On Thursday, I was trying and failing to explain to someone what movies meant to me: how simply, at their best, they make me feel connected to humanity.
Trying to understand, she elaborated on my point saying that it makes sense to love movies: they're predictable, they have satisfying character arcs, they have happy endings.
In my head, I was saying no, no, no, that's not what I mean, how do I explain this; but I didn't correct her because her broader point was right in some senses. Movies are a great comfort to me because being an observer of life can feel safer than living it myself.
I wondered to myself after, how do I better express my point; how do I articulate the ways a good film, a good art film, speaks from the heart, directly into the hearts of its audience. Not just using plot and characters, or sometimes not using them at all. How do I explain something using words that is powerful precisely because of the way it can only be expressed cinematically: with poetry in motion and sound, using lighting, cinematography, architecture, pacing, editing.
How do I explain the stakes here: that cinema is the most visceral confirmation I can personally get that what I feel in my body is felt by others. A confirmation that feels very important to me, a confirmation I feel alienated from humanity without. A confirmation that makes me feel less alone.
Shortly after this conversation, my friend Jackson texted me that David Lynch had passed. David Lynch, the person whose movies are movies that make me love movies. Movies that give me that rare, deeply-desired confirmation that I'm less alone in the world.
His films are not predictable, they prefer a mobius strip to a clear character arc, they do not have particularly happy endings.
His films speak from a subconscious, accessing and expressing the true feelings of things: they consider power, pain, fear of inadequacy, delusion, desire, with clear eyes, an open mind, and without shame. He considers with profound empathy and interest the internal experiences of characters not typically considered worthy of our time, yet also the truest representations of our modern experience: a wannabe movie starlet, a cuck sax player, a suburban teenage peeping tom, a new father overwhelmed.
As hard as I try here, Lynch's movies defy description; they operate on a level that isn't verbal. There isn't really a way to make sense of them on the surface, but they feel true energetically and emotionally.
Every now and then, my friend Simon tells me of a movie screening that I have to go to, and every single time he has been absolutely right to compel me. He brought me to see Lost Highway, and asked me to pay close attention to the opening frames, claiming they subtly jump between two realities. We went to the theater, sat through trailers, were blasted through the thrilling opening credits set to David Bowie's I'm Deranged:
From a home viewing on Friday night, in a basement with a mirror adjacent to the screen
The movie starts, and I'm straining to see this jump in reality claimed by Simon; the film is instantly inscrutable, slow, weird, creepy, yet engrossing and activating. The first piece of dialogue (where we can see the person talking) occurs a very long 5 minutes into the movie; but, during this screening, as Patricia Arquette's stone-faced lips moved, no words came out. We quickly realized the dialogue track wasn't playing; employees rushed in, apologized, gave us vouchers to return later that week for the same screening.
We returned several days later, settled in, get to the part with Patricia Arquette, still no talking; apologies, vouchers, yet another return date.
We did eventually see the movie complete with dialogue, and it blasted its way through my sense of reality. I stumbled out of the theater a different person. I sometimes wonder if I'll wake up one day in that theater seat, everything that happened since only a dream.
I know we had issues with the dialogue track at least once, if not twice, but it felt immersive and appropriate to the mirroring/repeating/looping that the movie enacts itself. Come to think of it, it's possible we didn't actually have to go back twice, but "I like to remember things my own way. How I remembered them. Not necessarily the way they happened." --------------------
Independently of my film fanaticism, I had the opportunity in 2018 to learn TM at the David Lynch Foundation, where they generously trained me in the practice over the course of a week for free (as a survivor of domestic violence). I've been practicing on and off ever since, but rather faithfully for the last year and a half.
Practicing TM gives me the chance everyday to sort through my subconscious, in an alert waking mind state. It offers me clarity, peace, and quiet, especially during troubled times both privately and in the world. So not only for his art do I have to thank David Lynch, but also for the way he's advocated for and provided the gift of TM to help with an everyday coping.
Tomorrow, Monday January 20th, Lynch's family has invited everyone who would like to celebrate his life to meditate for 10 minutes at Noon PST. I have felt the impact of group meditation, and am eager to see what it feels like when such a large collective gathers energetically, and for the purpose of celebrating such a singular, generously creative soul.
