Lynchian

As you may or may not be aware, David Lynch has been the master of his own personal brand of style for over 30 years now. I'm writing this, fresh from a screening of Blue Velvet, and feeling positively coated in his thick and highly viscous aesthetic, which generally results in a renewed respect for bright red lips and nails, and a distinct desire for black coffee and slices of diner pie.

I remember going to a party once where "Candy Colored Clown" came on at one point, and it was all I could do to keep myself from unabashedly demanding all attention by lip-syncing while gazing at the party-goers from under heavy-lidded eyes. I restrained myself, and regret it to this day. What a surreal way to sing a love song to culture - by letting culture sing its own song while you put a new face on it. That song plays a very real role in Blue Velvet (as does the song the film is named for, among others) and shows how effectively communicated one's impression of a song can be. The villainous Frank Booth is undone by the Candy Colored Clown every time, and it becomes even creepier to like a song that you can watch a sociopath liking. Yikes.

But what Lynch does in that film, and Lost Highway, and Twin Peaks, is important because it shows that loving something (a time-period, an architectural style, a film) can result in a work all its own, while remaining ever-respectful and always acknowledging the source of inspiration. He has shown me that it's alright to love something to such an extreme that you can't help but incorporate it and let it inform everything you do.

My feelings about what Lynch does is part of the reason why I think it's so important to be patient and knowledgeable about the context in which his work was first released. When Blue Velvet came out, it was innovative and racy and like nothing else that was out there: he took things he loved and crafted a story (albeit a remarkably twisted one) around them. So when I heard people tittering in the audience, obviously unaware of what these scenes meant when they first burst on the scene, I was angry because it cheapens an experience to write something off as dated, and therefore silly. I can't imagine things our culture has to offer - Angry Birds, T-Pain, and Puss in Boots in 3D, just to name a few - won't be met with misunderstanding chuckles in the future.