David Lynch—Filmmaker & Transcendental Meditator
AUTHOR: Liz Goldwyn
PHOTO BY MAX VADUKUL
David Lynch (right), Liz Goldwyn (left) Photo Credit: Max Vadukul
“The full potential of a human being is enlightenment.”
Interview with David Lynch, film director and Transcendental Meditation practioner and founder of the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace.
David: Hello?
Liz: Hi David! How are you?
David Lynch: Good, Liz. How are you doing?
L: I’m great.
DL: Are you in a car?
L: No. I’m by the ocean. Is it too loud?
DL: No, but it sounds like you are traveling on high speed in a car.
L: I am traveling high speed through the universe, but not in a car [laughter].
DL: Good for you.
L: Can we start with the weather report?
DL: Well, I don’t have all the details but here in Los Angeles it looks like a beautiful day. We have blue skies and little white puffy clouds moving in a Westerly direction and there is a slight breeze and it’s probably 68 or 70 degrees right now.
L: Thank you. Did you remember your dreams from last night?
DL: No. I was in a dream just when the alarm went off, but I don’t remember it.
L: Do you ever write your dreams down?
DL: At one point in my life I was doing that. I’ve never really gotten ideas from nighttime dreams. Only a couple of times and those have been critical times. I get ideas from other things, and one of those other things is daydreaming.
L: Daydreaming.
DL: Daydreaming.
L: Daydreaming with your eyes opened or closed?
DL: They can be open sometimes, but sometimes they will close. It’s very important that we human beings have time in the day to sit quietly and think…and dream.
L: I agree. I think the saying is attributed to Shakespeare— that intervals of idleness are essential to creativity.
DL: Oh boy, are they ever.
L: [Laughter] I was asking dreams not so much for ideas—where you get ideas—but I had given my father who loves Fellini—I think you do as well—a book…
DL: Love, love, love.
L: Have you seen the book that he has done where he has drawn his dreams everyday?
DL: No I haven’t ever seen that.
L: It’s an amazing book. Sometimes he would dream when he was in production—he would dream specific things—but usually they were unrelated to anything, but he would draw and sketch his dreams everyday, and they are really beautiful. You should check them out.
DL: Yeah, fantastic. I am very proud to say that I was born on the same day of the month as Fellini.
L: You were? When’s your birthday?
DL: January 20th.
L: So you are still a Capricorn?
DL: Yes, but I share qualities with Aquarius.
L: I am a Capricorn too: Christmas day.
DL: Christmas day!
L: [Laughter] did you ever meet Fellini?
DL: Twice.
L: You did? In Italy?
DL: Both times in Italy. The first time I met him - do you want to hear this story?
L: Yes!
DL: So I was with Isabella Rossellini. Isabella was in a film called Dark Eyes directed by a guy I think named Milkakoff, a Russian director. And also in the film were Marcello Mastroianni and Silvana Mangano.
L: Wow.
DL: And one night Marcello Mastroianni, Silvana Mangano, Isabella Rossellini, and I had dinner together, and it was a time of the year just in the South of Rome in a most magical area with these giant palazzos, with terraces and all built on different levels of hillsides and mushrooms were in season so the entire dinner was different themes of mushrooms, and the main course was a mushroom steak, and during the dinner we were talking and Marcello, you know, soon realized how much I loved Fellini. Next morning a car was outside my hotel with a driver—it was Marcello who organized it—and the car was told to have me spend the entire day with Fellini.
L: Oh wow.
DL: And he was shooting a film for television called Intra Vista and the DP he was using was named Tonino Delli Colli or something like that. So I spent the whole day with Fellini; it was just, you know, I was in seventh heaven. Then some years went by and I was shooting a Barilla pasta commercial for a French company but we were shooting it in Rome. And we were shooting it in a big square and on the crew, the production manager knew Fellini, and we had the same DP, Tonino, who I met earlier, years before, working with Fellini. When we were shooting they got word that Fellini, who was in a hospital in Northern Italy, was being moved to a hospital in Rome. And I asked, do you think it would be possible for me to say hello to him if he was moved down here to Rome? And they said, yeah, David. I think we could work that. And so, sure enough, it came that we were going to see him on a Thursday night and last minute they said you can’t see him because he is having tests made, but Friday night we can see him. So Friday night we finished shooting that day, and there was a beautiful sunset— it was still sunny, the sun wasn’t setting, it was still sunny, but an evening sun in the summer. We went to this hospital and Fellini’s niece, Francesca, was taking care of us and said only David and Tonino can go in. So Francesca took us deep into the hospital, down a long hallway, and at the door and said wait here. I will go in and see if it is good. She came back out and said Fellini will see you. Tonino and I go in. Now there’s Fellini sitting in a kind of a wheelchair kinda rig between two beds and a little table in front of him and across the room from him was a man named Vancesco. Tonino knew Vancesco. Vanesco knew Tonino. So they went together and talked while I sat directly in front of Fellini. He took my hand and he held my hand and we talked for half an hour. And then left and said, you know the whole world is waiting for your next film and he smiled, and he was in good shape and I left. And two days later he, for who knows really what reasons, went into a coma and never came out.
L: You’re very lucky to be able to visit with him.
DL: Very lucky.
L: You have such precise memory. The detail of your memory is very impressive—what the sunset was like, the corridor of the hospital…
DL: It was a very important evening.
L: What did you talk about?
DL: His sadness for the way cinema had changed and students of cinema had changed. He said he used to come down to this café every morning and read the paper and talk to students. And he loved it; and the students obviously loved it. And now, he said, when I go down to have a coffee, there’s no, there’s no cinema students. They’re all, you know, interested in money, in the business, and are… it’s just, it’s just different. And he had a big sadness for that. A big sadness.
L: What do you feel about how the Hollywood system is changing?
DL: I always say it is pretty much the same thing. Hollywood and the world are always changing. Right now it seems to me like big studio pictures pretty much own the theaters—the big screen. And alternative cinema doesn’t really have the opportunity to enjoy long runs on a big screen. So, I think that cable television is the new art house and the old art houses very sadly have gone and but you know they could return. You never know. They also say most every advancement in cinema has come from outside the studio system. And there is always the chance that a jump will happen and revitalize another type of cinema.
L: Well, you were really on the forefront of the auteur television movement with Twin Peaks. It was such a huge influence on me and my whole generation not just the show, the style; all I wanted to do was look like Sherilyn Fenn in those pencil skirts, and the cardigan twin sets, and those arched eyebrows, and the music, the soundtrack to that was incredible. I remember passing around a forbidden copy of Laura Palmer’s diary in science class. It was amazing, and I couldn’t believe it was on television.
DL: Right. It was a magical thing.
L: You work in so many mediums—you’re an artist, a filmmaker, you make coffee, ceramics, you do the weather reports. Did you always have such diversity in your career?
DL: You know, it’s strange, because human beings can fall in love with many many things and it wasn’t too long ago though that if an actor, say painted, you know, the paintings were just considered as meaningless and basically as worthless. It was like a hobby. Or if anybody was known for one thing and did other things, those other things weren’t significant. But now, more and more people are doing different, many different things, and I think it is really important to get into other mediums —ideas in one medium can spur ideas in another. It’s very beautiful.
L: How does being in LA give you any more freedom to go into all these different worlds?
DL: I love the light and the feeling of freedom.
L: Yeah.
DL: LA is a place that makes me feel free and owning the field of all possibilities.
L: How much of that is, is due to the environment of LA, the physical landscape?
DL: LA is not a tall city; it is a spread out city. And there’s lots and lots of light, and so it’s, it’s, it gives this feeling of, of soaring into freedom.
L: I like that. What are some of your favorite landmarks in LA? That you first fell in love with when you moved to the city?
DL: Well, I like the feel of it. I always say [laughter] the same thing too but LA it seems like a huge sameness when you first come to LA. It did to me. Then the more I was here, the more I discovered different areas and each area had its own feel. And there are some areas that I discovered that I could feel the golden age of Hollywood. And I would like to go through those areas and and especially when you smell night blooming jasmine at night…
L: Yes.
DL: …going through some areas you can look over and see Gary Cooper driving his Duesenberg. It’s just, it’s so beautiful.
L: What about the Ambassador Hotel? Did you ever get a chance to go there before they tore it down?
DL: Yeah. I’ve been to the Ambassador Hotel. Yeah. Yeah.
L: I wish they hadn’t torn that down.
DL: Maharishi went to the Ambassador Hotel when he first came to Los Angeles.
L: Really?
DL: His first press conference was there. And it was at one of those press conferences that he said, “I will fill the world with love.”
L: Speaking of filling the world with love. I wanted to talk to you about responsibility to help do so and social consciousness. You are very invested in transcendental meditation but also, particularly, in teaching it in schools to children…
DL: Okay. Maharishi said how important education was for developing the full potential of the student and students as human beings. The full potential of the human being is enlightenment. And education should bring out, unfold the full potential of every single student and the full potential is so beautiful and so important. In schools today it’s about the known— nothing about the knower. The knower is the student and every human being has consciousness, but not every single human being has the same amount. You give them the technique of transcendental meditation and they will start expanding whatever consciousness that they had to begin with. And their grades, their understanding, will go up. Their appreciation for life will grow, will grow. Their relationships with others will improve. They’ll get happy inside, inside. The torment, the torment, no matter what they try in schools the students are still filled with this torment. Drugs mask the torment; they don’t get rid of it. You let a student transcend and that torment will start to disappear. And it will be filled in its place with supreme happiness. Health will improve, they will start really enjoying life, feeling good in their bodies, the world will look better and better to them. They will affect their environment in positive ways; they will affect others in positive ways. Right now it’s a joke, pathetic, sick joke. The food is bad; the atmosphere is bad; there’s fighting; there’s drugs; there’s you know no learning, and it’s a hellhole. Mostly, it’s, it’s a hell. You give them this thing. They bring it out from the deepest level of themselves and it’s their technique; they recognize it; they love it; and they just got to get it; they got to get it.
L: It’s really interesting when you talk about the torment of school and this tool of transcendental meditation bringing love, because a lot of your work in your past, and your paintings, explore darkness, or hurt, loneliness, violence. Is mediation your tool for maintaining personal balance when deep in that type of subject matter?
DL: The world provides many ideas. I do love certain things in cinema, you know, stories that hold the high and the low and the same in paintings. I love organic phenomenon. And I don’t just paint or film dark things.
L: No.
DL: But the world has dark things in them. Our world has plenty of dark things that I always say are far worse than anything, in anybody’s film. So the world does provide ideas and as the world changes, paintings will change, cinema will change. You know all of these things.
L: How do you unwind?
DL: I don’t really unwind. I, I [laughter]
L: [Laughter]
DL: I like working and I like meditating.
L: How many hours do you meditate a day?
DL: Well I mediate maybe two hours a day.
L: Do you have any vices?
DL: No. I mean, I love to smoke cigarettes and I love to drink red wine and I don’t know if those are vices but some people might consider cigarette smoking a vice. But in the long list of vices and problems, I think cigarettes are not so, so bad. I love tobacco.
L: You love tobacco?
DL: I’ve loved tobacco since I was little and…
L: What’s your brand?
DL: American Spirits.
L: Oh that’s kind of healthy, right?
DL: Yeah. They’re healthy cigarettes.
L: [Laughter]
DL: They’re pure tobacco, like my grandfather smoked. I think I always just wanted to live the art life. And for me the art life was drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes.
L: Very Beatnik.
DL: Maybe it’s a Beat thing. Yeah.
L: How important is intuition to you?
DL: Liz, one of the number one things. Intuition is a knowing. A knowing how in the world does it work. But deep within every human being is an ocean of knowingness. It’s just there. And when you contact that field within, that ocean of consciousness, it’s an ocean of all knowingness. Total knowledge is there within every human being. And this thing of intuition is such a tool it can tell you very easily when something isn’t correct and can tell you ways to make it correct. It’s just a kind of a knowing that grows more and more the more you experience that inner unbounded eternal realm of pure consciousness. And it’s right there within every human being. Another name for this area within every human being is the Self. Self with a capital S. Know thy Self. Here’s a technique that’s easy and effortless. It will take you there open the door to that and you can experience it and grow in that. And life gets better and better and better. When you transcend, they call it a holistic experience. The full brain gets engaged when a human being transcends. They call it total brain coherence. And all avenues of life because it is a holistic experience start to improve. Negativity starts to recede. It’s so beautiful. So important.
L: Well thanks so much for taking the time to talk with me and—
DL: It’s good to talk to you, Liz.
L: It was good to talk to you too.
DL: You’re a very beautiful girl.
L: Well you are a very beautiful man.
DL: Bless your heart. [Laughter] Take care of yourself.
L: Have a great day.
DL: You too, Liz. Bye.
DL: Bye.