What David Lynch showed us about permission to be strange.
(A eulogy.)
If you haven’t already watched the footage of composer and longtime David Lynch collaborator Angelo Badalamenti demonstrating how the pair came up with the main theme for Lynch’s era-defining TV show Twin Peaks, I strongly urge you to do so. Badalamenti, who himself died in late 2022, takes us behind the curtain to shine a light on just how intimate and organic the creation of this music was. If you’ve ever collaborated with other people in modest spaces where you didn’t have the fanciest equipment to work with, this clip goes to show that even ideas of the most humble origins can etch their place in time forever.
I didn’t watch Twin Peaks when it originally aired over the course of two seasons on the American television network ABC. On the night of the show’s premiere in April of 1990, I was—much like the character of Laura Palmer—just 17 years old and still in high school. It wasn’t until after the turn of the millennium that I fell into a circle of friends who’d made it a weekly ritual to gather for potluck dinners followed by an episode of the show. As a result, my initial impression of the show itself stands out less so than the incandescent glow of coziness and bonhomie that I’ll always associate with it.
Prior to watching, I’d read at least one interview with Lynch, most memorably the cover story on him and Nine Inch Nails mastermind Trent Reznor that ran in the March 6, 1997 issue of Rolling Stone. (I still have the cover—minus all the other pages—in a milk crate because that issue also happened to include the music review that inspired my music-journalism career.) I’d also seen—and been deeply moved by—Lynch’s 1980 film adaptation of The Elephant Man, and I was certainly aware of the mystique around his cinematic debut, 1977’s Eraserhead.
Much to my surprise, though, the homey comfort of my friends’ on-campus apartment turned out, strangely enough, to match the tone of the show rather well. Though I’d read about Lynch’s singular ability to plumb the darkest recesses of the psyche, I wasn’t prepared for humor, whimsy, and wholesomeness that weave through Twin Peaks’ otherwise twisted disposition. This contrast, of course, is part of what made the series such an enduring phenomenon despite a precipitous second-season ratings decline that resulted in the network essentially forcing a rushed ending.
Nevertheless, it’s hard to fathom the idea of a TV network today daring to open a series with the murder of a minor found to have traces of both cocaine and semen from three different men in her system. (For more of the sordid details, see here, here, and here.) The 1990s, alas, were a decade marked by an unprecedented surge in transgressiveness that reverberated throughout the arts and culture at large. But even back then, it took enormous nerve to add a layer of spirit possession on top of a story that that already contained envelope-pushing levels of sexual deviance.
Ultimately, I found Twin Peaks unsatisfying. As Lynch makes clear in the Rolling Stone article, he had no interest in actually solving the mystery of Laura Palmer’s death:
“The murder of Laura Palmer,” Lynch says, “was the center of the story, the thing around which all the show’s other elements revolved—like a sun in a little solar system. It was not supposed to get solved. The idea was for it to recede a bit into the background, and the foreground would be that week’s show. But the mystery of the death of Laura Palmer would stay alive. And it’s true: As soon as that was over, it was basically the end. There were a couple of moments later when a wind of that mystery – a wind from that other world—would come blowing back in, but it just wasn’t the same, and it couldn’t be the same. I loved Twin Peaks, but after that, it kind of drifted for me.”
In the end, the world of Twin Peaks—visually and emotionally stunning as it was—never cohered into a state of mind worth dwelling in, even if it had been a marvelous place to visit. Moreover, I couldn’t help but notice the disparity between my friends’ enthusiasm for the show and their aversion to the more troubling aspects of human behavior that sit right under our noses every day.
I, for one, tend not to delve nearly as far into extremes of depravity as Lynch has done throughout his body of work. So I have some quarrel with the way outwardly extravagant weirdness gets socially rewarded while even the mention of more banal forms of emotional extremity remains out of bounds in our day-to-day interactions. As much as I admire Lynch’s filmmaking, for me it stands as a testament to the fact that people would rather be tickled by darkness than actually face what it tells us about ourselves.
Be a person who dares to incorporate whatever you've retrieved from staring into the abyss and I can guarantee you’ll be met with swift, punitive resistance. I'm aware that this is, to some degree, a self-fulfilling narrative loop that I've locked myself into. Still, I don't think my read is off-target by any means. In my observation, people are loath to make room in their daily lives for the very same things they'll go chasing after in art. And in Lynch's art in particular, the ugliest truths are packaged in such a way as to keep them at a safe distance.
Then again, we can’t blame Lynch if the rest of us lack the resolve to truly walk ourselves down the paths he leds us. Inevitably, Lynch's passing has sparked fans to repeat catchphrases from his work. Although I tend to find this fan-geek reflex irritating (especially, believe it or not, with things I’m a fan of myself), even I can appreciate the one-of-a-kind charm of Twin Peaks protagonist Agent Bradley Cooper’s proclamations about coffee.
At the end of the day, though, what's ringing most loudly in my head now isn't any of Agent Cooper's famous quips, but what Lynch said to Rolling Stone when elaborating on the allure of mystery as a creative device:
“You can say that a lot of Lost Highway is internal,” says Lynch. “It’s Fred’s story. It’s not a dream: It’s realistic, though according to Fred’s logic. But I don’t want to say too much. The reason is: I love mysteries. To fall into a mystery and its danger… everything becomes so intense in those moments. When most mysteries are solved, I feel tremendously let down. So I want things to feel solved up to a point, but there’s got to be a certain percentage left over to keep the dream going. It’s like at the end of Chinatown: The guy says, ‘Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown.’ You understand it, but you don’t understand it, and it keeps that mystery alive. That’s the most beautiful thing.”
My reservations about Twin Peaks aside, that quote has always resonated deeply with me. When I first read it back in ‘97, it had just been three years since I myself had been inspired to write a work of short fiction about a WWII U.S. naval vessel that suddenly re-appears in the present. When the image came to me, it gripped my awareness as if I had been plunged into an all-consuming fever. And when I finished writing the story, I still had no idea how to make any sense of it.
It was as if I'd woken up from the type of dream whose images remain vivid and compelling in your mind’s eye and nag you throughout the day. You just know there’s an important clue somewhere in there, yet the underlying message stubbornly eludes your grasp. The difference, however, was that I felt tremendous satisfaction in having followed my inspiration to the end—dutifully, wherever it might lead both me and the audience, even if there'd been no payoff per se.
As I look back on that short story now, I cringe. I'm sure it's an absolutely dreadful read. Honestly, I wouldn't even know where the one surviving printed copy might be. But Lynch's passing reminds me of how crucial it is to listen when inspiration comes calling and starts nudging you down a path you can’t make out because it has yet to be lit. He was right in the sense that there’s something deliciously rewarding about giving form to a work of art that refuses to disclose itself even to the creator who channeled it into existence.
In 2000, Lynch appeared on Charlie Rose and explained, among other things, why sticking to the rigid routine of eating the same meal every day actually helped free his imagination. (Full interview here.) Looking back in hindsight, Lynch displayed many tendencies that appear to fall on the autism spectrum. Of course, most of us didn’t have the vocabulary to identify them as such during his creative prime, which makes his rise to prominence all the more remarkable.
When all was said and done, David Lynch was able not only to make his way in life and achieve great renown, but to leave behind a body of work that resonated far and wide, in spite—or, perhaps, because of—its nagging refusal to answer the questions it flirted with. And, whether or not most of us enjoy as much of an on-the-ground sense of permission to be strange among family, friends, co-workers, and others in our immediate proximity—Lynch at least did his part to show that there is a place for difference in this world.
Also, not to be overlooked: Lynch was a musician in his own right too! Somewhat turned-off by his reliance on heavily stylized music in Twin Peaks, I was quite pleasantly surprised when I heard his third album, 2013’s The Big Dream. I was especially drawn-in by how Lynch deviated from the predictable “noir” stylings he’s most often associated with. His musical approach, much like his films, was born of a muse that’s hard to identify according to conventional notions of genre and mood. You owe it to yourself check it out!
Hats off to David Lynch in his sojourn into “the big dream”…
<3 SRK
For all of Siskel and Ebert’s Lynch reviews compiled in a single video, click here!