January 21, 2025

The Song You Hear Is Real

This is Finish Your Monsters, a weekly blogletter about the creative process. I'm sharing adventures in art and life as well as setting CLIFFHANGER goals for myself, so--

DID I MAKE MY GOAL?

Big picture, I’m working away on the post-production of our horror film, Dead Media. Last week, I committed to the goal of sending 3 movie related emails and editing one more scene of Dead Media.

I got the emails sent and I edited another scene and a half. I was able to clear most of Sunday to focus on editing which is great because the more hours in a row, the easier it is to get into the flow.

I wrote last week about what a long and distracting week it’s been with political horrors, the fires in Los Angeles, taxes work due, and more.

Then David Lynch passed away.

I wanted to do nothing but mourn and sit in a very dark room watching his work. But I also felt a good way to honor him was to tenaciously pursue my art. So it did feel good to carve out some time to work on my film while processing the loss of my favorite filmmaker.

ADVENTURES OF THE WEEK--

My adventure this week was truly an adventure in processing loss and embracing gratitude.

I don’t know who I’d be if I hadn’t seen Twin Peaks when I did. I saw the first season during its rebroadcast in the late summer of 1990.

I was always drawn to art and stories that were different, otherworldly, larger than life. The bombast of superhero comic books. The thrill of a buzzing, glowing lightsaber in Star Wars. Repeatedly checking out the old Crestwood House Monster book about Dracula even though I’d never seen the original film. Those strange gothic images sparked something.

All of that storytelling was a contrast to the boring, beige world of a lot of television in the 80s. Normal humans in brown jackets drove big beige cars around big beige cities, sometimes looking at a big boxy gray computers. In many sitcoms, rigid archetypes of a nuclear family would go through rigid story structures accompanied by hollow, inhuman laugh tracks. Next week they’d repeat the same journey without any awareness they were trapped in a soul-dulling loop of sameness.

At school, I felt trapped in a soul-dulling loop of sameness. My peers generally liked me. I got validation from being good at visual art and the occasional joke in class. But I felt trapped in rigid structures of what is “normal.” By senior year I was voted Most Personality. Not Best. Just Most. My general artsiness, weirdness, otherness was tolerated. In a bemused “pat on the head” way. Like I was another stock character in a sitcom. Every high school is allowed one artsy guy.

But I felt seen by Twin Peaks. By Special Agent Dale Cooper. By David Lynch, Mark Frost, and all the writers and directors who made that show.

The show had multiple levels of appeal. Cooper was an archetype of masculinity I desperately needed. Confident, physically fit, but absolutely leading with empathy, grace, humor.

But more than anything, there was a sense in Twin Peaks of the ethereal. A sense that there is so much more world, life, emotion, truth beneath the rigid routine of traditional society. People cling to soul-dulling sameness out of fear and anger, but if we open ourselves and really listen to the wind whistling through the trees we can find ourselves snapping our fingers in rhythm to some ancient haunting melody we’ve never heard yet always sensed.

I didn’t express these feelings to anyone. I couldn’t have verbalized them back then if I had tried. They didn’t immediately change my life. They just made me feel GOOD in the middle of many other life experiences that made me feel awful. They made me feel SEEN. Like I was not an aberration to be tolerated. That the way I felt the world was valid.

Lynch was not the only creator when it comes to Twin Peaks. Mark Frost co-created it and did a ton of the actual showrunning. Some of my favorite lines and scenes are not even in episodes Lynch personally wrote or directed.

But my Twin Peaks fandom was a doorway into David Lynch fandom. Fire Walk With Me imprinted on my soul. His films, his art, his photography, his delightful interviews.

I read one interview where he described ideas existing somewhere out there in the cosmos and we just need to have our antenna out to receive them.

I stayed up until 2 am one night making a painting inspired by that quote for an art show I had booked at a coffee shop. (By this time I was performing and I had booked the art show so my little theater group could do a few sketches at the opening. I dressed up in a squirrel costume and recited the “Alas Poor Yorick” speech in front of the painting below.)

As I got older, my life was almost entirely about comedy and theater. I was surrounded by mostly like-minded weirdos who craved the unusual in storytelling. That was great, but some of it was just about stories that broke convention. Lynch’s work was something more than just a simple flipping of expectations.

After doing a lot more creating myself, I revisited Lynch’s films and interviews and I started to intellectually understand my love of his work.

For me, this is the essential truth: He is not being weird for weird’s sake. It is not a performative affectation. He gets an idea, he tries to stay very true to that idea, and he tries to express it through his unique and specific filter as a unique and specific human soul.

In other words: He’s not trying to be weird, he’s trying to be honest.

When I saw Twin Peaks, I laughed at the fun and weird things. But when I felt seen by Twin Peaks, it was the honesty coming through. It was the validation that humans are intuitive, emotional beings.

In my love and pursuit of comedy, I studied comic theory. The science of laughs. I’ve taught multiple workshops on it. There are rhythms and structures and WHYs of what makes people laugh. You can employ them to get a better response.

But I also knew from YEARS of standing in front of a live audience that raw instinct is real. That there is a wave of laughter from one joke and if you deliver the next joke at the precisely perfect moment at the precisely perfect volume and cadence as the wave of laughter dies down, it will be golden.

There is indefinable, unquantifiable energy passed between an audience and performers. You can’t measure it. You can’t time it. You can only sense and feel it.

That’s why Twin Peaks hit me so hard. That’s why Lynch is an exceptional filmmaker. He feels and he senses and he strives to go beyond what words can express to communicate something deep and true. To hum his version of the ancient song buried in the rustle of the trees and see if anyone wants to hum along.

Not only did David Lynch create great work, he was open and encouraging that others could, too.

In countless interviews, he describes his process. Just following the idea. Just being true to it and his instincts. And you can, too.

I love his work, but I also love his generosity in encouraging others to follow their ideas and their own unique intuition about expressing those ideas.

When I moved to Los Angeles, I hoped to meet David Lynch and thank him in person. A friend of mine sometimes just saw him at a barbershop. What luck!

I went to Amoeba records when he did a signing once in 2017. I believe he was signing a new pressing of the soundtrack to Fire Walk With Me. I got there four hours early and the people who had been standing in line since the night before kindly wished me luck getting in. I did not get in.

In a strange way, I did get to thank him. My wife, Sara, works at the filming location for Lynch’s first film, Eraserhead. Lynch visited his old stomping grounds in 2019 and Sara showed him around. The visit was filmed and we hope it shows up some day as a bonus feature somewhere. (The details of that story are not mine to tell, but utterly fascinating.)

As Lynch was leaving from the visit, Sara very kindly told him that her husband was an artist and very inspired by his work.

Sara said Lynch smiled and said, “Tell him to keep going.” Then gave a big thumbs up.

Sara sent me the text below.

And I have, indeed, kept going. I’ve been working away at creative projects. Comedy, storytelling, podcasts, theater, and now an emphasis on films.

Sometimes I’ve veered farther away from listening to that deep, honest, intuitive song. I’ve needed to make money or try to get more followers. All the soul-dulling work that’s needed to support your art.

As I started to work on films, I’ve really pushed myself to follow Lynch’s creative ethos. Don’t get too caught up in the rules. They’re there to help you if you get lost. Just follow your instinct. Don’t be weird for weird’s sake. Just be your unique self and people will sense that truth.

When I felt myself getting wrapped up in all the claustrophobic, stultifying tape of writing and creating to please a set of gatekeepers and rules lawyers, I would watch a Lynch film or interview. Then sigh deeply and listen to the wind in the trees again.

Like many during the pandemic, I delighted in Lynch’s weather reports. His turn in The Fablemans is amazing. In an era of nostalgia being embraced by studios, the third season of Twin Peaks was a brilliant, wild, funny, haunting, honest meditation on nostalgia, mortality, and never truly being able to “go home again.” I bought what might be his last creative project—an avant-garde album with Chrystabell that includes a sticker from Lynch that reads, “If you listen to this record three times, you will find a friend.”

I was hopeful, but I was also resigned that he might not make another film or TV series. I’ve been worried about Lynch’s health for a while. Frankly, I thought I was braced for his passing.

I was not.

It hit me on a deep, deep, visceral level. It felt cosmically wrong. Like he should always and forever be in his studio up in the Hollywood Hills, making a painting or a record or a table or a video about patching his pants. Like he was some titan of myth holding up a pillar that kept a vital flame alive.

His worldview, his bliss at creating, his honest but bizarre sense of humor was just NEEDED. More than ever in the face of AI slop. In the face of gatekeepers producing a new and different generation of soul-dulling sameness.

But he wasn’t a god. He wasn’t a titan. He wasn’t the sole keeper of the flame. He’s a kind soul who vociferously encouraged others to create.

It felt important to do my little part in being a flowing, intuitive, creative person. So I coped by doing some editing on my film. In the evening, I put on the Twin Peaks album and did some drawing. I watched Mulholland Drive and cried.

On Saturday, I visited Bob’s Big Boy in Burbank. Lynch famously went there every day for seven years to get coffee, a chocolate milkshake, and catch some day dreams.

The night of his passing, fans turned the Bob’s Big Boy statue into a memorial.

I knew I wanted to bring a tribute. Every October 1st, my wife gives me a little pumpkin to celebrate my love of spooky season. I keep it for months and watch it slowly melt in fascinating ways.

Lynch is well-documented in his love of decay and rot. He found beauty in the organic patterns of rotting things many find ugly and disturbing.

It felt honest and right to honor that with my rapidly deflating pumpkin.

We chose to go in the afternoon.

Much of Lynch’s work deals with darkness. He wanted to confront that part of humanity honestly. There are parts of his work that are deeply disturbing because they’re unflinching looks at the totality of humanity. But he isn’t showing horror to validate it. His work, in my opinion, always pulls toward empathy. He wrestles with questions of darkness. He doesn’t provide easy answers. But for me, the answer is to be deeply aware of the darkness and still pull toward the light.

So I was delighted to visit the memorial in “the beautiful blue skies and golden sunshine” Lynch described at the end of his weather reports.

It was a wonderful and strange moment putting a pumpkin in front of a cartoon boy on the streets of Burbank with tears in my eyes.

But even better was the community. So many people, leaving tributes. So much creativity. Artwork, ticket stubs, a plush Eraserhead baby, blue roses, coffee, donuts, cherry pie, a random can of Miller Lite with “Thanks” written on it.

It was hard to feel he was gone when there were so many people celebrating him.

At one point, a speaker set-up outside squawked. The restaurant was loudly calling for “Lynch, party of three.” Everyone looked around, wondering if he might appear. Appropriately haunting.

It also struck me how many people need to see work like Lynch’s. Work that addresses the full scope of humanity—from the darkest horrors to the deepest bliss to the absurdly silly and jubilant. Honest work generating honest love.

My wife and I went inside and talked about creative plans while enjoying coffee, a chocolate milkshake, and also clam chowder. I’ve become obsessed with clam chowder. It was a strange and wonderful collection of non-solid substances.

My journey of processing isn’t over. But a diner-turned-festive-memorial did its work. It gave me some much needed joy.

There is sadness. There is great darkness. But there’s also beautiful blue skies and golden sunshine. David Lynch is and will always be an inspiration.

If you’re curious and looking for entry points into Lynch’s work and life, I recommend the great documentary The Art Life. For his films and TV, I recommend starting with the Twin Peaks television show or Eraserhead and easing in from there. If you’re not in a place to wrestle with some of the darker elements in most of his films, The Straight Story is a beautiful and unique film released by DISNEY. My blu-ray copy has a little warning sticker that reads: This content is very mild.

If you want to honor David Lynch, I encourage you to create something only you can.

Who would we be if he hadn’t?

LIGHT PLUGS—

We’ve got a fiscal sponsorship with the great Minnesota organization Film North. They can accept one-time donations that will go directly toward finishing the film: SCORE, VFX, COLOR GRADING, etc. It’s like a Kickstarter where the rewards are A) a tax deduction and B) helping us make the film.

For full info, please check out the page for the upcoming horror film, DEAD MEDIA!

Or if you have any questions about supporting the film, feel free to reach out to me personally!

MY GOAL FOR THE WEEK--

I’m headed to Minnesota today to visit family so my work time will be greatly reduced. But as soon as I get home, I’m diving back into the film. So my goal for next week is to edit two more scenes of Dead Media.

YOUR GOAL FOR THE WEEK--

I would absolutely LOVE to hear what you're working on this week in the comments below. What's your goal? How can I help you literally finish your monsters?

A LITTLE SKETCH--

This week’s sketch is the ink drawing I made on the day David Lynch passed away. I did it in 30 minutes, with ink, no edits or corrections. And it felt fantastic.