David Lynch, like many other filmmakers before him and many who will follow in his path, was drawn to Los Angeles because of the city’s natural and near-constant light.
In the 2016 documentary, “David Lynch: The Art Life” — which features Lynch speaking at length about his early days as an artist, his transition from painting to film, and the surreal minutiae of adolescence that led to him developing his signature “Lynchian” style — the light of the city he made his home for 55 of his 78 years and the light of his own inner creativity are shown as two connected wires producing one big spark that will exist long after the sun itself explodes in the sky above us.
In the wake of Lynch’s passing, we are lucky to be able to access his light anytime we want by revisiting the works he’s left behind — they can be put to use in times of emotional deep freeze or to jumpstart our own creativity, should the darkness that looms threaten to snuff it out. Although his time here was short — factoring in the wish of many that his end time would never come — his imagination, which he had an endless supply of, comes with the reminder that darkness exists because of the knowledge of light and that the sun is always shining somewhere, you just need to turn towards it to feel it.
In the second episode of “Twin Peaks: The Return,” which aired on Showtime in 2017 and would ultimately become Lynch’s final released project since efforts to obtain financial backing or distribution for two films (“Antelope Don’t Run No More” and “Snootworld”) went nowhere and Netflix tabled plans for a limited series called “Unrecorded Night” during the COVID pandemic — which I would bet they’re kicking themselves for now — a scene featuring arguably his two most beloved characters, Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) and Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee), is just one of many ways Lynch played with the concept of light as being an ocean of creativity containing a multitude of ideas to fish out — but it’s a great one.
This light, to me, feels like it symbolizes the totality of every idea Lynch ever had and, now, every idea he ever will have.
In the scene, Cooper — trapped in an in-between space known as the Black Lodge for 25 years — talks to a long dead Palmer, questioning if it’s really her.
“But Laura Palmer is dead,” he says, trying to make sense where there’s no sense to be made.
“I am dead. Yet I live,” Palmer says back to him, slowly moving her hand in front of her face to remove it like a mask, revealing a bright white light that washes over Cooper.
This light, to me, feels like it symbolizes the totality of every idea Lynch ever had and, now, every idea he ever will have. And, like Palmer, he is dead. Yet he lives.
Because of that light.
Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.
This scene was jarring but, like most of Lynch’s work, it was both jarring and beautiful. Throughout the bulk of his projects — and especially in “Twin Peaks” — the scariest scenes were often punctuated with brilliant flashes of light, and the color or temperature of that light was always intentional: Blue for melancholy, white for death, red for pain or murder and yellow for blind optimism.
From “Wild at Heart” to “Mulholland Drive” and everything before, after, or in-between, Lynch’s light did some heavy lifting but, like the works themselves, if you go in and in and in to the center of it all, you will eventually arrive at the core — at the source of that light — which was Lynch himself.
In a resurfaced clip making the rounds on social media following his death, Lynch compares people to light bulbs that radiate energy, both good and bad. For anyone who grew to love him — either through knowing him personally, or via his work — you get the sense that he put a lot of work into what kind of “light bulb” he was, and much of that work was done via his years-long practice of transcendental meditation.
“A human being’s like a light bulb. And we enjoy that light inside, but we also radiate it. We affect our environment. Everybody knows that,” he says in the clip. “You go into a room where there’s been a bad argument, and the argument’s over, but you can feel that thing. You go into a room filled with bliss, and the power of that is so beautiful to be in.”
I have certainly felt Lynch’s light in this way via his work. In fact, during an interview I was lucky to conduct with him many years ago, I told him about seeing “Lost Highway,” in the movie theater when it came out in 1997 and being so rattled by it that, afterward, I found it difficult to drive and had to sit in the parking lot of the theater until I re-connected with the real world around me. For a good long while, and many times throughout the years, the energy that lived in him found its way directly into me in a profound way. And that won’t stop, even now that he’s gone. I can get that feeling back by experiencing what he’s made and bask in it, just as easy as flicking a light switch.
In the days since Lynch’s death on January 15, 2025, many remembrances written about him by friends, family and stars that he worked with over the years made mention of light — both what it meant to him, and which he brought.
Like the works themselves, if you go in and in and in to the center of it all, you will eventually arrive at the core — at the source of that light — which was Lynch himself.
In one such remembrance posted to Instagram by Riley Sweeney Lynch, his son with third wife Mary Sweeney, he shared three photos of his father from throughout the years, and it’s interesting to note which ones he selected.
In the first, Lynch is shown sitting in his studio, illuminated by an overhead shop light. The second is of Riley as a young boy, standing next to his dad with sepia-toned daylight over their shoulders. And in the third, Lynch is shown walking away from the camera straight into the bright ball of the sun shining through the trees of Washington State, while filming “Twin Peaks: The Return.” A life story told in light: Work, family, and a journey there’s no coming back from.
Towards the end of Lynch’s “Art Life” documentary, he talks about receiving the grant that would allow him to move from Philadelphia — where he lived at the time with his first wife Peggy and their daughter, Jennifer — to Los Angeles, and how that changed everything for him.
Describing seeing the light of Los Angeles for the first time, Lynch says, “So when we drove out, we went down Sunset and turned left on San Vicente — parked the big truck — and the next morning was the first morning I experienced California sunshine. Unreal. I just stood in the street and looked up at the sun. It was unbelievable. And it was a kind of a thing where it was pulling fear out of me.”
Compared to that first morning spent in Los Angeles, when the light pulled every care in the world right out of him, that setting was lit considerably harsher on his last — forced to evacuate his home during wildfires that ravaged a vast portion of the city.
But above that fire, and above that fear, was the light of everything beyond. And he headed that way.
Read more
about this topic
