David Lynch

David Lynch has died, just a few days before his 79th birthday. Although details of his death have not been officially announced, it's not hard to imagine what happened. Only last year he announced he suffered from emphysema from years of smoking. The condition prevented him from leaving his home and he was forced to do that very thing due to the recent catastrophic fires in Los Angeles. You could say simply he was killed by fire but, artistically, throughout his career, he was propelled or sustained by it. He talked about the inspiration he drew from smoking cigarettes and the presence of fire in his films was always remarkable. What filmmaker has more memorably provided shots of fireplaces? There's the sudden blaze in Fred Madison's recollection of a dream in Lost Highway, the shot of Ben Horne spitting into a massive fireplace on the first episode of Twin Peaks. I needn't mention the important place Lynch's work has occupied in my life. Anyone who knows me or has read my blog for a long enough time will know the profound effect his work has had on me. When I was a kid, just figuring out what art is and how it works, Lynch's films were so arresting, so easily evincing of the power of image and sound to communicate thoughts and feelings beyond the scope of language, my capacity for perception couldn't help but be enriched and expanded. Watching Lynch's movies taught me the power of pacing and silence and sequence. Watching his movies was a gateway to appreciating many other filmmakers, from Ingmar Bergman to Jean Cocteau to Alfred Hitchcock to many, many more. It's a consolation to know that Lynch's genius is widely recognised. Not every artist who's passed over for recognition or who garners praise deserves either but in Lynch's case the praise is abundant and abundantly deserved. Already Criterion is showing a playlist of his works and his work in film and television and music can be found on Amazon Prime, Disney+, Netflix, and YouTube. When I think about death, I often thing of "Sycamore Trees", a song from Lynch's Twin Peaks. Lynch wrote the lyrics and the music was by his frequent collaborator Angelo Badalamenti. Here it is performed by one of Lynch's many luminous muses, Chrysta Bell: What else can I say? Only about a billion things. Too many for this space. It's a crime he was never permitted to make another movie after 2017's third season of Twin Peaks but as a final work those eighteen episodes would be hard to top. He directed and co-wrote every episode, he starred in most of them, he designed the sound, he built much of the furniture. Truly, words are insufficient.