There’s a great irony in losing David Lynch. His entire body of work is all about processing the human condition, whether it’s love, hate, fear, courage, the list goes on. And so, it’s odd to feel so disconnected and hollow in the wake of his passing. It’s as if we’re all collectively sitting in that tearful montage at the top of the Twin Peaks pilot, digesting the breaking news with heaves of air, jolts of icy disbelief, and the sobering glaze of mortality. Like Laura Palmer and the titular town, we lost someone special.
I’ll go one further: a one-of-a-kind icon.
Without getting too personal, I’ll say this (and borrow a line from Stephen King): I’m not a crying man. More often than not, loss tackles me into a meditative state, offering runway for reflection and very little wiggle room for any outward emotional response. Maybe I’m a sociopath, who knows. All I can say is that when my mother passed last summer, I didn’t shed a single tear. I even continued writing an e-mail to a client. You could say I went mute. But on Thursday, the news of Lynch hit me like a ton of bricks. Or, to stay on theme, I crumbled in my seat like Donna Hayward in that aforementioned pilot.
It was immediate, it was out of my control, it was admittedly unnerving. Because I’m slightly off (like IFC), I’ve spent the last few hours reckoning with that reaction, mostly out of sheer guilt (sorry, ma), and what I’ve landed on is this: We didn’t just lose any artist, any human being, any creator. We lost a rare voice, one that has become so exceedingly absent, you might as well call it obsolete. In an era where regurgitated IP is a skeleton key across Hollywood, music boils down to the same five billionaires, and art is an influencer culture, Lynch feels like an anomaly.
He was. Even in his salad days, the Missoula maestro was seen as left of the dial. Here was a guy whose upbringing read like Americana: The Great Novel and yet his output felt culled from the furthest reaches of space. That dichotomy was likely his greatest strength, though. Whether it was his writing, his music, his films, his art, it always had his signature, and the notion that not a single soul in the world would have dreamed what he dreamed. But, he always invited you into those dreams, even if they were often nightmares.
No, Lynch was for everyone, and that speaks volumes when you consider his myriad collaborations. He won over funnyman Mel Brooks, he dazzled a similar man who fell to earth in Bowie, he carved out new identities for the world’s most prestigious brands, and he never took his finger off the pulse of what was now and what was coming. In his late ’70s, he was shooting the shit with talent born decades after Blue Velvet. Hell, one of the many revelations from 2017’s Twin Peaks: The Return was how everyone fought tooth and nail to be in his orbit.
Now, he’s gone, and it’s not just sad… it’s devastating. Earlier today, I went down a rabbit hole, revisiting all the events, all the content, and all the memories involving his work over the years. There were more tears. They never let up. And the clarity I needed, at least to rationalize this reaction, came from Brooks. During his chat at 2016’s Festival of Disruption, the legend charted his work with Lynch (he personally tapped him to direct The Elephant Man after seeing Eraserhead), and concluded: “We need people like David. They make it okay for weird people to be accepted by society.”
Couldn’t have said it better, Mel. Whether or not this world entertains another David remains to be seen. Doubtful. Again, just look around. Lynch is leaving a world torn apart by all facets of culture, a culture, mind you, that is constantly being commodified by billionaires and conglomerates whose ceilings are nonexistent — an infinite abyss, black as a moonless night. Even Lynch wasn’t immune to their discretions. Just take a look at Netflix, who signed off on $320 million for another forgettable Chris Pratt venture, and couldn’t greenlight any of Lynch’s projects.
That’s the world Lynch left, and that’s the world we’re stuck with in 2025. Losing Lynch doesn’t just feel like the end of an era, no, it feels like the end of a culture. Dour, certainly. Hyperbolic, maybe. Probably not. Look around. In between those sugar-coated 20-second reels you devour while doom scrolling, you’ll likely see reactions to this loss — and from all ages. Everyone’s crying in Twin Peaks today, mourning a man whose work challenged us, enlightened us, and showed us a unique way to engage with a stoic world. That was his mantra, as he once said: “Everything I learned in my life, I learned because I decided to try something new.” Chase that feeling, hold on to it, and let it be your guiding light as the world spins.
