In November 2024, I wrote an exploratory argumentative essay about the use of the ceiling fan in David Lynch’s “Twin Peaks” (1990). Writing about the significance of a ceiling fan may seem like an outlandish essay topic, but Lynch’s work is riddled with unexplainable minutiae that often have larger meaning to the work. 

I was 15 when I saw my first Lynch film, “Eraserhead”(1977), which (unknown to me at the time) was the first film he had directed and written. In a short, it’s a film about the pressures of impending unplanned parenthood as well as living life in an industrialized society. 

If you were to ask Lynch what the film is about, he would probably just shrug his shoulders while a stream of smoke traveled upward from his cigarette.

Nonetheless, he did give the public a little insight into the film, saying that it was his “most spiritual” film. But, for those who haven’t seen the film it’s about a girl with puffy cheeks who lives in a radiator and a human man who takes care of his alien baby, set against a Kafkaesque, unsettling world that’s grey, macabre and seems to be closing in on itself.

It’s trippy, disgusting, gripping, confusing and just plain weird — a great introduction to Lynch’s directorial style. 

The next movie I watched on my journey through Lynch’s filmography was “Blue Velvet” (1986). This movie requires context to understand the plot. 

Lynch was born on Jan. 20, 1946, in Missoula, Mont. If you attended any high school history class, you would know that his birth year directly followed the end of World War II, America finally had overcome the Great Depression and economic prosperity was on the rise.

The nuclear family was also becoming a norm in America — a wife, a husband, a kid, a dog and a white picket fence. An era famous for suburbanization, consumerism and conservatism. 

“Blue Velvet” was released in 1986, when Former President Ronald Reagan was in office and culture wars were starting. 

“Why are there people like Frank? Why is there so much trouble in this world?”, Kyle MacLachlan’s character, Jeffrey Beaumont, says at the end of the film. 

Jeffrey is the audience’s navigator who explores what’s underneath the surface of the nuclear family. The movie’s aesthetic seems cherry picked out of 1950s Americana culture and tells the tale of the criminal underbelly of a small, quiet town filled with predatory and violent men. 

He uses this narrative of looking beneath the cookie-cutter, white-centric Americana and seeing the darker undersides. What might be considered Lynch’s magnum opus and where his vision and ambition are at full force is the television series “Twin Peaks.” 

This show and its movie counterpart, “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me” (1992), made me who I am today. To put it quite simply, I have never seen anything else like them. 

I love this show so much that I showed it to my suitemates, and just a few nights ago, they asked me about when Bob was revealed to be Leland. What did that mean? And how was Leland actually Bob, if Leland had just previously spoken about living next to who was presumed to be Bob? I had a hard time answering their questions because I have honestly never thought about “Twin Peaks,” or any of Lynch’s work in a literal sense. Nor have I ever thought about it in a figurative way. I just knew that the show and the accompanying movie spoke to me. 

I was frustrated at myself for not being able to answer their questions (being the self-proclaimed superfan I am with a picture of Laura Palmer’s homecoming photo sitting in my dorm room), but right then and there, I knew how it must’ve felt to be Lynch being asked the question, “What does it mean?” Maybe words are too one-dimensional. Maybe all I know about the show is that it makes me feel lonely and sad, but when “Laura Palmer’s Theme” plays, I find comfort in the hopelessness of her story. 

Jordan Roberts, an editor in Stony Brook’s Master of Fine Arts Television Writing Program, discussed the complex and provocative nature of Lynch’s filmmaking.

“I always tell my editing students that confusion is often the enemy of emotion, but Lynch was one of the few filmmakers who transcended that idea. I’m mature enough to say that I don’t fully understand every aspect of ‘Mulholland Drive’ [(2001)] or ‘Lost Highway’ [(1987)], but they are unbelievably emotional films and even if the story doesn’t 100% click together, he always made me feel something,” Roberts said.

Roberts expanded on his ideas, saying, “Lynch was a filmmaker that was always able to tap into something just below the surface. He knew how to make us feel uneasy. Whether that be the ceiling fan blades, the floating camera in the Winkie’s scene in ‘Mulholland Drive,’ the negative space in ‘The Elephant Man’ [(1980)] or literally going below the surface in ‘Blue Velvet,’ he knew how to heighten emotions and put us on edge, even during moments of relative calm.”

 Lynch once described his creative process by saying, “We don’t really create an idea, we just catch them like fish.” 

Lynch is undoubtedly a master of the surreal and dreamlike — he even has an adjective, “Lynchian,” named after him to describe his directorial style. But his greatest strength was capturing and depicting the profound aspects of the human experience.

Almost all the works I mentioned focus on themes of the unwavering human spirit. “What we fear in the dark, and what lies beyond the darkness. I’m talking about seeing beyond fear … about looking at the world with love,” Dale Cooper said in “Twin Peaks.”

It’s so easy to look at the world with apathy when seeing the depths of depravity the human race can succumb to, but “Twin Peaks” is a reminder that good people can resist the temptation of evil. “Twin Peaks” is one of the “fish” Lynch caught, and it captured the genuine human spirit that exists in the world we live in. 

“His films lived a few steps removed from reality. We recognized the spaces these characters lived in because it looked similar to our world, but something was just a bit off. Naomi Watts won a jitterbug contest and now she’s going to be the next big Hollywood star?”, Roberts said. 

The term Lynchian is sometimes associated with something that we don’t understand at first glance. However, it’s not just the plot that we don’t understand. “The Big Sleep” (1946) is unbelievably confusing, but it’s not something you’d call Lynchian. I think to earn that term, the characters need to be elusive, their motives confusing and their relationships downright dumbfounding. 

“As viewers, we like films that aren’t easy to dissect and solve immediately. We like ruminating on something. We like debate. He was the master at that,” Roberts said. 

Lynch is without a doubt a perpetual icon of the screen. He was a writer, director, producer and an overall creative genius who never stifled that creativity. “Eraserhead” was absolutely panned when it came out. Variety called the film “a sickening bad-taste exercise,” and it was polarizing to viewers. Now with more than 45 years of hindsight, it is now considered one of the horror genre’s most groundbreaking independent films.

“One of Lynch’s biggest contributions was making weird cool. Not to say that others were playing it safe, but this is a man whose first short film was a looped animation of [six] men vomiting. His embrace of sound as a way of making audiences feel so intensely was imperative to his success. ‘Eraserhead’ is a prime example of that. It was all about mood. He didn’t seem to really care that his film was the antithesis of [the] ‘Star Wars’ [franchise] or ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind‘ [(1977)],” he said. 

Lynch made us think. He never talked down to the audience or tried to lecture. He understood that art is subjective and allowed the viewers to form their own interpretations, even if that entails dissecting the significance of a ceiling fan for a class. Not every question needs an answer and not everything needs to make sense. 

Roberts expressed how Lynch pulled his inspiration for his work from peculiar moments that occurred in his real life.

“One thing that Lynch really did for me was solidifying the thought that a single image or moment can turn into something beautiful. ‘Lost Highway’ came to be because someone rang his doorbell and said the words ‘Dick Laurent is dead,’ and no one was at the door. ‘Twin Peaks’ started with the image of a body washed ashore,” he said.

He shared how Lynch’s creative style carried an important lesson for creatives.

“Undoubtedly, he had thousands of ideas that went nowhere, but that’s what filmmaking is all about. Trying stuff. As wild as some of his films are, they still remain grounded within the work. Aspiring filmmakers can never lose sight of that. Each decision needs to be justified as it has to serve the story,” Roberts said.

He explained how Lynch’s surreal filmmaking encouraged artists to express themselves. 

“If you plan to embrace odd editing rhythms because you want characters to observe one another on a deeper, creepier level, go for it. If you want to direct an actor to play a scene as if they’ve scared they may be caught at any moment, go for it. Just embrace it and go all in. That is one thing that he passed on to all of us. Own your work, own your decisions and do what makes you happy,” Roberts added. 

Something that has remained a constant throughout Lynch’s life is his love for mediation and spirituality. Lynch has said he started Transcendental Meditation (TM) in 1973 and did it twice a day, every day, since. Meditation brought Lynch to a level of life called “pure consciousness” that is deep within all of us. He saw that “it was being practiced by veterans who suffer the living hell of post-traumatic stress and women and girls who are survivors of terrible violence.” Lynch’s deep sensitivity to people from all walks of life is central to his work. 

Lynch’s final artistic statement and work was an 18-episode television series that was deeply entwined with TM called “Twin Peaks” (2017). The series served as a continuation of the original show, which was canceled after season two. The “Twin Peaks” that aired in the 1990s was somewhat confusing, but “Twin Peaks” (2017) was a whole other beast. 

In “Twin Peaks” (2017), Lynch’s creativity wasn’t held back by network executives and he was able to unleash his unusual style with no restraint. It takes place 25 years (cue Laura Palmer) after the run of the original show, but it doesn’t try to recapture or profit off the nostalgia from its predecessor, recognizing it as its own thing. 

One line that can sum up the show, the entire collection of Lynch’s work and Lynch himself is, “We are like the dreamer who dreams then lives inside the dream.” 

The world can be dark and things can be confusing, but Lynch and his dreams walk with us. He helps us emerge from the darkness with all our scars and teaches us to love being alive. To reference Lynch, or really Laura Dern’s character in “Blue Velvet,” “the robins will come, with all their blinding love.”