David Lynch on meditation, consciousness and creativity, the art life, his advice for filmmakers, coffee, and how to catch ideas.
A brief overview of David Lynch before delving into his own words:
| Who (Identity) | David Keith Lynch, an American filmmaker, screenwriter, visual artist, and musician, known for his distinct and enigmatic contributions to film and art. |
| What (Contributions) | Lynch is celebrated for his unconventional and surreal approach to filmmaking. He directed iconic works such as “Eraserhead,” “Blue Velvet,” “Mulholland Drive,” “Twin Peaks,” and “Lost Highway.” His films and television series often delve into themes of mystery, dreams, and the dark underbelly of suburban life. |
| When (Period of Influence) | Lynch’s influence on the world of cinema and art began in the 1970s and has continued into the 21st century. His unique vision and storytelling style have left a lasting impact on the medium. |
| Where (Geographic Focus) | Born in Missoula, Montana, USA, Lynch’s work often reflects American culture and society, though his narratives often venture into surreal and otherworldly realms. |
| Why (Artistic Philosophy) | Lynch’s artistic philosophy is marked by a fascination with the subconscious, the mysterious, and the uncanny. He believes in the power of visual storytelling to evoke emotions and tap into the viewer’s subconscious mind. |
| How (Technique and Style) | Known for his use of dreamlike imagery, atmospheric soundscapes, and nonlinear storytelling, Lynch’s filmmaking style is characterized by its surreal and sometimes unsettling quality. He often blurs the line between reality and dream, creating works that invite interpretation and introspection. |
This post is a collection of selected quotes and excerpts from secondary sources used for educational purposes, with citations found at the end of the article.
Coffee
Coffee is part of the art life. I don’t know quite how it works, but it makes you feel really good and it serves the creative process. It goes hand in hand with painting.
For me, it’s about the flavor. The coffee should have no bitterness, and it should be smooth and rich in flavor. I like to drink espresso with milk, like a latte or a cappuccino, but the espresso should have a golden foam.
I really enjoy them…I just keep drinking. My trick though is to stop drinking them around 5:30 at night. 1
Advice For Filmmakers
If you want to make a feature film, you get ideas for 70 scenes. Put them on 3-by-5 cards. As soon as you have 70, you have a feature film. 2
My advice is to use the opportunity digital video brings to do what you truly believe in. Keep your own voice. Don’t do anything for the sole purpose of impressing any studio or some money people. That always seems to backfire, in my experience.
It’s great to go to film school, and you can get a lot of intellectual knowledge there, but learn by doing. And now that costs have fallen, you can really go and do it on your own.
Then there are lots of film festivals that you can enter and see if you can catch some distribution or financial help later on.
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. 3
Be true to yourself. Find your own voice. Be true to the ideas. I always say never turn down a good idea but never take a bad idea.
If you want to die a death, sign a contract where you don’t have final cut. If you want to live a healthy life, never make a film without final cut. Why would anyone go to work on something they love and not have final control, not be able to make the film that they want to make. That doesn’t mean you won’t take an idea or some kind of suggestion. If it works, you might say thank you very much that really helps me, but if they make you take a bad idea you will die, it’s not your thing. Never make a film without final cut.
Don’t take no for an answer, and don’t walk away from any element until it feels correct. You might be working along, and somebody says we got to get out of this set. You say I haven’t got it yet. They say I don’t care, it looked good to me… no no no no – you stay there till you say ‘I’ve got it, this is correct.’ Then the thing has a chance to hold together as a whole.
When you put something out in the world, you can never control how that thing is going to go, if the big studios knew the secret of how to things go they would be trillionaires. Audiences are funny.
The most important thing is that you love what you did, you did the best you could in every element in every way, and this is a big happiness. Even if you don’t make a nickel you’ve got that great feeling, and chances are maybe something will happen and you’ll make a success in money terms, but you can’t count on that.
If you make something you don’t love and you sold out and you make the money, that money just won’t make you happy, it won’t do it. 4
Black
Colour to me is too real. It’s limiting. It doesn’t allow too much of a dream. The more you throw black into colour, the more dreamy it gets.
Black has depth. It’s like a little egress; you can go into it, and because it keeps on continuing to be dark, the mind kicks in, and a lot of things that are going on in there become manifest. And you start seeing what you’re afraid of. You start seeing what you love, and it becomes like a dream. 5
Daily Routine
For seven years I ate at Bob’s Big Boy. I would go at 2:30, after the lunch rush. I ate a chocolate shake and four, five, six, seven cups of coffee — with lots of sugar. And there’s lots of sugar in that chocolate shake. It’s a thick shake. In a silver goblet. I would get a rush from all this sugar, and I would get so many ideas! I would write them on these napkins. It was like I had a desk with paper. All I had to do was remember to bring my pen, but a waitress would give me one if I remembered to return it at the end of my stay. I got a lot of ideas at Bob’s. 2
When I get up, I have a cappuccino – that’s breakfast. I don’t have any food till lunch. I get into phases where I’ll have the same thing every day. Lately I’ve been having feta cheese, olive oil and vinegar, tomatoes, and some tuna fish mixed together. Before that I was having tuna fish on lettuce and cottage cheese, but I got tired of that in about three months. I once had the same thing for lunch every day for seven years – a Bob’s Big Boy chocolate shake and coffee at 2:30 every afternoon.
I meditate in the morning and in the evening, for half an hour each time. I don’t know what my life would be without meditation and I never have missed one session anywhere. I’ve meditated every day for the past 23 years. It cleans the nervous system, which is the instrument of consciousness. Little by little, a person becomes a hair more aware of what’s going on. The bad things that happen don’t hit you so hard, and you’re not overpowered by success. Success can be even more dangerous than failure.
I don’t work out, I’ve got a treadmill and it’s still in its box. It’s been there for months, in fact. I like the idea of walking and walking and never getting anywhere, so I want to get it out, but I don’t have a place for it right now.
In the afternoon, I try to spend some time reading or just thinking. I long for a kind of quiet where I can just drift and dream. I always say getting inspiration is like fishing. If you’re quiet and sitting there and you have the right bait, you’re going to catch a fish eventually. Ideas are sort of like that. You never know when they’re going to hit you.
I like, staying home at night, and I don’t go away too much. It always strikes me that wherever you go, there you are. We could be in Pakistan right now, you know what I mean? You always carry all the same problems. It’s not so different anywhere you are with yourself, so I figure, why go?
These days my girlfriend and I have a fire in the fireplace, and we have dinner, which varies lately between a few things: cottage cheese, apples, and cheddar cheese, or chicken and asparagus or chicken with broccoli. I drink red wine and maybe have a Cuban cigar. I have a bunch of other vices, but I don’t want to get into that.
I go to bed around midnight, and I drift off to sleep easily. I’m excited about the next day. If left alone, my natural waking hours would probably be 10 A.M. till 3 A.M. After 3:30 A.M., a cold wind starts coming in – the warmness of 2:30 goes away and it’s time to sleep. 6
5 Favourite Books
- The Art Spirit by Robert Henri
- The Name Above The Title by Frank Capra
- Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Anonymous Photographs by Robert Flynn Johnson
- The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
How He Got Into Painting
So I went to visit met my friend Toby Keeler’s father’s studio in Georgetown, and his father was a really cool guy. He was still on his own, he wasn’t part of the painting world really, and yet he was, you know, devoting his life to this, and it thrilled my soul.
And so I became friends with his father – Bushnell Keeler and that decided this course for painting, 100 per cent right then. I was in the ninth grade.
He also turned me on to this book by Robert Henri called The Art Spirit that sort of became my Bible, because that book made the rules for the art life. It was one of those things that is so fantastic, because it sets you on your way.
Why Meditate?
If you have a golf ball size consciousness, when you read a book, you’ll have a golf ball size understanding; when you look out a window, a golf ball size awareness; and when you wake up in the morning, a golf ball size wakefulness.
But if you could expand that consciousness, then when you read the book, you’ll have more understanding; when you look out, more awareness; and when you wake up, more wakefulness.
There’s an ocean of pure vibrant consciousness inside each one of us and it’s right at the source and base of mind, right at the source of thought. It’s also at the source of all matter.
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi teaches a technique called Transcendental Meditation. It’s a simple, easy, effortless technique, yet supremely profound that allows any human being to dive within, experiencing subtler levels of mind and intellect and transcend and experience this ocean of pure consciousness.
This pure consciousness is called by modern physics the unified field. It’s at the base of all mind and all matter. Modern science now says that all of matter, everything that is a thing emerges from this field. This field has qualities like bliss, intelligence, creativity, universal love, energy, and peace.
It’s not the intellectual understanding of this field but the experiencing of it that does everything. You dive within, experiencing this field of pure consciousness and you enliven it, you unfold it, it grows. The final outcome of this growth of consciousness is called enlightenment. Enlightenment is the full potential of all of us human beings.
A side effect of enlivening this consciousness is negativity starts to recede. When I started meditating, I was filled with anxieties, filled with fears, kind of it a depression and anger, and I took this anger out on my first wife. After two weeks of meditation, she comes to me and she says what’s going on? I said what do you mean and she said this anger, where did it go? I didn’t even realise it had lifted.
Now these negative things like anger and depression and sorrow, they’re beautiful things in a story but they’re like a poison to the filmmaker, to the painter, to creativity. They’re like a vice grip. If you were super depressed you can hardly get outta bed let alone think ideas, have that creativity flowing.
So its money in the bank to get that beautiful consciousness growing, which is flowing creativity, the ability to catch ideas at a deeper level. Intuition grows. This field is a field of pure knowingness. You dive in there, you sort of just know how to go, you know how to solve solutions, it’s like an ocean of solutions.
The ultimate thing for me is the enjoyment of the doing, the enjoyment of life grows huge. I love making films now more than ever before. Ideas flow more, everybody has more fun on the set, creativity flows. 7
Dreams
I dream, but I don’t go by nighttime dreams. Nighttime dreams are sometimes some good ones, but it’s daydreams that I love. And sinking down, sitting comfortably in a chair, where you might be controlling some of the thoughts and directing yourself here or there, but at a certain point the dream takes over, and you enter in a place where things are unraveling before you without your intervention. And many things can present themselves that way, and sometimes ideas that you fall in love with. 8
Ideas
When you catch an idea you see it in your mind’s eye and you feel it and you can hear it. Then you write that idea down on a piece of paper and you write it down in such a way that when you read it, the idea comes back in full. You hold this idea in your mind and you stay true to that and it guides you through the process. 9
I have hardly ever gotten ideas from dreams. I get more ideas from music, or from just walking around.
The idea is the whole thing. If you stay true to the idea, it tells you everything you need to know, really. You just keep working to make it look like that idea looked, feel like it felt, sound like it sounded, and be the way it was. And it’s weird, because when you veer off, you sort of know it.
You know when you’re doing something that is not correct because it feels incorrect. It says, “No, no; this isn’t like the idea said it was.” And when you’re getting into it the correct way, it feels correct. It’s an intuition: You feel-think your way through. You start one place, and as you go, it gets more and more finely tuned. But all along it’s the idea talking. At some point, it feels correct to you. And you hope that it feels somewhat correct to others. 3
Favourite Filmmakers
I think Kubrick is one of the all-time greats. Almost everyone of his films is in my top ten.
I think Herzog is one of the all-time greats. Really great. When I was in England once I saw Stroszek on TV. I’d missed the beginning of it so I thought it was, like, some real documentary. I was just captivated in the first two seconds. I’d never seen anything like it. 5
I am a huge admirer of Billy Wilder. There are two films of his that I most love because they create such a world of their own: Sunset Boulevard and The Apartment.
And then there’s Fellini, who is a tremendous inspiration. I like La Strada and 8 ½—but really all of them and, again, for the world and the characters and the mood, and for this level, which you can’t put your finger on, that comes out in each one.
I love Hitchcock. Rear Window is a film that makes me crazy, in a good way. There’s such a coziness with James Stewart in one room, and it’s such a cool room, and the people who come into this room—Grace Kelly, for instance, and Thelma Ritter—it’s just so fantastic that they’re all in on a mystery that’s unfolding out their window. It’s magical and everybody who sees it feels that. It’s so nice to go back and visit that place. 3
Rehearsing
In the beginning, what you want is the actor to bring all their talent out in the correct way. So there’s always a beginning. And in the beginning, you sit down and you start rehearsing a scene that may be a scene that illuminates that character the most, a good starting-point scene. And you rehearse it.
And no matter what it is then, you’ve started, and then you talk, and then you rehearse and then you talk. And what you want is the person to lock into that same place you’re locked into and catch this thing. And from then on, it all rolls out perfectly, or next door to perfectly. 8
Setting & Location Scouting
A story appears and the setting comes with it. And a setting says a lot of things that are difficult to say in words. It gives you a lot of information, and it gives you a mood. So all of your location scouting, everything is to find that feeling. And sometimes on location scouting, you can’t find the thing that appeared in your head, so you find the closest thing. And then you work to make that even closer.
Sometimes on location you find new things that give you new ideas. And so that’s part of the business of staying alert, because many things come in that affect the final thing all along the trip. 8
The Viewers Reaction
I love the idea that one thing can be different for different people. There are films or writings that you could read once and then ten years later read again and get way more from. You’ve changed; the work stays the same. But suddenly it’s got way more meaning for you, depending on where you are. I like things that have a kernel of something in them.
They have to be abstract. The more concrete they are, the less likely that this thing will happen. The maker has to feel it and know it in a certain way and be honest to it. Every single decision passes through this one person, and if they judge it and do it correctly, then the work holds together for that one person, and they feel it’s honest and it’s right.
And then it’s released, and from that point on there’s not one thing you can do about it. You can talk about it – try to defend it or try to do this or that. It doesn’t work. People still hate it. They hate it. It doesn’t work for them. And you’ve lost them. You’re not going to get them back. Maybe twenty years later they’ll say, ‘My God! I was wrong.’ Or maybe, twenty years later, they’ll hate it when at first they loved it. Who knows? It’s out of your control. 5
How To Use Color In Film
It’s the idea. If you go into a room and it’s a blue, you say no no no no no we’ve got to paint this room and it becomes a kind of a pink, a yellow pink, because that feels correct for the idea. The idea sets the mood, it’s all based on the original idea.
It’s not that you think so intellectually, like you decide I’m going to use blue because blue gives me a strange cool feeling and this is a very cold character or something like that. It’s not an intellectual overlay, it’s living inside the ideas and being true to them. 10
Painting, Music & Films
Music for me unlocks a lot of things. Sometimes you’re working on a certain music or certain combinations of sounds and an image comes out of that, an idea comes out of it. It may be just a fragment of something but it leads to other ideas that hook together with that and a story could form.
Some of the same sensibility of painting for instance works in film also – framing a thing and and where the eye goes, some of he same things work across the board. Film is also a lot like music because it’s a flowing of things in time. 10
Why He Still Paints
Well, you can sit in a chair – and I love just sitting in a chair and going off and float away. And sometimes, when I’m going to sleep, especially, or sitting in a chair with my eyes closed … I drift through this one space where images just come, and I’m not prompting them. In fact, if I start thinking about it, they stop. And because I don’t judge them and don’t think about them too much, they just come in.
To paint something is a way of catching them in a more permanent way. Then you have a thing that you can look at. Ninety-nine per cent of these images you can’t remember a week later. And a painting kind of reminds you of those; also it exists. And you work it up to a place where you say it’s done, and it’s pleasing – it’s a little bit of a thrill to have it, and to have experienced it. 5
How He Works With His Composer Angelo Badalamenti
Longtime music collaborator Angelo Badalamenti discusses about how he works with David when scoring his films:
He describes moods and moods translate into music for me. I do music a lot before David even starts shooting the film. This is very unusual, because most composers are shown the finished product, and then they compose to that finished product.
With David, while he’s thinking about a project, he’ll come to me almost first. He would start talking and I sit at a keyboard and put a little recorder on and we record everything that I play. Then we will key into something and he sees what he is going to shoot by listening to this music.
Very often he’ll bring that music right to the set and let the actors move and speak at that pace. What’s so beautiful about David is that when he decides that something is right, he knows it right away and he does not vacillate. 11
How He First Got Into Meditation
When I first heard about meditation, I had zero interest in it. I wasn’t even curious. It sounded like a waste of time.
What got me interested, though, was the phrase “true happiness lies within.” At first, I thought it sounded kind of mean because it doesn’t tell you where the “within” is, or how to get there. But, still, it had a ring of truth. And I began to think that maybe meditation was a way to go within.
I looked into meditation, asked some questions, and started contemplating different forms. At that moment, my sister called and said she had been doing Transcendental Meditation for six months. There was something in her voice. A change. A quality of happiness. And I thought, “That’s what I want.”
So, in July 1973 I went to the TM center in Los Angeles and met an instructor, and I liked her. She looked like Doris Day. And she taught me this technique. She gave me a mantra, which is a sound-vibration-thought. You don’t meditate on the meaning of it, but it’s a very specific sound-vibration-thought.
She took me into a little room to have my first meditation. I sat down, closed my eyes, started this mantra—which is a specific sound-vibration-thought—and it was like I was in an elevator and they cut the cable. Boom! I fell into bliss—pure bliss. And I was just in there. Then the teacher said, “It’s time to come out; it’s been 20 minutes.” And I said, “IT’S ALREADY BEEN 20 MINUTES?!” And she said “Shhhh!,” because other people were meditating.
It seemed so familiar, but also so new and powerful. After that, I said the word “unique” should be reserved for this experience. It takes you to an ocean of pure consciousness, pure knowingness. But it’s familiar; it’s you. And, right away, a sense of happiness emerges—not a goofball happiness, but a thick beauty. 12
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon is, to me, the main guy, the number one kinda hero painter. There’s a lot of painters that I like. But for just the thrill of standing in front of a painting … I saw Bacon’s show in the sixties at the Marlborough Gallery and it was really one of the most powerful things I ever saw in my life.
The subject matter and the style were united, married, perfect. And the space, and the slow and the fast and, you know, the textures, everything. Normally I only like a couple of years of a painter’s work, but I like everything of Bacon’s. The guy, you know, had the stuff. 5
What Prompted The Move From Painting To Film
It was one of my paintings. I don’t remember which one, but it was an almost all-black painting. And it had a figure in it, and the figure was in the centre of the canvas.
I’m looking at this figure in the painting, and I hear a little wind, and see a little movement. And I had a wish that the painting would really be able to move, you know, some little bit. And that was it. 5
Franz Kafka
The one artist that I feel could be my brother – and I almost don’t like saying it because the reaction is always, ‘Yeah, you and everybody else’ – is Franz Kafka. I really dig him a lot. Some of his things are the most thrilling combos of words I have ever read. If Kafka wrote a crime picture, I’d be there. I’d like to direct that for sure. 5
Cinema Is A Lot Like Music
People sometimes say they have trouble understanding a film, but I think they understand much more than they realize. Because we’re all blessed with intuition—we really have the gift of intuiting things.
Someone might say, I don’t understand music; but most people experience music emotionally and would agree that music is an abstraction. You don’t need to put music into words right away—you just listen.
Cinema is a lot like music. It can be very abstract, but people have a yearning to make intellectual sense of it, to put it right into words. And when they can’t do that, it feels frustrating. But they can come up with an explanation from within, if they just allow it. 3
The Art Life
For me, living the art life meant a dedication to painting—a complete dedication to it, making everything else secondary.
That, I thought, is the only way you’re going to get in deep and discover things. So anything that distracts from that path of discovery is not part of the art life, in that way of thinking. Really, the art life means a freedom. And it seems, I think, a hair selfish. But it doesn’t have to be selfish; it just means that you need time.
Bushnell Keeler, the father of my friend Toby, always had this expression: “If you want to get one hour of good painting in, you have to have four hours of uninterrupted time.
And that’s basically true. You don’t just start painting. You have to sit for a while and get some kind of mental idea in order to go and make the right moves. And you need a whole bunch of materials at the ready.
The idea just needs to be enough to get you started, because, for me, whatever follows is a process of action and reaction. It’s always a process of building and then destroying. And then, out of this destruction, discovering a thing and building on it. Nature plays a huge part in it. 3
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References and Related Resources
- David Lynch’s Philosophy On Drinking Coffee, Vice. 17 July 2014.
- How They Write A Script: David Lynch, Go Into The Story
- Catching The Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity, by David Lynch. 2006.
- David Lynch Masterclass, YouTube
- Lynch on Lynch, by Chris Rodley and David Lynch. 1993.
- Marie Claire spends 24 hours with film director David Lynch, LynchNet.
- David Lynch on Consciousness, Creativity and the Brain (Transcendental Meditation), Transcendental Meditation.
- David Lynch talks about his influences, his creative process, and the challenge of comedy, Charlie Rose. 02/14/1997.
- David Lynch In Conversation, QAGOMA.
- David Lynch: Consciousness, Creativity and the Brain, UC Berkeley Events.
- Mulholland Drive Behind The Scenes, YouTube.
- David Lynch On Why He Meditates, Goop.com.