Fire Walk with Me

Did any artist ever love Los Angeles more than David Lynch did?

When David Lynch died on the 16^th of January, while the greater Los Angeles area was still reeling from the ongoing destruction due to several fires, it seemed it might be almost too much to bear. Of course mourning the death of one person in the face of so much loss and devastation, especially a person who had been sick for so long, and someone I didn’t even know personally, sounds sort of ridiculous. Yet we mourn celebrities not because we knew them, but because they helped us know ourselves. David Lynch certainly did that for many, and probably for more people here in Los Angeles than anywhere else.

It’s safe to say that had I not been a genuine admirer of Lynch’s artistry, I never would have ended up marrying Lily Holleman. For many years, David Lynch was a pre-qualifier for Lily. Perhaps to be her friend, but certainly to be one of her creative collaborators, and especially to be “dating material”, one had to be a David Lynch fan. When Lily and I first met and got to know each other, circa 2007, I was already an enormous admirer of Lynch’s artistry and profoundly enjoyed several of his films as well as (the first season of) “Twin Peaks”. Since that time, my admiration and enjoyment have only grown. His 2017 “Twin Peaks: The Return” (aka “Twin Peaks Season 3”) was my favorite movie of the past decade even though it aired episodically on Showtime (making it what we old folks used to call “television”). Several of the films Lynch directed find themselves among my all time favorites, but I also deeply loved that he would never speak about their meaning. He expressed what he had to say through the language of pure cinema. So, why reduce a film’s meaning to words thereafter? When people would have a challenging time “understanding” his work, I would always point out that Lynch’s works made sense emotionally.