Securing time to talk to one of the most prolific, genre-shaping directors of our time is a hard task, but David Lynch is now stuck inside. For the first time, he’s just like the rest of us. And so, the famed auteur behind Eraserhead, Mulholland Drive and Twin Peaks has finally had the chance to sit down and give us a rare insight into his creative process, from his school days all the way through to now with transcendental meditation magazine Enjoy TM News.
As part of a series of live interviews for those who practise meditation, in which the subjects discuss their own personal development and their growing “higher states of consciousness”, David discusses his reliance on a “state of consciousness” as a source of motivation and inspiration. “I always say two things got me involved,” he says on his first encounter with transcendental meditation. “One was a phrase: True happiness is not out there, true happiness lies within. Another thing was the word ‘enlightenment’. I thought, is this even real?” It was his sister, eventually, who introduced it more formally to him. “I like what she told me about it,” he says, and so he became a “seeker”, reading up about the practise. “Meditation,” he decided, “would be a way to find happiness within.”
The conversation weaves in and out of Lynch’s effect on the wider world learning about transcendental meditation in the west, and his own David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace, which counts transcendental meditation as a key practise.
We also get a deeper insight into his method of cultivating ideas, which he calls ‘fishing’. For those struggling to get to grips with their own creativity in isolation, he has some advice: “You desire, and the desire starts pulling ideas in,” he says. “There’s trillions of ideas… If we just keep one little fish that we love, that becomes even more bait… Now more will swim in. If you’re writing a script or a book, scenes will start emerging. Characters will start coming [alive]. And if they don’t come, just like with fishing, move to a different part of the lake. Get some different things going and think from that place. They’ll start pouring in.”
Sound inspiring? Watch the full video below.