David Lynch - One

Sundog Rising!

Reflections on living the life literary by the Urban Sundog

Don’t You Already Know?

Cinema is a lot like music. It can be very abstract, but people have a yearning to make intellectual sense of it, to put it right into words. And when they can’t do that, it feels frustrating. But they can come up with an explanation from within, if they just allow it. If they started talking to their friends, soon they would see things — what something is and what something isn’t. And they might agree with their friends or argue with their friends — but how could they agree or argue if they don’t already know?

David Lynch — Catching the Big Fish

I think this quotation raises a very interesting point. Art in any format is so subjective how can anyone truly argue its objective merits? Some questions regarding what a work is or isn’t might be more obvious than others on first look. Some people might argue they don’t find the Mona Lisa particularly attractive, but no one’s going to say it’s not a great painting. But what about say, oh I don’t know …

A David Lynch movie? Or Ron Romanowski’s poetry? (See below.)

Almost anything Lynch has done is fair game in this discussion, with the possible exceptions of The Straight Story and Dune. The Straight Story’s pretty much … a straight story, sorry, can’t get around that one, and even Lynch admits Dune is just bad. For the record, David didn’t have final cut on that movie.

But what about the brilliantly enigmatic Mulholland Drive? INLAND EMPIRE? Or Lost Highway? Or even his most arguably popular work, Twin Peaks? Or we could go really out on a severed limb and ask this question of … Eraserhead.

Many people come out of any of these viewing experiences shaking their heads with a blank expression on their faces. Totally lost. They might as well have been reading poetry! Yet David says that when they sit down to discuss the piece, how could they agree or argue if they don’t already know what the movie is or isn’t for them?

I remember doing this, in fact … Bob France, Mike Cipryk and I went to a midnight showing of Eraserhead when it first played Winnipeg, God knows how many years ago. And we went back to Mike’s place afterwards to thrash it out. God knows we had opinions. Not that those opinions resolved anything for us about the movie that night, as I recall. I don’t think any of us hit on what I appreciated most about the movie when I saw it again finally two years ago — the weird positive spin and sense of redemption at the end of it. But then, I don’t think any of us were paying attention to the soundtrack when we first saw it. And that’s always a major mistake to make when experiencing a David Lynch movie.

Out of the darkness and horror comes light and beauty at the end … The horror is real, but so are the angels. The shadows wouldn’t be so black without an equally potent contrasting presence in the films of light.

Which leads me to a topic for a future blog. How does such a happy guy as David Lynch make such nightmarish movies? We’ll take a look at what makes him so happy in the first place next week. But the point is, perhaps focussing on the undeniable nightmare always present in his work as most people do isn’t always the proper message to take away.

Because David Lynch makes some truly beautiful art. I don’t think I already knew that the first time I saw a few of his movies. But now that the idea’s in my head, I see everything differently.

But as for Ron, well … We all better go to the booklaunch on May 4th and make up our own minds about that.

*****

The MayWorks Festival of Labour & the Arts 2015 Presents the Book Launch of:

A Reader's Guide to the Unnameable

by Ron Romanowski

McNally Robinson Booksellers 1120 Grant Avenue Winnipeg

Monday, May 4th, 2015 7PM

In the Atrium

See the poetry video by Dylan Baillie: http://bit.ly/1JgD1Gf

More on MayWorks Festival events: http://mayworks.org

A book launch and literary thrill-ride for poetry fans and everyone else by one of Winnipeg's most experimental poets.

Tickets not necessary. Admission is free.

A Reader’s Guide to the Unnameable

is avant-garde Winnipeg writer Ron Romanowski’s sixth poetry collection.

His first, Sweet Talking, was published in 2004. His work has appeared

in journals and in numerous anthologies. His poetry has been read

on national CBC Radio. Ron continues to work with, among many other

cutting-edge themes, definitions of authorship and identity

in his latest collection.

*****

REALITY FICTION AND BEYOND!

Murder in an alien’s heart. Obsessive fixation on constructing mechanical women. And pirates, of course. Episode Nine takes a surreal, decadent dip into the world of E.T.A. Hoffman and Jacques Offenbach on Monday, with the results posting on Friday, April 17th. Reality Fiction Three: The Interrupted Edition continues at:

http://realficone.blogspot.ca/

Vadim Strakar strikes back at Slick Danny Grievous. What is this, avant, beta?

Episodes to Date:

Episode One: Dante-Ish — Mak’s Inferno

Episode Two: Chaucer-Ish — The Hermit’s Tale

Episode Three: Malory-Ish — Le Morte de Mak

Episode Four: Doyle-Ish — Mak the Kipper

Episode Five: Carroll-Ish — Madelyn in Wonderland

Episode Six: Stoker-Ish — The Down For The Count Shimmy

Episode Seven: Tolstoy-Ish — Anna Makerena

Episode Eight: Lem-Ish — So there is …

Episode Nine: Hoffman-Ish — Dr. Hoffman’s Happy Gene Machine

All with illustrations by the author. Working through the Contestants in order of their appearance. But there’s been some problems with the scanner, so appearances may be deceiving.