David Lynch, the greatest dream expert since Freud, said that “important dreams are the ones you have when you are awake.” He also used to say that the films he liked were those that “left the viewer a space to dream.” While several generations grew up theorizing about the meaning of his cinematic masterpieces, such as ‘Mulholland Drive’ or ‘Lost Highway’, he assured that understanding the whole was no more important than the ability to delve into each scene separately.
David Lynch made us daydream like no one else. Those red curtains and long hallways that you have seen everywhere – from the News to Instagram – since his death was announced this Thursday, are the spaces that we traveled with him, happy to enter unknown and disturbing terrains of the world, of our own psyche. . Abstract places that we found comfortable without them being so and without understanding why. The label of “auteur cinema” was very small for someone who made us discover so much about ourselves.
‘A True Story’ proved that David Lynch could make “normal” films, but he will undoubtedly be remembered for amazing things like ‘Inland Empire’, his final feature film, released almost 20 years ago, and for which the adjective “surreal” It wasn’t enough. All you have to do is check how many entries the network presents to us for the word “Lynchian.” Even further, when television series have become the fashion of the times, we must remember how the director and screenwriter revolutionized the genre with ‘Twin Peaks’ at the end of the 80s. Only then do we discover that a series could be a greater work of art than a film.
To begin with, he managed to introduce the question of “Who killed Laura Palmer?” in the world’s vocabulary, after presenting in that immense pilot episode, worth watching on a loop, the protagonist “dead, wrapped in plastic.” In a way that was risky to the point of implausibility, the series shied away from being a typical “whodunit”, surrendering more and more to the magical component, losing audience but gaining cult. Its basis was an ambitious, challenging and unpredictable script, as well as a colossal supporting cast, as seductive as they were grotesque. I am incapable of doing the house without remembering the crazy woman with the curtains. Few series have caused the death of even their prompter to be in the news: there is a page on IMDB that explains which are the 60 people linked to ‘Twin Peaks’ who have already died, which includes Lady Leño, David Bowie, and finally the author of its successful soundtrack, Angelo Badalamenti, and the Roadhouse singer, Julee Cruise.
The death of the master of all is already too much for those of us who discovered perversion through ‘Blue Velvet’. The consolation is that his last work was the most insightful and enriching. An absolute triumph of independence and creative freedom. At a time when series survived on cliffhangers, he offered an ungraspable, extremely strange final season of ‘Twin Peaks’, with outstanding characters like Sky Ferreira, to whom the viewer was invited to give meaning if he wanted to. needed. But with powerful plots, fascinating journeys between underworlds and unforgettable chapters like “Part 8” or the end. He obviously didn’t have the impact of his first season; I wasn’t looking for it either. In its destructure, it is a work that can be revisited in two or three future lives. You won’t do the same with any other series you know.
We cannot overlook the value of music in their series. He hired Angelo Badalamenti because he had to give up having the Cocteau Twins appear in ‘Blue Velvet’. He had come to them by delving into 4AD’s catalog because This Mortal Coil’s version of Tim Buckley’s ‘Song to the Siren’ had blown him away. The charismatic Ivo asked too much money for the reproduction rights, but the choice for Liz Fraser’s band already denoted exquisite taste. David loved dream pop because such a genre could have been named after his films, and as in purely aesthetic terms, musically the 50s were also his devotion. He and many of his characters looked like Elvis; These were almost always called things as pop as Shelly, Donna, Audrey or Bobby.
In addition to discovering Julee Cruise; David Lynch was the lyricist of the songs on ‘Twin Peaks’, and later released his own albums. The involvement of his own hand was evident. I have felt David Lynch so many times in the groups of the 21st century that sometimes I have come to think that his soundtracks were being more influential in our times than the Beatles. Ask Lana del Rey, The Weeknd, Beach House, Cigarettes After Sex, Lykke Li, Johnny Jewel, Chairlift, Eartheater or all of trip-hop, just to name a few. Their imprint is even where you don’t notice it, from Billy Corgan to Nine Inch Nails, as they themselves have acknowledged. Trent Reznor said that some of his concerts in the early ’90s started late, solely and exclusively so he could see ‘Twin Peaks’ live. In all the awards he is receiving for his film work, there is a little piece of David Lynch.
Being such a music lover, as a sign of his humor avoiding boring intellectualities, his character in ‘Twin Peaks’, a top boss in the FBI, was deaf as a stone, and screamed like a pig.
The last days of David Lynch will be remembered for those absurd videos – as it could not be otherwise – in which he gave the weather from Los Angeles, uploaded to YouTube. He was so sick that he could barely go outside. Now let’s hope he’s dreaming, as he liked, immersed in a completely abstract world. In case David is nowhere to be found, don’t forget that there is nothing like daydreaming anyway.
