David Lynch is Dead

TLDR: David Lynch died from emphysema and I smoked a cigarette in the cold.

“Stanton, are you in a space to get some pretty bummer news?”

A question with such thoughtful consideration, packed with precise knowledge of my personhood and my relationship to her. Many things could constitute bummer news: a show I enjoy being removed from HBO, an actor I joke about my marriage with falling from grace, Shakespeare is being cancelled. “David Lynch died.”

The precise moment she said the words I rejected them. My innermost compass steadfast in the direction of denial. My second instinct was to verify, as I had to know for myself. I needed my body to hold the information, my eyes to see the headline, I don’t trust my ears. But it is true. The disease he said would be an easy recovery, the pain he insisted would be minimal, the vice he claimed he never regretted, killed him.

…

It feels strange for me to be grieving a stranger. I don’t know that I’ve ever done it before. I am companions with the cloud above my head, the thing pressing out and through my fingernails; teachers, pets, friends, I’ve all had the human privilege of losing them. I have even grieved my own life before. This is different.

David Lynch was a man who, in so many words, gave me a vocabulary for my life. I felt as though his perceptions aligned so closely with mine that I didn’t need any other artist. The portrayals of evil, bodily lust, purity, intrigue, strangeness, are what I have clung to for the better part of 10 years, seeing his worlds gave mine order. I was made whole. My life became one of aesthetic purpose as he put sense to the noise around me. No artist could make me feel like he could, his dialogue worming itself into my mind until it felt more natural than my own speech. Severed ears, talking monkeys, it was authenticity incarnate. He is why I make art, completely and totally.

What’s more, learning I was related to the man he worked with and saw his vision of the world in was revolutionary. My blood was next to his in a more concrete way than I’d ever been able to imagine. I could see myself in his work now, my family, and myself. Now they are both dead. My tie to a man I’d never seen beyond a screen was real when he had air in his lungs, a metaphysical tie between artists. Now what remains is a tie to a memory, one I do not even truly have. So what is that? It feels like nothing.

This prose isn’t falling neatly—not that it ever does—but I barely even know what to feel. In a sickening mode of my own mind, I cannot stop thinking about Twin Peaks, a community falling after the loss of what they perceive to be an angel. A mother’s screaming sobs, a best friend’s hollow eyes, a lover’s choked resolve. David Lynch gave me my matrix for grief, I did not realize he has taught me how to grieve himself.

…

After learning the man died of emphysema, I smoked a cigarette. He spoke of tobacco like a holy vice, something that gave him access to himself. His dedication to a ritualistic worship of the plant is what killed him, concretely. I suppose I just wanted to taste what he loved. I am grappling with myself so severely I can barely explain why I am feeling such depths of pain today. Recalibrated I am made new but nothing about myself has changed. I have not been orphaned, I have not lost a friend, I am not the owner of one-fewer-cat, I am simply a teenager who is aware of one fewer soul in this world.

As with every death I hear of or am faced with, I return to the notion of how many deaths (and births) have happened today I am not privy to. 45 minutes away in a major hospital several people have likely lost their lives today. But I do not cry for them.

I smoked outside, in view of the other students at my school for the first time. I saw a boy running ahead of himself. There was a woman clutching a thermos close to her chest on a bike while her backpack’s bottle holders remained empty. A couple exchanged gifts. I felt so singularly silly, isolated, drifting. My despair was apparent, the smoke around me and my stiffened lip were on public display, but I considered how many of those people knew of his death—if any. David Lynch is dead today and as my eyes watered, I took off my coat and let them freeze.

Return to JOE - - - >