Revisiting: Little Gems of Focus

 

I recently revisted David Foster Wallace's book of essays A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments to re-read the essay he wrote called David Lynch Keeps His Head, about hanging out on the set of David Lynch's Lost Highway. It was such a pleasure to revisit it after having watched Twin Peaks. DFW, was a self-admitted Lynch freak, and this article is thoughtful, funny and pithy. He talks about more than just Lost Highway though -- pretty much his thoughts on Lynch's work in general. This essay was originally in an issue of Premiere in 1996. I also noticed it gets quoted a lot in other articles I stumble on, usually in reference to helping define what "Lynchian" actually means as an adjective (and I'm paraphrasing DFW here): macabre but mundane irony, a deconstruction of a weird 'irony of the banal.' One example he gives is in reference to serial killers: Dahmer storing body parts in the fridge next to chocolate milk, that's pretty Lynchian, but Ted Bundy, well, not so much.

Things I loved in the essay: 
-Lynch's work is not quite art film (as a viewer, DFW explains, with art films you pay to get in and have to do then do some intellectual work, essentially paying to have to work). But Lynch's films aren't quite commercial films either (as a viewer for commericall films, you pay once to get in but have an unspoken assumed contract with the filmmaker that the fee you paid to get in is the only "price" you pay; you don't have to do any work.) DFW speculates that Lynch belongs to a third class of filmmaking that is more about just getting "inside your head," (p. 171) or as British critic Paul Taylor says, Lynch's movies are "to be experienced rather than explained" (p. 170).  I agree with this. I think about many of the dream sequences in Twin Peaks and the argument I have heard many people make, that what is really being communicated is a mood. Or something. Something that comes to mind in regard to this point is that I saw the Chicago premier of the documentary film about Lynch's 16 city speaking tour entitled Meditation, Creativity, Peace. In it, a student told him that while watching Inland Empire that once they dimmed down their conscious mind always trying to make sense of the movie, that they felt like they intuitively understood it more, and Lynch agreed that that is the best way to understand his films. I have a hunch that other people who work with him would agree. In fact, off the top of my head I'm like 77% sure I read a quote from Twin Peaks co-creator Mark Frost (from Reflections: An Oral History of Twin Peaks by Brad Dukes), where Mark Frost said something to the effect that Lynch is the master of communicating a mood. However, I should point out that DFW does say on page 161 of this essay "Lynch seems to run into trouble only when his movies seem to the viewer to want to have a point -- i.e. when they set the viewer up to expect some kind of coherent connection between plot elements and then fail to deliver any such point." I have a hunch that that may have been a criticism of both Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive, but it probably depends on the person.

-this quote, which appropriately (and you will see why this is appropriate once you read this quote) can be used about art in general: "Art, after all, is supposed to be a kind of communication, and "personal expression" is cinematically interesting only to the extent that what's expressed finds and strikes chords within the viewer. The difference between experiencing art that succeeds as communication and art that doesn't is rather like the difference between being sexually intimate with a person and watching that person masturbate. In terms of literature, richly communicative Expressionism is epitomized by Kafka, bad and onanistic Expressionism by the average Graduate Writing Program avant-garde story." (p. 199) YESSSSSSSSSS. Like good art says something universal. Bad art is so specific to that person that it's uninterestingly embarrassing. Quirky is OK, but there has to be something universal being communicated in spite of it.

-the fact that Balthazar Getty is sort of a douche, illustrated with examples

I loved all the little crystalized gems of insight David Foster Wallace had about how to perceive Lynch's oeuvre, things that I realized I kind of had been chewing on in the back of my head too, and it was nice to see it honed into well-articulated crystals of logic and wit.

And the snarky stuff was good too, because being snarky can sometimes really just be a slightly higher IQ version of gossiping. Which, I, um, well, looooooooved.

Tapping In, Setting Up, Petting Small Animals

Reading David Lynch's Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity, a few quotes really stand out for me:

"Little fish swim on the surface, but the big ones swim down below. If you can expand the container you're fishing in-your consciousness-you can catch bigger fish." (p. 27)

The fish of course, being the creative ideas. I like this idea very much. The book, among other things, is his testament to the awesomeness of transcendental meditation, one of the things he cites as being a major help in expanding his own consciousness, tapping into the unified field, etc etc etc, which I am such a sucker for. Anytime somebody starts talking about "tapping into" something, I'm immediately on board. "I want to be tapped in! How do I get tapped in? Who can tap me in here? How do I get a tap? Is there a deposit I need to put down on this tap?" I've done pretty much everything I can think of for tapping in to some sort of consciousness expansion, including but not limited to: yoga, biofeedback, books, music, a variety of substances, lights, sensory deprivation, dance, visualization, occulty-seance-oujia-boardy stuff, petting small soft animals, lucid dreaming, stuff with candles…the time has come to try meditation Maharishi Mahesh Yogi style, which is different than the kind of meditation I always did with yoga. Because I am always DOWN FOR TAPPING INTO SHIT. That SHIT be tappin'. So I'm attending a TM lecture on Sunday if you want to tap in with me, for my Chicago friends. Hilariously, I keep fusing TM in my head with TMJ.

"There's a safety in thinking in a diner. You can have your coffee or your milk shake, and you can go off into strange dark areas, and always come back to the safety of the diner." (p. 39)

That makes pretty much everything that happened in the RR Diner in Twin Peaks make sense. The woods = scary. The diner = safe. Plans are discussed, delicious coffee and pie is eaten, characters have respite from abusive people in their lives...I've always loved diners. Not so much for the food, although I do enjoy an egg white omlette from time to time. Mostly I like them because many are open deep into the night and I find this very comforting. If I can't sleep, I know there is always a diner open where there are people there too, awake in the middle of the night, a little refuge in the night. I love sitting in them with friends for hours, talking, and getting jacked up on coffee, or just being there alone working on something, where they don't mind if I hang out there for a while.

"Life is filled with abstractions, and the only way we make heads or tails of it is through intuition. Intuition is seeing the solution--seeing it, knowing it. It's emotion and intellect going together." (p. 45)

I've never before been able to come up with a satisfactory explanation of what intuition is. Appropriately, I've only ever been able to explain what it is, well, intuitively. That is to say, I've always described it the way that everybody describes it, which is "the feeling in your gut about a situation." And ironically (or maybe well, appropriately ironically [what?]) this never seemed like a very good explanation, although it is the best that I feel like I or anyone else could come with. Full disclosure though: it's not like I've ever actually sat down and did research on the actual definition of intuition. But emotion and intellect going together = intuition. Yup, that's it. Right there.

"And the idea just sits there and festers. Over time, it will go away. You didn't fulfill it--and that's just a heartache." (p. 125)

This quote was actually referring to the importance of having a place (a "setup") to go work on whatever the idea is, when you get the idea for the thing (whatever the thing is). This place should facilitate actually being able to get to working on the idea that you had. But what is more intriguing about this quote on a higher level, is that over time, an unworked on idea just sits and if it doesn't get tended to, it goes away. Like anything that's not tended to, it goes away or dies: plants, pets, gardens, relationships. This resonates with me; there was a semester I was in school that I made my schedule unreasonably packed with classes, because I was concerned with finishing by a certain date. Early on that term, I had a dream about wilting and dying plants. It wasn't until many weeks into the semester that I realized that the reason I had the dream was because I was not tending to the human and creative parts of my self and my life. Those were parts that needed tending, caring, relaxing, enjoying and nurturing. And then after many years of this habit of ignoring that vital life-force type of stuff in myself, I suffered from some crazy health issues. Untended to ideas, life force, creative endeavors, relationships -- when you suffocate that stuff, that good stuff that doesn't come to fruition, it festers and then goes away. And then what you're left with is health issues, remorse, heartache and whatever else happens to you when you make those decisions.

I invite you to join me in tapping in, setting up, tuning in or out and dropping by.