Jennifer Lynch on David Lynch’s Art and Life: “He Loved Being Alive”

The Blue Rose is the second notable fanzine dedicated to documenting and celebrating the world of David Lynch. The first, Wrapped in Plastic, ran from 1992 to 2005. And now, capping off an 18-issue run that began in 2017, The Blue Rose is publishing its final issue. Here, in an exclusive excerpt, Scott Ryan, the magazine’s managing editor and the author of Always Music in the Air: The Sounds of Twin Peaks and Moonlighting: An Oral History, has a heartfelt and revealing chat about the late Twin Peaks cocreator with his eldest child, Jennifer Lynch.

Most Twin Peaks fans have known of Jennifer Lynch as long as they have known about her father. Some believe that David Lynch’s first film, Eraserhead, was inspired by his fear of becoming a parent when Jennifer was conceived and born. After Twin Peaks dominated pop culture in the spring of 1990, The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer, written by Jennifer, became a New York Times bestseller. She was one of three people who knew who killed Laura Palmer, putting her in a very exclusive trio with Mark Frost and her father. She was the first writer who brought Laura Palmer to life. The character she created was expanded by Bob Engels and David Lynch in 1992’s Fire Walk With Me.

Jennifer, who occasionally was credited with “Chambers” in her name, directed Sherilyn Fenn in 1993’s Boxing Helena, a film that caused a whirlwind of a legal battle about what actually constitutes a deal in Hollywood. It was one of those behind-the-camera dramas that sank her directorial debut before anyone had even seen a single frame of her film. After that, she directed Surveillance, Chained, and several shorts. Eventually, she became a television director, working on shows such as Psych, The Walking Dead, American Horror Story, and many others. But all these things are just facts. To me, she is a beautiful, kind, spiritual, positive human being who was created by two painters and raised in an environment where dreams, color, positivity, laughter, family, and love were her oxygen. Despite being engulfed in grief, overwhelmed with work, and busy tackling the immediate issues of protecting her dad’s lifelong pursuit of creating works of art, she made time to speak with me one early morning in February, before spending the rest of the day in an editing bay.

Scott Ryan: I was thinking about how when someone loses a parent, they think the world should stop. But you’re going through losing a parent, and the world actually did stop. Were you surprised with the outpouring of love from every corner of the world?

Jennifer Lynch: I wouldn’t say surprised as much as just thrilled and grateful. I hope wherever he is he knows there was more about world peace, meditation, art, creativity, and catching ideas on Monday, January 20, than there was about [Donald] Trump’s inauguration. [David Lynch died on January 16, and January 20 would have been his 79th birthday.]

Which was glorious for all of us.

It was glorious. I was like, You did it, Dad. You turned what could’ve been a really dark day into something where people were talking about how much they loved art and your work. It was also Martin Luther King Day, and I credit him with making that day about something good. Isabella Rossellini and I were talking recently, and she said, “It may come up for you sometime, Jennifer, that you have to say, ‘I know you all loved him, but he was my dad.’” She had to deal with that when her father [the Italian filmmaker Roberto Rossellini] died. There was such an outpouring of love for him. She found herself a little ways down the road having to say, “I know that everybody else is missing him and his work, but I have to mourn my father.” I haven’t reached that point yet. I am amazed how this process of realizing he’s gone is taking a while because I’ve been so busy. I still wake up in the morning and can’t believe he’s not here. All I’ve ever known of the world is my father in it.

Of course. That is such a hard thing for a child to face.

Everybody that I know keeps dreaming about him. My mother just texted me this morning, saying she dreamt about him. I haven’t dreamt about him yet, but I feel him when I’m at work, doing good stuff. And I think he may have taken a great deal of my depression away when he left.

That’s beautiful. What’s it like to follow in a parent’s occupational footsteps? Especially someone who will make the list of the greatest directors of all time?

He is one of the great artists and storytellers. Because he was so wonderful and because I’m not trying to be him—and he knew that and I know that—it’s been okay. I think more is expected of me because I’m following in his footsteps, but I wouldn’t trade having him as my father, you know what I mean?

Of course.

I think if I were trying to be like him in some way, I’d be met with more resistance. When people misunderstood Boxing Helena, that was pretty brutal for both of us. That film never had a chance.

Why was it rough on your dad?

He felt that I was not being given a fair shake, and that I was being compared to him so much that nobody was even seeing the film.

What do you think about that?

I think there’s a lot of truth in that. I think that it was not the time in the world where people were interested in a fairy tale about obsessive love. I think people expected blood and gore and more sex. I think people expected it to be like a David Lynch film, and it is nothing like one.

Well, it’s aged spectacularly, and unfortunately, because the industry sort of had to deal with the themes you were covering. I’ve screened the film at events, and after the #MeToo movement, it seems right on point.

Truly. That’s one thing somebody mentioned to me. They said, “That film now is being seen, when years ago it wasn’t.” Which is nice because everybody busted their butt to make that movie and went through quite a lot. It was the first time I ever picked up a camera, so I’ll always love it, and I’ll always love everybody who believed enough in me to let me do that.

It lands so much harder today because people are ready to hear that story. It’s the same with Fire Walk With Me. So you and your dad were telling flip sides of the female experience that audiences didn’t want to face in the ’90s.

Yes, there was a lot of abuse of females. Fire Walk With Me is one of the best movies about child abuse that I’ve ever seen. And I think Boxing Helena is about the abuse of females. Sometimes the only way to tell that story, without it being too heartbreaking, is to give the woman this indelible spirit and enough strength to handle it.

Did you paint when you were a kid?

I did paint, and I still do. I got into the Interlochen Arts Academy for painting, and I ended up being a double major: painting and writing. My mother [Peggy Reavey] is a painter. She’s incredible. This compound where I’m staying, at Dad’s—as the kids say—is lousy with my mother’s painting. He loved her work and bought a lot of it. I consider myself, in many ways, a painter and a writer—much like my father. The two combined and have become moving pictures.

Do you have a favorite painting of your father’s and your mom’s work? Do you have one for yourself?

I don’t have one for myself. I love so many of Dad’s paintings. There’s “The Crucifixion and the Resurrection,” “Oww God, Mom, the Dog He Bited Me,” “My Head Is Disconnected.” There are any number of my father’s napkin drawings. He could doodle with a ballpoint pen and blow your mind. I love him and my mother’s work. I don’t know if I have a painting of hers that’s my favorite. I just love the way she paints. She’s not like any other painter I’ve ever seen—not that my father is, but my mother’s work is really special. I hope she gets noticed. My father and I were talking about that pretty recently. She’s applying for a grant, and he wrote her a nice letter. We were talking about how surprising it is to each of us that nobody’s caught on yet to my mom’s painting. They met in art school. They were two artists who fooled around and made a baby. So I come from the beginning of their art life, and Eraserhead is a testament to how scary it was that, suddenly, the art life was gonna become a family.

Knowing that, how do you feel about Eraserhead?

I love Eraserhead. My father once said to me, “I thought having a child was gonna ruin my art life. But my art life started when you were born.”

That’s true. You inspired his first film.

He has four beautiful children, and we all have an amazing father who we’ve all just…I think…all of us thought he was gonna live forever. He told me this past Christmas that he thought it might be his last Christmas, and I don’t think I let that sink in.

Well, we’re not supposed to let that sink in. That is how we survive as humans, knowing that we will outlive our parents.

Yeah. When my brother called me, I had been shooting until the wee hours of the morning, and I pushed the deny button on the phone, thinking, you know, I’d just gotten to sleep an hour and a half ago, and I’ll call him back later. He called back right away, and I knew something was wrong. He did a beautiful job telling me some terrible, terrible news. Then he had to call my other brother.

I’m so sorry.

You know, there’s life before your father dies, and then life after your father dies. And so far I’m not crazy about life after my father died. I notice his absence, but I do feel like he’s in everything. If anybody was gonna become stardust and be in the owls outside my window, and be in the rainbows, and be in the hummingbirds, it would be Dad.

He had a hand in every aspect of creation, and that’s crazy to me.

He made lamps. He made furniture. He made sculptures. He made drawings. He made paintings. He made music. He made films. If he was curious about it, or had an idea about it, he did it. He was not fearless, but he was so curious that the fear didn’t matter. He just loved being here. He loved being alive. He loved it.

So what from the art life are you passing on to your daughter?

When my father first heard about people being painters and that was their job, his mind was blown. And I think his career is absolute proof that you can live a life, and make a life, making art. The world pushes back, but if you’re being true to yourself, and you’re creating things, it’s an important part of the world we live in. I wish it was given more possibilities. It’s not like we tell our kids, “Well, if you wanna grow up, honey, and be a weaver, that’s just great.” It’s the Montessori school and the David Lynch plan, which is, if you wanna make films or pottery or furniture, you should be able to do that. I want my daughter to feel like wherever her happiness is, I support her in making a life. Sometimes we have to have a nine-to-five job to pay the bills because our passion does not pay the bills. But if it’s your passion, you always find some time to work on it, and it’s so exciting to find that time. The luxury of having all day, every day, to make your art is afforded to very few. My father knew how lucky he was, but I want to embolden my daughter with: She’s his granddaughter. I think he emboldened her with: If there’s something you love that brings you joy, find a way to have a life around that.

Were you able to make it out to Bob’s Big Boy and see the impromptu memorial?

My daughter went and took many, many photographs, but I was too emotional to go. There was a chance I’d run into a bunch of friends there. We’ve collected all the artwork that was left, but I did not go out myself. I was raw the day he died, and up until even today, I’ve been working every weekday, except for his birthday. I’ve been busy, but when I get very still in my meditations, it becomes difficult.

One of my worries is, what’s going to happen to all of that music and painting and furniture and art that he’s left us?

There’s so much of it. He was working on his archives, and it’s close to being done. There is some very nice interest in his archives, and that would include everything from his early work, his drawings, paintings, music, obviously the films, and all of his writing. He’s about to receive an award from the Writers Guild of America, and he was so excited to hear that he was getting this award. When he passed away, I was asked to write a piece about that. I only managed to write something brief because I felt it should be an acceptance speech, but I am not able to go up onstage. I just don’t have it in me right now to sit in a room with people who cared about him, and respected him, and try to have words come out of my mouth.

Of course. Who would have the nerve to ask you to talk about this stuff right now? Oh.

[Laughs] I’m sure it will become easier to talk about him in front of people. But right now I can still smell him on the clothes in his closet, and I can still hear his voice in these environments, and nothing brings me to tears quite as fast.

Well, we’re supposed to cry. We’re supposed to mourn. It is what you do. It’s the people who don’t experience the emotions when they occur that have the long-term effects from it.

Along with all of the amazing things he was, he’s still my dad. You know, for all I care he could’ve shoveled manure, and I would’ve loved him. I miss his creativity and his contribution to things, but I also really miss being able to hug him and sit with him, talk and get advice and laugh. We laughed so much. I had a very, very wonderful relationship with my father. I’m very grateful.

That makes me happy to hear. I’m really glad to know that.

It was perfect.

If someone out there wants to do something for your dad, what can they do?

A lot of people have donated to the David Lynch Foundation. It was something he was very passionate about. People can also follow Agent Cooper’s advice and give themselves a present every day. My father could not believe what was going on in the world politically, and it was very upsetting to him. People can be kind to each other. As much darkness as he was able to swim in and express, there was so much more light in his work. People can do nice things for other people in his name. That would make him very happy.