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It feels fake, or like one of those elaborate internet hoaxes made up by someone with a lot of time on their hands. When David Bowie passed, we all thought his official Facebook page had been hacked – mostly because none of us had known he was sick. When it was first reported back in November that David Lynch was suffering from emphysema and was unable to walk across a room without help, I braced myself.
I don’t put too many people on a pedestal, and I try to stay away from engaging in anything that feels parasocial – but Lynch is just… different. The rules of art and life and society and cinema, whatever is considered the standard, or the norm – it just doesn’t really apply here. Lynch, from the moment he released Eraserhead out into the world, was his own entity. He moved through life with whimsy and joy, and made art that was dark and vivid and terrifying. He wrote a book about transcendental meditation. He founded a screenwriting MFA – which I thought was fake and/or a cult until I met someone who was close to graduation. They told me Lynch would hop in on a Zoom call once a month, say something that would absolutely blow their minds, and then disappear into the ether. They said he was mindblowing even when he wasn’t necessarily trying to be.
I got into Twin Peaks a little bit later on in life, in my 20s, in order to impress a guy. The crush never materialized, but a full-blown obsession emerged. At the time, I was in graduate school studying poetry somewhere in West Virginia, and something horrible had happened to me that affected both my work and school life. As an escape, I pretended the lush landscape of Appalachia was actually somewhere in Twin Peaks, Washington. I dressed like Audrey Horne. I smoked cigarettes. I got four tattoos, the fourth being a matching one with someone I no longer speak to. I got my dad into the show, and now he owns a Funko pop based on every main character. Twin Peaks was the jumping-off point – and I slowly made my way through his entire filmography. Blonde girls and blue light and unconventional love and so many cigarettes and uncomfortable sex scenes – that’s Lynch, but that’s not even the half of it.
I could tell you to start with Wild at Heart and follow up with Mulholland Drive and then make your way down to Inland Empire and Eraserhead – or vice versa if you’re feeling frisky – or start with Twin Peaks and chase it with The Return – but there’s no right or wrong way. Each Lynch project is almost its own lifeform, its own special thing – once you’re hooked, you’re hooked (and then suddenly you’re filling your tiny apartment up with Twin Peaks merchandise from 1990 than you found on eBay instead of paying your student loans).
Lynch isn’t here anymore, and I don’t know what to do with myself. Part of my job is getting to ask artists about the art they make, and I’m really sad that I didn’t get the chance to chat with him. I, like so many fans who make art of their own, still have so many questions. But he would probably tell me to look to the moon, or something. He would point at the stars, or to a can of Coke. He would say that we already have all the answers. The owls are not what they seem. One day the sadness will end.
Twin Peaks, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, and Twin Peaks: The Return are streaming now on Showtime. Mulholland Drive, Inland Empire, and Eraserhead are streaming now on Max. You're welcome.
