Late to the Game
Thoughts on David Lynch and my brain. Spring is almost here!
Imbolc happened and while I’ve been writing in honor of it since the last sabbat, Yule (the winter solstice), I haven’t really been interested in sharing online. My attention has been better served elsewhere. This morning, it feels good to write, so here I am-
LYNCH WALK
I’m currently listening to songs from the limited series, Twin Peaks, The Return.
The show, which is considered more of an eighteen-hour film, was released in 2017. Coincidentally, this was the year I would make my return to living in the place I was raised; Marina, California, on the Monterey Peninsula. It’s one of probably a billion places in America that comes across as a less interesting version of the fictional small town, Twin Peaks.
I was able to transfer to the same teaching position I had in L.A., but in the Silicon Valley, which is where I was born. The school I teach at now is a long drive from Marina, but just a few miles from the first house I ever lived in. It’s a return, all around.
The music from The Return, which I love, is something I was a little annoyed by at the time of the show’s release. I remember telling my coworker-friend at the time, about how little interest I had in many of the acts performing on The Roadhouse stage as the credits rolled, but my judgement wasn’t coming from a good place.
By the time the show aired I had attended many events, concerts and small shows in Los Angeles where many of these younger performers were playing. I knew their look and sound and was a little annoyed by a common visual aesthetic (mostly the fashion. Think Coachella of the 10’s), which seemed linked to a certain kind of vapid, fame-hungered hustle I had grown bored of. But then, I’m a Lynch-head, or a Twin Peaks head, or whatever- so I soon developed a warm connection to all of the music on the show. (Aside from ZZ Top’s Sharp Dressed Man.)
At the time of the release of the new series’ episodes, I had spent a few years riding the L.A. Metro, filled with tired workers like I had become, and so many others with addictions and/or visible mental health issues. My daily life held a lot of what The Return was presenting. In addition to that, I had long since planted myself into the grimy Hollywood that David Lynch’s work opened my eyes to. I had some glimmering “Betty from Mulholland Drive” moments, as well, but by the time the series was released, I was exhausted. It’s one thing to see a character in a Lynch film going through life and another thing to actually be living inside of that kind of energy (especially what was presented in The Return), day in and day out, all while scraping by.
I didn’t realize that 2017 would be the end of an era for me, and now that I take notice of the date marking the start of the series, I treasure it as a parting gift.
At the time of its airing, I lived very close to the neighborhood where Lynch had his houses/offices. I lived in another Hollywood apartment, even closer to his homes when I had first arrived in Hollywood in 2003, but that’s a different story…
Some mornings, when I had the day off, I would walk all around the quiet neighborhoods above my noisy apartment-lined street, for peaceful strolls along tall privacy fences built for the people who may or may not have worked hard, but either way, most likely met with some kind of luck. As Wally Brando says in Michael Cera’s fantastic cameo in The Return, it must be their “dharma.”
It was shocking how just a few blocks away from the neighborhood apartments I lived in and among, where the sounds of the occasional gunshot (I once heard one that turned out to be from a contract killing), howls from lunatics or late night party-people, weekend football games at Hollywood High, and the roar of crowds from the outdoor concert area where the Jimmy Kimmel Show was filmed, was a place where one could hear birds. Chirping birds. Where I lived, we had crows. Our street held the pollution of noise and as well, very tall trees that lined the sidewalks, different than any other street in the area. The only birds I ever heard or saw by my home were crows. I called them all Catherine.
On my walks, aside from listening to birdsong, I shared hellos with staff arriving at the big, mostly hidden houses, for a day of labor. Once I saw William H. Macy out for a morning stroll and he greeted me warmly and with a smile.
Anyway, during most of the time I lived in Hollywood, I assumed Lynch lived on Mulholland Drive (and maybe he also did). It’s silly but I guess it’s because he made a movie with the same name- and it was common knowledge that he lived in Hollywood. I preferred to wander around an area called The Outpost Estates. Mulholland was a bit too far.
One morning I changed my route to make myself hike up a small hill and noticed a building with strange windows and a very “Lynchian” look, all around. It seemed to be the one used in Lost Highway, which was the only movie of his that I found hard to finish watching, so I wasn’t sure. It turns out it was the home. What I just now found out is that the director owned it and two more, right next to each other on the same road.
Of course that street instantly became a part of my walk. Soon I started to notice an electronic hum near his compound of homes, like an “electrical box” sort of sound. That’s how quiet it was up there. I thought it was funny- since his works, specifically The Return, often has that sort of buzz going on, here and there. In the first episode, the Fireman asked Cooper, or us, to listen to the sounds, and since it’s easy to see anything done by the director as somewhat oracular, I did.
David Lynch has now died, from smoking, I guess. Not long ago he announced that he was homebound for good and that although he loved smoking, it ended up, as he wrote or said, “biting” him. He left us during the terrible fires in Los Angeles and his passing amidst this makes me think of the poem he wrote a long time ago for one to enter Twin Peaks’ Black Lodge.
Through the darkness of future past
The magician longs to see.
One chants out between two worlds
Fire walk with me.
Fire was such a constant in his works. It’s interesting what artists are drawn to. You know? There’s all the fire and smoke in the things he made. Even so many of his paintings look like they’ve gone through a burn or two.
The day he died, on my drive home, a power plant I’ve known my whole life that I drive past nearly every day (now it’s not a power plant but the world’s largest battery-storage location) caught on fire. It was a big, toxic fire. What’s more, is that the road right in front of it had not yet been closed, so I drove right toward and passed it, on my way home from a long work week. Driving in a car past a nighttime fire next to flame-lit giant cement smoke stacks belonging to a defunct power plant that was built in 1949 could not be a more fitting way for me to say goodbye to Mr. Lynch.
Because of all the internet stuff going around after his death, I learned about his book, Room to Dream. (I guess I’m not that good of a Lynch-head, since I didn’t know about it beforehand.)
It’s a collaboration with Kristine McKenna, who I didn’t realize I had learned about when I read her writing on the death of her friend and peer, one of my teachers at Otis, the poet Lewis MacAdams, who started the Friends of the L.A. River. They were both music journalists.
It’s an interesting audio book experience as she interviewed people in Lynch’s life, then compiled that information. In the audio version, after she reads her findings, he takes over and shares similar stories, from his perspective. I love learning more about the films, his TV projects, as well as his art and life experiences.
He also speaks about the way he embraced the idea of a website in the early days of the internet and as well, the use of digital cameras.
The weather reports and Youtube movies he made and posted in recent years were online. His website now links directly to his Youtube channel, called, David Lynch Theater. I see these works as expressing, by way of being shared there, something very true and obvious, but I find it hard to comfortably recognize it all as such- which is that we have the freedom to make and share in any way we wish.
I connect to that, as I hate the rules of how and where we need to place our works. I’ve always hated the systems in place that work in twisted exclusion for reasons that have less to do with being discriminating for the purpose of presenting good work, and more to do with money, power, or with our left-brained systems determining rules that never really made sense.
Learning more about David Lynch’s ideas on this kind of creative freedom has been serving as the last “gift” his work as an artist has led me to.
OKAY, IMBOLC
Imbolc marks the halfway point between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox. This means we will eventually have more light. Although the rainy season seems to have begun where I live, longer days are on the way. I’m ready for it. Champing at the bit, really.
Imbolc means it’s time to start thinking about getting at least some of your seedlings going, if you choose to garden.
It’s about new ideas, new projects, hope, creativity- think symbolically of new growth. We can honor the goddess Brigid, which is pronounced, Breed. I choose to honor and celebrate the increased light and the yellow flowers I see blossoming outside. The shifting green of the Monterey Cypress trees-
If you want to know much more about Imbolc, as usual, I will lead you to Amanda Yate’s Garcia’s Mystery Cult Substack Blog post on the topic. I see her as a “witch’s witch” and go to her writings for meaningful clarification.
That said, we are now just short of two weeks from the Spring Equinox (Ostara), and the sunlight follows me on my evening commute a little bit longer, each day, as we draw nearer. I love it.
ART
I’ve got some bees in my bonnet, relative to being in control of making and sharing my work. In learning from David Lynch’s words, spoken from his own mouth, regarding what was living behind things I’ve seen, not just in his Youtube sharing, but before that, in his website works- I’m sorta jazzed. Because this is also how I have felt and do feel. For years I used my website as an art form, as he once did. (Now it’s just a website). And my intuition, which I’m working on listening to in a clearer way, has “told me” that I’m good on the path of steering clear from unsolicited advice and doing things my own way.
It may seem ironic, since I’ve just written about sharing on social media/websites and I’m currently sharing on a social media outlet, but I’ve grown bored of instant sharing. I’m done listening to what people say it all should be used for and how. I’m sick of swimming in energetic garbage and three-minute segments of worlds curated by boring robots and people who are stuck in systems ruled by greedy money mongers. I like doing things my own way, in my own size, and I can trust that. I’m not David Lynch so my audience is minuscule, but that is fine. That is good.
I’ve used the digital landscape as a sort of art medium for years. The last of this being a series of commute videos utilizing Instagram music clips and stickers in ways that felt more like collaging.
I’m thinking of ways to realize and embrace that I’ve been taking ownership of my art-sharing.
I’ve been gathering data by way of my community of artists and writers- by observing processes and talking to them, learning and considering ways to not only make, but share. That’s where I’ve “been” lately.
I’ve been thinking about this wind-chime idea, using sea glass and sea shells I found on the beach. I can see where I’ll hang it. This is just for me. As always, I’ve been thinking about my clothes and mending and making and honoring it all and how others might engage in this along with me. I’ve been thinking of removing myself further from what I’ve held as “the rules” of sharing what I do. Needless to say, I’ll surely take pictures of it all when I’m done and share it on Instagram, lol.
Since the new year, my body has been feeling a combination of new strength and motivation and also a bit of breaking down. I’m choosing to see it as a good “breaking down,” which doesn’t stop it all from feeling strange. But feeling it is important and from this comes new stuff.
I’m doing some cleaning after I write for today, and looking forward to it. Like an Imbolc and pre-Ostara combo ritual, readying it all for what lies ahead.
In regard to all that “feeling” I mentioned, I’ve been listening to Jill Bolte Taylor’s audiobook version of Whole Brain Living and her breaking down of our behaviors/mind into four parts that we can force to work together to help us live the lives we desire is helpful. She says that we need to remember that we are “feeling beings who think,” as opposed to “thinking beings who feel.”
She describes four sections of our brain and asks us to name them, based on their characteristics, and in doing this we can identify what parts of ourselves are working at the moment, and determine which other part needs to step in and take the reins, or simply come online and help the “team” out. She calls this the “brain huddle.”
I feel I’ve received a great gift from what she shares about the four sections, two being emotional; one on the left, the other on the right, and the other two being related to thinking; also left and right- all with characteristics she describes that make a lot of sense, relative to our shared human existence and internal struggles we can relate to. That said, I’m finding her sweeping generalizations about human relationships, addictions (how the four characters relate to each and every step in AA’s Twelve Step Program) and the listing of every generation (from pre-WW2 to now)’s behaviors relative to technology, to be exhausting. The feeling was like being around an energetic vampire who means well, but is nonetheless draining. Think of Bubba reciting shrimp recipes in the film, Forrest Gump. I skipped a lot of it.
That being said, she reveals fantastic connections at the start of the section on generations and our brain characters- but it doesn’t take long to “get it,” once the initial description of the generations is given, since by then we’ve learned all about the characters. Despite this, I truly think everyone should learn what she has to share.
You may recognize Jill Botle Taylor’s name from her very popular Ted Talk from years ago, shared on Youtube like crazy, where she, a neuroanatomist and national spokesperson for the Harvard Brain Tissue Resource Center, described a massive stroke she experienced when she was in her thirties. I’m sure I’ve shared it on at least one of my newsletters, either here on Substack or at lindalay.com.
Her stroke allowed her to connect to what she names as, right brain character four. She calls hers, Queen Toad, which I love. I call mine, Hedge Witch, because when I’m in my right brain character four, I am in the world of trust and faith and connection to nature and everyone and I consider that way of being to be most important and what my “hedge-witch” side of myself does naturally. This right brain character four feels exactly like the description people like David Lynch give about different forms of meditation, where it can bring one to peace and transcendence. (Although for Lynch it’s only through the specific practice of TM). For me, that bliss arrives on the crowded dance floor through physical movement connected to sound evoking shared connections/nostalgia or something very personal that feels like messages from everything that ever was, as well as it coming from the energy of others connected to the same “thing” at the same time. It’s incredible.
Right brain character four is the realm of the mind Bolte-Taylor’s stroke brought her to existing completely in, for a time, where she understood the utter connection between who we are and everything that exists. Vast, beautiful and at one with everything. It’s the place of mysticism and spirit. Her description of how we need this in addition to the other parts of our brain, which leads us to “messy” play (right brain character three) and the two sections on our left (left brain characters one and two), which often take too much of the reins in our lives. She is trying to tell us the importance of choosing to live mostly in the right hemisphere, and also to value the absolute importance of the two left-brain quadrants. We need them all and with practice, we can choose which one to use at any given time.
The section on human generations explains how and why we moved to value only the left-hemisphere and it makes a lot of sense.
I’ve learned that my character two- which is left-brain emotional, has had a lot of “responsibility” over the course of my life. After reading this book, I realize I have engaged my left-brain character one over the past recent years. “She” is in charge of order and keeping things going smoothly. I have talked a lot here in my newsletter about “her,” without realizing it. I wish she had come online a long time ago, but I’m glad she finally has a chance to work in a more balanced manner.
Character three has been with me all along- it’s the thing that made my peers refer to me as “hyper” as a pre-teen and what embraces my joy in laughing- a lot. She’s the dancer and the one who makes a mess in the art studio. Since I’ve been associated with art my whole life, I feel she has been a strong part of my brain.
It’s my darn character two who has held the reins for a long time though, and I can feel how she was encouraged to take charge as a child through family dynamics, as well as what was culturally valued or encouraged during the early days of my life’s experiences.
I can see how I used my familiar right-brained character three, which I call Fairy, who is messy and creative and loves to play, as a source of strength during a life-altering traumatic experience, many years ago. This saved me and also, somehow connected with my right-brain character four, my Hedge Witch self, in that I fell into what I had referred to as an esoteric space or time… I fell into a trust that I needed. In Bolte-Taylor’s book she relates this to AA’s “something bigger than ourselves (and our addictions).”
As a disclaimer, which I don’t usually have, Whole Brain Living is published by Hay House- founded by Louise E. Hay, who is a well known “self-help” guru, who I happened to connect to as a teen. So take all this stuff as you wish. To me, it makes sense. I should have this disclaimer for everything witchy that I write here, but I feel that my readers are smart enough to know that they can take things they like and disregard everything else.
Here is a link to Mayim Bialik’s podcast where I first learned about this book. It’s cool that Bialik is also a neuroscientist. Her questions are pretty great:
So- happy early spring to you all! I just saw a post by Miranda July where she mentioned that Substacks work better when they are short, so I’ll try and make things brief next time, when I explore Ostara, and the Spring Equinox . Thanks for reading.