“Mr. Lynch, I’ve been a big fan of yours all my life–I started watching Twin Peaks on Channel 4 when I was three years old,” a diminutive blonde whispered into the microphone.
    “Wait, how old?”
    “Three years old.”
    “…Yikes.“
    And so began an hour-long question & answer with David Lynch on January 16 at Town Hall.  Now, supposedly this was to be an hour-long reading of his new book, Catching the Big Fish, which muses on his experiences with transcendental meditation [Wikipedia] and its role in his creative process. But after Lynch had read only a paragraph, he looked out and said, “So, do you all have any questions?” 
    Nervous laughter rippled through the audience, people looking at each other as if to say, “Is he serious?  Wait, does that count as my question?”  But David Lynch has never been one to kid around, at least not without fully expecting everyone to take him seriously, and so the Q&A began.


    A number of questioners were most interested in specific element of Lynch’s work.  A bearded man asked about the symbolism of the robins in Blue Velvet, to which Lynch replied rather sheepishly that things said to a lover in private sound quite silly when shared with a large group.  A middle-aged woman asked about Lynch’s comic strips, The Angriest Dog.  A preschooler asked about the supernatural elements of Twin Peaks; Lynch commented, “Boy, you really start ‘em off young here in Seattle!” 
    Some, however, were genuinely interested in Lynch’s views on transcendental meditation.  First a clearly very stoned guy wanted to know exactly how to go about transcendental meditation, calling Lynch a “beautiful director” and professing his dislike of classical music.  Another man rambled and finally got to the question so many must have wondered: if transcendental meditation taps Lynch into an infinite dimension of bliss, then why are his movies so depressing?  (There was no good answer for this.)
    Maybe some were disappointed that the advertised reading was ditched, but I was admittedly relieved.  Rather than an hour of well-rehearsed musing on the joys of meditation, Lynch was off-the-cuff and unpolished.  For a director who purposefully wrings emotions through film, there was something satisfying about watching his own unedited emotional reactions to the thoughts of his viewers.
Side note: Lynch does this thing where he wiggles his fingers and honestly it was kind of freaking me out the whole time–my companion remarked that “it looks like his hands are trying to escape his body.”
    Lynch-a-palooza continued for me the next day at the midnight showing of Inland Empire.  This three-hour behemoth loosely follows the story of an aging actress (Laura Dern) who becomes increasingly enmeshed in her latest role.
    First, I have to say that this is a terrible movie to see at midnight.  It’s long, hard to follow, emotionally exhausting, and really creepy.  However, it is undoubtedly the peak (so far) of Lynch’s emotional manipulation, deeply evocative in incomprehensible ways.  If you immerse yourself in the experience (something easy to do in the Cinerama), Lynch’s direction reaches beyond the screen and into your own heart and mind, stirring up fear and dread without you even really understanding how or why.  For those who allow themselves to be tugged along, the film is troubling and ultimately terrifyingly ambivalent.  For those who keep their distance, it’s boring and pointless.  The theater was palpably divided between the two camps, and both undoubtedly have their validity.