For The Last Time

David Lynch entered art as a painter. But then one day he was looking at his in-progress painting, and he thought: Wouldn’t it be better if this were moving? And also if I could hear it? And the brainshower came on, and he eurekaed—film. So that’s what he became about. And. For all time.

As a filmmaker, Lynch was always an acquired taste. Some could never find their way there. Even people not only sane and decent, but also of wisdom. Like Joe Ben. When she and I would view together such as Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive, what she most wanted, was for them to be over. But, so what? Everyone is different. It’s like Joe Ben is a serious aficionado of mushrooms. Whereas I will not allow these to pass my lips unless they have the purple streaks that bring the pretty colors. When I would then go Alice, and dive down the Lynchian rabbit holes, Joe Ben, she would say, “That’s okay. I’ll stay up here.” And. That’s fine.

While in said holes, for Lynch’s 75th birthday, I posted to some tube or other:

David Lynch. 75 years old today. That’s 365 – eighty-eighty @ new shoes = raBBits x yes we have no bobanas = what year is it?, in David Lynch years.

That might seem obscuro. But if you’re sufficiently steeped in Lynch, it will come clear. James Joyce, after expending 14 years writing Finnegans Wake, and then people going what is this shit?, said he expected people to spend as much time reading the work, as he put into writing it. Lynch was not of that peak of ego madness. But his films do require more attention than glancing up now and then at the Simpsons tv while you’re drinking and yakking down at Duffy’s. And—he does have this in common with the Wake—understanding comes only from the work itself.

Though early on I went astray, for the past several decades I have been monklike in not exposing myself to the eleventy-billion theories of the wild-eyed obsessives aflail in the What David Means cult. I prefer to get there myself. I would if I came across it Look at what Lynch himself might say, though most often that was no help at all—except when he let slip Lost Highway was sparked by OJ Simpson’s slaughter and then denial of ending his wife. Which you can get from the film itself. And so he was sorry he said it. Because, the Highway, it is so much more, than some mere-ass OJ.

Some artists will not talk about their art. They prefer it remain in mystery. Lynch—that Highway burbling notwithstanding—was one of those. Thus, for example, he would not address why in Twin Peaks: The Return the true Dale Cooper oozes out of a wall electrical socket, where he is then taken for the recently departed tulpa Dougie Jones, who was just recalled to the Lodge, and from that very spot. The dimmed Dale then just assumes he is Dougie, because everyone treats him like he is. And the knowledge of his true Daleness, it sizzled away, during his incarnation through the wall. As, who we all really are, always fades away, when we incarnate, upon this here planet. Just. The way. It is. Or why later Dale, in Dougie, dimly aware—as are we all—that he is more, and other, than just this Dougie, sticks a fork in a wall electrical socket, to deliver a shock to the system. Thereby hoping to recover his Daleness. Which. He then does.

Lynch just assumes you will Know about such things, because, for instance, at some point some doctor harangued you about the cigarettes. Lynch smoked all of the cigarettes, all of the times, even when he was asleep. Because that is a way to remain always firing. But it is currently a Law that the doctors will harangue you to stop smoking. And in the harangues the doctor will commence the St. Vitus Dance about heart disease. Explain about the heart. That every heartbeat, it begins with an electrical spark. That no one really knows why. Or where the spark comes from. But it's real. And a human, s/he is therefore a creature of electricity. And in the life of any human, there can be good electricities, and bad electricities. Like the electricity that keeps the heart beating, that powers you, that is an electricity that is good. And the electricity that powers a toaster, that is also good. But if you sit in the water in the bathtub, and you plug in the toaster, and you then drop the toaster into the bath, that then brings unto you electricity that is bad. Because your electricities, that of you and the toaster, they are not, in that moment, in the bath, compatible. And so you, there in the bath, will sizzle off to the boneyard.

In The Return Lynch is actually quite explicit about the good and the bad electricity. And that is how we know The Return, and thus the entire arc of his career, had a happy ending.

Because David Lynch is anyway easy enough to figure out. Even if you don't know electrical sparks in the heart explain why special agents ooze through wall sockets. As all of Lynch's work is informed by something that happened when he was a little boy, growing up in a nice little Pacific Northwest neighborhood. One afternoon he was out in the street, playing with his brother. When around the corner, came stumbling, a naked, bloodied woman. The woman sat down on the curb, and she cried.

And Lynch, he cried too.

All of his art, once he knew it, and worked to make it real, was about finding out what had happened to that woman. And then working to make her safe.

Like Roger Ebert, I was a skeptic of Lynch’s early work. Because in it he would not fully commit. To why he did be. Eraserhead is juvenilia, steeped in male fear; that is not what Lynch came here for, that not his duty, not his destiny, he came here for women, and for what happens to them. The Elephant Man, also male—disregard. Dune a stupendous fail, as Lynch himself would admit. With Blue Velvet and Wild At Heart Lynch tried to do his best, but he could not. As Ebert said of Velvet, and then again of Heart, in exactly the same words, “this is a film without the courage to declare its own darkest fantasies.” Both times pining for the day Lynch “ever goes ahead and makes a film about what’s really on his mind.” When came Mulholland Drive, Ebert wrote that Lynch “has been working toward this movie all of his career, and now that he’s arrived there I forgive him.” Same here. Except Ebert was off by one—it was with the film prior to Drive, Lost Highway, that Lynch became himself. With those two, then Inland Empire, and finally Twin Peaks: The Return, Lynch ended with four gems, each pretty much flawless. (In the chronology The Straight Story doesn’t count; he had no hand in writing it; it was work for hire.)

All these four were initially greeted with howls of outrage and cabbages angrily hurled at the screen. As tonight I am amused to discover Mulholland Drive is all and everywhere now hailed as “a masterpiece.” When for that thing ABC first shitcanned it, kicking Lynch out into the street; then he had to go to France to secure further financing; then when it was released there was a deafening geek-chorus of but what does it mean?! As for Inland Empire, nobody would distribute it at all, Lynch bled his bank account dry doing it himself, meanwhile wandering the lands with a live cow to promote Laura Dern for Oscar best actress. Which she deserved. And with all and every bell on. Except she wasn’t even nominated. And the little gold man went instead to Helen Mirren. For some shitty-ass gossip pic about Princess Diana.

Because. That’s. Pretty much. Always. The way. Of it.

When some time after Empire Showtime came to him and said, “Hey, I know what let’s say we do, let’s revive Twin Peaks,” Lynch said, “Okay, fine, we can do that, except you will have to give me all of the money, and all of the creative control, that I have never had for any filmic project ever before, so I can get it at last really Right.” Three years of tsuris followed. Until, at last, Showtime caved. Mostly. The original tv Twin Peaks had been a wonderment, but Lynch soon lost control of it, and some things that got in there made him actively foam at the mouth. He was not going to go through that again. The original Peaks was most valuable in that it put Lynch on the right road. When it was cancelled, to try to accomplish some sort of botched sum-up, he got diverted into the wrong Fire Walk With Me. But. after that, he didn’t, pace Straight, misstep again. A lot of people who adored the original Peaks go silent, or even disparaging, on The Return. Yes, well, and how can I put this politely—fuck those people. The Return is the crown jewel of his career. And one of all cinema. He put in there exactly, all and every, of what he wanted. And we are all the better for it. As. At last. He got to keep safe the woman. And, at least, for all her time.

Once he knew what he was about, Lynch would not relent, in trying to make safe the naked bloodied woman he’d encountered crying on the curb when he was five years old. Because, in some Realities, it can be done. Just because it might not have happened yet, doesn't mean that someday, somehow, it won't be. And so it came to pass that at the end of The Return Lynch moved all of time, and all of space, to pull it off. To keep that woman safe. He first nodded to Sam Peckinpah, in having a (previously fittingly minor) character monikered Freddie Sykes—originally the sole survivor of Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch—knock out for good the male Thanatos entity Bob. Who through her father had tormented raped killed Laura Palmer. Then it was on to the even more powerful female Thanatos entity, Jowday. Who, after Cooper had successfully prevented Laura’s murder in the primary Peaks timeline, removes Laura to another place. Into which Cooper must then ride, boldly, ride. Which he does. Finding Laura there submerged in an identity as Carrie. Just as Dale had earlier been submerged in Dougie. They together drive to the Palmer house. Those people there say they don’t know shit about any Palmers. Cooper is confused. Wonders what year it is. Then Carrie hears from inside the house the voice of Laura’s mother, Sarah. Whom The Return has let us know has been inhabited by Jowday. From the time of the first atomic explosion in New Mexico in 1945. Why Sarah, in The Return, when she removes her face, reveals only darkness, bites a guy’s aorta out in a bar, shriekingly stabs over and over again a photo of Laura. We know from The Return that The Fireman and Senorita Dido dispatched from the White Lodge to earth Laura to counteract the wrongness of Bob and Jowday. Who have bent all their dark powers to destroy her. Now, Carrie, hearing Sarah’s voice, from inside the Jowday house, recognizing it, returns to Laura. And screams. Like there has never been a scream before. And we see this scream extinguishes the bad electricity of Jowday. As all the power in that house goes dark. And we know that remains. Because at the very end of the end credits of every episode of both the original Twin Peaks and The Return has been a Frost/Lynch logo crackling with loud electricity. But, at the very end of this last episode, that electricity, it has gone silent. Laura. She. Has. Uber allesed.

Of course this doesn’t mean Bob and Jowday have been extinguished for all time. We know this from our present situation. Where Bob is in the unutterable rapedeath of Donald Trump. And Jowday in the nazi filth fountain of Elon Muskow.

There are some carpers out there claiming that over the last couple years Lynch was negotiating with Netflix on another project. But Netflix kept ixnaying. And maybe that’s so. But I believe it is right and meet he went out on The Return. Where he kept the woman safe. And then she did grant the grace. For all we rest.

The last time I was with David Lynch, he and I were in a gallery, regarding paintings. They were okay. But they seemed like maybe they needed something more. Even though some were moving, and they were sounding. And then he and I, we took the cigarettes out our mouths, and we stuck them into the still wet paint, of one of the paintings. Which was then not only moving, and sounding. But, also, smoking.

That. Was his art.

Go well, David.

Tags: 
Share
up
8 users have voted.

Comments

QMS's picture

.
To read your descriptions.
Again. Be well.

up
5 users have voted.

question everything

Lookout's picture

for David's work. He said it was all worthwhile.

Might be worth another look. Thanks for the reminder.

Good to read your writing again!

up
6 users have voted.

“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

janis b's picture

Thank you for the glimpse into David Lynch’s mind, and your mind too. I’m sorry for you and all his loved ones and admirers who will miss seeing in film, and experiencing in life, where he might have gone next. He created a great legacy which will live on and inspire always.

For anyone with netflix or roko, or whatever connection, you can watch this great short-film ... a duet between himself and a monkey.

https://www.netflix.com/watch/81226955?trackId=255824129&tctx=0%2C0%2C11...

Cheers

up
4 users have voted.