a/n: began writing this a few days ago on my phone in response to some post i saw about david lynch, and all the comments likes and replies made me think that everyone must be incredibly boring since so much of Lynch's "weird" is pretty mundane stuff with a funny little twist. anyways, this one is a little bit all over the place, just a warning.
I kind of have a theory about David Lynch.
Before anyone gets upset, or starts to feel any type of way about it, let me make it clear -- when I say I have a theory about David Lynch, in reality the theory is really about his fans, and the David Lynch Tulpa that pervades American consciousness at this point in time. Lynch has come to embody something massive and abstract, a pinnacle of radical weirdness that's deeply beloved for speaking exactly what's on his mind without mitigating it for anybody.
I guess what I want to say is -- everyone must be really boring.
Nothing to do with Lynch, nor his films! I don't find Lynch's work boring at all. But what I do find concerningly uncreative is the idea that Lynch's approach to art and life is one in a million, that he's the silliest man alive for his tastes.
As I write this, I can already feel my point being misconstrued in the future by whomever happens to read this blog post. Let's hope I can do a better job at communicating than I have thus far.
David Lynch is a certifiable artistic genius. His ability to translate his dreams, visions, and beliefs into surreal but entertaining TV and movie classics isn't anything to scoff at, and he carried himself with grace and good humor through the very end of his life. His legacy is well-deserved, and hopefully persevering.
What I find frustrating is the growing societal trend wherein one invokes David Lynch as the end-all, be-all of strangeness. I'm sure any of you who are unfortunate enough to also be hooked to some degree on social media have seen it -- increasingly mundane viral videos, described as "Lynchian" in nature for some included act of spontaneity or unexpected participant. The overuse of his name, of course, has been rapidly diluting the actual credibility of the term "Lynchian", not to mention the work of the artist himself. Judging from TikTok or Twitter, one would expect to watch a David Lynch film and see Spongebob driving the Patty Wagon through Chicago. Random? Sure, but Lynchian it is not.
This fad points to a few things for me. The first is a growing estrangement from the launching point of many of our cultural references. I would be willing to bet that no small portion of the people using the term Lynchian on social media today haven't watched any David Lynch movie all the way through, instead referencing other memes they've seen posted in a long game of memetic telephone. This leads to exponentially increasing levels of abstraction and deviation from the source.
(Ironically, this sort of total disconnection from the source content could be itself considered a little bit Lynchian, what with the thread of continuity still buried beneath several layers of sign and signifier, but I'm getting ahead of myself.)
This is not a phenomenon limited only to David Lynch, of course. Looking around, we can find this sort of false echo in nearly every facet of society today. Fashion trends copy TikTok amalgamations of mis-categorized reference boards on Pinterest. Teens bemoan their nostalgia for 2016 while posting pictures of flip phones from 2009. I recently saw a post on Twitter claiming that one animation studio referenced a newer anime, and the whole thread continued without anyone recognizing that the so-called reference work was itself redrawing a more classic, more famous anime.
This is not a jaded criticism of kids these days and what they do or don't know -- I hardly think the phenomenon is limited to kids in the first place. It's merely an observation of an ongoing collapse of cultural context that serves as the foundation for other cultural behaviors.
The second point this issue brings forth for me is the unwillingness to align oneself with originality for its own sake. This is where my comment on people being boring these days comes into play. David Lynch is a man of dreams and whimsy -- why can't people see themselves as such? Why must we build referential walls between ourselves and the object of our fascination or glee, such that we can no longer see ourselves within them?
I've seen many people bemoan the loss of Lynch's mind, and of course I agree. But my identification with the emotion ends there. The idea that no one could ever think like him, that no one will ever be able to do what he did again -- I find that to be a hopeless and un-profound way to look at it. Yes, he is silly, interesting, actualized, wise! But why can not one of us see ourselves as such? What is truly so silly that he does that none of us could do as well? Nothing prevents any of us from making daily Youtube videos about the weather, from repairing our pants with superglue and Sharpies. Funding might prevent one from making another Twin Peaks, but absolutely nothing is stopping anyone from trying, from writing the screenplay or gathering a team or creating anything for a world as dreamlike as Lynch's!
It seems to me that for many, these Lynch Tulpas exist to extract the strange, the unmanageable from within oneself, and place it safely outside and away. It is much safer to say "Wow, David Lynch was so amazing, it's terrible he died, no one will ever match his freak," than it is to admit just how much he inspires the freak within yourself. Than it is to confront the version of yourself he might inspire you to be.
He is much easier to consume, to buy, to advertise as a part of your intellectual shopping cart and display safely on an abstract shelf, than to engage with. The radical weirdness exists within all of us, and it requires practice to engage with it regularly and with confidence. David Lynch didn't come out of the womb with the script for Twin Peaks ready in hand. There's something, I presume, in the safety and distance of it that makes this idea become so powerful -- the deceased God of Weird and his unattainable Strange Glory.
Anyways, I find that this is getting kind of long and ranty, and maybe less coherent than I would like for it to be. I know at least ten people as weird as David Lynch in real life, and they delight me every day because I trust them and I trust myself and I don't care about the world's opinion on any of it. So here's to rejecting man-made Tulpas of radical strangeness in favor of pursuing and engaging with the real strangeness and real strange people we can meet every day. And here's to David Lynch, who was profoundly and beautifully strange.
