David Lynch is currently my favourite creative person in general. You just can’t not love Lynch. He’s primarily known as a filmmaker but he’s also a painter, musician, weatherman and general force of nature. He’s known as the ‘American Surrealist’ and for good reason. His work is driven by ‘the elusive subconscious’ which is why consuming his art, especially his films, often feels like dreaming. You pay too much attention to the plot, you will be completely and utterly lost, so the best way to appreciate it is (cliché as it sounds) to feel it. Roll with it. I’m surprised how (relatively) popular he is considering how unapologetically avant-garde his stuff is, but unsurprised that he hasn’t made a feature film since ’06 (as of writing). He’s said the film industry as it is now is no longer the place where his stuff will thrive seeing as how corporate it’s gotten. He said tv and the internet are good, though, and that’s where he’s been releasing most of his projects as of late. As someone with a fondness for the surreal/abstract, myself, the attitude he takes toward creativity is simply inspiring, especially as I’ve come of age during this age of attention-seeking and corporate zombification. Probably, what I like most about Lynch is how he always refuses to explain any of his work or elaborate on the ideas presented. People joke about it, but I really admire him for it. There are lots of reasons why I and many others love Lynch, but that is probably the biggest reason for me.
To visit a David Lynch work is to have a sensory experience. Actually, to visit any work of art is to have a sensory experience, but Mr. Lynch takes that and makes it his priority. As mentioned before, trying to follow a David Lynch plot will probably leave you frustrated and miserable. How you approach it is to let go and feel it. Get taken on this emotional, sensory journey. THAT is where you’ll find the soul of the thing. Kubrick once said something along the lines of that a film (or you could say story in general) should be, like music, a series of emotions and everything else comes later. If most stories have emotion at the base with themes and plot as icing on the cake, the Lynchman serves us this full course meal of emotion leaving the whole plot thing as a little dessert. Because of this approach, we as audience members can never quite come away with the same experience- or, at least, we shouldn’t. The Lynchman’s playing with the subconscious, here. His work is meant to sink down into the depths of our souls and take us whatever places our minds let them. The art does what art does and manifests itself within us and reveals to us something only we can experience. You could call a David Lynch experience a Rorschach test. And the absolute legend has the generosity not to ruin it all by breaking it down for us. Why would you WANT such a beautiful process to be tarnished by outside influence?
Art shouldn’t be explained. I think that defeats the purpose of it being made in the first place. A work of art is an experience whether it’s an image, sound, words or anything else. It’s a journey specially crafted for people to travel. Worlds are created for you to explore. Whatever you get from it is yours. What you take away will reveal something about you. Frankly, I don’t think the creator’s original intent really matters once the art is released to the world (just so long as your conclusions are drawn based on what’s presented to you). I know I’ve had some art tell me stuff about myself I didn’t know, even if I do know the most obvious intended meaning was something else. Personally, while it’s pretty clear that Nightcrawler (2014) is about media sensationalism, it revealed to me something about how I interact with others that I didn’t realize. I've tried to be mindful of that message ever since. A big example of something with an open-ended concept that’s often used for very.. differing perspectives is the concept of The Matrix. As the years have passed, it’s become abundantly clear what the Watchowskis’ intended meaning was, but people will still use the concept for various (often conflicting) concepts. Annoying as some of these perspectives can come across, I do think it’s very interesting what people’s different conclusions say about them and how they view the world. I think that’s how art should work. But we don’t like that, do we? We like having things having objective meaning. We like them getting explained.. why?
I had a conversation about this recently and a point that was brought up was how we’re trained (especially in school) to think that everything should be explained and that it has one meaning. (As if I didn’t hate the education system enough already.) It doesn’t help at all that we now have one thousand and one joe schmos on the internet explaining every film, novel, tv-show, etc. in existence. I hate how whenever type a title into google, the first thing that’s always suggested is “explained” or “ending explained.” Like, dude.. is this the first thing you did after you finished the thing?! Were you even watching the thing at all?! Did you even TRY to form your own opinion first?! But, then again, in school, whenever you finished a book in lit class (or even before) the first thing you do is type in “explained” or “how was this theme shown”. You don’t even get the chance to think about the book. You have too many exams and assignments to worry about. I remember sometimes where I actually did try to come to my own conclusions about the book or look at it from another angle but had to dismiss the thoughts because I had to stick to the curriculum or whatever. I remember the curriculum we used for Lit class had a set list of themes that we’d look at, and if you found any themes coming out from the story that weren’t in that list, they were dismissed as simply ‘incorrect’. You could even be talking about the exact same theme but have to reword it to fit the curriculum. Don’t get me wrong, though. I definitely know in retrospect that some conclusions we may have drawn did deviate from the text, but not all of them. Even so, we (or at least, my class) were never taught why conclusions were wrong or not. We were just fed explanations and got our grades. We were never taught to appreciate literature much less any other forms or art, it was all just information to memorize and spit out with our formulaic, fake essays filled with manufactured thoughts. Digest and regurgitate: school in a nutshell. You train these kids full of potential to become thoughtless robots during what should be their developmental years.. Man, I’m REALLY starting to remember why I hate school.
Then that carries over into life. I’ve mentioned in several essays before how the brain likes making these shortcuts to making sense of life, often for worse. Usually for worse. I think our need to derive objective meaning for everything is a part of that. Or maybe we've been doing that even before. We've definitely been doing before, but how they're 'teaching' the kids isn't helping. The gaps are filled. The abstractions are simplified. Anything that befuddles the mind is either written off or the brain suffers until it receives an explanation. We don’t like to use our imagination. The mind doesn’t like these surprise attacks.
As much as I’d like not to give specific examples, I do know some specific people who do this stuff and while I won’t name names, these people will know themselves if (and that is if) they read this. (I’m sorry.. not really)
In high school, I did quite deliberately surround myself with the nerds who were the ones getting the best of the best grades. I did okay, but these are the people who are regularly getting top of the class, national award, newspaper articles made about them type deals. Because I know these people personally, I can say without a shadow of a doubt that grades mean absolutely nothing. Some of these people have said and done some of the dumbest stuff I’ve ever heard and seen. Still, they have confidence because the system tells them they’re brilliant. I wasn’t originally going to talk about my problems with school this much here (I have plans to make that its own thing), but for this point, all of this is extremely relevant. Since I dipped from school for a year, a lot of things have been recalculated. Because we’re no longer in that setting, not only have my strengths been allowed to grow and flourish, but these people’s weaknesses have also become all too exposed. I know a person (always got the top grades, teachers’ favourite and everything) who is always watching the video essays and explanations for everything they watch immediately after they finish. They will watch a thing and not like it or not enjoy it, but change their mind after watching an essay. Or they’ll be messaging me WHILE they’re watching asking for the explanations. I kid you not, I was messaged after they watched a thing asking me for an explanation of the ending; I would later find out that it was because they wanted to know if they were allowed to be upset with a certain character. I showed them Lynch’s Eraserhead (1977).. Yes, I knew what I was doing, but while the mental deterioration was hilarious, what was most interesting to me was how the person resembled a machine malfunctioning. You could practically hear the buzzing and beeps and smell the exhaust. You could practically see static upon this person's face. Again, I knew what I was doing, but the image of a machine that simply wasn't programmed to process certain data going haywire stuck with me. What if I wasn't here? What if you DIDN’T have all these explanations online? Whose thoughts will you depend on? There is another (also top grades, head constantly stuck in a textbook) who will read stuff I write or listen to stuff I share or things like that and say they agree, but when actually put into practice, it will be all too obvious that they didn’t think about it at all. I say a thing. They say they agree. I ask them to expound. Nothing. I ask a question. They give an answer, I ask them to respond. Not. A. Thing. (I sound hurt. I wish I could use examples that didn’t include me, but my world is a small and strange one.) One day I will post a clip of -again- LYNCH talking about.. pretty much what I’m talking about now: understanding abstractions and people not getting art that isn’t straightforward. And they’ll say they agree with what he says about people’s increasing unwillingness to use intuition and wanting everything to be easily explained. Then the very next day, they’ll complain when the thing you showed them has any quality at all that makes it slightly unconventional (if you think I’m being a jerk again, Scott Pilgrim was too abstract for this one). They’ll take it back if they watch an essay about why it doesn’t suck though.. then call it a masterpiece for the same reasons why it befuddled them.
There comes a point where you start repeating words and thoughts you don’t understand. You start YELLING them, even. You concern yourself with things that don’t concern you and lose sight of the things that do. You start to wear feelings that aren’t yours and may even truly believe that they are. This is right. This is wrong. This is this way. This is that way. I must get mad at this. I must respond to this this way. Why? I haven’t given it much thought, but it makes sense to me. I think so. I think I think so. You genuinely start to think you think things you’ve never really thought about. You start to feel like you feel things without ever considering why. Why is this wrong? Why does this upset me? Why should this make me happy? What do I feel? What do I think? Do I feel anything? Do I think anything? Are my thoughts my own or are they a series of words that’ve been fed? Do I truly believe them or am I just telling myself that I must?
I was born into a generation built on artificial emotion. Feelings are so easy, and they’re forced upon you at all sides every day without enough time to process them for yourself. The most sensationalized possible feelings are algorithmically thrust upon you and they’re all a touch away. People’s feelings are rarely their own. Everything must be and is explained. Not enough time or patience for nuanced thought. You have to deliberately unplug to escape. Then, at some point, you might actually realize that you weren’t a person. You don’t have to do anything. You don’t have to think anything. Deviation makes you an anomaly, but it also makes you a person. It is perfectly fine to use your own brain or feelings to interpret art. It is perfectly fine to use your own brain or feelings to interpret life. Art is meant to make you feel. Why are you asking others to tell you how to feel?
People depend too much on other people’s thoughts, and when put to the test, you realize that they hold no substance. What the person is saying may be true (to them, at least), but if YOU didn’t go through the process of arriving at those thoughts, yourself, there’s a good chance they’ll mean nothing to you. I know that all of my favourite things are things that meant something to me, personally, because I thought about them and watched and rewatched or read and reread them until it clicked. Angel’s Egg (1985) took me three viewings before I got it, and now, I can’t watch it without shedding tears. Akira (1988) was (kind of) explained to me before I’d watched and rewatched and read and reread it. The thing about that particular case is that it was with each revisit that I realized more and more what Mr. YouTube was saying. I realized that from watching the video essay, while I heard and got it in theory, with each revisit, I started to understand it for myself and even realized I misunderstood what Mr. YouTube said.. or at least, I realized his thoughts weren’t mine. And now, just a few months ago, I made a big essay about Akira that I still consider unfinished, so there you go.
As for Mr. YouTube, is he wrong to be giving his thoughts? Am I wrong to be giving my thoughts? I don’t know about that. While I will say it is a sin for the audience to seek out explanation without giving any thought to the experience, themselves, what of the people supplying them? Is the drug addict better or worse than the drug dealer? See, because I do like talking about art and things I like, I get it. Writing essays and reviews that get into analysis and explanation is fun and rewarding for the writer, and that’s the primary reason they’re made: for the writer. As for how it affects the audience, I don’t know about that. Maybe it’s because I make stories and art, myself, but I’m always trying to be mindful of the creator’s perspective. I know, being a creator, that I do not create art for people to get meaning secondhand from some schmuck living in his parents’ house who loves his media maybe a little too much (yes, I’m calling myself out, too). Because I’m mindful of this perspective, I try to be very deliberate in that I don’t claim to ‘explain’ or tell people what to think. I try to discuss, talk about the topic and what it means to me. For example, the only really ‘analysis’ type essay I’ve done so far was my Akira essay, and even then, I was really talking about something else, just using Akira to discuss my points. That’s where I think the attitude should lie: discussion instead of explanation. But, I’m not your dad. I can’t tell you what to do. Having said that, if you’re making 4-hour long videos claiming to explain Twin Peaks, you should probably get sent to maximum security prison.
Let me tell you from personal experience, it feels like getting punched in the gut when you put your heart and soul into crafting a work of art only to have people tell you to explain it. It’s like you create this thing, every decision, every detail is carefully considered to convey this narrative- this emotion and people toss it all out the window for you to just lay it all out. I think that defeats the purpose of art being created in the first place. The Lynchman knows what’s up. The Lynchman wants you to experience art. What I say is, if you don’t understand something on first visit, if you care about it enough to actually want to get something out of it, revisit it. If you don’t get it that time either, revisit it, again. And again. And again. Maybe use your head less. Feel it. Roll with it. Go where the artist is taking you. At this point, if you still can’t quite come to any conclusion or explanation, maybe that’s because there is none. But chances are, you felt something even if you aren’t able to put it into words or it doesn’t really make sense in a concrete way. Art is, before anything else, an experience. Art won’t always- probably shouldn’t ever, have an objective meaning, and thus, shouldn’t be ‘explained.’ I really don’t think that’s why it’s made.
TLDR- David Lynch is pretty cool, school sucks and I need new friends.
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