Category: Craft

Craft, Film, Praise, Writerly Thoughts

David Lynch: A List of Over Twenty Interviews on Creativity and The Creative Process

by mondoidentLeave a Comment on David Lynch: A List of Over Twenty Interviews on Creativity and The Creative Process
David Lynch: A List of Over Twenty Interviews on Creativity and The Creative Process

David Lynch is a perpetual inspiration. I’m watching INLAND EMPIRE as I write this brief introduction, a surreal horror film I can return to countless times, year after year, and never tire of exploring, of being frightened and intrigued by its nightmarish profundity and creative power. His film TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME clawed into my subconscious at crucial time in my young life. I had a small wood-paneled television in my bedroom as a teenager, a VCR below, and curtains to shut out the dark. But Lynch invited me into that darker chamber of Douglas Firs, a darkness that light and time and fear crawl out from and flourish behind dressers.

What follows is a collection of links to the best David Lynch “creativity” and/or “creative process” interviews I could find on this rainy morning. If you find others that you have prospered from, please post them as a comment. I would like to grow this list to act as a resource for those who might be flirting with the idea of further understanding Lynch’s work, or for those among us who wish to review his words and the depths of his creative spirit.

So, read on and dig in. May these links, these videos, and the audio interviews serve you well.

The Collected Interviews: David Lynch

  1. The Fragmentary Nature of Creativity (brainpickings)
  2. How to “Catch” Creativity (Good)
  3. On Meditation, Creativity, and Twin Peaks (TimeOut)
  4. On Meditation, Success, and Happiness (David Lynch Foundation)
  5. What To Do When You Catch a Good Idea (No Film School)
  6. Secrets for Tapping into your Deepest Creativity (Huffington Post)
  7. “It’s ignorance that keeps up in that boat of suffering” (Salon)
  8. On the Creative Process Behind “The Big Dream” (Spin)
  9. “Everybody Holds the Key to Unlock the Mystery” (The European)
  10. “Sometimes the Fish Talks Back to You” (The Guardian)
  11. Interview with Hikari Takano (on Creativity)
  12. David Lynch: Life Coach (Harpers Bazaar)
  13. “Idea is Everything” (Creative Screenwriting)
  14. Patti Smith and David Lynch Discuss Creativity (Electric Literature)
  15. An Ocean of Solutions (Origin)
  16. David Lynch on Transcendental Meditation (All Good Found)
  17. Find Your Own Voice, Be True To That Voice (A Bittersweet Life)
  18. Wild at Art (Talking Art)
  19. David Lynch’s Elusive Language (The New Yorker)
  20. On the Meaning of Eraserhead (Vulture)

Selected Video Interviews: Creativity, Process, Meditation

Selected Audio Interviews: The Creative Life

  1. David Lynch Collected Audio Interviews (davidlynch.de)
  2. The Unified Field 
  3. David Lynch: The Wire Interview (Wire)
  4. David Lynch & Frank Herbert: The Dune Audiocassettes
  5. The Soundboard Collection

Thank you for reading. I’ll be growing this list, so please, if there are other better interviews out there, get in touch and I’ll add to this list accordingly.

 

Craft

David Ohle on a Cinematic Narrative Approach

by mondoidentLeave a Comment on David Ohle on a Cinematic Narrative Approach

David Ohle, in conversation with J.A. Tyler, says, ” My approach is not that different from a film director’s. I call for live action and my characters enter the set, a set already designed and waiting for them to play out their roles. I often cut, rethink, or re-see a given scene many times, until I’m satisfied with it.”

It is this cinematic mode of composition that I, as author, am drawn to–compelled toward–in my own writing. While I never quite envisioned it in exactly the way Ohle states, I have found myself, especially in the composition of my novellas as opposed to my short stories and poetry, wholly, at times, immersed in the spectacle of the visual-cinematic, in being able to actually see the events as action-movements and, much like a screenwriter or director, relaying those events–in the present tense, in the realm of the “we”–to the reader’s imagination.

Moreover, it should come as no secret that Ohle’s work and mode of narrative approach is vastly inspirational to my own aspirations, not in terms of actual thematic content, but in terms of stylistic choice: the immediate, the tension-release, the oddness, the attention to a kind of cinematic movement.

His Boons/The Camp remains a pivotal work in my own development, a work that, years ago, allowed me to imagine myself as the creator of a somewhat similar (stylistically) world and a work that I imagine I will be continually trying to move toward throughout my creative development. It is something to strive for, yeah. We all must have our heroes. Thank you, David Ohle, for your work and for sharing with us your imagination.

David Ohle’s new book, The Blast is currently available through Calamari Press.