So Long David, Hopefully Now You Can Reach Transcendance...

Ah, what the hell. My wife just walked in the room and casually said, "Hey, you've seen that David Lynch is dead, right?!". Uh. No. Nope. Haven't seen that. Damn. It's been a while we've heard from or seen something from Lynch since his return to Twin Peaks, but in the new changed media and cinema landscape that didn't seem overly surprising. His death? Surprising, though, at least for me. I hadn't heard anything about him being sick or what have you. Just read up about him living with emphysema for the last couple of years due to starting smoking at age 8 (!) and his evacuation due to the wildfire in and around Los Angeles seemingly doing him in. Damn. 

I also just realized he didn't do anything for a decade between Inland Empire and Twin Peaks: The Return. Double Damn. Then again, I hated Inland Empire with a passion back in the day and had sort of crossed Lynch off my priority list. Still, not knowing that makes me grumpy. Because while I'm not the biggest Lynch fan on the planet, there are a bunch of films from him that I like or love. Mulholland Drive is fantastic. Blue Velvet is a deranged classic. Hell, I even like his version of Dune and Lost Highway, despite the latter being utterly baffling, no matter how you slice it. I can't really get on board with Wild At Heart and - I might have mentioned it - I hate hate hate Inland Empire, that long ugly-as-hell insane torture device of a film. But yeah, if you were a budding cineaste like I was in the mid 90s there's no way that your education didn't include some David Lynch. 

So. I obviously had planned something different to go up on the site tomorrow, but January continues to surprise me - and by proxy you - with more unforeseen stuff. So, something Lynch-related it is. I had foreseen to post my version of the The Music Of David Lynch album at some point, so obviously 'some point' has just turned into tonight. The Music Of David Lynch was a live concert memento of a charity event benefitting the David Lynch Foundation that was issued in 2016. But my version is, as usual, quite different from the original configuration. I completely reconfigured the sequencing and I threw off the track by Moby (which for me just didn't fit in with the mood of the rest of the record). Duran Duran's "The Chauffeur" already was close to the cut line, but I kept that track for something a little more muscular in the middle of the mostly moody stuff. I threw out David Lynch's "Poem Of Unknown Origin", an exercise in child-like simplicity. Sorry, David. And I obviously got rid of speeches calling for contributions, since unless you were there, that's something you probably need to listen to exactly zero times. 

So, what about the music of The Music Of David Lynch? Rebekah Del Rio reprises her classic "Llorando" segment from Mulholland Drive. Tennis And Twin Peaks channel their inner Roy Orbison/Dean Stockwell with "In Dreams", recalling the most memorable sequence of Blue Velvet. Lykke Li gives a moody reading of Chris Isaak's moody breakthrough "Wicked Game". Jim James uses his finest falsetto to interpret "Sycamore Trees" from Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, doing his best Jimmy Scott interpretation. And of course we couldn't go without Angelo Badalamenti, the musical mastermind behind almost all of Lynch's musical adventures, including his own records or the ones he worked on with Twin Peaks revelation Julee Cruise. Badalamenti opens proceedings with the mighty "Twin Peaks Theme", sweetens the middle with "Laura Palmer's Theme" and then lets the evening end with dwarves dancing into the night ("Dance Of The Dream Man"). Just like David Lynch would have probably wanted. 

R.I.P. David Lynch (1946-2025)