So This is Love, David Lynch 1992

There are some people who are meant for the afterlife, always living one foot in this world, one foot in the other.

I was riding a train on Tuesday listening to the album Chicago 2017 by Daniel Johnston and Wilco. If you do not know who Daniel Johnston is, he was an artist with a broken heart. Recently, Sherman Alexie wrote a post on Substack about David Foster Wallace and ended the article with a statement about his suicide, saying, “Yes, it was a love story.”

I do not know if David Lynch’s life could be summed up as a love story or not, it is too intentionally well camouflaged with a smokescreen of red herrings, arcane symbolism, and unironic ironisms. However, if all of the art that artists make isn’t to help them and us find a deeper connection, then what is it for if it is not in vain?

I have my own love story. I am not afraid to say or write that the way some people are afraid to say that they imitate The Catcher in the Rye or A Confederacy of Dunces because it breaks some tradition. I think Freud and Jack Kerouac were in love with their mothers. And, I think if we have learned anything from F. Scott Fitzgerald, it is that the American Dream is, or was, a tragic love story.

While I was listening to the iconic lisp of Daniel Johnston, who died on September 11th, 2019, as sad as his life ended up feeling, it gave me hope. Daniel Johnston was infamously in love with a woman named Laurie (who still walks this earth), but had his heart broken because she got married to someone else, and it bore his masterpiece Hi How Are You?. A question I was asked today by a girl I couldn’t bring myself to fall in love with.

The reason why it gave me hope is because I am only five years off from a pretty important Romantic Legend. If Daniel died only five years ago, then there are probably other hopeless romantics that are alive creating art in their parent’s basement or out in New York. This gives me great hope indeed.

David Foster Wallace’s ethos was “boredom,” which translates to stoicism. I don’t think that “boredom” is actually the point he was trying to arrive at, since he never got to it because of his untimely death. What I think he was trying to get at was closer to “calmness.” I agree with him that the world is oversaturated with a lot of distractions to our true purpose and can greatly aggravate our inner psyche and nature – technology being the most evident.

However, Salinger’s ethos, on the other hand, to me anyway, is that there is one person meant for everyone. A concept of “True Love,” this person being Oona O’Neil for him, mine being that girl from high school, and for you being that one girl. Although there is no reliable evidence that my interpretation of his work is correct, I do not feel like I am alone in this belief, even if it is only me and my old friend Holden.

However, where I think authors like J.D Salinger, David Foster Wallace, and myself slip up, is that we play God more than we should. There is no doubt in my mind that Salinger was doing some very demonic good deeds that put his language in a caliber that was beyond that of abiding with any Christian God for the sake of my argument. And I have read sentences by David Foster Wallace that assured his death. I have one or two myself that I don’t know if I will be able to live with, and God knows how to punish those who don’t play by the rules. John Lennon said he was “Bigger than Jesus,” and we all know how that turned out.

So when a man becomes immortalized, there may be a part of him that stays on this earth, for better or for worse. My latest concept of Heaven ties into a bit of Buddhism. It is that when you die, the parts of you that you kept sacred and for God go on; they move on into the next dimension or light. Whatever you keep for yourself, whatever you have done to defy God in your own self-image, will remain here and continue to be reincarnated into this hell of the world until you truly let go of any ego.

So when I heard of David Lynch’s death, I thought it best not to belabor any points or convictions I have about him or his work. The best thing I can do for a chain-smoking transcendental meditator is to try and allow as much of him to move on to the next world and not remain here. I think he was unhappy, but if there is anything I really have to say about him, it is that he was already a ghost before he died, like many of us. He was the walking image of a man who could see just over to the other side, and yet never go there. But I related with Eraserhead when I was in a dark place and found it to be true, even God-like.

Let’s let him move on the best we can. I think that Daniel Johnston is in heaven. The others I’ve seen and talked with them recently enough that it would surprise me if they weren’t still here. Radio silence for now.