David Lynch's Best Advice: Find Your Space and Invent

Finding bliss and comfort in this world sounds more like a task than an inherent reality of existence. Lately you're probably getting a feeling that something tough and difficult is brooding in the corner, waiting to take your happiness away, or it already has. As the pressures pile on in your daily existence you begin to wonder how of if you're ever going to the space and time needed to work on your craft and become the professional you want to be, and this only makes things worse.

I can't speak for everyone, but this is definitely my state of mind these past few months, and I think it's fair to say that things have been tough for everyone across the board. Achieving the right equilibrium and inspiration will forever be a duty of immense proportion to whoever finds itself climbing the mountain of discovery. It has become more apparent over time that there really isn't any excuse to stop trying even at the face of total failure.

This predilection has led me down a dark path for which I am trying to come out of. Usually when this happens, I look for the advice of other people, but over the years I am finding the advice too generic and rarely able to address the problem. On this recent occasion, I felt stuck within the confines of my thoughts, rarely seeking or expecting to be given some form of counseling; I have grown resentful over such a practice, finding the routing existentially draining.

It is around this time where I began to get obsessed with the works of famous surrealist artist David Lynch, and how his approach to art allows him to explore the depths of the subconscious in its most bizarre, twisted, and horrifying forms.

A couple of years ago I purchased his part-biography, part autobiography book Room to Dream in the hopes of learning a great deal about his art. I was well aware of Lynch's refusal to share the true meaning of his work, but I learned over time that Lynch shares more information than what most people give him credit for. It is technical and completely related to the process, never the finished result. However, I didn't think much of the book on my first read. Just a man reminiscing about his past the only way he knows how.

As time began to pass, more ideas and moments from the book began to pop up. It came to a point where I decided to revisit the book in the hopes of finding something I didn't see before. This time, I began to pay close attention to Lynch's childhood and teenage years, and how they played a big role into his adulthood. The suburban depiction of the American neighborhood was a direct result of his childhood upbringing and his intense desire to always be in the moment.

By the time he was a teenager, Lynch was already certain he wanted to be a painter, and he immediately went to work on becoming the best artist he could be. During this time he developed what he later came to term "the art life", a way of life dedicated completely to engaging in creative activities, be it painting or manual labor. Already decided on what to do in life, Lynch set out to work religiously for hours on end in the art of painting. His dedication was so strong that by the age of 16 he was renting a place to work on his paintings along with friend Jack Fisk. It was in this workshop that Lynch discovered his love for filmmaking and overall knack for invention and creativity. Lynch himself describes this process in the way he began shooting one of his first films, Six Men Getting Sick:

I don't know if I even had an idea when I started Six Men Getting Sick - I just started working. I called around and found this place called Photorama, where 16mm cameras were way cheaper than other places. I shot the film in this old hotel the Academy owned… I built this thing with a board, like a canvas, propped on top of a radiator, then I put the camera across the room on top of a dresser that I found in the hallway and moved into the room.

I have no idea what gave me the idea to do the sculpture screen… You mixed this stuff in these paper containers, and I loved mixing a lot. When the film was done I built this kind of erector-set structure to take the film up to the ceiling and back down through the projector, and I had a tape recorder with a siren on a loop that I set on the stage. (82)

This short anecdote tells us all we need to know about why Lynch was able to produce such high levels of work. He had a natural knack to look for how things work and quickly applied these principles to art. Lynch resembles a handyman more than an artist, staying more in tuned with the mechanical process of the components needed to make an abstract work of art rather than vice versa.

It was this practice that led him to the path of financial security and international fame. Despite having a career spanning five decades, Lynch has never deviated from this approach to the creation of art. Regardless of what type of project he's working on, a space to think and picture the idea is always necessary; everything else, from the brush to the camera to the stills and the wood, is a product of the space. His latest ventures on YouTube and anecdotes from close friends only confirm this notion, demonstrating that every facet of Lynch's life is dominated by his insatiable appetite to create as much art as possible. The content of the art is different subject altogether, one where I have delved into before.

The base behind this framework comes from the development of a long and effective routine that has never allowed his creative juices to stop flowing and he has never abandoned. This is because they are a part of his DNA; art is the way he channels the world around him into a mysterious structure full of captivating images made to invoke a strange sensation on our perceptions. He found his calling at a young age and had enough decency (and support) to act on the matter before the despair of never trying hit him in the face. This is perhaps the best advice Lynch has given us without us even asking for it; he did it through sheer example and creativity.