#231 | In Honor of David Lynch: 9 Quotes from ‘Catching the Big Fish’ on Creativity, Consciousness, and Meditation
Quick SUMMARY:
In the wake of David Lynch’s recent passing, Douglas Vigliotti delves into the iconic filmmaker’s nonfiction book "Catching the Big Fish,” sharing nine standout quotes on creativity, meditation, and consciousness. He reflects on Lynch's legendary career, highlighting films like "Eraserhead," "Blue Velvet," "Mulholland Drive," and the TV series and movie, "Twin Peaks,” emphasizing the visionary artist's unique perspective, creative process, and love of transcendental meditation.
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Topics Covered in the Episode:
Introduction to the Episode (00:09) - Douglas introduces the episode and the book "Catching the Big Fish" by David Lynch.
David Lynch's Background (01:13) - Discussion of Lynch's iconic films and his impact on cinema, including "Eraserhead" and "Twin Peaks."
Lynch's Artistic Vision (02:28) - Exploration of Lynch’s unique storytelling style and its experimental elements.
Documentary Recommendation (03:54) - Vigliotti recommends "The Art Life," a documentary that delves into Lynch's creative process.
Other Works by Lynch (04:52) - Mention of Lynch's memoirs and their significance in understanding his artistic journey.
Themes of the Book (05:54) - Overview of the book's focus on meditation, creativity, and consciousness.
Transcendental Meditation (04:52) - Discussion on Lynch's advocacy for transcendental meditation and its benefits.
Creative Struggles (05:54) - Story of Lynch's challenges while creating "Eraserhead" and his feelings of inadequacy.
Philosophy of Creation (06:59) - The importance of staying true to one’s vision in creative endeavors, regardless of audience reception.
Quote One: Ideas Are Like Fish (07:16) - Lynch emphasizes the need to dive deeper for greater creative insights.
Quote Two: The Art Life (08:08) - Discussion on the sacrifices creatives make for their art.
Quote Three: Audience Perception (09:25) - Exploration of how audience interpretations differ from creator intentions.
Quote Four: The World Is As You Are (10:37) - Reflection on personal perspectives shaping individual experiences of art.
Quote Five: Audience Consideration (11:55) - Lynch's belief in prioritizing personal vision over audience expectations.
Quote Six: The Essence of Meditation (12:08) - Meditation as a means to discover one’s true self and creative identity.
Quote Seven: Living with Failure (13:08) - The importance of pursuing one’s beliefs despite the risk of failure.
Quote Eight: Therapy and Creativity (14:22) - Lynch's perspective on therapy's potential impacts on creativity.
Quote Nine: Embracing Ideas (15:25) - Advice on recognizing and valuing creative ideas while discerning between good and bad ones.
Conclusion and Call to Action (16:22) - Vigliotti encourages listeners to explore Lynch's work and subscribe to the podcast.
READ THE TRANSCRIPT:
Welcome back to “Books for Men”, a podcast to inspire more men to read and bring together men who do so. I have a fun book to share with you today. It is a non-fiction book creativity book and it is by none other than David Lynch. It is titled “Catching the Big Fish” and it's a shorter book under 200 pages. The passages are short as well. It came out almost 20 years ago, I think originally in 2006, and the reason why I'm sharing it with you today is because, sadly, David Lynch recently passed away and I thought this would be a great book to draw attention to all of his work as a whole, but also to share with you. And I'm going to go through nine of my favorite quotes from the book. That is how I will construct this episode. But before I do that, I want to remind you of my new book, which is out “Aristotle for Novelists: 14 Timeless Principles on the Art of Story”. And if you're interested in finding out more about that, you can on the website AristotleforNovelists.com.
01:13 - All right. Now that I've gotten my little bit of self-promotion out of the way up front. Who is David Lynch? As I just alluded to, he is an iconic filmmaker most prominently known for movies like “Eraserhead”, “Blue Velvet”, and “Mulholland Drive”, all three of which are Oscar-nominated films. I believe he was actually nominated for Best Director in each of those. And then there's, of course, “Wild at Heart”, which won the Palme d'Or, the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival. And then there's, of course, the TV show, which also has a prequel movie, “Twin Peaks”. Since he passed away, I went back and watched all of his work or at least a lot of it. I would say definitely everything I just mentioned. And what's interesting about that TV show and prequel movie is the story is so dark, but since the TV show was still operating on a traditional TV model, even though it was done by Showtime, it doesn't go as far as the movie goes, and it would just be an interesting TV show to see what he would have done with it differently if it was post shows like “The Wire” or “The Sopranos” when television really started to get adventurous.
02:28 - Not that that show isn't a lot of fun to watch, or that it doesn't have great characters because it does. It's just you could see that it's much more restricted. And then in that movie, he really goes into the David Lynch zone. I would say in really challenges you in all of the ways that he does with his work, much of which could be described as experimental and arthouse or surrealist, but all having mystery elements and psychological thriller elements. It's really this unique, individualistic, auteur perspective on film that is highly stylized to the vision of its creator. Of course, this makes his work a lot of fun to watch and engage with. It's unexpected and daring, and all of the qualities you would think of somebody who is really testing the boundaries of what you can do on the screen and with a story. He's the subject of a wonderful documentary called “The Art Life”, which I highly recommend if you could find it on streaming somewhere. And he talks a lot about process, of course. And that's part of the reason why I'm also sharing this book with you today, because any time a visionary artist offers you a look inside his mind and process, I'd say take it and enjoy it.
03:54 - Along with this book, There's also a memoir that came out. I think it was only maybe 5 or 6 years ago, something like that called “Room to Dream”. I haven't read it yet, but I'm really looking forward to it, it’s on my TBR as well as “Lynch on Lynch”, which is a compilation of things that he has said about his work more broadly, not just film, but painting and photography as well. And while I can't speak to them because I haven't read them yet, I am looking forward to diving into both of them at some point during this year. So quickly, before I jump into the nine quotes that I'm going to share with you from this book, I should probably tell you a little bit about what it actually is or how it sets up, and that is in very short passages on a plethora of topics. They're mostly centered around meditation, consciousness, and creativity. So one of the things that I didn't tell you about David Lynch is that he is a huge proponent of transcendental meditation.
04:52 - He even has a foundation called the David Lynch Foundation. That does a lot of work to bring awareness around transcendental meditation and helping people learn the practice and all of the above. Funnily enough, I actually interviewed the CEO of the David Lynch Foundation on my previous podcast. It's not what it seems. His name is Bob Roth. He's also a huge TM teacher, something that I have been trained in myself. But let me not get too far off track. I'm sure I'll talk a little bit more about meditation as this episode goes on. The other thing that this book does, and that I've alluded to at the beginning of this episode, is that it provides commentary on many of his films and working relationships, providing little stories that amplify a lot of his work. One of them that points out to me was when he was first making “Eraserhead”. It took him five years to actually finish it, and he never thought that he would. He was very open and honest about his feelings during that time, thinking the world was going to pass him by.
05:54 - And he was jealous. It almost seemed like. Of things that were coming out. Well, he couldn't even finish the work. Or like he says in the book, he felt like he was dying. But this story actually came full circle when he found out later in life, at a certain point, that it was actually one of Stanley Kubrick's favorite movies. That was a fun story to read about, or even when Dennis Hopper called him up and insisted that he played Frank Booth, which is the antagonist or the villain in “Blue Velvet”, which thrilled and scared David Lynch at the same time. Because if you've watched that movie, you will quickly realize that that's one of the scariest villains and antagonists of all time. He really makes the movie, and I think I didn't even mention this part, but the reason why he insisted that he played Frank Booth is because he insisted that he was Frank Booth. So that was the actual scary part of the phone call. But anyway, I just think that if you are a creative person, then this is a must-read.
06:59 - And if you liked Rick Rubin's “The Creative Act”, which was a massively successful book from last year, then I think you will also like this book. Having said that, let's jump into the nine quotes that I want to share with you from the book. Number one, “Ideas are like fish. If you want to catch little fish, you could stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch the big fish, you've got to go deeper.” So this is the quote that he actually starts the book off with. And I love that because it gets at the essence of what the work is trying to convey to the reader, not just creatively, but also through consciousness and meditation. And it's a reminder to dig deeper for those bigger fish. Okay. Now, quote number two, … the art life means a freedom to have time for good things to happen. There's not always a lot of time for other things.” So this sort of gets at the trade-offs that creative people make to produce the work that they produce.
08:08 - There's only so much time in a day. This is something that I think is easily forgotten about or ignored. But I think he capsizes this really well with this idea in the book when he says that if you want one good hour of painting, what you really need is four hours of time. And as I grow older, I could see the truth in that statement. Quote number three, “There is a circle that goes from the audience to the film and back. Each person is looking and thinking and feeling and coming up with his or her own sense of things. And it's probably different from what I fell in love with.” I think you could look at this quote in one of two ways. Of course, there's the obvious that the consumer's experience is much different than the creator's experience or the creator's intention, but it's also a nod to the idea that we all enjoy something for a different reason, perhaps. And for me personally, I find it really frustrating when somebody tells me why I should like something. Which is sort of funny, because that's basically what this entire show is.
09:25 - But hey, you're tuning in to listen to me tell you. What I mean is, when two people watch something or listen to something or read something and someone says, no, no, you don't understand. This is what you should be experiencing. It's like, no, no, I love it, but I love it because it makes me experience it this way. That's the beauty of art. And I think that's what David Lynch is getting at with this quote. This sort of leads perfectly into quote number four, where he basically mirrors what I would consider to be an Anais Nin quote. And he says, “I like the saying: the world is as you are.” To me, this just couldn't be any truer of a statement, since we all run our perspective through the lens of self, and we have no other way to view the world but through our own experience. And how our mind is, is how we will view something. This is why you and I can watch, read or listen to the same thing, but have a completely different experience of it, either like it or hate it, or it touches us in a completely different way.
10:37 - Quote number five. “If you thought about how it's going to hit people, or if it's going to hurt someone, or if it's going to do this or do that, then you would have to stop making films.” Now this idea really gets to a philosophical belief on creation, to how much one thinks about its audience. And there are a lot of people out there who will urge you as a creator to think about your reader. Think about your audience. And I love creators who do the exact opposite. And that's not even necessarily to say they don't worry about how it's going to be received, because I think that is something that you could never avoid. It's just that the North Star is their vision of how they see it. Or is it something that they would enjoy? It doesn't include the audience at all until they experience it. And I think when you see works of this nature, they are instantly recognizable because they are different. They don't look, feel or sound like anything else that is being done in the genre or genres that they are creating in.
11:55 - And of course, this also means that they could be a flop just as much as they could be a hit. Quote number six. “The thing about meditation is: you become more and more you.” As someone who has slowed down their life quite a bit over the last three years, I would say, and I’ve focused a lot more on breathwork and yoga and meditation and things of that nature. I find this quote to be really resonant because as you peel back the layers, you're left with who you are in a sense. And this, of course, could be a lot of things scary, exciting, enlightening. But mostly it's just easier to pinpoint what is a story and what is part of your being, so to speak, because so many things are stories and we're influenced in so many ways. And that “being” aspect becomes something that is more recognizable when you really slow down and go deeper. As David Lynch might say, quote number seven, “If you do what you believe in and have a failure, that's one thing you could still live with yourself. But if you don't, it's like dying twice.”
13:13 - Again, this goes back to that singular, visionary creative perspective that he has. It's not easy to abide by, but it is definitely an admirable quality. That brings us to quote number eight when he was talking about the first time that he was going to therapy. He says, “When I got into the room, I asked him, ‘Do you think that this process could in any way damage my creativity?’ And he said, ‘Well, David, I have to be honest, it could.” And I shook his hand and left.” So the reason why I wanted to share this with you is not because I have anything against therapy. I think it's an extremely effective modality for many people in many situations. However, it is interesting to me how we tend to look at therapy as this panacea. When you talk to people about it, meaning, they very rarely talk about any of the downsides that come from therapy, but it just seems reasonable to me that there would be downsides in some shape or form.
14:22 - It's like a first principle of life for me. Everything is a tradeoff. Everything has pluses and minuses. And so depending on what your North Star is, maybe it's not the right modality for you. And I think this was just an interesting quote to point out. David Lynch's North Star was creativity in his life, for better or worse. And he didn't want to affect that in any way. So he walked out of therapy the day that he walked in. All right. So that brings us to the final quote that I wanted to share with you, quote number nine. And it was a little piece of advice that he gives at the end of this book. And so I thought it was appropriate to end this episode with, “Never turned down a good idea, but never take a bad idea. And meditate.” All right. So that just about does it for this episode. I hope you enjoyed it. I will encourage you to go read this book but go watch David Lynch's work if you haven't already, or maybe revisit it.
15:25 - He was a true visionary artist. If you enjoyed this episode, I want to remind you to please click the subscribe button on whatever podcast platform you're listening to this on, or take two seconds and rate the show, because doing either one is the best way for us to get in front of more eyeballs and ears and in return inspire more men to read. Also, I'd love to hear what you think about David Lynch or any of his work or anything at all that has to do with books for men. So if you'd like to connect with me, you can. On Instagram @DouglasVigliotti or via email, which you can find on my website DouglasVigliotti.com. Of course, if you're interested in any of my latest work, you'll be able to find it on that website. Or perhaps you want to check out my new book? Then you can by visiting AristotleforNovelists.com. All of those links will be in the show notes. And lastly, of course, thank you so much for listening. And if you want more information on this podcast, then all you have to do is visit the website BooksforMen.org.
