An Authentic Homage To David Lynch’s Artistic World
Have you ever seen films that were not meant to be watched in a traditional way, guided instead by sound, atmosphere, and silence rather than dialogue or narrative? In these films, the contrast between sound and silence became more important, while the script itself was often less significant than the emotions and sensations the director wanted the audience to feel. Through this unique style, Lynch revealed something unusual about humanity, something many people struggled to express. He presented another side of reality, often making ordinary situations feel strange or unsettling. In this article from The Intoxication Issue, guest-edited by Richard Milward, an English novelist, and written by Megan Spencer, the author explored David Lynch’s universe through his art, especially his films, examining the importance of atmosphere and silence in his work, and how his films reflected his addictions. Read more here in An Authentic Homage To David Lynch’s Artistic World.
David Lynch
David Lynch was a director with a very unique style that he shared from the beginning of his career, moving from painting to short films and then to feature films. His art was deeply personal, coming from within him and expressed through his artistic style. He shared his emotions through atmosphere, sound, and silence.
‘I love the idea of David Lynch getting ‘jazzed up’ creatively, after too many cups of coffee and a thick chocolate shake. Like the best compulsive artists, Lynch injects his nutty neuroses into his own characters, resulting in a manic, multi-faceted celluloid self-portrait of the man himself. Often overlooked, Lynch’s short films demonstrate the great man’s knack for non-linear, mind-bending storytelling, as well as his passion for handmade image-making. Here, Megan Spencer examines Lynch’s short films.‘
Richard Milward
Movies to Watch
Megan Spencer : He’s a self-confessed caffeine, nicotine and doughnut addict. He’s also addicted to directing films, transcendental meditation and making art. And over the years in his shorts, animations, features and TV series, I believe, American filmmaker David Lynch has presented us with an array of characters wrestling with addictions of their own, be it coffee (Agent Cooper, Twin Peaks), violence (Frank, Blue Velvet), mystery (Betty/ Diane, Mulholland Drive), anger (Randy, Dumbland) and beyond..
Inspiration
Lynch’s work seems to be born from, if not addiction, then compulsion. Prolific in his output, when he’s not painting, writing books, taking photos, speaking at film festivals and conferences, meditating, animating, directing TV and features, or uploading his latest ‘weather report’ onto his website… well, there aren’t many hours left in the day.
Cinematography
However, in my opinion, addicted to words the filmmaker is not. Perhaps a ‘war with words’ is too harsh a depiction of the struggle David Lynch appears to go through when he speaks about his work. But if you have heard him talk you will know that speaking doesn’t come easily to the director; not his preferred mode of communication. Perhaps it might be fairer to say that words are Lynch’s ‘second language’, with images, pictures and sounds romping it in, in first place.
David Lynch Artwork
From Eraserhead (1976) through to Inland Empire (2006), I don’t believe words are tantamount in his features. Lynch doesn’t write a script like others. Dialogue doesn’t carry story in his work (if anything silence does). And he might just be one of the last directors in Hollywood who hasn’t taken a Robert McKee script-writing seminar. (Hallelujah).
Lynch is an articulate, intelligent and entertaining speaker, there’s no question; but watching him trying to turn thoughts into sentences is tantamount to watching a man wrestle a crocodile. Words just don’t do justice to the marvellous array of ideas flowing at a rate of knots through that brilliant skull of his, beneath that fabulous head of hair.
His films are a far cry from the stoic conventions of mainstream American storytelling. Forget the story; there isn’t one. Forget characterisation; there isn’t any and forget ‘plot points’; it just doesn’t matter. Nor does logic, rationality, reality, or expectation. Chuck them all out. What does matter in a Lynch film is atmosphere, transition, repeating motifs, symbolism, chaos and, not knowing what’s going on but the exact opposite: ‘not knowing’ what’s going on.
Lynch talks about filmmaking – and the ideas behind – almost as if it’s an itch he has to scratch. Not in a loud maniacal film-nerd Tarantino kind of way… more in a compulsive, corporeal David Cronenberg kind of way, where an invasive worm has taken over his system and he has to get it out lest he bust or burst.
The first time I experienced Lynch’s short films, it was in the perfect environment, at a ‘guerrilla’ DVD screening in a Sydney warehouse, alongside the loyal freaks and geeks of the then increasingly rarified underground cinema movement, circa 2007. I remember being utterly enthralled and exhilarated; loudly responding to the screen with giant audible guffaws and gasps, so taken was I with his early work and the narration between them. It made me feel great to hear Lynch speak, albeit reluctantly, of his quest to make films from his distinctly artistic perspective. So strange, yet so right…
On the DVD The Short Films Of David Lynch, Lynch discusses his very first film Six Men Getting Sick (1967), which he made as a painting student. Lynch describes being taken over by the green and black colours he was painting, and just having to see them move – ‘I wanted to see a painting move and have sound to it.’ His foray into filmmaking was as simple and as anguished as that. So he made a one minute looped animation projected. Six disembodied male heads attached to stomachs via finely drawn alimentary canals, spew rhythmically and abstractly in different colours, to the soundtrack of a looped ambulance siren. It is at once mesmerising and discomforting to watch, and feels like it goes on for one hour not one minute. But he did win first prize in his school’s annual experimental art contest.
Going back to Lynch’s early short films is instructive. They give fascinating and illuminating insight into the themes and symbols that have underwritten his features for years. That war with words was there from day one, in my opinion. Characters scowl, beam, stare, frown, grunt, vomit, bark, cry or talk nonsense – anything but speak a logical sentence. Repetition is rife and symbols are dark and potent, springing forth from deep recesses.
Speaking of discomfort, Lynch’s obsession with ‘goo’ also comes to the fore early on in The Amputee (1973), a short he and co-conspirator Freddie Elmes (Lynch’s erstwhile cinematographer) made when they had run out of money on Eraserhead, still enrolled at the American Film Institute. Elmes was about to test new video stock for the film school; Lynch commandeered the project by writing a ‘script’ that consisted of an amputee woman writing a letter in a chair (the Log Lady from Twin Peaks), while her ‘unable and scared nurse’ (Lynch) changes her bandages and cleans the wound. The banality of her letter (audible in voiceover) only compounds the horror as her weeping legs gush forth and the nurse stumbles out of frame, beaten by the unstoppable leak. By God it’s funny, but again, I believe The Amputee shows Lynch’s abhorrence for conventional film storytelling and dialogue, and yet strangely, an affection for how things can go wrong in the most ordinary of circumstances. Another of his signature themes.
The significant short forerunner to Lynch’s feature films has to be The Grandmother (1970), the ‘grand guignol’ of his short work, also made at the American Film Institute. A nightmare about family life, The Grandmother is a haunting animated/live action 34 minute short. Animalistic parents raise a boy with aggression and violence. He is starved of love and stimulation. The parents either race around the yard like dogs or preen at the kitchen table. He decides to ‘grow a kindly grandmother’ in his bed after finding a sack of seeds in the attic. She hatches from a giant, dirty pod and gives him the connection and affection he is looking for, while his parents morph into even more callous monsters, in a juxtaposition of innocence with evil, and primitive misanthropic brutes with naive optimists.
It’s no secret that David Lynch is a meditator. He was attracted to transcendental meditation the same year he made The Amputee – not so much by the promise of finding ‘true happiness’ but of finding true happiness within. Lynch wanted to dive inside. Deep. To see what was there.
Ever since, in all of his films, videos, and artwork, we’ve had the privilege of witnessing what he found. This is a man who knows both sides of consciousness – dark and light/horror and bliss – and is not afraid to show them.
I was struck by this realisation when I was fortunate enough to see Lynch’s Dark Splendor painting exhibition at Max Ernst Museum in Germany earlier this year. I was transfixed by the intense Lynchian dichotomy of horror and beauty on canvas; it was relentless and I was paralysed by it. In film, you always have time on your side, as the emulsion clatters through the projector, moving the images onward and forward. In an art gallery, well, no one can hear you scream…
Standing there, viewing the various panels of his latest work, I felt nauseous and shocked, yet comforted by the clear vision of humanity he was revealing. Then it came to me; only someone who understands bliss – the pure unadulterated, unconditional, infinite feeling of ‘life energy’ – could understand the true horror of having that taken away. That’s what i was seeing, understanding, and wrestling with. It’s an experience I will never forget and am eternally grateful for. It was overwhelming and something that I couldn’t turn away or run from, courtesy of one very addicted filmmaker, David Lynch…
Megan Spencer is an Australian broadcaster, film critic, journalist, podcast maker, and educator. She’s well known for having worked on Triple J, ABC Local Radio and SBS-TV. She also has won an award for her podcast ‘From A Whisper To A Bang! ‘
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