Catching the Big Fish (8 page)

KEEP AT IT

 

 

 

It’s such a tricky business. You want to do your art, but you’ve got to live. So you’ve got to have a job, and then sometimes you’re too tired to do your art.

But if you love what you’re doing, you’re going to keep on doing it anyway. I’ve been very lucky. Along the way, there are people who help us. I’ve had plenty of those people in my life who’ve helped me go to the next step. And you get that help because you’ve done something, so you have to keep doing it.

So much of what happened to me is good fortune. But I would say: Try to get a job that gives you some time; get your sleep and a little bit of food; and work as much as you can.There’s so much enjoyment in doing what you love. Maybe this will open doors, and you’ll find a way to do what you love. I hope you do.

SUCCESS AND FAILURE

 

 

 

In some ways, the more films you’ve done, the easier it is to make one. You become familiar with the process of catching an idea and translating that idea. You understand the tools and the lighting. You understand the whole process—you’ve been through it before.

 

But it’s also harder, because when you release another film, it’s seen in context of what you’ve already done. It’s going to be judged based on that. And if you’ve just come off something successful, you feel that you may take the fall.

But if you’ve come down from something very low, as I did after
Dune
, there may be zero fear—you feel you can’t get any lower. You may experience this euphoria and freedom that you have nothing to lose.

You have to learn to find balance in success and failure. Success can kill you just as failure can. And the only way to have balance in success and failure is to function on that Unified Field level. There’s your friend. You can’t fake it—you’re either in that field or you’re not. And when that field is fully enlivened, you can’t lose, no matter what happens.

GONE FISHING, AGAIN

BHAGAVAD - GITA

 

 

 

When you finish a project, there’s a good feeling to it, but there’s something of a vacuum, too. You’ve been putting all your attention on that, and then it’s done.

It’s like fishing. You caught a beautiful fish yesterday, and you’re out today with the same bait, and you’re wondering if you’re going to catch another. But if you carry on the analogy of fishing, sometimes, even if you sit with lots and lots of patience, no fish come. You’re in the wrong area. And so maybe you reel in the hook, get the paddle, and move to another place. That means you leave the chair where you’re daydreaming or you move on to another thing. Just by changing something, the desire often gets fulfilled.

It doesn’t mean that if you just sit and wait that it will come. I don’t know quite what brings it. But the desire, if it’s kept alive, will often be validated with an idea. When you get an idea, you know you’ve got a validation.

COMPASSION

VEDIC DESCRIPTION OF THE ENLIGHTENED

 

 

 

Meditation is not a selfish thing. Even though you’re diving in and experiencing the Self, you’re not closing yourself off from the world. You’re strengthening yourself, so that you can be more effective when you go back out into the world.

It’s like they say on airplanes: “First put your mask on, and then help those next to you put theirs on.” My friend Charlie Lutes used to say, “There’s a guy crying on the curb, and you sit down to comfort him, and pretty soon there’s
two
guys crying on the curb.”

So compassion, appreciation for others, and the capacity to help others are enhanced when you meditate. You start diving down and experiencing this ocean of pure love, pure peace—you could say pure compassion. You experience that, and know it by being it.
Then
you go out into the world, and you can really do something for people.

CONSCIOUSNESS - BASED EDUCATION

 

 

 

One of the main things that got me talking publicly about Transcendental Meditation was seeing the difference it can make to kids. Kids are suffering. Stress is now hitting them at a younger and younger age, at just about the time they get out of the crib. And there are all these different learning disorders that I never even heard about before.

 

At the same time, I saw the results of consciousness-based education, which is education that develops the full potential of the human being. It’s the same education everyone receives, with the added bonus that the student learns to dive within and unfold that Self, that pure consciousness.

There’s a school principal, Dr. George Rutherford, in Washington, D.C., who has introduced Transcendental Meditation into three schools. Before that, the schools were filled with violence:There were shootings, suicides, and violence. But he got the staff meditating, got the teachers meditating, got the students meditating, and watched it all turn around.

 

There’s another principal, Carmen N’Namdi, in Detroit, who introduced Transcendental Meditation in her school, Nataki Talibah, about nine years ago.The kids meditate ten minutes in the morning together, ten minutes in the afternoon, and the school is a blissful school.Those kids are happier, getting better grades, and going out and experiencing all kinds of success.

 

It’s something that works. You take in more intellectual knowledge during school because it’s so much fun. But you’re also expanding the container of that knowledge. You contrast that with what normal education produces, which is a joke. It’s facts and figures, but the knower does not know him- or herself.

One night I saw a play at Maharishi School in Iowa—a school that has consciousness-based education. It was a cold and rainy night, and when I was told I was going to see a high school play, I thought,“Man, it’s going to be a very long night.” I was sitting in the middle of this little theater, a beautiful little theater, and out on stage came the students. They weren’t professional actors; they were just kids putting on a play. But I was never more blown away. I thought it was better than a Broadway production, because what I saw was consciousness on these faces—a lively, glowing consciousness. They had such intelligence and timing, and their humor was right on the money. You don’t worry about students like that.They’re self-sufficient.They’re going to do fine in the world and they’re going to make the world better by being in it.

My foundation, the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace, was set up to help more kids get that kind of experience.We’ve raised money and given it to schools all over the country for thousands and thousands of students to learn to meditate. And it’s amazing to see kids who do this. Stress just doesn’t catch them; it’s like water off a duck’s back.

 

I want to do this not only for those students’ sake, for their own growth of consciousness, but for all of us, because we are like lightbulbs. And, like lightbulbs, we can enjoy that brighter light of consciousness within, and also radiate it. I believe that the key to peace is in this.

If there were ten thousand new meditating students, it would affect this country. It would be like a wave of peace. It’s harmony, coherence—real peace. In the individual, that light of consciousness drives negativity further and further away. In the world, it can do the same thing.

REAL PEACE

YOGA SUTRAS

 

 

 

People are so convinced we can’t have peace that it’s a joke now. Somebody wins a beauty pageant, and the joke is, she wants world peace. And everybody has a big laugh. Nobody believes in peace. It’s a nice idea. But that’s all it is—just a sweet-little-old-lady idea. It’s meaningless. It’s never going to happen. And we live in this hellhole, and we think it’s got to be this way.

 

But what if we’re wrong?

We know that in one human being, when you ramp up consciousness—when you ramp up that light of unity—negative things begin to recede. In that individual, you see more and more intelligence, more and more creativity, more and more bliss, negativity going away
,
and a positive influence pouring out into the world. So if there were many, many meditators, it would be beautiful. But even without that, small groups of advanced meditators could still make a huge difference.

 

The theory is that if the square root of 1 percent of the world’s population, or 8,000 people, practices advanced meditation techniques in a group, then that group, according to published research, is quadratically more powerful than the same number scattered about.

 

These peace-creating groups have been formed for short-term studies. And every time the advanced meditators got together in a group, they dramatically affected the area around them.They measurably reduced crime and violence. How did they do that?

There is a field of unity within everyone. It’s always been there. It’s unbounded, infinite, and eternal. It’s that level of life that never had a beginning. It is, and it will be, forever. And it can be enlivened. In the human being, the enlivening of that field leads to enlightenment—the full potential of the individual. In the world, the result of enlivening unity by a peace-creating group would be real peace on earth.

IN CLOSING

 

 

 

I’d like to say: I deeply love film; I love catching ideas; and I love to meditate. I love enlivening unity. And I think the enlivening of unity brings a better and better life. Maybe enlightenment is far away, but it’s said that when you walk toward the light, with every step, things get brighter. Every day, for me, gets better and better. And I believe that enlivening unity in the world will bring peace on earth. So I say: Peace to all of you.

 

 

May everyone be happy. May everyone be free of disease.

May auspiciousness be seen everywhere. May suffering belong to no one.

Peace.

CODA: TRUE HAPPINESS LIES WITHIN

 

 

 

Right now I’m catching some painting fish. And some music fish. I haven’t caught the next film fish yet. I just try to catch ideas—and sometimes I fall in love with one and then I know what I want to do. It has nothing to do with money; just with translating that idea.

 

After
INLAND EMPIRE
, people asked me whether I would distribute a film again myself. And, with a team, I would for sure. Likewise, I remain completely committed to shooting in digital video. DV is just like film, without the problems. We live in a digital world now, and I love it—I’m never going back to film. So far as the reaction to
INLAND EMPIRE,
it went, I think, like it does for a lot of films: It was hated by some and loved by some. And it made a discussion.The blogs were lively.

 

I do believe film students themselves are going digital. Of course, film students will always experience a yearning to make at least one film using film, just to have done it, just to have been in that world. But after doing that, I think, they will quickly return to the digital world.

Looking ahead, I am committed to my work with the Foundation.We want to help the rapidly growing number of schools that are asking for programs in meditation. And the word is going around that diving within really changes things for the good. It is not something that just comes and goes—when you give students this technique, things really start changing. And they have that technique for the rest of their lives. I see that people are coming to realize that it is just so beautiful: this dive within, this transcending, and this experience of the Unified Field, where everything comes from. It is a Field of pure bliss consciousness, absolute intelligence, and infinite creativity.

 

Everything I experience today brings me back again and again to where I started: True happiness lies within.

SELECT FILMOGRAPHY

Eraserhead
(1977)
The Elephant Man
(1980)
Blue Velvet
(1986)
Wild at Heart
(1990)
Twin Peaks
(1990-1991)
Lost Highway
(1997)
The Straight Story
(1999)
Mulholland Drive
(2001)
INLAND EMPIRE
(2006)

SOURCES QUOTED

Ramayana.
Retold by William Buck. University of California Press, 1976.

 

 

 

Eternal Stories from the Upanishads.
Thomas Egenes and Kumuda Reddy. Smriti Books, 2002.

 

 

 

 

International SRM Publications, 1967. Penguin Books, 1969.

 

 

 

Maharishi’s Absolute Theory of Defence.
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Age of Enlightenment Publications, 1996.

 

 

 

The Upanishads.
Translated by Alistair Shearer and Peter Russell. Harper & Row, 1978.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

 

 

 

Three-time Oscar-nominated director David Lynch is among the leading filmmakers of our era. From the early seventies to the present day, Lynch’s popular and critically acclaimed film projects, which include
Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, Wild at Heart, Twin Peaks
,
Blue Velvet
,
Mulholland Drive,
and
INLAND EMPIRE,
are internationally considered to have broken down the wall between art-house cinema and Hollywood moviemaking.