THE IRISH JOURNAL OF GOTHIC AND HORROR STUDIES

David Lynch in Dublin, 20th October 2007

Throughout his career, David Lynch has been notoriously reticent about discussing the meaning of his films: any enquiry as to what a film might be about is more likely than not to meet with a deadpan “It’s about 120 minutes”. In recent years, although he has remained tight-lipped about specific interpretations of his work, he has become more forthcoming about the methods through which he approaches filmmaking. 2006 saw the publication of Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity, Lynch’s paean to the role played by Transcendental Meditation in his creative process, and he has recently embarked on a mission to promote Transcendental Meditation through his charity, the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace, and by touring with 1960s troubadour Donovan. In October of this year, the unlikely pairing made an appearance in Dublin, in an event co-hosted by the School of Drama, Film and Music, Trinity College Dublin, and the David Lynch Foundation. The performance took two parts, a Q&A with Lynch followed by a live set of Donovan’s greatest hits (including Lynch’s favourite, “Season of the Witch”). Demand for tickets proved so great that the performance was broadcast live into another lecture hall, setting up the most uncanny aspect of the event when audience members in the “overflow hall” were also given the opportunity to put questions to Lynch, by broadcasting their disembodied voices into the main arena. 

On paper, the pairing of Lynch and Donovan is clearly an odd one, but in truth the even stranger combination seems to be that of Lynch with Transcendental Meditation, an impression that was reflected by many of the questions audience members put to the filmmaker. In essence, it seems difficult to reconcile the dark, nightmarish vistas of most of his work with the mantra of pure bliss and enlightenment that he propounds through his meditative practices. But in Lynch’s terms (as he puts it in his book): “the filmmaker doesn’t have to be suffering to show suffering. You can show it, show the human condition, show conflicts and contrasts, but you don’t have to go through that yourself. You are the orchestrator of it, but you’re not in it.” This is what Lynch claims Transcendental Meditation allows him to do: to dive within his consciousness and capture ideas which in turn translate into his striking cinematic language. The two, then, are fundamentally connected for Lynch, and practically all of his answers during this Q&A session returned to his commitment to Transcendental Meditation and the possibility of achieving “pure bliss”, the phrase that peppered his responses, appearing almost mantra-like. He remained less forthcoming on other aspects of the filmmaking process: for example, a question as to which of his own films was his favourite met with a tight-lipped refusal to claim a favourite child (but an admission that “Dune is the nastiest little child”). Nonetheless, he did take the opportunity to promote his other favourite topic du jour, his newfound preference for digital video over film (employed in his most recent work, INLAND EMPIRE).

Lynch comes across as an impassioned and entertaining speaker, delivering his responses in a manner that will be familiar to anyone who recalls his turn as FBI Regional Bureau Chief Gordon Cole in Twin Peaks, and his enthusiasm for his topic is almost palpable. As an insight into the mind and creative processes behind some of the most unsettling films of the last thirty years, this performance did prove fundamentally compelling; and although some may be put off by the seemingly unfashionable New Age dimension that this introduces to the man Mel Brooks once described as “Jimmy Stewart from Mars”, it should actually come as no real surprise, merely adding yet another layer to the enigmatic world of David Lynch. 

Jenny McDonnell