One of my favorite things to do on a lazy Sunday morning is to grab a book from a growing pile of neglected reading material. This morning, the book that caught my eye was a 2006 publication from David Lynch called Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity. As is widely known by fans of the maestro of weirdness, the same director who is famous for disturbing our collective unconsciousness – with a mewling mutant baby in Eraserhead (1977), sliced ears and sexual psychopaths in Blue Velvet (1986), head-blasting violence in Wild at Heart (1990), more demonic versions of evil incarnate than you can shake a stick at be it Bob in Twin Peaks (1990), Robert Blake in Lost Highway (1997), the screeching imps in a box of Mulholland Drive (2001), or the crazy clown of Inland Empire -  this same man wants his name to be associated with Transcendental Meditation and inner bliss. It calls to mind a famous quote by Gustave Flaubert: “Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.” 

But just how regular and orderly can Lynch be? Catching the Big Fish offers some fascinating insights into the creative process of one of the most iconic directors of our time. Below are some excerpts that pertain to some of the aforementioned films.

Eraserhead:

Eraserhead is my most spiritual movie. No one understands when I say that, but it is. Eraserhead was growing a certain way, and I didn’t know what it meant. I was looking for a key to unlock what these sequences were saying. Of course, I understood some of it; but I didn’t know the thing that just pulled it all together. And it was a struggle. So I got out my Bible and I started reading. And one day, I read a sentence. And I close the Bible, because that was it; that was it. And then I saw the thing as a whole. And it fulfilled this vision for me, 100 percent.

I don’t think I’ll ever say what that sentence was.

Later on in the book there’s a chapter titled “Kubrick” (all the chapters are very short, ranging from one sentence to three or four pages at the most) that also touches on Eraserhead. Lynch recalls working in England on The Elephant Man (1980) when he met some “guys who were working with George Lucas” and:

They said, “Yesterday, David, we were out at Elstree Studios, and we met Kubrick. And as we were talking to him, he said to us, ‘How would you fellas like to come up to my house tonight and see my favorite film?’” They said, “That would be fantastic.” They went up, and Stanley Kubrick showed them Eraserhead. So, right then, I could have passed away peaceful and happy.

Lost Highway:

At the time that Barry Gifford and I were writing the script for Lost Highway, I was sort of obsessed with the O.J. Simpson trial. Barry and I never talked about it this way, but I think the film is somehow related to that.

What struck me about O. J. Simpson was that he was able to smile and laugh. He was able to go golfing later with seemingly very few problems about the whole thing. I wondered how, if a person did these deeds, he could go on living. And we found this great psychology term – “psychogenic fugue” – describing an event where the mind tricks itself to escape some horror. So, in a way, Lost Highway is about that. And also the fact that nothing can say hidden forever.

In Catching the Big Fish Lynch also talks about “The Unified Field” – a topic that merits its own chapter and which pops up repeatedly when discussing the way things are inter-related. Perhaps one example of that can be said to be here in Lost Highway: a film inspired by a celebrity murder-trial that would feature a very unnerving performance by Robert Blake, almost unrecognizable to his Baretta fans due to a series of botched plastic surgeries, and who four years later would also make headlines world-wide in connection with his wife’s murder.

Mulholland Drive (2001):

…you don’t use meditation to catch ideas. You’re expanding the container, and you come out very refreshed, filled with energy, and raring to go out and catch ideas afterward.

But in this particular case, almost the day I got the go-ahead to turn it into a feature, I went into meditation, and somewhere about ten minutes in, ssssst! There it was. Like a string of pearls, the ideas came. And they affected the middle, the beginning, and the end. I felt very blessed. But that’s the only time it’s happened during meditation.

It would seem fitting that the one film Lynch attributes to finding its form due to a direct connection to a transcendental state should now be making many critics list as one of the top films of the decade in a recent survey by Film Comment of nearly 200 film critics from around the world.

For Lynch, Transcendental Meditation goes far beyond being a tool for making movies. He thinks it’s a tool for world peace and encourages everyone to dive into “the enermous reservoir of energy and intelligence that is deep within all of us,” and does so actively via the David Lynch Foundation.

But you don’t have have to be a Yogi-wannabee to enjoy Catching the Big Fish, it’s a light, often funny, very breezy read for any fan of both films and the creative spirit. Unlike Flaubert, Lynch keeps it short.