David Lynch (January 20, 1946 - January 16, 2025)

“WHAT?”

That was my reaction to the death of David Keith Lynch. I was at home on the one real day off I had this week between recovering from a very bad cold, teaching, prepping and cleaning up after the vacation that was time spent with my family. I was about to take the laundry out of the washer when I saw the message on Facebook that he had died and all I could think to say (or at least type) was one loud blurt from the heart. And it seems appropriate now that the person who put that notice up happened to be one of my former media students. She seemed to understand his importance not just to me, but to a host of us suburban weirdos who could see what was bubbling under the surface of all that brown and grey.

The first Lynch film I ever saw was “The Elephant Man”. I was about eight or nine and a local television station played it as part of their late-night movie show. I was not sure if I believed the story to be true…but I was hooked. There is something about the outsider not being understood that has always drawn me to certain talents (Tim Burton, David Byrne, H. R. Giger). Lynch understood who the real monsters were, and would not let us look away from reactions that were all our own.

And it continued: “Blue Velvet”; “Eraserhead”; “Dune” (well, I tried to watch his version first; not much luck there); “Lost Highway”… And, of course, there was the cultural phenomenon that was the original “Twin Peaks” series. It is very hard to make it clear just how many of us wanted to know, more than anything else television could promise, “Who Killed Laura Palmer?” No spoilers here and solving the mystery was not even the point. Even as the teenager I was in 1990, I knew that this was one of the weirdest and most improbably programs to ever be shown on television. I began to wonder how he got away with it (this was a primetime, non-cable television show). Who was this David Lynch who could be “the first populist surrealist” (Pauline Kael’s term for him) and move from one form to the next?

Who were you, David?

Well, from your memoir, “Room to Dream” (please get the audiobook version if you can), you grew up in suburbia, married four times (not to Isabella Rossellini, as I discovered with a little disappointment), started out with painting and became a filmmaker who ushered in the midnight movie era with “Eraserhead” (Stanley Kubrick’s favourite film, boys and girls), received grants, prizes, and praise, and several fine cups of coffee to create a body of work that cannot be touched (“Mulholland Drive” was named best film of the decade in 2001).

And yet, you still did not rest.

How many filmmakers can say they voiced a cartoon (“The Cleveland Show”), put out experimental blues and rock albums, often acted in their own and other films and television shows (cf. “Louie”; “Robot Chicken”), put out public service announcements, advertising, videos and weather reports for local news stations, made me laugh out loud with their last cameo (will have to be a spoiler here: in Steven Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans”, he played…John Ford!), and ran transcendental meditation centres under his own name? You were the greatest of inspirations to those of us still figuring out what the word “polymath” really means…

And now you are gone.

I am going to look for my copy of “Blue Velvet” this weekend, and think carefully about the quote heard in the movie theatre that Kael was kind enough to remember and share:

“Maybe I’m sick, but I want to see that again.”

Good-bye, David. You were loved and now we will have to play catch up as we live with your cinematic memories. May all the surrealistic dreams you shared with us come true in a better world than this one.

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You can find more poems, stories, and articles by Kendall Defoe on my Vocal profile. I complain, argue, provoke and create...just like everybody else.

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