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I was in Barbados for the last week, trying my best not to engage with news of any kind. (I spent Monday’s U.S. presidential inauguration day on a catamaran with a quartet of apologetic Americans who were attempting to do the same thing; I fear the next day’s spate of grim executive orders probably wiped out all the blissful enjoyment of a day at sea.)
Of course, some events permeated my vacation fog, including the sad news of David Lynch’s death at age 78.
My colleague Jen Zoratti beat me to the tribute punch with her bang-on Next newsletter, which talks about the Mulholland Drive director’s philosophy of life: Keep your eye on the doughnut, not the hole.
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Like Jen, I admire David Lynch as a person — but I’m also pretty passionate about most of his work. I love Twin Peaks the most, partly because it’s the first TV series my father and I really shared (he, up until then, had intellectually opposed television other than Masterpiece Theatre) and partly because I think the 1990 show hit me in that sweet spot of burgeoning pop-culture obsession of my early 20s.
Also, of course, because it’s brilliant. Despite its precipitous decline into second-season silliness, its effect on the television that followed can’t be overstated.
It proved that viewers were not averse to outré material, that TV can be bizarre and beautiful (I would wager Twin Peaks has the best-looking collective cast of all time) and terrifying and hilarious all at once.
In The Reveal, Keith Phipps has a great essay about the initial series’ final episodes (it returned for an extra-Lynchian new iteration in 2017), which were a return to form.
Reading this piece on my laptop, I scrolled down to this picture from the last episode; just seeing it gave me a chill. That’s the power of Lynch’s work — that a still image from a 35-year-old show can give you goosebumps.
Bob (Frank Silva, left) meets Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) in the Black Lodge.
Director Guillermo del Toro says Twin Peaks co-creator Mark Frost told him, “David is unironic. People think that he’s ironic, but he isn’t… he really believes in the goodness of pie and coffee.
“He really has the two things: the weirdest mind and the most wholesome mind. I think that paradoxical creation is essential to art.”
Grieving people often say “There are no words” when attempting to summarize a loss. For Lynch, that feels a particularly apt sentiment.
His frequent star Kyle MacLachlan (Twin Peaks, Dune, Blue Velvet) wrote in the New York Times, “Though my lifelong friend, collaborator and mentor David Lynch was as eloquent as anyone I’d ever met — and a brilliant writer — he was not necessarily a word person… David didn’t fully trust words because they pinned the idea in place. They were a one-way channel that didn’t allow for the receiver. And he was all about the receiver.”
So here’s a wordless toast to David Lynch, with some damn fine coffee.
I didn’t have any huckleberry pie, but I do have a Twin Peaks mug.
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