Big Fish and Blue Velvet

Charles over at Creative Lifestyles shared a link to a David Lynch lecture with me on Twitter last week and recommended his book Catching the Big Fish.  Intrigued by the lecture I followed through and picked up a used copy for a couple of bucks, which arrived yesterday.

In many ways it’s a peculiar book written with short vignettes.  I’m struck by how original the language Lynch uses to tell of his experience of meditation.   He does not rely on the the descriptions that others have developed.  Instead, he creates and repeats his own cliches, like the use of fish for ideas and “dropping into a state of bliss.”   The other striking element in the book is how his creative process making films is intimately tied to his practice of meditation.  He talks of encountering many many types of fish in the depths while meditating and being able to select the fish that would work best for cinema.  I also like that his over thirty years of practice led to such diverse types of expression, including Blue Velvet, which I never would have guessed arose from meditative depths. There’s a valuable shadow lesson sitting in that fact.