on david lynch
My home, in many ways, was a quintessential Midwest archetype—the kind you might find an ear in on a lazy summer afternoon. My family was nuclear, our diet fairly balanced (after all, my grandmother was a nutritionist), and our TV watching was relatively simple. I scoured the Internet Movie Database with great care, but my fascination leaned more toward the nihilism of Nolan’s early career than the simplicity of TV writers or classic cinema.
The first time I heard Lynch’s name was through my father, who recounted seeing the backward-talking dwarf on Twin Peaks. In his bewilderment over what it all meant, he inadvertently taught me something about Lynch—that his power is subconscious, evocative, and not through strict explanation.
I can’t recall exactly how I felt watching Lynch for the first time, beyond the universal expectation of concrete answers embedded within his films. I borrowed Mulholland Drive from the Northfield Public Library, and halfway through watching the DVD on my home computer downstairs—my private cove for rumination—I found myself pausing. I turned the case over and saw a list of clues on the back. I couldn’t make sense of them at the time. I’d understand later the meaning wasn’t in strict delineation. The clues were more entry points.
The way Lynch brings me joy is the same way he has sparked the imaginations of so many others. He understands the existential horror that plagues our dreams but suspends the hubris to think he can conquer it. Instead, he lets his unconscious mind loose, giving all his worlds the same playground—a place that bridges the pedestrian with the divinity of the subconscious, granting equal measure to both. To me, Lynch was like a different kind of child—one who found classic works divine, lapped at the shores of sincerity as a nebulous form, and, in his concrete status as human, kept a stately curiosity reserved for only the greatest storytellers: Miyazaki, Wordsworth, and a host of others, mostly poets.
Yesterday, the day he died, I returned home and watched my first Douglas Sirk film, Imitation of Life. Though nearly half a century apart from his final film, Inland Empire, Sirk’s melodrama resonated with Lynch’s ability to capture human emotion. Inland Empire—the culmination of an L.A. trilogy that began with Lost Highway and continued with Mulholland Drive—remains a testament to his vision. I had the pleasure of seeing Inland Empire in its restored form at the Laemmle Theater in North Hollywood. (I still have the ticket stub.) Lynch seems to have inherited Sirk’s keen understanding of human emotion. That’s what makes his work so eternal. Lynch is not sardonic in the least; his earnestness made Twin Peaks timeless and universal, inspiring countless imitators who have tried, and failed, to capture his magic.
What makes Lynch truly uninimitable is how he lives through his influences. His work is deeply expressive in a way that is entirely singular, shaped by his upbringing and infused with his insecurities, biases, and small joys. These personal threads sink into and animate everything he created. Like many great filmmakers, Lynch understood that the mystery itself—not its resolution—was what made the experience worthwhile. Though audiences clamored for answers to Laura Palmer’s murder, the true magic lay in traversing the Mobius strip, not conquering it.
To understand Lynch’s work, especially his final creations, Inland Empire and Twin Peaks: The Return, one can return to his rare comment about his work, describing Laura Palmer. “She’s my golden goose,” he said, “and she was laying these golden eggs.” That is the joy and timelessness of Lynch: his iterative, endlessly explorable canon. The joy is in following the goose. What in the world would we do if we caught one?