I’m not really ready to think about a world without David Lynch yet. But I have at least realised in the days since his passing that Lynch was probably my introduction to genuine art – art which I felt like I was part of the genuine audience for. This came with Twin Peaks, which I first watched, terrified and confused and thrilled and delighted, when I was 12. My mental life was massively expanded by that show. I was that kid at school brushing my hair like Cooper – back when I had hair! – and walking around talking into a TV remote like it was a dictaphone and really trying to like coffee. (I was eventually successful on that front.) What an idiot I was, and yet Cooper, I still feel, is an extremely good role model. Pretty much ideal, really.
Anyway, over the last few days a lot of people have been thinking about Lynch in relationship to video games, and that feels like at least a tiny way into considering a world without him. There’s the PS2 ads he made, of course, and there’s all the people he influenced – explicitly, like Remedy, and implicitly like… well, I have my suspicions.
All that is great, but what I want to talk about today is a moment from the movie David Lynch: The Art Life, which a dear friend suggested I watch this week. It’s a documentary about Lynch’s life, his memory of his childhood and his endless project of creating art – just by living, it sometimes seems. My friend said it was the only time he’d ever seen Lynch as he truly was. It’s a documentary but it feels like we’re seeing Lynch as he is when he’s all by himself.
It’s a completely fascinating movie – it’s , to use a word that Lynch himself was very fond of. And there’s this magical moment that I’ve rewatched about four times so far. Lynch is talking about his idyllic childhood in the late 40s, early 50s. What did he like to do more than anything? He liked to sit in a hole dug under a tree with his best friend. His dad would partly fill the hole with water from a hose so there was mud to play with. Lynch’s verdict? “”