By: Marek Zebrowski
Artistic creativity, boundless imagination, indomitable courage to explore topics and worlds unknown, and infinite fascination with almost everything that surrounded him throughout his life does not even come close to describing David Lynch, my dear friend of some twenty-five years. Looking back to a dark and chilly December evening in Łódź, just as the CAMERIMAGE Film Festival concluded with a banquet at the fin-de-siècle Poznański Palace ballroom, I finally had a chance to chat at length with David who stood in the far corner of the room, closely observing the multitude of assembled guests. It was his first visit to Poland and everything he had witnessed—the decaying post-industrial landscape of Łódź with its idle factories, grey and neglected facades of the once elegant Art Nouveau era buildings looking forlorn against the endlessly overcast skies, and the anonymous crowds scurrying down cobblestone-clad streets and vanishing into even darker courtyards—had fired up David’s fertile imagination, nurturing his strong wish to return and transform these impressions into something more permanent, artistic and more Lynchesque.
And return to Łódź he did, on numerous occasions during the next several years, always in late fall, always around the time CAMERIMAGE was held in the city’s Grand Theatre, a sandstone-clad monolith of Soviet-era opulence fronted by staid, square columns, huge internal staircases and crumbling infrastructure. Armed with his still and video cameras and aided by CAMERIMAGE director Marek Żydowicz and his crew, David enthusiastically explored the long dormant interiors of abandoned textile factories and power plants, dutifully collecting the images and gathering ideas for a project that would later become his 2006 feature, INLAND EMPIRE. After each photo safari all over Łódź, David would invariably relax at the Greenski Restaurant, an establishment occupying part of the Hotel Centrum lobby, where most of the CAMERIMAGE guests mingled well into the night before retiring to their 1960s-era rooms. Seated at his favorite and always reserved solely for him table, after lighting up a cigarette and ordering coffee, David would pull out a large yellow notepad and begin writing. On many occasions I would join him, we’d chat about his discoveries that day, and toast to more adventures with a glass of red wine that materialized courtesy of Marek Żydowicz or the restaurant’s owner, Mr. Zieliński whose surname (in direct English translation) was proudly placed above the restaurant’s entryway.
On one such occasion when David was busy writing, he asked me to play for him the opening movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata on a small black grand piano placed in the center of the restaurant’s floor. The piano was terribly out of tune, but that only seemed to delight David; perhaps it made the Beethoven sound more poetic and certainly more surreal. The musical effect (such as it was) may have spurred on his muse, so David asked me to improvise a little in the style of the Sonata, including “some beautiful and painful harmonies.” Little did I know that this curious episode in Łódź and our subsequent meetings in Los Angeles would blossom into many years of wonderful and highly satisfying musical collaboration as well as several other creative projects.
After filling in pages of yellow pad notes and recording countless still and moving images from Łódź, at one point in summer of 2004 I was invited to come “for some music” at David’s Hollywood Hills studio (pictured at left, in September 2012). Asking if I should bring anything with me, I was told, “Just come in as you are.” David’s sound engineer John Neff had set up two keyboards and David was already seated at one of them. “Let’s go,” he said as soon as I sat behind the keyboard next to his. “What are we playing, what style?” I asked, to which I heard, “Just make it contemporary, and interesting.” Still uncertain what’s next, I said, “Can you set up a scene for me or give me an image I could think of?” Almost instantly I heard David’s resonant voice, “It’s night. Dark city street. A car is going slowly; its headlights show on cobblestones. Another car is following it.” That said, David began to gently touch the keys, eliciting mysterious buzzing bass sounds from his keyboard. Almost in a trance, I began playing as well and the music unfolded, gradually and inexplicably shaping itself into an ever-evolving composition. At one point I felt like our performance should be ending and, looking to my right, I noticed David’s intense gaze on me. Mysteriously, the moment felt like a cadence and the music stopped. After a brief silence, David asked, “How long do you think it was?” I guessed maybe a little over ten minutes or so. It turned out to be almost twenty-four minutes and David quickly asked, “Want to do another one?” We recorded a few more sessions that afternoon and many more during sessions in the next few years. Eventually, some of them—edited and recorded by John Neff and later by his successor, Dean Hurley—ended up on our CD album, Polish Night Music, so named by David, and later released on vinyl.
Encouraged by the results of our studio improvisations, I suggested performing live for an audience. “I have an invitation to perform at the Polish Consulate in New York City,” I said, “and it would be a perfect way to introduce our music-making to the public. David’s first reaction was, “You must be kidding!” but eventually he relented and in October 2006 we travelled to New York to perform. With David’s two keyboards, an excellent Steinway concert grand and Dean Hurley’s perfect audio-visual setup, our concert for a select group of guests invited by the Consulate to its palatial interiors was recorded and videotaped. Further live concerts all over the world quickly followed. The next one in Łódź in November 2006 at the opening of the CAMERIMAGE Festival led directly to the opening credits of INLAND EMPIRE (pictured above). David was thrilled when, just as our improvisation was ending, his keyboard and my Steinway on stage were gradually lowered into the orchestra pit and we slipped out of sight just as the projection of his latest film began. During the next several years we performed, among others, at the Fondation Cartier in Paris (watch on YouTube) where David’s artwork was exhibited, at the Festival of the Stars in Gdańsk, Armand Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, Triennale Exhibit in Milan, and at the March 2011 New Generation Concert organized by the Polish Music Center on the USC campus.
Still another project with David was our joint contribution to the Visions and Voices series at USC. Entitled “Measures and Frames,” the evening featured live string quartet performance accompanying moving images ranging from animation to videos to films. With about a year’s notice, I asked David to make a 10-minute film for which I’d write a string quartet accompaniment. David readily agreed and a few months later invited me to his studio for a screening. Written, drawn and directed by David, the animations were carried out by his assistant, Noriko Miyakawa. After the first eerily silent private screening of Pożar/Fire, David asked me, “What do you think?” I replied that I could already hear some music for it, and would like to watch Pożar again. This short film was instantly replayed and afterwards I rushed home to begin composing the soundtrack for it. The world premiere of Music for David took place March 28, 2015, at the Alfred Newman Hall on USC’s Downtown LA campus, together with the screening of Pożar (pictured above). This Visions & Voices program also featured fragments of The Vagabond by Agnès Varda with music by Joanna Bruzdowicz, and animations created by the studio of USC professors Michael Patterson and Candace Reckinger set to music composed by Thomas Adès, Jeffrey Holmes and Veronika Krausas. All films and videos that night were accompanied live by the Penderecki String Quartet. In the years since, David’s film with live string quartet performances was seen with David’s various art shows, including those at the Bonnefanten Museum in Maastricht and the Znaki Czasu Art Gallery in Toruń, among others. Pożar was also screened with Music for David at other concerts and festivals, including its French premiere given by the NEO Quartet at the XV International Festival of Music in Catalonia in Céret, at the Kwadrofonik Festival in Warsaw (with the Royal String Quartet) and at the University of California/Riverside during a festival organized by cellist Lars Hoefs.
Photo: Krysta Close, all rights reserved
Shortly after we met and began to discuss things other than music, David noticed my interest in meteorology. I was happy to let him know that, years earlier at M.I.T., I was part of the winning team participating in the Intercollegiate Weather Forecasting Contest. Within a short time, David set up a weekly phone call from his studio to my Polish Music Center office at USC (always on Mondays at 9:15 a.m. sharp) and recorded my weather forecasts for the upcoming week for Los Angeles and Łódź. This jolly routine continued for quite a few years until a random bird decided to nest in the camera housing suspended from the ceiling in David’s hillside art studio. Unwilling to evict this creature from its favorite perch, David reluctantly had to suspend our weather forecasting project. In recent years, however, he returned to forecasting weather for Los Angeles during his solo live segment aired on Santa Monica’s KCRW radio program, “Morning Becomes Eclectic.”
When the CAMERIMAGE Festival decided to present David with the Lifetime Achievement Award for a Director with Unique Visual Sensitivity in 2012, I had the pleasure of recording, transcribing and editing into a book several conversations with David about his life and work. Published by CAMERIMAGE Film Festival, this richly illustrated album of photos and stills from David’s films as well as reproductions of his paintings, drawings and other objects d’art was a huge hit with David’s fans and the CAMERIMAGE public, who bought the entire print run as soon as it came out.
But music, especially the pioneering works of Polish avant-garde composers, invariably dominated many of our conversations and private meetings. Accompanied by his wife Emily, David came to my apartment for dinner and we listened to CDs in my collection with music by Krzysztof Penderecki, Witold Lutosławski, or Bogusław Schaeffer. Some of this music ended up later in soundtracks of David’s films. David also graciously came as a guest to my “Anatomy of the Film Score” UCLA lectures, generously sharing with students his views on art, music and film.
Without a doubt, David’s oeuvre could be seen as a window into his life and the artistic vision that reflected an extraordinarily creative and ever-searching intellect. Whether on screen, paper, canvas, sculpture or other carefully-designed and meticulously executed artworks, David could instantly convey to the public his profound fascination with the mystery of seemingly ordinary events, objects and people, and highlight the dark side of everyday life. His unique, iconic and instantly recognizable visual style followed a path charted by his seemingly boundless imagination. His warm and nurturing presence sustained all those lucky enough to be invited into his creative space. Friendships like that happen once in a lifetime and I feel truly honored to have been in the presence of this great artist and an exceptional human being for so many years.
David Keith Lynch, born 20 January 1946 in Missoula, Montana; died 15 January 2025 in Los Angeles, California.