Godspeed David Lynch

Spread the love

by Hazel Anna Rogers for the Carl Kruse Blog

It was a Thursday night, and I had been learning a monologue in preparation for an audition tape I was to film on Friday morning. It was dark out, because it is winter, and it goes dark almost as soon as the sun rises. Cold, it was cold. 

My friend and I had been messaging, because she is from Los Angeles, and Los Angeles is burning down. What do you say to someone whose home is burning down?

I had shared my condolences, and then we had shared a joke or two, because what else is there to do, and then we had stopped messaging for a little while, because she was doing other things and I was doing other things too. I was sat at my kitchen table, which also serves as the table where I work from, and the table where I write at, and the table where I edit films at. I checked my phone, and there was a message from my friend from Los Angeles:

Omg David lynch

And I said:

I love David lynch

Then:

Wait

Oh no:(

And then I messaged my best friend, because he was coming round for a drink. We have been drinking at home because it’s gotten too expensive to drink in other places.

My little love

David Lynch is dead

I put on some music. The music that plays in the third season of Twin Peaks. I remember when I watched that season because, when it finished, I felt a feeling in the pit of my stomach that was like the feeling you get when you’re little when you see something that you know is not good, but you don’t understand it yet, except that now I wasn’t little anymore but I still didn’t understand that feeling. And I remember that I found it wonderful that David Lynch had made me feel something like that. 

I saw my best friend through the window. He waved at me and smiled. I wondered if he knew yet.

I opened the door, and he was there, and he took me in his arms, and I cried, because we had found David Lynch together, because it was with him that I had first visited Twin Peaks, because it was with him that I had found it in me to start all of this, to start my life again, to make films and be in films and find joy in life again. 

We sat in the living room and drank drinks from cans and bottles, and talked about David Lynch, and then we watched Wild at Heart. 

It was different with Lynch, because even though he was so famous, so famous that we all knew his name, he made you feel like you knew him better than anyone else, like no-one quite understood the connection that you two had together. I haven’t cried over the deaths of many famous people. I cried when David Bowie died, but, then, I think we all did. I was a teenager when he died. But now I’m an adult. Lynch’s death gave me that strange pulling sensation, like your heart’s being tugged out of your mouth, lurching upwards and filling up the inside of your throat. It’s almost the same feeling as when someone breaks your heart.

When I came to London, I was very excited. I had a good time, too, though lots of my first year was spent completely out of my mind. Late nights, late mornings, that sort of thing. And when I finished my studies, after that first year, I sunk into a deep hole and the walls were very high and even when I climbed up them for a second or two then I saw that it was night outside and I couldn’t see anything, so I crawled back down. My love broke my heart that year. I made some films, but they weren’t very inspired. There is something that David Lynch says about how suffering doesn’t make good art, and I think it’s true. Sometimes, when you’re sad, you think that what you’re writing or making is profound because you seem to feel things very profoundly, but then you read or watch them back, and they’re not as good as you thought they were. The films I’ve made when I’ve been smiling are much better than the ones I’ve made when I was crying. 

I stayed close with my ex, and we watched Twin Peaks together. That was the first thing we saw of David Lynch. Since then, and perhaps partially as a result of that first meeting with Lynch, I have been becoming a happier person. Maybe I always had it in me, but I’m not so sure. I was very bitter for many years, and I did nothing. My days were spent on nothing. And I think that some people never change, and they sort of stay bitter, even if the bitterness looks different. When you think you’re never going to be happy again, then it’s difficult to think how you can be happy. 

But somehow, we got here. Everything is so beautiful, here. And the things that don’t make sense are the best things, because they all look like pictures in a film, and then you make films with them. Of all the things I’ve learned from Lynch, the one thing that I think on, most days, is how life doesn’t make any sense at all and it doesn’t explain itself to you, and so you needn’t feel like your art has to explain itself either. Lots of films try to explain things to you, as though they don’t realise that we live in a world where everything is strange and unexplained and that’s why it’s a good world to live in.

So here we are. David Lynch is dead, but I am still smiling. And in the moments when I find that I am not smiling, it doesn’t take so long for me to smile again. I am smiling now because, on the day he died, I was on set, shooting in a strange film with good people, doing something that he might have been doing should he not have died. It is a strange thing that life carries on when good people die. 

Even if it was not only Lynch, I think I have Lynch to thank for much of the change that has happened in my life. What is it that he wrote on one of his paintings? I wrote it down in my brown book, the one where I write down the scripts I have to learn. I have written lots of things in there. But I liked this thing in particular.

“He saw the splendour all around. He saw himself.”

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The Carl Kruse Blog Homepage is at https://www.carlkruse.com
Contact: carl AT carlkruse DOT com
Other articles by Hazel include What Does It Mean To Be Wealthy, Gluttony and Love, and Film Scenes I Wish I Had Never Seen.
Also find Carl Kruse on Crunchbase,

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