http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/living/education/12793022.htm
Posted on Sun, Oct. 02, 2005
David Lynch wants everyone to ... relax
He says TM helped him.
By Amy S. Rosenberg
Inquirer Staff Writer
Here's a quiz. To get in a David Lynch frame of mind, a David Lynch kind of
head, do
you:
A. Drive around a small town with strains of the Blue Velvet movie soundtrack
playing in the background, thinking dark, creepy thoughts about undulating
folds and
the underbelly of small-town life?
B. Go to Bob's Big Boy every day for seven years for a burger, chocolate shake
and
inspiration?
C. Twice daily, take 20 minutes out of your over-caffeinated, nicotine-infused
existence to sit down, repeat your mantra, and become so convinced of the value
of
transcendental meditation that you travel the country to tell equally
over-caffeinated, possibly also nicotine-infused, but definitely stressed-out
college students things such as "Bliss is our nature"?
Bliss is our nature? This is now the message from the creator of Eraserhead, the
film starring that poufy-haired guy and the mutant baby.
Apparently, it's an all-of-the-above phase of life for mind-bending filmmaker
Lynch,
who says his 32 years of meditating have rid him of the anger, anxiety and fear
that
gripped him when he was a student at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
right
here in stress-inducing Philadelphia.
Lynch, 59, is now touring college campuses with a band of TM devotees
(including a
physicist, a professor of nuclear medicine, and a volunteer student who
meditates on
stage while hooked up to an EEG machine) to raise $7 billion (yes, billion) for
a
new nonprofit. The David Lynch Foundation - dedicated to "consciousness-based
world
peace and education" - seeks to make transcendental meditation available to
hopped-up college students, and to younger kids, too, who are suffering from
lots of
high blood pressure, anxiety and other ailments.
"I want God to dance with us in a flow of bliss," Lynch told the overflow crowd
at
the University of Pennsylvania the other night, speaking in his surprisingly
Poindexter-y voice, with that unmistakable shock of big-head hair and dressed
in the
same skinny black tie, white shirt, and black suit he has worn since his high
school
yearbook picture. "We're not made to suffer," he said.
An unlikely message, perhaps, from someone whose psyche has coughed up such
discomfiting works as Blue Velvet, The Elephant Man, and Twin Peaks (but also,
as he
reminded the students, the rather blissful The Straight Story, a true tale
about a
guy who drives his John Deere riding mower cross-country to mend his relations
with
his dying brother).
Lynch does not see a disconnect between his meditation practices - a "diving
into
the ocean within to create a world of peace" sort of thing - and his ability to
create dark, edgy art. He is finishing up a new film, Inland Empire, which he
describes as being about "a woman in trouble," starring Lynch regular Laura
Dern.
"You don't have to suffer to show suffering," he said. "You don't have to be
angry
to show anger. Those negative emotions start lifting when you start meditating.
You
should have an edge. But you should get rid of those things that keep you from
creating."
Three decades of TM have not, however, rid him of his fear of public speaking,
he
says. And so, minutes before he was to appear on stage at Penn's Museum of
Archaeology and Anthropology on Thursday night, the idol of many a camera-waving
film student stood in an alleyway just off Spruce Street, leaned his head
against
the brick wall, closed his eyes, and tried to calm himself.
"It's like everything, relative," Lynch had explained backstage a few minutes
earlier. "If it was 32 years ago, you'd have me in a stretcher."
Now, he said, jabbing a finger into the shoulder of a reporter (lightly,
lightly,
not at all menacingly - but this is a guy who used a severed ear as a plot
device,
so there is a slight recoil), he strives to reach that "field of unity," where
he
can tap into positive energy (jab), bliss (jab), intelligence (jab), universal
love
(jab), creativity (jab), and more energy and sharpness (he stopped jabbing and
headed outside, presumably to dive into his ocean of calm).
No doubt, academic, financial and social pressures among college students are
real
concerns. (Just ask the hundreds of students who arrived early but were still
turned
away from Lynch's lecture after the 780-seat auditorium filled up. Inside,
though,
the students in the artsy crowd often seemed to be the ones offering up an
admiring
reassurance to the disarmingly awkward Lynch.)
In the book College of the Overwhelmed, Harvard mental-health services chief Dr.
Richard Kadison cites statistics that find nearly half of all students
experience
depression during college, and one in 10 will consider suicide. Too often,
Kadison
writes, students resort to such destructive behaviors as eating disorders, drug
abuse, cutting themselves and suicide attempts. Kadison said he supports Lynch's
efforts.
"I'm a strong believer that meditation, yoga, relaxation breathing and similar
exercises can be a great stress reducer in college," Kadison said via e-mail.
Practitioners of TM - a technique developed 50 years ago by Maharishi Mahesh
Yogi
that involves 20 minutes of silently repeating a mantra with one's eyes closed -
believe it produces an experience of "physiological restful alertness."
Among Lynch's audience of wired, fatigued, overachieving college students, some
said
they would be open to Lynch's ideas, though most seemed more intent on getting
their
Eraserhead posters signed. (And one cynical film major derided the whole thing
as
Lynch's "Kabbalah midlife moment").
"It's inspiring and optimistic," said Andrea Scott, a senior at Penn. "I'm
tempted."
Some of the Lynch devotees, the ones whose lives were forever altered by Blue
Velvet, seemed willing to put this latest peek inside the filmmaker's
consciousness
into the general Bizarro-Lynch file. But whether his bliss mission would
ultimately
serve his art was another question. "You're not going to find a fictional drama
about meditation at the movies," said Dan Brohawn, 21, a senior film student at
Temple.
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