Eulogy: David Lynch

Just outside the frame.

It was always going to end this way. Somewhere between a slow-motion shot and the high-pitched sound of an old record skipping in an empty diner. A red telephone ringing in the distance, unanswered. A cigarette burning itself down to nothing in an ashtray that no one remembers lighting. A woman in a silver dress right under the streetlamp, turning her head too slowly, like she already knows what’s behind her. The coffee is still hot. Maybe it isn’t. Maybe time has stopped moving altogether, frozen in a single frame, the kind that flickers slightly at the edges, just enough to let you know you’re watching something not meant to be seen.

I have not seen all his films, but does one need to watch every cloud in the sky to understand the storm? What is knowledge anyway, if not an endless loop of trying to make sense of something that refuses to be understood?

As the news of his passing flooding my feed, I see a 20 year old Yashh, watching a random interview of a man in black shades, seated before his laptop in a lit room, a space that seems to have witnessed light for the first time in 5 years. Now you know, where the idea of being in a dark room all the time, devoid of sunlight, comes from. Cool. He said, "I learned that just beneath the surface there's another world, and still different worlds as you dig deeper. I knew it as a kid, but I couldn't find the proof. It was just a kind of feeling. There is goodness in blue skies and flowers, but another force, a wild pain and decay, also accompanies everything." I think this pretty much sums up the state of 'most of my being.'

Lynch was the feeling of walking into a room and forgetting why you are there. He was the half-remembered dream that lingers just at the edge of waking life, the familiar stranger on a train who looks at you just a little too long. He was not interested in the obvious. He made that very clear. He was interested in the space JUST right next to the obvious, where he could fold time like origami.

God, he hated explanations. He never explained, only invited. And isn’t that what the greatest artists do? I want to believe that. I want to embrace it fully, to let mystery and subtlety breathe without suffocating everything with meaning and shapes. But I've struggled all my life. Because explaining is easy, and not explaining feels like standing at the edge of a dark forest, resisting the urge to light the world on fire. I know mind craves resolution, but I also know Lynch taught me that resolution is often where things go to die.

I have carried/tried to carry his philosophy more than I have consumed his work. And I know I'm failing. I am (not) fine with it. It's not coming from the chamber of my shortcomings, but someplace deeper than that.

Because even now, as I write this, I am explaining him. Trying to contain something uncontainable. He understood that it’s beautiful when things are allowed to be mysterious. If everything is clear, then you lose interest. And yet, I am wanting to pin it all down, to outline why his work matters, why his presence (and absence) in the world felt like a crack in reality where something larger could slip through. Perhaps that’s my mistake to think I need to make sense of what he left behind, when all he ever asked was: feel it.

I think I am feeling it. I'm feeling it. Being in an impossible room, where black coffee is being poured endlessly and you see the doughnuts lying around at odd places. I know he's here. Just outside the frame. Still whispering (or yelling): Keep your eye on the doughnut, not on the hole.

Some interviews and clips to change your life:

The iconic David Lynch - David Stratton interview

David Lynch explains Transcendental Meditation

David Lynch lashes out at crew for not letting him go dreamy

David Lynch: ‘You gotta be selfish. It's a terrible thing’

David Lynch interview: 'Even in the so-called dark things, there's beauty'