Writer Blocks - Twin Peaks and the World of David Lynch

“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. Down deep, the fish are more powerful and more pure. They’re huge and abstract. And they’re very beautiful.”- David Lynch, Catching the Big Fish  

David Lynch was the first film maker whose work I sought out.  Of course I was familiar with Lucas and Spielberg and was starting to appreciate Coppola and Scorsese, but there was something about Lynch’s visual style that made me crave more.  And my introduction to Lynch was in April of 1990 - the pilot episode of Twin Peaks.



No other television show captured my imagination like Twin Peaks.  The mystery of Who Killed Laura Palmer?, the mystical and magical subplots, the quirky characters, and the “damn good coffee” all added up to an immersive viewing experience I have sought to emulate in my own writing since I was 14.  The first comic book script I ever wrote was an overt homage to my fascination with Twin Peaks, and I would often lie on my floor staring at a ceiling fan, a motif throughout the show, for inspiration.

Then there was the Red Room and the Black Lodge.  I lack the capacity to do this justice, so here’s a picture:



Once I was fully immersed into Lynch-land, I began to watch his films. The opening scene of Blue Velvet, Kyle MacLachlan finding an ant covered ear in a field of green grass, is one of the best “hooks” I have ever seen, but it was Wild at Heart, or as I call it “Elvis Goes to Oz”, that opened my eyes to what can be done in film, and by default comic books.  The straight forward narrative of two lovers on the run from a domineering mother, coupled with the pure weirdness that is Lynch imagery, forced me to realize that there are other ways to show, rather than tell, what a character was feeling.

That’s why it won Best Picture and Cannes.



The news of Twin Peaks return came at the perfect point of synchronicity.  As Special Agent Dale Cooper said:

"When two separate events occur simultaneously pertaining to the same object of inquiry we must always pay strict attention."  

Not only have I been re-watching the series, but I am also reading David Lynch’s book on meditation and creativity, Catching the Big Fish.



In this wonderful book, which I cannot recommend enough to anyone interested in expanding their creative consciousness, Lynch discusses the “ongoing narrative”, which he applied to Twin Peaks but can also apply to comic books, some of the longest ongoing narratives in our culture.  He believes the ongoing narrative, with its almost infinite timeline, allows the artist can go deeper in their exploration of character, and that is what he and Mark Frost will do in 2016 when we return to a town in the Pacific Northwest called Twin Peaks.

Next week – back to our regularly scheduled blog with Daredevil Visionaries: Frank Miller Volume 1