Books for Better Creativity 03: Catching the Big Fish by David Lynch (2007)

Filmmaker David Lynch (Twin Peaks, Mulholland Drive, Eraserhead) shares his thoughts about creativity in this wonderful book.

Introductory Thoughts

I adore David Lynch. He’s a brilliant weirdo and it defies all cultural logic that he’s such a household name. Films like Mulholland Drive are subversive and non-linear, yet they are famous and everybody hears about them.

_{David Lynch. source: his twitter}

Following his 2005 film Inland Empire, David Lynch vanished from the art world. Instead of making films, he spent a decade building the David Lynch Foundation to promote transcendental meditation around the world.

He quietly released this book in 2007, a prologue to his decade with the Foundation. Now, ten years later, I happily will share my favorite notes & quotes from this wonderful little book.

BTW - the book is quite short, you can read it in an hour or two. The “chapters” are mostly one or two pages, sometimes just one paragraph. As such I’ve labeled each quote by page, rather than breaking it up into segments.

The Usual Disclaimer:

The views represented in the book do not necessarily reflect my own.

This is a way to learn from the perspectives of others, which happens best when we challenge our own beliefs. I present this information in as politically neutral a way as I can.

In these posts, “Quotes” are direct quotes, “Notes” are notes from the book’s ideas, and “Personal Thoughts” are my own ideas.

Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity

Quote [pg. 1]: “Ideas are like fish. If you want to catch little fish, you can stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch the big fish, you’ve got to go deeper.”

Quote: [pg. 2]: “My thirty-three-year practice of the Transcendental Meditation has been central to my work in film and painting and to all areas of my life.”

Quote: [pg. 4]: ”She took me into a little room to have my first meditation. I sat down, closed my eyes, started [the] mantra… Boom! I fell into bliss—pure bliss.”*

Personal Thoughts: Wow! I wish that I could say my own meditation career started so easily, haha. For me it’s been a lot of struggle along with great joy - so don’t feel discouraged if your first sessions aren’t as immediate as what David Lynch describes.

Quote [pg. 8]: “Anger and depression and sorrow are beautiful things in a story, but they’re like poison to the filmmaker or artist. They’re like a vise grip on creativity.”

Book Recommendation [page 11]: The Art Spirit by Robert Henri

Note [pg. 11-12]: You have to make time for creativity. The time you spend being active and actually painting/composing/filming may be a small amount of time. The rest of the process - waiting, thinking, setting up - is just as important.

Quote [pg. 17]: “When I catch an idea for a film, I fall in love with the way cinema can express it.”

Quote [pg. 19]: “A film should stand on its own. It’s absurd if a filmmaker needs to say what a film means in words.”

Note [pg. 23]: An idea is a spark - the whole work will not come to you in the first instant. But the first little spark can set you down the path for an entire movie.

Quote [pg. 28]: “It [Meditation] makes life more like a fantastic game.”

Personal Thought: The above quote has been true for me. Meditation teaches me the rules of the game - what are my thoughts and emotions? How do they bounce around in my head? - and with the landscape of inner life more fully explored, I am able to navigate my decisions with greater clarity.

Quote [pg. 31]: “Philadelphia is known as the City of Brotherly Love, but when I was there, it was a hellhole.”

Quote [pg. 33]: “Eraserhead is my most spiritual movie.”

Quote [pg. 45]: “Personally, I think intuition can be sharpened and expanded through meditation, diving into the Self.”

Note: There are four forms of consciousness: Waking, Sleeping, Dreaming, and Transcending.

Quote [pg. 53]: “By measuring EEG patterns in brain research, they can prove that someone is transcending; they can prove that the person is experiencing a fourth state of consciousness.”

Quote [pg. 59]: “If you do what you believe in and have a failure, that’s one thing… But if you don’t, it’s like dying twice.”

Personal Thought: Blockchain platforms like steem are making it more and more possible for artists to do what they believe in, rather than being forced to do what was previously realistic. This is why I am so enthusiastic about blockchain.

Quote [pg. 69]: “I don’t ever give actors cold readings. I feel that’s a torment for them, and I don’t learn anything.”

Quote [pg. 73]: “In work and in life, we’re all supposed to get along. We’re supposed to have so much fun, like puppy dogs with our tails wagging.”

Quote [pg. 79]: “I like the feeling of discovery. I think that’s one of the great things about a continuing story: that you can go in, and go deeper and deeper and deeper.”

Quote [pg 83]: “If you pay attention to the original idea—stay true to that—it’s surprising how, at the end, even the things that were accidents are honest. They’re true to the idea.”

Personal Thought: A theme in this book is that you can’t predict art. You find an idea, start creating, and slowly the work reveals itself. This is super true for me with music - it’s more like discovering a song than creating a song.

Quote [pg 91]: “There are many, many dark things flowing around in this world now, and most films reflect the world in which we live.”

Note: You can depict darkness and suffering without being in a terrible mindset yourself — “Let your characters do the suffering.”

Quote [pg. 101]: “All religions flow ultimately to the one ocean. Transcendental Meditation is a technique to experience that ocean, and it’s a technique practiced by people from all religions.”

Quote [pg. 105]: “We’re like lightbulbs. If bliss starts growing inside you, it’s like a light; it affects the environment.”

Quote [pg 113]: “Mulholland Drive was originally going to be a continuing story on television.”

Personal Thought: I had no idea about the above fact - although it makes sense in retrospect. Mulholland Drive has an updated Twin Peaks kind of vibe - you could see a larger plot emerging from that madness. Mulholland Drive was always my favorite David Lynch movie…

Quote [pg 119]: “When you see an aging building or a rusted bridge, you are seeing nature and man working together.”

Note: You need to have your art studio set up - whatever that means, whether painting, music, film, or otherwise - so that when an idea arrives, you can get straight to work. Otherwise you might miss it - “and that’s just a heartache.”

Quote [pg 133]: “I love Hitchcock. Rear Window is a film that makes me crazy, in a good way.”

Note: Inland Empire started as a short online collaboration between David Lynch and Laura Dern - but it came out so well that David couldn’t bear to release it online, and built a feature-length film out of the idea.

Quote [pg. 143]: “I knew nothing about the film at the time. But I wanted to call it INLAND EMPIRE.”

Quote [pg. 147]: [On Director’s Commentaries] “I do believe in telling stories surrounding a film, but to comment as it’s rolling is a sacrilege.”

Quote [pg. 150]: “These 35mm film cameras are starting to look like dinosaurs to me… it’s all so slow. It kills a lot of possibilities. With digital video everything is lighter… you can think on your feet and catch things.”

Personal Thoughts: It’s fascinating how David Lynch has kept up with all the new technology - he has been happy to transition from analog to digital, unlike most pre-digital artists.

Quote [pg. 159]: “Experience the joy of doing… Everyone will want to sit next to you. And people will give you money!”

Quote [pg. 163]: “It’s such a tricky business… 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.”

Note: Success and Failure both have their ways of dragging you down… meditation helps to stay steady.

Quote [pg. 171]: “One of the main things that got me talking publicly about Transcendental Meditation was seeing the difference it can make to kids… stress is now hitting them at a younger and younger age.”

Quote [pg. 175]: “People are so convinced we can’t have peace that it’s a joke now… But what if we’re wrong? We know that in one human being, when you ramp up your consciousness… negative things begin to recede.”

Final Thoughts

This is a wonderful book… just reading through these quotes and notes makes me feel giddy. It’s a pleasant worldview wrapped around a simple idea: meditation is good.

My own experiences with meditation make me agree. It’s good for my wellbeing as a person and my work as an artist. And it’s not so hard to do! I only do ten minutes per session, once or twice a day. Meditation is your own personal practice, you do it how you want.

Question

What’s your favorite quote from this post? Also, do you have any thoughts on meditation?