Good evening, whenever you are. At the top of the stairs I have more MOBY DICK for you.
But before we ascend to the SECRET ROOM, you may have seen the few and paltry words I tried to assemble to express my feelings about David Lynch.
When I learned he had passed away, I immediately opened my copy of A MASTERPIECE IN DISARRAY by Max Evry. It’s an oral history of the making of David Lynch’s DUNE—a gift from my old DUNE pal Tim McGonagle.
I found these photos of Lynch collected inside.
Even then, in his thirties, a philosophy of being seemed to radiate from every gesture: a curiosity and openness re: the world of humans and things around him. A dedication to finding and nourishing a deep happiness within.
So I wrote these paltry words and put them on instagram, but I’ll share them here as well in case you hate that platform, and why shouldn’t you, after all?
What Lynch knew and was trying to tell us all along is: you should take pictures of the hotel parrots. Even if you’re in the midst of filming a massive, impossible, sandworm opera in the desert, don’t forget to look around. Be curious about birds. Be curious about everything. Talk to people. Accept sunscreen and other help. Sit at your desk and get things done. But also doodle and daydream of a cat with a rat strapped to it. What does it mean? It does not matter. Put it in your movie. David Lynch gave us permission through example: to be as strange as you are and take value in it, to accept the logic of dreams, to not fear the unexplainable, and instead to enjoy its silence.
There’s a lot to emulate in Lynch’s life. NOT the cigarettes, please, but definitely the meditation.
Even if you don’t specifically get into Lynch’s beloved Transcendental Meditation, it’s clear that his habit of mindfulness made him a person who not only enjoyed life, but likely looked at death with less terror.
I saw a video of him talking to Harry Dean Stanton online, and when Lynch asks Stanton “how would you like to be remembered” and Stanton says, “It doesn’t matter,” you can see Lynch smile, as if to say “This guy gets it.”
It reminded me of something I overheard in the YMCA locker room this week after a swim. For years there have been a clutch of old guys who hang out there, gossiping and shit stirring and sometime singing doo wop in the nude.
This week I heard one guy say to the other, “We are nothing but dust. Cosmic dust. If they don’t appreciate you, if they don’t appreciate your gifts, then fuck them.”
These guys get it.
I’ve been going to this YMCA for 15 years. Scurrying from locker to shower. I don’t like transitions and I never liked public nudity. I always felt terrified, unsure of which shame to cover first: my top half shame or my bottom half shame.
Now I realize I am one of the old guys. And while I do not sing doo wop, I feel more comfortable being naked now, both physically and figuratively. We are nothing but cosmic dust after all.
As Harry Dean Stanton said, there is no self. What a relief.
