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David Lynch (Justin Stephens for the New York Times)
Deborah Solomon: Let’s start by contemplating the current fascination with the small screen.
David Lynch: That’s a terrible subject. There’s nothing like the big screen. The cinema is really built for the big screen and big sound, so that a person can go into another world and have an experience. As an example, there’s Stanley Kubrick’s “2001:A Space Odyssey” — this would be kind of a pathetic joke on a little screen.
DS: How do you feel about someone watching your films — “Eraserhead,” “Blue Velvet,” “Mulholland Drive” — on a laptop?
DL: More and more people are seeing the films on computers — lousy sound, lousy picture — and they think they’ve seen the film, but they really haven’t.
DS: Because the small screen emphasizes plot over visuals?
DL: It’s a pathetic horror story.
DS: On the other hand, you do appear on countless computer screens every day, giving a weather report from your home in Los Angeles, on your Web site.
DL: People are kind of interested in weather. It’s not artistic. It’s just me sitting there in my painting studio.
DS: Who films you?
DL: It’s a camera that comes down out of the ceiling.
DS: I hear you’re starting an online series on transcendental meditation, based on your book “Catching the Big Fish.” Is the small screen a good format for discussing meditation?
DL: Any format is a good format for meditation. Every single person has within an ocean of pure vibrant consciousness. Every single human being can experience that — infinite intelligence, infinite creativity, infinite happiness, infinite energy, infinite dynamic peace.
DS: Tell us about your foundation.
DL: The David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace — we raise money to give meditation to any student or school. There is a huge waiting list.
DS: As a devotee of cultivated bliss, how do you explain the proclivity for twisted eroticism and dismembered body parts in your films?
DL: A filmmaker doesn’t have to suffer to show suffering. You just have to understand it. You don’t have to die to shoot a death scene.
DS: Do you see yourself as an American Surrealist?
DL: Dennis Hopper called me that, and that is the way he sees it. It’s more than just Surrealism to me.
DS: I think of you as someone who transported the noir sensibility from the city into a Norman Rockwell setting. What do you think of his paintings?
DL: I love his work. It’s like Edward Hopper. They see a certain thing, and they catch it.
DS: What is that clock you’re holding in this photograph?
DL: I just didn’t want to stand there like an idiot. It’s an old clock, but I am building this plastic bubble around it.
DS: Is it a sculpture?
DL: In a way it is. You mentioned Surrealism, and time was very important to the Surrealists.
DS: But Dali painted melting clocks, and yours isn’t melting, is it?
DL: It’s not melting, no. But part of it is made of polyester resin, which at one time was liquid.
Deborah Solomon
New York Times
I find cooking to be very calming, even in the rush of it all for business. I think about the combinations of ingredients and the anticipated delight of the diner. From my own philosophical experience, I try to be aware of the good, the true and the beautiful in all endeavors – including cooking. A lot to ask from an item to be consumed but I hope that I’m paying attention. I want to be aware of that first sip of good tea, coffee or wine and note that I should pay attention because this is good. It likely seems like fuzzy philosophy but being open to the ineffable is being open to delight. Or is that a tautology? In any case, I don’t see cooking as a vacation from philosophy but the action can put me in a state of mind where thinking is clearer. In some ways, having the mise en place kind of discipline is very Kantian in that there is a great deal of freedom arising through the discipline. I can’t have chaos in the kitchen, and I clean as I go. I hope that because of that discipline that I can make culinary ideological leaps as well…Although there is great freedom offered in Nietzsche and great process can be learned from Kant, neither would likely be much good in a kitchen – not to trivialize. It’s somewhere between the chaos and the control.
Karen Peters, by way of Elatia Harris
3 Quarks Daily
Slow Painting 