David Lynch and the Power of Mystery
I want to say a few words about filmmaker David Lynch, who passed away this week. His work had a profound influence on me.
My first introduction to David Lynch was from my college English professor who came to class one morning, clearly shaken. “I just saw the most remarkable movie,” she told the class. “It is a murder mystery that starts with a young man finding an ear in a field.”
That phrase — “an ear in a field” — was too intriguing to pass up. I watched the movie, Blue Velvet, which I found both captivating and horrifying. The ear in the field — severed from its body, crawling with ants — was a portal to a strange and mysterious world. I was hooked.
But I really fell in love with David Lynch, as many of us did, in the first season of Twin Peaks. I had never seen anything like it on television. Co-created with Mark Frost, it was simultaneously funny and mysterious, gentle and violent, wholesome and sexy. That show defied categorization.
But, like Blue Velvet, what struck me most about Twin Peaks was its sense of mystery: the long shots of wind blowing through the Douglas firs, the blinking owls, the haunting musical score by Angelo Badalamenti. This was a murder mystery, sure, but it hinted at a universal, capital-M Mystery.
This mystery could be maddening. The final episode of Twin Peaks made me so angry that I (an aspiring filmmaker myself) made a short film ranting about its injustice. Not only did they not resolve the story, they just made the mystery deeper!?
In the following years, I watched everything Lynch ever made. His movies were often incomprehensible, the kind of films you have to research on the Internet afterward to figure out, “what the hell did I just watch?”
But they always were infused with this sense of mystery.
I later learned that Lynch was a practitioner of Transcendental Meditation, which he credited as crucial to his craft. From his book Catching the Big Fish:
“Ideas are like fish. If you want to catch little fish, you can stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch the big fish, you’ve got to go deeper. Down deep, the fish are more powerful and more pure. They’re huge and abstract. And they’re very beautiful.”
Strangely, I began my own meditation practice about the time that I discovered Twin Peaks — a practice I have maintained to this day. I think about this quote all the time during meditation, when I am supposed to be quieting my mind. Spontaneous insights — the “big fish” — often reveal themselves in silence.
Another thing we learn in meditation is the depth of mystery that surrounds us. This is an Eternal Mystery, which unlike a TV mystery, has no “solution.” There is no whodunit. The mystery only leads to deeper depths.
Lynch never spoon-fed his audience, never tied up his loose ends in a tidy bow (though Audrey Horne did tie a cherry stem with her tongue). Instead, he invited us to sit with the unresolved, to open ourselves to the unknown.
This is the essence of mystery — not as a puzzle to be solved but as an experience to be lived. The flickering light in a desolate room. A cryptic message delivered by a giant in a dream. These are not clues in a traditional sense, but portals to a deeper awareness.
In his films, Lynch often juxtaposed the mundane with the surreal. A man mowing his lawn might encounter an otherworldly figure. A suburban street could hide unspeakable horrors beneath its manicured surface. Lynch showed us that mystery is not “out there” in some distant cosmos; it is woven into the fabric of everyday life. It’s all around us.
That is why his work always touched me as deeply spiritual. His films touch on themes of good and evil, light and darkness, love and fear. But instead of resolving these dualities, he lets them coexist, showing us that life’s greatest truths often live in paradox. In Blue Velvet, the lush beauty of the roses contrasts with the grotesque insects crawling beneath them. In Mulholland Drive, the dreamlike romance intertwines with nightmare logic. Beauty and horror, order and chaos, light and shadow — all of it is part of the same whole.
By embracing mystery, David Lynch taught me something profound: not every question needs an answer. Some mysteries are meant to remain mysteries, to draw us deeper into contemplation and awe. The question is more important than the answer.
Throughout history, the deepest spiritual thinkers have been called “mystics.” Mystery and mystic, of course, come from the same root: the Greek word “mystēs” (μύστης), meaning “an initiate” or someone initiated into secret rites.
David Lynch’s work, at its best, made me feel that I was being initiated into some secret rite, a coded message about the unseen nature of the universe. Some of his films, like Mulholland Drive and Eraserhead, are not even linear stories, they’re more of a “vibe.”
I judge the greatness of a movie or a show by how long you find yourself thinking about it afterward. And every Lynch film would hang out in my head for weeks or months. Who is the mysterious cowboy? What does his riddle mean? Does he reappear once or twice in the film?
If you’re new to David Lynch, I recommend The Straight Story, a very sweet film — based on a true story — about a man who travels on a lawnmower to reconcile with his brother. (It is rated G — but as Norm Macdonald once joked, “That movie is a hard G.”)
When the Twin Peaks movie came out a year after the show ended, I watched it again and again. It’s a prequel, so it doesn’t make much sense if you haven’t seen the original series, but it also doesn’t make much sense if you have.
And of course, the movie only deepens the mystery further. No answers to what happened to Special Agent Dale Cooper, played so expertly by Kyle MacLachlan.
So you can imagine my delight when the Twin Peaks sequel was released on Showtime in 2017, twenty-five years after the original. It was 18 episodes, and I savored every one like a precious morsel. After each episode dropped on Sunday night, I would spend hours on r/TwinPeaks on Monday morning, reading fan theories that tried to unravel the mystery.
And then came Episode 8.
In the pantheon of David Lynch’s work, Episode 8 of Twin Peaks: The Return stands alone as a visual and conceptual masterpiece. It is widely regarded as one of the most surreal and experimental episodes of television ever created.
But trying to describe it to you, like so much of Lynch’s work, is like trying to describe a song or a poem. You really just have to experience it for yourself. (Note: Lynch was in his seventies and producing his best work.)
He’s not for everyone. Some people want their mysteries wrapped up at the end of an hour, Matlock-style, and I respect that. But I fell in love with the wanting. I fell in love with the mystery.
As the great psychologist (and mystic) Scott Peck said, “The addiction to mystery is one addiction that I can heartily recommend.”
I feel gratitude for the life of David Lynch. He taught me that life itself is a mystery — one that grows richer the more deeply we engage with it. For me, Lynch’s art was not merely entertainment; it was an initiation into the eternal questions, a reminder to always seek the deeper waters.
David Lynch Recommended Watch List
- The Straight Story (1999)
A gentle, heartwarming road movie with universal appeal. A rare departure from Lynch’s typical style. - The Elephant Man (1980)
A heart-wrenching biographical drama, grounded in reality and deeply emotional. It’s one of Lynch’s most conventional works. - Twin Peaks: Seasons 1 & 2 (1990–1991)
Start with the original two seasons, which mix quirky humor, melodrama, and supernatural mystery. Watch the episodes in order. - Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992)
The prequel film that dives into darker, more disturbing territory, expanding on Laura Palmer’s story. Best watched after the series. - Twin Peaks: The Return (2017)
A bold and experimental continuation of the series. It’s best appreciated after experiencing Lynch’s earlier works to fully grasp its ambition. - Blue Velvet (1986)
A neo-noir thriller that juxtaposes idyllic suburbia with disturbing darkness. This film is a great bridge between Lynch’s accessible and surreal works. - Mulholland Drive (2001)
A dreamlike mystery that’s often regarded as one of Lynch’s masterpieces. It’s both enigmatic and emotionally affecting.
