Rachel Martin’s Wild Card: NPR

David Lynch has said that he felt like he was living three different lives when he was a teenager.

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David Lynch has said that he felt like he was living three different lives when he was a teenager.

Vittorio Zunino Cerotto/Getty Images

Note Wildcard RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: David Lynch said that when he first tried Transcendental Meditation, “it felt like I was in an elevator and someone cut the cable.” Phew.I went in.

He fell into his subconscious.

And this metaphor of freedom in an elevator is how you feel when you absorb Lynch’s work, whether it’s a TV show or a film. Twin Peaks Or Movies Mulholland DriveIt feels like diving into a dark and surreal part of the human psyche, completely disorienting but thrilling at the same time.

To be honest, the feeling of free-falling in an elevator is a bit like what I felt when I was talking to him: our conversation started with fond memories of his childhood, and then the elevator fell, and suddenly we were much deeper into Lynch’s mind than I’d expected, and we were all just riding together.

At 78, Lynch is still creating art; he’ll be releasing a new album with the artist Christabel in August. The song, he told me, began as a sound experiment he was working on; when he got Christabel to sing along with it, he thought, “She’s perfect for this song, she’s indescribably perfect.”

But he doesn’t find the new music easy to listen to. He admits that he was initially put off by it himself: “The first time I heard it, it was complete bullshit.” But he says that after repeated listens, he began to open up to it: “The second time I heard it, I thought it was a bit lacking. The third time I heard it, I thought it was beautiful.”

The album title is Memories of Cellophaneexpresses how the music moved him: “It touched my heart, like a friend. And it brought back memories. As I listened to this music, memories from long ago came flooding back. Something about this music brought back memories.”

He says that will be the case for anyone who listens: “You’ll find music that brings back memories. Music that brings a lot of beauty and happiness into your life. Beauty is very gentle. It’s gentle music, but gentle in the sense that it’s beautiful.”

This Wild Card interview has been edited for length and clarity. Host Rachel Martin poses questions randomly selected from Trump to her guest. Tap play above to listen to the full podcast, or read an excerpt below.

Question 1: When was the moment in your childhood when you wished you had made a different choice than your parents?

David Lynch: I was in my girlfriend’s yard. I was in the ninth grade. I was meeting this boy named Toby Keeler. He didn’t go to my high school. He went to a private school. He told me his dad was a painter. At first I thought his dad was a house painter. But he said, “No, he’s a fine art painter.” And a bomb went off in my head. A bomb that changed my life in an instant, a bomb that changed my life completely.

And from that moment on, I wanted to be a painter. That’s it. My father was a research scientist for the USDA, and I never really wanted to be that. But wanting to be a painter, an artist, confirmed to me that I wasn’t going to follow in my father’s footsteps.

Lynch poses in front of one of his own works at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain exhibition, “The Air is on Fire,” in 2007.

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Rachel Martin: Going down that path required a high tolerance for risk — or some might say delusion. Where do you think that instinct came from, given that it wasn’t necessarily prominent in your parents’ lives?

Lynch: When you love something, there are no problems. There are no problems. You accept whatever happens because you are in love. You are in love.

Question 2: What was your way of rebelling as a teenager?

Lynch: Well, I was living three lives: a home life, a school life with my boyfriend, a studio life, an art life, and I was also a bit of a party animal.

I had three lives and I didn’t really want any of them to mix, so I developed intestinal spasms.

Martin: You developed an illness, so did you create it yourself? Was it psychosomatic?

Lynch: Yeah, it was psychosomatic.

Martin: And what did that do for you?

Lynch: I soiled my pants. That’s what happened. It was awful. But I’ll tell you the good side of it. Around that time, the Vietnam War was starting to break out, and my dad took me to the doctor because I was having intestinal cramps. [colonoscopy]And the guy was a good doctor, and he was looking at a race track, and it was like a race track, and he said, “Now, they’re turning this corner! They’re turning. Number 7 is in the lead! And they’re turning this corner!” [colonoscopy]When he was talking about my intestines, he said, “Your intestines are spasming,” and he said, “By the way, if you look at the x-ray, you have a misaligned vertebrae. If you ever get drafted, I’ll show you this x-ray, so that if you want to get out of the military, you won’t get drafted.”

I didn’t have to go to Vietnam because I was able to get out with the help of doctors due to intestinal spasms.

Question 3: What failure has taught you the most?

Lynch: My Movies Sand DunesI knew I had to have final cut before I could be in the movie. But for some reason, I thought everything would be okay and didn’t put final cut in my contract. And then, in the end, Sand Dunes It wasn’t the movie I wanted to make, because I didn’t have the final say.

It’s a lesson I’ve known for a long time, but now it’s too late. Who would work on something that isn’t theirs for three years? Why? Why would they do that? Why? I’m dead. It’s all my fault for not putting that in the contract.

Question 4: What made you feel awe?

Lynch: My first meditation. I [the transcendental meditation] I was at the center and I had just had a teaching, and I was taken into a little room and the teacher said, “Sit here, close your eyes. Sit here and start meditating. I’ll be back in 20 minutes.”

So I sat down, closed my eyes, and began what I had learned. boomIt was as if I was in an elevator and someone cut the cable. Phew.I went inside. Wow. Bliss. Tears of bliss. So beautiful. So powerful. Transcendental Meditation is trash out and money in.

I always say that we live like we’re wearing these suffocating rubber clown costumes of negativity. We don’t want to be clowns. We don’t want to wrap ourselves in this heavy, smelly rubber of negativity.

When you start transcending every day, the rubber starts to break down, to evaporate. And freedom comes. Bliss comes. It happens automatically. It’s a very beautiful thing. Why doesn’t everyone meditate? I don’t know. Think about it.

Martin: I have to say, it really does seem like you’ve found a level of fulfillment that a lot of people haven’t found.

Lynch: It all exists within you. If it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone. And it’s an amazing journey we’re all on. It’s even more amazing when you transcend each day. You put money in the bank. You take 20 minutes in the morning, 20 minutes in the afternoon, and the rest of the time you work on your business.