David Lynch - Catching the Big Fish

David Lynch, filmmaker, painter, and author, has received three Academy Award nominations for best director and is unquestionably one of today's most respected and original film auteurs. He is also a serious spiritual seeker, a veteran of Transcendental Meditation (as taught by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi) who claims to have not gone a day in thirty years without meditating. Through his nonprofit organization, the David Lynch Foundation, he is raising money to promote the teaching and practice of what he calls, “consciousness-based education” in schools across America. In this exclusive interview, Lynch speaks with EnlightenNext magazine editors Maura O'Connor and Igal Moria about his book, Catching the Big Fish, the author's personal exploration of the artistic and the creative process in light of meditation and enlightenment.

Lynch responds to the question, “What would enlightened filmmaking be like?” with a passionate monologue on the fundamental underlying unity of all creation in which, he states, one's full human potential is revealed and out of which one's work would engage people on all levels of reality, from the superficial to the transcendent, from the dark corners of the psyche to the infinite bliss of oneness. So next time you rent a DVD of Blue Velvet, think of its creator sitting upright on his meditation cushion, bathing in the unlimited, powerful “electric gold” of enlightened energy.

BIO
 
David Keith Lynch was born January 20, 1946, in Missoula, Montana, the son of a U.S. Department of Agriculture research scientist, and raised across the Pacific Northwest. Originally intending to become a graphic artist, Lynch enrolled in the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C., in 1963, falling under the sway of expressionist painter Oskar Kokoschka and briefly studying in Europe. By the early weeks of 1966, he had relocated to Philadelphia, where he attended the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and began his first experimentation with film. Today, David Lynch is renowned as a wildly original American filmmaker, an acclaimed writer/director, television producer, photographer, cartoonist, composer, and graphic artist. More than any other contemporary art house filmmaker, he has enjoyed considerable mass acceptance and has helped to redefine commercial tastes, honing a surrealistic aesthetic that is both visionary and deeply personal. David Lynch is famous for writing and directing films that are often a surreal mix of wonder and repugnance. After his first film, Eraserhead (1976), became a cult hit on the midnight movie circuit, Lynch was tapped by Mel Brooks to direct The Elephant Man (1980, the story of Joseph Merrick). The film was a critical and box-office success and he was nominated for an Oscar. His next film was 1984's unsuccessful version of Frank Herbert's classic sci-fi novel, Dune, but he bounced back with Blue Velvet (1986, starring Dennis Hopper) and firmly established himself as a unique filmmaker who could appeal to more than art house crowds. He has ventured into television, most famously for a Calvin Klein commercial and for the series Twin Peaks (1990). His other feature films include Wild at Heart (1990, starring Nicolas Cage), Lost Highway (1997) and The Straight Story (1999, starring Sissy Spacek). His 2001 film Mulholland Drive earned him another Oscar nomination for Best Director. Lynch’s enduring interest in meditation dates back to the mid seventies, when he was first initiated into the practice of Transcendental Meditation. Since then, Lynch claims to have meditated twice a day for 20minutes each time, without fail. He advocates its use in bringing peace to the world and in July 2005, he launched the David Lynch Foundation For Consciousness-Based Education and Peace to fund research about TM's positive effects. Lynch’s book, Catching the Big Fish (Tarcher/Penguin 2006), discusses the impact of TM on his life and his creative process.