David Lynch died this past Wednesday.
I’m going to level with you—when I heard the news, it didn’t mean much to me. I had never seen a single one of his movies; I had never watched Twin Peaks. I’d heard the term “Lynchian” before and had a vague sense of what he stood for as an artist, but, truthfully, I didn’t know much about him.
In the 24 to 48 hours following his passing, my social media feeds were flooded with quotes, interview clips, and anecdotes about Lynch. What an interesting character, I thought. It was enough to send me down the rabbit hole.
I started with Eraserhead on Friday night—bizarre, but undeniably one-of-a-kind. I could appreciate that immediately. On Saturday night, I followed it up with Blue Velvet. It was less bizarre, but still shocking and subversive in its own way.
Finally, on Sunday, I watched a documentary on Max about Lynch’s life as an artist (David Lynch: The Art Life). I love things like this—works that not only offer a glimpse into how an artist found their way but also reveal how they developed their creative process. Watching it put me at such ease that, for a moment, I felt as if I might be cured.
There was one part of the documentary where Lynch talks about his time living in Philadelphia from 1965 to 1970. As someone who has spent the last six years living in this city, it immediately caught my attention. Lynch says:
“Philadelphia was kind of a poor man’s New York City, so it was a weird town. It was kind of a mean town. One woman, who was my neighbor, reeked of urine.”
Sounds about right, I thought. Lynch continues:
“There was another woman, who was totally crazy. She was a neighbor who lived down the street with her parents. And she would go around the backyard on her hands and knees and squawk like a chicken and say, ‘I’m a chicken! I’m a chicken!’ She’d squawk and squawk and go around and around in this tall white grass in her backyard. She came up to me one day on the street and said, ‘Oh, my nipples hurt!’ And she was squeezing her breasts, standing right in front of me, squeezing and shaking, saying, ‘My nipples hurt!’”
It sounds like something straight out of an Always Sunny episode, doesn’t it? Lynch goes on:
“I’m walking down the street. There’s a very nice lady with her little boy, a baby, on her lap, out on the stoop. I’m walking by, and I say, ‘How you doing?’ She says [mockingly], ‘How you doing? How you doing?’ Then she turns to her little baby and says, ‘You grow up like that, and I’ll fucking kill you.’”
Finally, Lynch concludes by describing the effect Philadelphia had on him:
“There was thick, thick fear in the air. There was a feeling of sickness, corruption, of racial hatred. But Philadelphia was just perfect to spark things. And the students were great, and they were workers. And we had a kind of camaraderie, and it was like the art life—the art spirit—was alive and well. [Philadelphia] was so good for me. Really, really good. Even though I lived in fear, I kind of— It was thrilling to live the art life in Philadelphia at that time.”
So many parts of this resonated with me. How could something so bad be so good? How could so many bizarre characters be crammed into one city?
It reminded me of a time I was walking in South Philly on a frigid winter morning. The sky was overcast, the city painted in muted shades of gray. I was heading to a coffee shop to work when I passed by a dead raccoon, limp and lifeless, lying on a storm drain. It was a stark contrast to my usual morning observations—birds fluttering about, people walking their dogs. I looked in every direction, but nobody seemed to be around. For reasons I couldn’t quite explain, my first instinct was to take a photo, so I did. My next thought was whether I should call someone to pick it up. No, I decided. Better to leave it. In life or in death, it’s just as much a part of this neighborhood as I am.
There was something tragic about that raccoon. I wondered whether it had frozen to death or succumbed to an infectious disease like rabies. Yet there was also something profoundly beautiful about seeing a dead, frozen animal in a place it wasn’t meant to be, out in the open, on display for all to see.
Lynch’s comments also reminded me of several characters I’ve encountered in Philly.
One time, not too long ago, I opened the front door of my building and found a man sitting on the stoop. He looked exhausted, as if he could barely stand. Raising a wad of cash in his right hand, he asked, “Where can I get a bike around here?”
“A bike?” I asked.
“Yeah, I’ve been walking forever. I need a bike,” he said.
Across the street, there was literally a bike store. “Just right over there,” I answered.
“Where?” he asked, earnestly.
“Right there!” I pointed.
“I don’t see it,” he said, and then he laid back down.
Or, there was the man who stopped me in the middle of the sidewalk at 7:30 a.m. on a Sunday morning to tell me he hadn’t been able to buy beer at Acme.
“I forgot my damn license! They don’t let you buy beer without your license,” he said.
“Oh, yeah. Bummer,” I replied.
“I asked them if I could show them a photo of my license, and they said they need the real thing,” he explained.
“Right,” I said.
“Now I gotta walk all the way back to 11th and Jackson to get my license,” he grumbled, walking away.
“Good luck!” I called after him. And as he walked away, I couldn’t help but wonder: why did he bother telling me that?
Or, there was the man who walked into a coffee shop, didn’t order anything, and then turned to look directly at me. I was sitting at a table, working on my laptop, and I mistakenly looked up, making eye contact with him. He took this as an invitation to start talking to me. He came right up to my table and launched into a story about his girlfriend.
“Man, I’ve been having all sorts of issues with my girl,” he began. “She’s on some bullshit. She took out all my clothes and threw them on the sidewalk. She won’t talk to me.”
Then, mid-story, he abruptly stopped and pointed at my computer. “What are you doing?” he asked.
“I’m just getting some work done,” I replied politely. “Actually, I need to get back to it.”
Without saying another word, he walked out of the store.
These types of interactions are a dime a dozen in Philadelphia. They happen to me almost daily. For the sake of brevity, I’ve only highlighted a few recent characters, but there are countless more I could tell you about. Every time I walk out of my apartment, I have no idea who I might encounter on a given day. And while these interactions are never dangerous, as Lynch might have experienced, they are always, without fail, a little odd.
This, to me, is what makes Lynch’s work especially remarkable. He was a master at capturing the surreal and twisting that knob all the way up to eleven. But it makes sense—when you stop to think about all the people you might meet in a week or a month, you realize that, in their own ways, they’re all really quite strange. And then, you begin to notice the ways in which you yourself are quite strange too.
Lynch lived in Philadelphia in a different time and in a different part of the city than I do, so I don’t doubt that his experience was much more intense and hostile than mine. But I have to agree with him: Philadelphia is a perfect place to spark things. It is, in many ways, not a nice place. Yet, in other ways, it has a rawness and authenticity that perfectly encapsulates the bizarre and unpredictable nature of our everyday lives.
In Lynch’s art, I see a reflection of this city: messy, raw, unsettling, but always brimming with life and possibility.
So thank you, David Lynch, for seeing what so many overlook about this city: the strange, fragile beauty that lies just beneath the surface.
David Lynch died this past Wednesday.
I’m going to level with you—when I heard the news, it didn’t mean much to me. I had never seen a single one of his movies; I had never watched Twin Peaks. I’d heard the term “Lynchian” before and had a vague sense of what he stood for as an artist, but, truthfully, I didn’t know much about him.
In the 24 to 48 hours following his passing, my social media feeds were flooded with quotes, interview clips, and anecdotes about Lynch. What an interesting character, I thought. It was enough to send me down the rabbit hole.
I started with Eraserhead on Friday night—bizarre, but undeniably one-of-a-kind. I could appreciate that immediately. On Saturday night, I followed it up with Blue Velvet. It was less bizarre, but still shocking and subversive in its own way.
Finally, on Sunday, I watched a documentary on Max about Lynch’s life as an artist (David Lynch: The Art Life). I love things like this—works that not only offer a glimpse into how an artist found their way but also reveal how they developed their creative process. Watching it put me at such ease that, for a moment, I felt as if I might be cured.
There was one part of the documentary where Lynch talks about his time living in Philadelphia from 1965 to 1970. As someone who has spent the last six years living in this city, it immediately caught my attention. Lynch says:
“Philadelphia was kind of a poor man’s New York City, so it was a weird town. It was kind of a mean town. One woman, who was my neighbor, reeked of urine.”
Sounds about right, I thought. Lynch continues:
“There was another woman, who was totally crazy. She was a neighbor who lived down the street with her parents. And she would go around the backyard on her hands and knees and squawk like a chicken and say, ‘I’m a chicken! I’m a chicken!’ She’d squawk and squawk and go around and around in this tall white grass in her backyard. She came up to me one day on the street and said, ‘Oh, my nipples hurt!’ And she was squeezing her breasts, standing right in front of me, squeezing and shaking, saying, ‘My nipples hurt!’”
It sounds like something straight out of an Always Sunny episode, doesn’t it? Lynch goes on:
“I’m walking down the street. There’s a very nice lady with her little boy, a baby, on her lap, out on the stoop. I’m walking by, and I say, ‘How you doing?’ She says [mockingly], ‘How you doing? How you doing?’ Then she turns to her little baby and says, ‘You grow up like that, and I’ll fucking kill you.’”
Finally, Lynch concludes by describing the effect Philadelphia had on him:
“There was thick, thick fear in the air. There was a feeling of sickness, corruption, of racial hatred. But Philadelphia was just perfect to spark things. And the students were great, and they were workers. And we had a kind of camaraderie, and it was like the art life—the art spirit—was alive and well. [Philadelphia] was so good for me. Really, really good. Even though I lived in fear, I kind of— It was thrilling to live the art life in Philadelphia at that time.”
So many parts of this resonated with me. How could something so bad be so good? How could so many bizarre characters be crammed into one city?
It reminded me of a time I was walking in South Philly on a frigid winter morning. The sky was overcast, the city painted in muted shades of gray. I was heading to a coffee shop to work when I passed by a dead raccoon, limp and lifeless, lying on a storm drain. It was a stark contrast to my usual morning observations—birds fluttering about, people walking their dogs. I looked in every direction, but nobody seemed to be around. For reasons I couldn’t quite explain, my first instinct was to take a photo, so I did. My next thought was whether I should call someone to pick it up. No, I decided. Better to leave it. In life or in death, it’s just as much a part of this neighborhood as I am.
There was something tragic about that raccoon. I wondered whether it had frozen to death or succumbed to an infectious disease like rabies. Yet there was also something profoundly beautiful about seeing a dead, frozen animal in a place it wasn’t meant to be, out in the open, on display for all to see.
Lynch’s comments also reminded me of several characters I’ve encountered in Philly.
One time, not too long ago, I opened the front door of my building and found a man sitting on the stoop. He looked exhausted, as if he could barely stand. Raising a wad of cash in his right hand, he asked, “Where can I get a bike around here?”
“A bike?” I asked.
“Yeah, I’ve been walking forever. I need a bike,” he said.
Across the street, there was literally a bike store. “Just right over there,” I answered.
“Where?” he asked, earnestly.
“Right there!” I pointed.
“I don’t see it,” he said, and then he laid back down.
Or, there was the man who stopped me in the middle of the sidewalk at 7:30 a.m. on a Sunday morning to tell me he hadn’t been able to buy beer at Acme.
“I forgot my damn license! They don’t let you buy beer without your license,” he said.
“Oh, yeah. Bummer,” I replied.
“I asked them if I could show them a photo of my license, and they said they need the real thing,” he explained.
“Right,” I said.
“Now I gotta walk all the way back to 11th and Jackson to get my license,” he grumbled, walking away.
“Good luck!” I called after him. And as he walked away, I couldn’t help but wonder: why did he bother telling me that?
Or, there was the man who walked into a coffee shop, didn’t order anything, and then turned to look directly at me. I was sitting at a table, working on my laptop, and I mistakenly looked up, making eye contact with him. He took this as an invitation to start talking to me. He came right up to my table and launched into a story about his girlfriend.
“Man, I’ve been having all sorts of issues with my girl,” he began. “She’s on some bullshit. She took out all my clothes and threw them on the sidewalk. She won’t talk to me.”
Then, mid-story, he abruptly stopped and pointed at my computer. “What are you doing?” he asked.
“I’m just getting some work done,” I replied politely. “Actually, I need to get back to it.”
Without saying another word, he walked out of the store.
These types of interactions are a dime a dozen in Philadelphia. They happen to me almost daily. For the sake of brevity, I’ve only highlighted a few recent characters, but there are countless more I could tell you about. Every time I walk out of my apartment, I have no idea who I might encounter on a given day. And while these interactions are never dangerous, as Lynch might have experienced, they are always, without fail, a little odd.
This, to me, is what makes Lynch’s work especially remarkable. He was a master at capturing the surreal and twisting that knob all the way up to eleven. But it makes sense—when you stop to think about all the people you might meet in a week or a month, you realize that, in their own ways, they’re all really quite strange. And then, you begin to notice the ways in which you yourself are quite strange too.
Lynch lived in Philadelphia in a different time and in a different part of the city than I do, so I don’t doubt that his experience was much more intense and hostile than mine. But I have to agree with him: Philadelphia is a perfect place to spark things. It is, in many ways, not a nice place. Yet, in other ways, it has a rawness and authenticity that perfectly encapsulates the bizarre and unpredictable nature of our everyday lives.
In Lynch’s art, I see a reflection of this city: messy, raw, unsettling, but always brimming with life and possibility.
So thank you, David Lynch, for seeing what so many overlook about this city: the strange, fragile beauty that lies just beneath the surface.
