Fire Walk With Me...

Today is 16th of January 2025, and it’s a sad day. Not just for me personally, but for thousands, possibly even millions of people worldwide. David Lynch has left this world.

There wasn’t, and most likely won’t ever be, any director, writer, painter, musician and overall artist like him. Sometimes it’s hard to describe these feelings with words. It’s a peculiar sense of loss that’s not directly personal, but is felt across the whole world and in hearts of so many people, that it eventually becomes the air itself. It becomes the atmosphere of the Earth, the compassion being inhaled by so many. Very similar to 10th of January 2016, when another David – David Bowie – a giant character (or characters), also departed for the other realm. Even both dates are too similar, as we can see. January is not a good month.

As a matter of fact, I finished reading the memoir/autobiography of David Lynch a few weeks ago, named “Room to Dream”. The book fascinated me, but not just because it was about one of my most beloved artists that I’ve been following for many years. Not just for the intimate insight into David’s life and professional career.

If you pay attention to his words, not only the ones written for movies and TV, but the ones that described his views on life and creativity, you can learn a lot. This is why we desperately need artists like him at all times. The ones that really understand what art is about and why we should not be discouraged if others don’t like what we do and create. He loved life, even if it sometimes wasn’t easy to go through. Despite the common darkness found in his work, he always looked on the bright side and he showed us the light through that darkness. His words were encouraging, warm and full of his specific humor.

Through everything weird, obscure and confusing, he was able to communicate deeper meaning of all the absurd things in life to his audience and fans. As I personally love and will always love surrealism in any artistic form, I’m especially grateful that David was using surreal elements during his career, and kept it alive for wider audiences still decades after the original era of the movement. Surrealism takes some courage, and despite this, he never hesitated to experiment and confuse everyone as a result, even if it sometimes meant poor reviews of his work. There are too many reasons why he was one of the most unique artists that ever walked this planet, and so I can’t go into each one without filling several pages.

The point is that the world wasn’t ready to let him go. At least not yet. We still hoped for something more, some other final masterpiece produced by his mind that would fascinate and confuse us once again. That’s why people loved what he was doing. And when you’re not ready, such news can hit hard. The psychology of someone very important (in a wider, public way) passing is a funny thing. Yet when you admire and love someone that’s on the other side of the world, if you devour every piece of art or legacy that these talented individuals leave here for us and then they suddenly depart, it hurts with a strange kind of sensation. Like when we were wondering who killed Laura Palmer while watching Twin Peaks for the first time.

In any case, someone like David Lynch will never truly die and be forgotten. Anyone that influenced masses and left a huge amount of interesting work for us to explore will still live on in that work. The best part about art in general (at least in physical or recorded form) is that it can be experienced over and over, and so the artist is alive with it every time someone puts on a record, watches a movie or reads a book.

And this is the whole point of this little tribute: Remember that creativity is a gift. Don’t let it sit on the shelf and catch dust. Don’t wait for something to happen out of blue. Grab a pen, a laptop, a guitar, a camera, whatever it is you like to work with. Go out (or stay inside) and get inspired. Create something out of nothing, transform your perception of the world and people around you into something captivating. Even if you think that the result might not be that good, it’s not important. Because the drive to create and the sheer enjoyment of doing so is what makes people’s lives better. And I’m positive that David would like it that way. However, he’s already orbiting the White and the Black Lodge in the form of the ethereal electricity, reminding us that it’s always important to dream. All great artists are, in fact, magicians in their own way. The magician becomes the magic at last.