David Lynch

No artist has inspired me as much as David Lynch.
Not Scorsese, not Tarantino, not Kubrick.
Not Lennon, not Dahl, not Dali.
Because none of them taught me what Lynch taught me, even if his lesson was so simple.
Ignore the audience.
You owe them nothing.

His films stand as the surrealist archetypes that took more from you than they gave.
To varying degrees, you'd be left wondering what you had just witnessed and what it meant, but if you wanted to know, he would be the last person to tell you.

Of course, anyone can vomit an impenetrable weirdo art piece, wearing it as a smug disguise that they are some misunderstood prodigy.
But that was not Lynch.
Any arguments against his genius or accusations of indulgence are effortlessly negated by one inarguable truth.
He, somehow, cracked the mainstream.

The fact that Lynch is one of the most revered and well-known directors in history spins the entire art form on its head.
How he bypassed every rule and challenged every eye only to land on the top of the podium is exactly what I'm talking about when I say he inspired me above anyone else.
He lived by example that we can achieve monumental success without sacrificing integrity.
He permitted us to do whatever we wanted.

What's crucial to remember about Lynch is that he was a pure talent capable of creating regular films if he so chose.
Have you ever seen The Straight Story? That is a traditional everyday biographical drama, which one would never know is him without being told. And it's up there with his best.

Still, David cemented his legendary status from the centre of his Venn diagram.
The overlap where the conventional and the strange melted into singularity.
Films that were almost normal, but something was subtly wrong, an undercurrent of minor distress, the viewer never quite sitting comfortably and never quite sure why.
Mulholland Drive (frequently labelled the greatest movie ever made) was one of them.
As was Blue Velvet.
In this category, we also have to mention the Twin Peaks TV series because, while we all would love to forget that abysmal second season, the third was one of the most outstanding shows in television history, on par with the Breaking Bads and The Wires.

That said, for me, nothing outshines his maximum bizarro works.
When I saw Eraserhead, the same thought looped around my skull.
"I want to make a movie like this."
What's more, it made me believe I could.

Last night, I was out drinking when I heard the sad news.
I went home at midnight, intoxicated, and watched Rabbits for the first time.
So fucking out there.
But it was the same thing.
"I want to make a movie like this."
"Yes, I do believe I can."

Without hesitation, I would've preferred that any director die over David Lynch.
While so many exciting filmmakers are out there, they all swim in the same bucket.
Lynch was flapping on the side alone, never a part of that shiny scene.
I acknowledge that he hadn't made anything new in a while, but we know he was working, and there was always hope that something would materialise.
And now there is not.
Whatever he could've done will never be done.
Because no one else could do it.

The death of David Lynch is the death of the most unusually important constellation in cinema, and I mourn this aching gap in our creative sky.


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