During lockdown, I stuck some letters over my front window in my flat, WELCOME TO TWIN PEAKS, as it felt in the midst of the pandemic, I had fallen into an episode of the cult TV classic where the everyday geographical landscape of suburbia holds a dark secret. A subtext behind the net curtains and view of tree tops outside. David Lynch is a pioneering creative who has had a massive impact on contemporary culture. Room to Dream by David Lynch told to Kristine McKenna is divided into a chapter by the biographer, a very measured, factual approach. Content containing interjections from interviewees, people who have known and worked with the director. Then followed by Lynch’s own reflections, a raw commentary with sprinklings of surreal anecdotes like hustling a kiss on the lips from movie legend Elizabeth Taylor at an awards ceremony or boiling a dead bird carcass in his kitchen, to retrieve the skeletal form in all its purity for a film prop.
It is a book laced with humility. The filmmaker holds no airs or graces and at one point sees him working as a delivery person in the small hours dropping off copies of The New York Times during a financially lean period. Like another one of my heroes, Philip Glass, who worked as a removal guy and a taxi driver to help subsidise his artistic career. Both artists who have to feed their creative projects through graft and not inherited privilege. Actual hard labour over entitlement. Both following the philosophy of:
One must love art and not the concept of oneself in art.
A Stanislavski dictum, a particular favourite mantra of mine.
The famed director’s diet described throughout the biography did fill me with anxiety. Simple grilled cheese sandwiches and afternoon coffee and donut binges. I found myself yearning for a bag of grapes, a banana or some vegetables.
He credits his drive and focus to the daily practice of Transcendental Meditation and credits it with calming a savage temper and energising him. He believes in happy accidents, intuition and advocates that graft does indeed equal craft. The gap between his interpretations of experiences and the facts that are delivered from interviews with people whom he has worked with enables the reader to make their own conclusions and judgements. We are left with wondering will we ever know the real David Lynch? Do we ever comprehend another being? Or even ourselves?
This biography is a fresh take on the format. I also enjoyed actor Steven Berkoff’s FREE ASSOCIATION – writing about his life as if speaking with a psychiatrist, a stream of consciousness on the page. Patti Smiths’ diaries and notepads are pure joy in written form and make me want to pick up a book, a cup of dirty black coffee and discard keeping an eye on the time. Alan Rickman’s diaries, in contrast, I found very frustrating as he complained about the acting game life, its trials and tribulations and other first world problems. Like having to get up at what he deemed a ridiculous hour – 4.00/5.00 a.m. (in my opinion the best part of the day) for a film shoot, even though this short period of employment permitted him to pop off to a farmhouse in Italy as many times as I visit the Aldi in a month to buy my food.
I am not sure that this Lynch book will be one I choose to re-read, like the way with some of his films, I am happy to have seen them once, but not certain I need to see them again. Two biographies I will always re-read include any Derek Jarmans, particular MODERN NATURE, a book that helped me when writing a play about William Roscoe. The horticultural descriptions inspired me to try and re-capture the botanical wonderment of Liverpool gardens in the 1700’s. Jarman’s lust for life and creativity is contagious. In a similar vein, David Hockney’s SPRING CANNOT BE CANCELLED is like literary Red Bull in that it makes you want to adopt a strict creative discipline and just create.
Lynch is a genius and what a portfolio to leave the world. From the bizarre oddity that is ERASERHEAD (1977), the fame fable of MULHOLLAND DRIVE (2001), the shocking disturbing BLUE VELVET (1986) and, for me, his finest piece of cinematography, the exploration of cruelty and kindness, THE ELEPHANT MAN, the true story of Joseph (not John) Merrick.
Of course, it would be remiss not to mention the cultural phenomena of TWIN PEAKS. I first watched this alone one summer as an undergraduate in Aberystwyth, renting video cassettes from PIER VIDEO, a haven of film oddities next to an amusement arcade, a cheap nightclub and an ice cream parlour. All locations worthy of a Lynch story. Seeing the TV drama for the first time freaked me out because the small Welsh seaside coastal town had a subtext of dark stories, (like a small leather-fixated gimp man, with a high pitch voice, who ran a Zoo in nearby Borth and a known nudist who swam in the sea late at night). This undercurrent behind closed doors reminded me of the whole theme of the show.
We can see the Lynch diligence in new directors. Like in Robert Eggers’ NOSFERATU, the icy German forest where snow drops fall from the silver screen, or the New York sunrise across the park in Halina Reijn’s BABYGIRL.
Finally, I do have to point out that this book is littered with wise insights.
On failure – it is so freeing, it is beautiful in a way, to have a great failure. There’s nowhere to go but up.
On ideas – ideas are like fish. If you want to catch little fish you can stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch the big fish you’ve got to go deeper. Down deep, the fish are more powerful and pure. They’re huge and abstract. And they’re very beautiful.
Along with wisdom, a very calm and caring authorial voice emanates from this book. I am particularly pleased to have heard the phrase, ‘HOLY JUMPING GEORGE’, one I will adopt. And I think I am going to meditate more often from now on.
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