David Lynch made it okay to create some deeply weird stuff

The filmmaker, who died at age 78, had some ties to North Carolina. But his legacy, to me, is the way in which he made things. He didn't explain. And he didn't apologize for it.

In December 2020, David Lynch was in Los Angeles and posting short weather reports to YouTube, because why not?

In one of them, he veers off on a short tangent and describes a very short scene—well, more of a mood really—that he recalled during his time in Durham. It was 1954. He was eight. And he found himself looking at a majestic building on Duke University’s campus:

And looking at this beautiful campus building and feeling the mood of it, I heard a song coming from a nearby radio. And the song was “Three Coins in the Fountain.” And I think it was by the Four Aces, but I'm not sure if that was the version I heard. And that music married with that image of the building, and it became a kind of a memory that stuck with me, and that was the kind of music that was coming out of radios mostly in 1954. But that was soon going to change. Big time.

And then, without explaining himself, he notes that it should hit 75 degrees in the afternoon, and wishes everyone a good day.

This was just one of the many things that’s been flooding my feeds this afternoon after the news came out that David Lynch had died at the age of 78. This isn’t an obituary. This isn’t really an essay. It’s just something that hit me after I heard about his death.

First, the North Carolina parts. Lynch was born in Missoula, Montana, but his parents had met as students at Duke University, and his family came back to live in Durham for a short time. They all moved a lot, thanks to his dad’s job with the USDA.

David Lynch returned to North Carolina in the 1980s to shoot “Blue Velvet.” It was filmed in and around Wilmington at the burgeoning Screen Gems Studios, and it’s not a stretch to say that the movie kickstarted the film industry there. The movie itself was set in a fictional town called Lumberton. Now, this may or may not have been based on the very real town of Lumberton in Robeson County, which has some real David Lynch vibes to it on its own.

Blue Velvet isn't a North Carolina movie per se, but it’s a movie that has stuck with me ever since I first watched it in college. Back then, I was a film minor and swallowed up everything that Lynch had put out. “Eraserhead,” which seemed abstract until you come to the part of the movie where they’re (SPOILER ALERT) literally turning people's heads into erasers. There was “Wild at Heart,” which I bought on DVD. “Twin Peaks,” which came later. And “Blue Velvet.” You know, with Dennis Hopper sucking down some sort of strange gas and Isabella Rossellini singing and the severed ear in the field. There’s one scene that’s seared into my memory, and it comes back I see someone ordering a Heineken:

I don't really have anything more to say about David Lynch, the brief North Carolinian. Instead, if I may, I wanted to talk about what David Lynch unlocked in me. Which was: He made it okay to create some deeply weird shit without apologizing for it.

I know David Lynch is not the only person who's ever done this, but he's done it in a way in which the weird shit somehow kept getting pulled into the mainstream. Again, watch “Blue Velvet.” This wasn't some tiny arthouse film. It was backed by a major production company! Lynch was nominated for an Academy Award! And yet is just deeply strange and disturbing and odd and wonderful, and it leaves something behind in you, as all great movies should.

I’ve been a journalist for most of my career, and it’s a profession where subtlety isn’t something to strive for. You mostly have to write things in a way where you assume the reader has no real advanced knowledge of anything else in the story. Stories and headlines tend to be deployed with blunt force. But I’ve also been jealous of artists who feel compelled to create something and put it out there, and let people figure out what it’s supposed to mean. Sometimes I’ve come across stories that just stir something in me. I can’t find a news hook per se. They’re not topical. There’s no anniversary. There’s no reason to write about them. But there’s just something … there. I love to create things, and I’m a non-fiction person to the core. I feel lost if I’m not being led around by facts. But every some often, I come across something fascinating that I don’t know what to do with. I think about how to make it into something tangible. Something understandable. Something that makes sense. But often, I just want to dump some facts out on the table, arrange them into a stylized mess, and let people sort through it all.

Which is what David Lynch did, much more elegantly.

If I came to you and told you a short story about a vibe I got at age eight from staring at some buildings while an old song wafted into my ears, you’d shake your head. What’s the point of this, you’d wonder? But David Lynch did it, and here I am, immersed in the mood that he put out. A re-watching of “Blue Velvet” is in the cards. A can of PBR is in my future. But for now, let’s just look at some beautiful old buildings at Duke, turn up the The Four Aces, and see what happens.

Duke University, circa 1954-1958 (Duke University Archives. Durham, North Carolina, USA. library.duke.edu/uarchives)