David Lynch, asymmetry, and just sending it

I'm not particularly sentimental. Certainly not about humans I have never met. Sometimes when I learn of some famous soandso passing I do take pause though. When I heard of David Lynch's passing I thought "damn, there goes a real one."

If you're looking to understand more about Lynch, go elsewhere for that. This isn't a eulogy for the man, but instead a tiny reflection on what Lynch and others represent (to me), and what I think anyone who is drawn to build and create could benefit from trying to practice.

That is: sending it. I've been increasingly interested in working towards taking and practicing what you could call "unhedged positions" or "naked commitments." Specifically as it relates to creating things—art, businesses, writing, food, etc...

Some time in 2013 or 2014^[1] I was in Philadelphia with one of my closest friends (who understands art far better than I do). She insisted we go and see the David Lynch exhibit in town. I hadn't the slightest idea he made any studio art; it was Twin Peaks and Eraserhead that made him famous. I discovered that day his studio art was as weird, dark, and often inscrutable as his movies and TV.^[2]

Most of the art didn't do anything for me. But leaving the exhibit I couldn't stop thinking about the artist bio: Lynch made it out that his parents were mostly supportive, loving, and had "boring CPA-like jobs" (I'm paraphrasing—it's been over a decade!). Hardly the expected foreboding childhood that would lead to nightmares and cracked-out dream sequences for which his art would become known/

It's clear the more time that you spend with Lynch's art, the more you see the artist locked in a sort of feedback loop with the art itself ("I could have spent a week in the Firemans"). You create a bit (launch your snomobile), it sparks some things, you feed the spark (drink a beer), it grows (the snow melts), you create a bit more (launch again), etc... Lynch took it a step further and was iconic in his desire to avoid having his films intellectualized and instead leaving them unexplained.^[3]

Art that really goes for it often ends up polarizing. Twin Peaks is GOATed television. What did she say is barely passable in my eye. This is often maligned as an undesirable quality in art. Movies like last year's Megalopolis are picked on as "divisive" as if all (any?) art should aspire to be universally liked. We often forget that a 51% on Rotten Tomatoes only tells us that as many critics liked it as not, but doesn't tell us anything about the magnitude of feeling that inspired the opinions.^[4]

Modernity has a way of smoothing the edges off of everything in its path. Because we, like many animals, like comfort, and so have welcomed that smoothing. Nassim Taleb's Antifragile elucidates this extensive phenomenom. All this smoothing means we forget what it really means to send it, because we've manufactured risks in our mind about the downsides of the art "failing" when in reality part of the power of creating (art, etc.) is that creators should have asymmetry in their favor. Downsides are quite small (what does it mean for art to fail?), and they probably get smaller the more prolific you are as a creator. And consequently you get crazy asymmetry on the upside.

Put another way, if you're creating something because you feel compelled to (and/or you're getting lost in the sauce of that sweet creation feedback loop), then once you put it out there, what downside could you possibly have? The time you spent working on it? The money you put into it? Well neither of those matter if you approached it for the aforementioned reason.^[5]

Take more risks: if you're starting to feel like you've got a lot of downside with your creations, consider that maybe you should change the approach. Or maybe just change the perspective.

Does it feel weird? Or dark? Make it weirder. Go darker. Don't ask for permission and don't look for validation. Trying to hard to speak to someone? Make it speak to yourself first. Better yet, get lost in listening to what it is saying to you. Do some dreamy shit.

- make weird art 

- make unabashed art

- make it for you 

- fuck the game 

David Lynch really went for it and some times it was dark