entry 1: catching fish.

i have so much appreciation for david lynch. i know those who i am closest with oftentimes don’t hear me shut up about how much his work has resonated with me at my core, but what lynch provides for me is a language and a blueprint expressed through abstractions and visual art for a way of understanding and conjuring uniquely creative ideas. these ideas are specific to you and draw from your own collective subconscious and personal life experience. this is something that i’ve always had an acute sense of awareness of since i was a kid, as in, the specific trancelike realm one can transport to while idea conjuring (more on this later) but never had been able to define until coming across lynch’s work and his process. i will even go as far as to say that this state one goes into while conjuring creative ideas, along with my faith, existentialist philosophy, and stoic philosophy have all been the most consistent intrapersonal driving forces for understanding my creative potentiality and overall offering in life. another individual who provides a similar creative blueprint but instead carries out such through a strictly musical process, and is someone that i also have a great deal of appreciation for is rick rubin. but that’s for a different entry.

i remember the first time i came across lynch’s interviews with charlie rose in 1997 (at the 4:27 mark onward, specifically) and in 2000 and just being absolutely floored. for the first time in my life i had discovered an individual contextualizing the same creative state i have recognized since my youth, but simplifying it in a way where it could be easily understood. i, like lynch, believe this state is reached through a higher sense of self awareness and an internalization of the abstractions we see in everyday life. more broadly, this is how i personally make sense of what my consciousness takes in as well. the ability to subconsciously detect and accept the abstractions, patterns (deja vu, ‘small world instances’, etc.), and absurdities that come with everyday life and meeting people as you draw from your own prior life experiences to make sense of such. with this, and returning to the concept of where idea conjuring stems from here, or, what could instantly snap you into this realm of subconscious hyper-awareness is most often found in daydreams, night dreams, meditative practices such as prayer for me or transcendental meditation for lynch, or even for some people through more extraverted practices. it can vary from person to person. however, what lynch believes to be the only “true” method to reach this state is where i actually disagree, and that is found in the practice of transcendental meditation. a practice with origins in hinduism and taoism, on the surface of it, transcendental meditation when done correctly does provide the user with complete separation from oneself and the practicer to extrapolate ideas once at the higher state, again though, i don’t agree in lynch’s labeling as being the only “true” methodology for catching ideas solely based on the fact that idea spawning occurs with every human and not everyone uses transcendental meditation. of course, i can only speak for myself and what has been authentic for me, and i would never say that someone’s authentic experience in practicing any other method is any less effective to them than another practice would be for another. but what i also believe more broadly as it relates to reaching this realm is what i will call external entry activities. i believe that through dedicating time to specific activities that are once again unique to you, that you can temporarily exist simultaneously in what lynch references from modern physics as the unified field (or in other words, the “place” where ideas come from before they pop into your mind). my go to entry activity for example is taking a drive alone in my car while listening to newly discovered music. the amount of ideas i get from this activity is unmeasurable. music is everything to me as it is with most people, and i usually come up with my most favorite ideas while dealing with music to some capacity. other activities for me in which i catch most of my ideas from is going to the movies alone and washing dishes oddly enough. i find a weird sense of serenity in washing dishes.

aesthetically, these concepts are very much in line with surrealism. which i have a deep love for. i don’t really resonate with psychedelia aesthetics as much as both are often compared to one another. i generally have a ‘take it or leave it’ attitude towards drugs and psychedelics as a whole, though i remain intrigued with psilocybin specifically and its positive effects on self growth and the erasure of longstanding addictions. i definitely don’t rely on psilocybin though to be creative or ever want to feel like I need to. it isn’t a necessity for me and the natural world is already rich with all kinds of inspiration.

i’m sure i could go into this further and maybe in the future i will, but this is all i have to say about this at this time.

rip david lynch.

jacob :)