Jesus Christ, It's Only January

My favorite David Lynch movie is The Elephant Man. People usually say this when they admire Lynch’s talent but hate his surrealist bullshit, except I love the surrealist bullshit, it’s just that Elephant Man is the best example of my favorite Lynch-ian quality— gooey sentiment amidst horrifying darkness. (I know, “Lighten up Matthew.” I’m trying.) John Merrick is a true innocent, a sensitive and intelligent man afflicted by physical deformity and human cruelty, but he never engages in self-pitying despair. Everyday kindness brings him extraordinary joy. “I am happy every hour of the day,” he says, in one of my favorite scenes in anything ever. “My life is full because I know I am loved. I have gained myself.” It crushes me every time.

I guess I love Lynch at his sweetest. The heart-to-heart between Major Briggs and Bobby, the saga of Ed Hurley and Norma Jennings, the brief moment of moonlit glory between Diane and Camilla in the Hollywood Hills. Lynch can represent evil with more bone-deep terror than any pure horror director, but then he’ll end a movie with a murder victim visited by a literal glowing angel offering her spiritual relief. The light and dark are so extreme, childishly extreme, but they complement each other. Lynch villains wear leather jackets and growl rape threats. Lynch heroes love robins, pine trees and the FBI. You juxtapose those two poles, you make something singular. You make him.

Lynch’s death hurt me worse than I thought it would. I was expecting it, frankly. When the Sunset Fire forced evacuations in the Hollywood Hills two weeks ago, I thought of him, housebound with emphysema, and it seems those very evacuations pushed his health to the brink. Still, celebrity deaths don’t often affect me like this. It might be that I loved him more than I thought I did, or it might be that this has been a rough January and I’m feeling raw. I liked seeing Lynch’s face and hearing his voice. I liked the tantalizing possibility that he might make more movies or TV shows, even though I didn’t hold out much hope after his Netflix project got scuttled by the pandemic. I didn’t go to Bob’s Big Boy to add to that big shrine, I don’t grieve in that way, but I loved that it happened spontaneously. Thousands of fans knowing so much about the guy that they made a pilgrimage to his favorite lunch spot. Gorgeous.

Lynch didn’t convince me to move to LA, but his ardent affection for this city made the move easier. Most of my friends decided to come out to California my senior year of college, and I wanted to join them, but I was wary of the place. Then I read Lynch’s Catching the Big Fish, where he speaks so glowingly of the light, the weather, the scent of jasmine, the dreams and possibilities. I arrived and instantly understood what he meant. I’m still here fifteen years later, long after most of that clique of college buddies moved back or moved on. I am very stubborn, almost delusional in my love for my adopted home. I wear my Dodger hat proudly.

But I’m not that delusional. The 2020s have been hard on this place. The Palisades and Eaton fires felt like a particularly tragic episode in a long litany of dour news. There’s been a persistent media narrative that LA is fucked, and a lot of that narrative is panicked exaggeration, but some of it isn’t. Lots of people I know have left in the last five years, and more are thinking of leaving. It’s silly to think Lynch’s death feels like another ill omen, but I do think that and I’m not the only one. My Mom has been very openly trying to get me to move elsewhere. She Googled entertainment jobs in Atlanta and sent me her search results. (Lots of unpaid internships at Tyler Perry studios!) Of course, that only makes me want to stay harder. If I could somehow live in Los Angeles and flee the United States at the same time, that might be ideal. LA might do well as a Singapore-esque tax shelter and city-state. Ah, who am I kidding, no it wouldn’t.

I felt compelled to write something about Trump’s inauguration and tie it to Lynch’s death and LA and everything else, but I don’t want to do that to you, or myself. I am neither a remarkable enough prose stylist nor an educated enough political expert to write anything interesting about this. It’s sad and I hate it. Trump has this habit of saying insane shit and following through with maybe 7% of it, but you never know which 7%, so we’re all forced to live with the intolerable uncertainty. This time he’s got more establishment support, so it might be something like 15% now. I don’t know for sure. No one else does either.

I remember attending a New Years’ party on December 31st, 2019, and the hosts had hung up a banner that read “It can’t get any worse!” My friends and I all looked at that banner with nauseous foreboding. Of course it could get worse, and it did, in ways we never imagined. I am resolved not to drive myself crazy spinning apocalyptic scenarios, but I am not going to pretend like this won’t be bad. I’m bracing myself but I can’t really prepare. It sucks.

I’m trying to be hopeful and optimistic long-term because my psyche can’t handle unbridled nihilism, but it’s not based on anything I can observe. It’s just a little treat I’m giving myself, like dreaming about your lunch order after thirty minutes of work. But that’s all I’ve got.

So…

See you at lunch.