blocks of his art. "Ideas are like fish," Lynch says in the opening sentence. "If you want to catch little fish, you stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch the big fish, you’ve got to go deeper." This deeper place is our personal inner consciousness, a place where we can tap into the Unified Field, where ideas swim freely and everything makes sense.
People often compare Lynch’s cinematic world to dreams, or more accurately, nightmares. But the director says dreams have supplied him with imagery only once, for Blue Velvet (he doesn’t specify, but I read elsewhere that it was the image of a dead man standing up in a room, wearing a yellow jacket). The presumption is that Lynch’s free-floating imagery, his emphasis on dark corners and vivid close-ups, must come from dream consciousness. But he argues that it’s really bits of ideas collected from the Unified Field, and so their "logic" must be viewed in that context.
This also explains why he refuses to "talk about" the meaning of his movies, which sometimes baffle audiences and critics alike.
We learn that Lynch is from the Northwest, where his father was a research scientist studying trees for the Department of Agriculture (which could account for Blue Velvet’s "Lumberton" setting and even the surroundings of Twin Peaks). He finds working with wood tactile and satisfying; indeed, all textures fascinate him. As an art student in Philadelphia (he remembers the City of Brotherly Love to be a "hellhole"), he thought it would be great if his paintings could move. So he projected a montage film loop onto one of his canvases and that was his first sale.
Film became an extension of his paintings. "Cinema is a language," he says, as he compares developing a film to developing a canvas  finding an initial idea, laying it down, working with it, seeing what you can add, then subtract, ultimately getting all the colors and layers and pieces to fit together. All the time staying true to the initial idea. Blue Velvet came about through a similar process of working with "fragments": "In Blue Velvet, it was red lips, green lawns, and the song  Bobby Vinton’s version of Blue Velvet. The next thing was an ear lying in a field. And that was it."
Contrary to some people’s beliefs, Lynch is not a dark dude. For years, he would go daily to Bob’s Big Boy, a sunny California diner, to drink milkshakes, think and write. Setting is very important to Lynch: "There’s safety in thinking in a diner. You can have your coffee or your milkshake, and you can go off into strange, dark areas, and always come back to the safety of the diner."
This is a good metaphor for watching Lynch’s films, by the way: they’re often wrapped, or at least fringed, in sunny normalcy; but deeper inside, darker impulses rage. And when the credits roll, you can return to the safety of the waking world, wondering what just overcame you.
He talks about the importance of "setup" as well: how necessary it is to have a reliable environment to lay down your ideas and do your work. For writers, it’s a desk with a computer or a notepad. For painters, it’s a closed studio. And so on.
At one point, while making Eraserhead, Lynch admits he was a very angry dude. He considered psychotherapy, but the therapist conceded that the process could make him "less creative." He discovered meditation instead.
Someone probably has already completed a master’s thesis on Lynch’s visual iconography, but it’s worth noting that the director knows perfectly well what all those red curtains stand for in his movies: they’re membranes, soft passageways to other states of consciousness. And no, he doesn’t mean through taking drugs, which "harm the physiology"; he means through dreaming, through meditating, and through the art of cinema. Music is also a key to other states of consciousness, and Lynch admits he will listen to the same piece over and over on his headphones while directing or running rehearsals, to get him in tune with "the idea."
Catching the Big Fish is a valuable book. Despite its one-page (sometimes one-sentence!) chapters and Zen brevity, it tells us quite a bit about David Lynch’s methods. It’s a valuable peek into the consciousness of a director who has arguably influenced the whole ’90s "indie" film movement, with his imprint evident in the films of Tarantino, the Coen brothers, Jim Jarmusch and many others. We learn, for instance, that since shooting his latest, Inland Empire, on digital video, Lynch will never go back to using more expensive film stock ever again (this will be of particular interest to local budget-conscious filmmakers).
And at the same time, the book is a semi-persuasive advertisement for TM, with Lynch donating all proceeds from the book to his Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace. (Lynch believes kids would be wiser, more attuned to reality, less troubled and violent if meditation was a part of their daily curriculum, and so funds schools that want to adopt such a program.) Maybe it’s a persuasive message because Lynch is the one advocating it; if Dr. Phil tried selling you on the Atkins Diet or Pilates, you might never listen. But hey, if sitting on a rug and reciting a mantra for 30 minutes a day works for David Lynch, young filmmakers and artists could do worse than to sit down and give it a try.
By David Lynch
177 pages
A few things you may not know about filmmaker David Lynch:
• For years, he had a syndicated comic strip in LA and Baltimore newspapers called "The Angriest Dog in the World."
• He has been a devoted practitioner of transcendental meditation (TM) for decades.
• He "doesn’t have a clue" what the weird little box and key are in Mulholland Drive.
It’s a bit odd to find these factoids imbedded in a sleekly designed book that almost comes across as a New Age self-help manual  that is, if such a manual were prepared by the director of Eraserhead and BlueVelvet. It’s almost as odd an occurrence as Lynch’s films themselves. But you soon grow to take Lynch’s sound bites and candid statements at face value.
After all, he’s arguably been one of the most original and influential filmmakers of the last 30 years, a man for whom the term "Lynchian" was coined to describe a certain dark, macabre or surreal quality.
Yet Lynch comes across as a perfectly well-adjusted Californian here, a citizen of Los Angeles who, like many others, finds peace and tranquility in the meditative techniques pioneered by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Yes, Lynch sits for 30 minutes twice a day and pulls out his mantra  it helps him "dive within" to his inner consciousness and return to the waking world fuller, sharper, ready to snag the next "idea" that may form the basis of an emerging film.
Ideas are the building blocks of his art. "Ideas are like fish," Lynch says in the opening sentence. "If you want to catch little fish, you stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch the big fish, you’ve got to go deeper." This deeper place is our personal inner consciousness, a place where we can tap into the Unified Field, where ideas swim freely and everything makes sense.
People often compare Lynch’s cinematic world to dreams, or more accurately, nightmares. But the director says dreams have supplied him with imagery only once, for Blue Velvet (he doesn’t specify, but I read elsewhere that it was the image of a dead man standing up in a room, wearing a yellow jacket). The presumption is that Lynch’s free-floating imagery, his emphasis on dark corners and vivid close-ups, must come from dream consciousness. But he argues that it’s really bits of ideas collected from the Unified Field, and so their "logic" must be viewed in that context.
This also explains why he refuses to "talk about" the meaning of his movies, which sometimes baffle audiences and critics alike.
We learn that Lynch is from the Northwest, where his father was a research scientist studying trees for the Department of Agriculture (which could account for Blue Velvet’s "Lumberton" setting and even the surroundings of Twin Peaks). He finds working with wood tactile and satisfying; indeed, all textures fascinate him. As an art student in Philadelphia (he remembers the City of Brotherly Love to be a "hellhole"), he thought it would be great if his paintings could move. So he projected a montage film loop onto one of his canvases and that was his first sale.
Film became an extension of his paintings. "Cinema is a language," he says, as he compares developing a film to developing a canvas  finding an initial idea, laying it down, working with it, seeing what you can add, then subtract, ultimately getting all the colors and layers and pieces to fit together. All the time staying true to the initial idea. Blue Velvet came about through a similar process of working with "fragments": "In Blue Velvet, it was red lips, green lawns, and the song  Bobby Vinton’s version of Blue Velvet. The next thing was an ear lying in a field. And that was it."
Contrary to some people’s beliefs, Lynch is not a dark dude. For years, he would go daily to Bob’s Big Boy, a sunny California diner, to drink milkshakes, think and write. Setting is very important to Lynch: "There’s safety in thinking in a diner. You can have your coffee or your milkshake, and you can go off into strange, dark areas, and always come back to the safety of the diner."
This is a good metaphor for watching Lynch’s films, by the way: they’re often wrapped, or at least fringed, in sunny normalcy; but deeper inside, darker impulses rage. And when the credits roll, you can return to the safety of the waking world, wondering what just overcame you.
He talks about the importance of "setup" as well: how necessary it is to have a reliable environment to lay down your ideas and do your work. For writers, it’s a desk with a computer or a notepad. For painters, it’s a closed studio. And so on.
At one point, while making Eraserhead, Lynch admits he was a very angry dude. He considered psychotherapy, but the therapist conceded that the process could make him "less creative." He discovered meditation instead.
Someone probably has already completed a master’s thesis on Lynch’s visual iconography, but it’s worth noting that the director knows perfectly well what all those red curtains stand for in his movies: they’re membranes, soft passageways to other states of consciousness. And no, he doesn’t mean through taking drugs, which "harm the physiology"; he means through dreaming, through meditating, and through the art of cinema. Music is also a key to other states of consciousness, and Lynch admits he will listen to the same piece over and over on his headphones while directing or running rehearsals, to get him in tune with "the idea."
Catching the Big Fish is a valuable book. Despite its one-page (sometimes one-sentence!) chapters and Zen brevity, it tells us quite a bit about David Lynch’s methods. It’s a valuable peek into the consciousness of a director who has arguably influenced the whole ’90s "indie" film movement, with his imprint evident in the films of Tarantino, the Coen brothers, Jim Jarmusch and many others. We learn, for instance, that since shooting his latest, Inland Empire, on digital video, Lynch will never go back to using more expensive film stock ever again (this will be of particular interest to local budget-conscious filmmakers).
And at the same time, the book is a semi-persuasive advertisement for TM, with Lynch donating all proceeds from the book to his Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace. (Lynch believes kids would be wiser, more attuned to reality, less troubled and violent if meditation was a part of their daily curriculum, and so funds schools that want to adopt such a program.) Maybe it’s a persuasive message because Lynch is the one advocating it; if Dr. Phil tried selling you on the Atkins Diet or Pilates, you might never listen. But hey, if sitting on a rug and reciting a mantra for 30 minutes a day works for David Lynch, young filmmakers and artists could do worse than to sit down and give it a try.
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