Being Directed by David Lynch with Professor WHAM
Pardon me while I have a strange interlude. There is nothing else. Life is an obscure oboe, plumbing a ride on the omnibus of art. And the misty corridors of time, and in those corridors, I see figures. Strange figures.
AP Strange:Welcome back, my friends, to the AP Strange show. I am AP Strange, and this is my show. And I got a little sponsor spot for you right now because this week's sponsor is garban bozia for the number one go to product for fear based nutrition and corny creamy goodness, Karman Boggia. Go get some at the Black Lodge nearest you. So, on our show tonight, we are discussing not disgusting.
AP Strange:We are discussing the works of David Lynch and the life of David Lynch who sadly passed away, very recently and, some of the esoteric and metaphysical and paranormal, aspects of that. And when I thought about doing this show after hearing of David Lynch's passing, I thought, who could I possibly get on to talk about this with me? And, then I had a forehead slapping moment and said, of course, I have the perfect person. The person in question is, a long time paranormal researcher, ufologist, writer, academic, an actual honest to goodness professor, an author of such books as Mysterious Beauty and, we're already forgetting the name of the other one. I should have wrote it down one.
Professor WHAM:Final final season.
AP Strange:Final season, the Lovecraftian quartet. You might have guessed by now, one of my favorite people to read or listen to, and and talking about paranormal and weird subjects. It is professor Lam. Welcome to the show, professor Lam.
Professor WHAM:Thank you for asking me to do this.
AP Strange:Oh, you're very welcome. Of course. But like I said, I heard about I heard about David Lynch passing, and I was like, you know, it wasn't my first thought. But after a while, I'm like, I should do a David Lynch show. And then I I could see your posts, and you actually changed your profile picture to, David Lynch's picture.
AP Strange:And then, you know, after a little while, I'm like, you know, yeah. Actually, WAM would be perfect to get get into this stuff with. And, you're on the short list of people I wanted to have on my show anyway. So, things just kinda came together.
Professor WHAM:Yep. Well, he loved those synchronicities. Although, I doubt that he died in order to accomplish that. But
AP Strange:Right. Right. Yeah. Well, I mean, we did kinda talk before recording about the timing of his passing being kind of, a synchronicity, you know, regardless of of, you know, his choice in the matter, which I don't think we really have a choice in the matter with synchronicities anyway. But, do do you wanna get into that a little bit?
AP Strange:What you're saying?
Professor WHAM:Well, well, I I mean, I'd obviously, there's a lot for for many of us, there's a lot of meaning around or possible meaning, potential meaning around the time of his death. And not only because as we later found out, in many ways, he was a he was a casualty of those LA fires because that's part of what brought on his, you know, his final descent into illness apparently was that they did have to evacuate. Although apparently, at least as far as what I know, his house was spared, so at least all of his paintings and stuff that were in there survived. But the fact that his birthday was on, inauguration day, and also Martin Luther King day. And for me personally, and I forgot to mention this beforehand, January 20 is also the birthday of although in a different year, but it's also she was born in a different year, but it's also the birthday of Eugenia Maeser Storey and interesting renaissance people.
Professor WHAM:A lot of people don't know of her, but, in my book, mysterious beauty, the very last chapter, the biographical chapter is about Eugenia Masur story. And she, did she was sort of like Lynch in some ways. She just didn't write she just didn't make films. She wrote plays, surrealist plays, which were performed all over New York City. That's how she made her living.
Professor WHAM:So, you know, for me, it it all of those layers of meaning made his death meaningful. I I don't for me, it wasn't tragic maybe like it might have been for some people because I know that he himself, he himself was not afraid of death, I don't think.
AP Strange:Right.
Professor WHAM:And he and he believed very strongly in in the the survival of consciousness after death. So I don't think he was afraid in a way that would have, you know, made his situation tragic. He always faced things pretty squarely from what I can tell. So, but to me, it was also ironic, you
AP Strange:know. Right.
Professor WHAM:Yeah. In the largest sense of irony, you know. And
AP Strange:so Yeah. Given given all of the all of the horrors of the world that are happening right now.
Professor WHAM:Right. Exactly. And, well and he, you know, he was unafraid of looking at looking at the dark side that lies behind the edifices that we create.
AP Strange:Yeah. And I mean, I think that was that's the most that's the thing you encounter head on in all of his work is just kind of this veneer of perfection of kind of like a nineteen fifties American dream kind of facade. But underneath that, there's there's all this darkness, and the the two coincide and just overlap in a way that, most people would care not to think about. So yeah.
Professor WHAM:Right. Well, and I it I think the reason why I've always liked liked him is because he had portrayed he portrayed reality pretty much the way I experienced it and how I've always experienced it as a kind of and I've expressed this in other places, a kind of a kind of nonlinear associative combination of an equal parts of beauty and terror. And that's that's literally how I've always experienced life. Even as a child, I experienced life that way. And, I so for me, he was especially as I became aware of his work, I wasn't always aware of his work, you know, like, the the very first thing of his that I ever saw, but I didn't know that he had that it was he that had done it and was Elephant Man.
Professor WHAM:That was the first movie of his I ever saw.
AP Strange:Yeah. That was a first for me too.
Professor WHAM:And in the high in high school. And, I thought it was brilliant. I mean, I was, like, entranced by it. And then the second movie of his I saw was and this was some years later when I was in a very vulnerable place in my own life, I saw Eraserhead and was completely traumatized. It just completely messed up because I was not at a place where I could see it and I didn't know that he had done both.
Professor WHAM:You know, I had no idea. And and, and I've and I saw but but then, like, in the late late eighties after I had grown up quite a lot, I decided to see Eraserhead again and and thought thought it was the most hilarious thing that I've ever seen in my life. And I still think it's hilarious because, you know, once you're older, you get it. You you're like, oh, this is what this is. Okay.
AP Strange:Yeah. But
Professor WHAM:I yeah. It's like you have to have a certain kind of or I had to have a certain kind of maturity in order to understand it. But, and then it was after that that I became obsessed with him, and especially then after Twin Peaks in the nineties, eighties and nineties. Just obsessed. So, you know
AP Strange:Yeah. I mean, I had I had a similar experience with Eraserhead, except, I come to David Lynch by way of my best friend who passed away a couple years ago, and we hung out and watched movies and shared music and, you know, wrote together and wrote poetry and performed poetry at the same places. And, I was always blown away by this guy's intellect and his just weirdness. And, he was, like, the biggest David Lynch fan I ever knew. And, and he let me borrow his copy of Eraserhead, I think, like, within a week of me finding out that I was gonna be a father, which wasn't a planned thing either.
AP Strange:So he's like, hey, man. And, like, I I do my Jeff impression every time I think of him, but, he's like, hey. You ever watch this one, man? I'm like, now he's like, oh, you gotta watch this. It's the best.
AP Strange:And and I was like so I watched for Racer Head, and I was, like, curled up in the field position, like, rocking
Professor WHAM:back. Well, yeah. Yeah. Because it has that kind of emotional impact. You know what I mean?
Professor WHAM:It it it does. It does. I mean, I'll never forget. I mean, the scene that always sticks out in my head in that movie is the scene where he's with the woman his woman, and they're at the dinner table, and they start to cut into the chicken and all this blood comes out.
AP Strange:Yeah.
Professor WHAM:You know? And it's like you know? Or, you know, or or the scene where he kills the little worm baby or cuts the little worm baby open. I mean, it's like it's so so so intense. You know what I mean?
Professor WHAM:My god.
AP Strange:Well, I mean, really, it was the lady in the radiator.
Professor WHAM:Oh, yeah.
AP Strange:It's the thing that stuck with me and really haunted me too.
Professor WHAM:What what do you what what do you think why do you think that haunted you? Why do you think that particular thing haunted you?
AP Strange:I think he does this in every work that he does where there's an out almost seemingly, like, out of place musical number where somebody is listening to something. And it it it it pulls you into, like, a dream world. If the movie wasn't already surreal enough for you, you're now in this, like, totally dreamy, almost like you're sitting in a a haunted theater watching what's happening on the stage, and you can't leave. Like, you're paralyzed or something. You know?
AP Strange:It it it the those pretty much any of the musical numbers are, like, entrancing to me, and and, they always blow me away. But that one with the woman, her cheeks are all, like, just basically two giant tumors or tumors. I'm not really sure what's going on.
Professor WHAM:Yeah. Yeah.
AP Strange:That that one just haunted me. And I think I was also just trying to block out the, like, expectant father stuff because that was a reality for me at the time.
Professor WHAM:Right. Right.
AP Strange:Right. Just focused on that more. But, but, yeah, I mean, I I I appreciated the movie still, and I loved it. And I revisited it later, and I'm like, I think this is pretty brilliant. It's got this dark humor to it, but it's also kinda horrifying.
AP Strange:So, that led me to check out other works, and I had to kinda push back against Lynch with him. And I was because I would tell him I don't get it. I feel like there's stuff I'm not getting, and it frustrates me.
Professor WHAM:Uh-huh.
AP Strange:Looking back now, I think what it is is I've I've had, you know, my my troubles with mental health, if you ask Mhmm. If you trust the opinion of psychiatrists. But, I mean, I've always just had a weird outlook on life, and I I've always experienced I've always felt like I experienced time differently than a lot of people do. I've experienced I I've fixed, I've had times where dreams were almost the same as reality. And I think part of what it was part of why I was resistant to it is because it scared me.
AP Strange:It just it seemed too real. It seemed like somebody was representing a reality for me that I didn't wanna acknowledge, had a basis with anybody else. I would to to me at the time, it was my own crazy world that I lived in, and it was wrong, and And I didn't wanna acknowledge it. I guess Right. That's kinda how I look at it.
AP Strange:And Jeff was the one that told me he considered David Lynch the greatest living surrealist. And being a huge surrealism guy, I was like, oh oh, no. That would all make sense. Like, that's where the marble dropped for me. And I could really start appreciating it because surrealism is not about having a one to one equation of meaning that you're trying to convey to somebody.
AP Strange:You're not making a direct statement a lot of the time in a surrealist work. It's more about the feelings that evokes and and the interpretation of the observer. You know? So
Professor WHAM:And the well, in the combination of really disparate things in unusual ways.
AP Strange:Yes.
Professor WHAM:But, you know, if you watch all of his stuff, like, I I mean, I noticed this when I was watching. I I like I told you before we got started, the one movie of his that I hadn't seen before we talked was Inland Empire. And so I went ahead and made sure that I watched it. And there's so much I mean, I'm still digesting it. I'll probably have to watch it again.
Professor WHAM:The thing about his films is that because of what they are, it's not a situation where you can like, in most movies, you can they're divided into scenes, you know, like, on the disc, and so you can just, like, go to a scene. His movies are not like that. You have to watch them all the way through. He doesn't do that scene thing. And and so you can't just it's really, you know, you can't just go back to one scene because it's connected to everything else.
Professor WHAM:But in in what I what I did pick up watching in London, Inland Empire, it's really sort of it combines, it's like if you see the original Twin Peaks and then you see Fire Walk With Me and then you see Mulholland Drive and then you see Lost Highways. And maybe a little bit of Wild at Heart, but if there's not quite as much of that in there, and then see Inland Empire and then watch the return, Twin Peaks The Return, there are there's such a layering of similar ideas, between all of them and images. So just because you have disparate elements in in, Lynch's work, that doesn't mean that there aren't themes that he comes back to. In fact, when you were talking about, you know, that the radiator lady, you know, the singing on the stage, I said, well, just compare her to that that whole scene that whole scene in Mulholland Drive of Silencio where Rebecca, Del Rio is singing, you know, Otis Redding's song in in Spanish. I mean, there's there are some direct connections there in a really interesting way.
AP Strange:Or or, in Blue Velvet, the Yes. Thinking scene there.
Professor WHAM:Yes. Yes.
AP Strange:Yes. That's another just, I'm not thinking of the actor's name now.
Professor WHAM:I always just think of it. Isabella Isabella Rossellini?
AP Strange:Well, oh, there's that. Yeah. There's multiple of it. I was thinking of, the guy that they go Oh,
Professor WHAM:the guy. Yes. Yes.
AP Strange:He's singing like Royal Orbison or something.
Professor WHAM:Yes. Right. Right. Exactly. Right.
Professor WHAM:Exactly.
AP Strange:It's very clearly lip synced, and he's, like, all dolled up and, kind of an unusual role for him. He was the guy that played Al on Quantum Leap. That's my only reference point for that. I know he did a lot of work, but I can't remember his name
Professor WHAM:right now.
AP Strange:But,
Professor WHAM:But but yeah. I mean, it's like, the so there are these recurring motifs. There's also an inland empire. There's a whole sequence of there's a whole sequence of those what now anyone who knows Lynch and Twin Peaks will recognize. A whole sequence of, red red, theater curtains
AP Strange:Mhmm.
Professor WHAM:That that, you know, the the Lorna Dern character is going through. Nikki Nikki, I guess. That's that's that's the name of the actress that Lorna Dern that Laura Dern plays.
AP Strange:I don't know
Professor WHAM:why why would call her Lorna. I've never understood her name as Laura.
AP Strange:Well, the her name kind of evokes Lorna Dune.
Professor WHAM:Yeah. I guess it does. I guess it does. Which for people who don't know are a type of cookie. Yeah.
AP Strange:Oh, I love my Lorna Dunes. I
Professor WHAM:love Cookie. But but anyway yeah. So so what else?
AP Strange:Yeah. But she's she's she's in a lot of his movies too, and that's
Professor WHAM:Oh, yeah.
AP Strange:That's another good, thing for consistency in his work, like, a repeated theme as you see see the same faces playing different characters. Sometimes in the same movie, like Mulholland Drive is a great example of that. Yeah. Or Twin Peaks. It's like there's there's there's always sort of a doppelganger or, alternate person aspect.
AP Strange:I think that's a recurring theme in his work.
Professor WHAM:Right. Yeah. Where where he have the he'll have an actor play the same be play two different roles with each other. Yeah. I mean, and and and then having recurring people like Jack Nance or,
AP Strange:Brian McLaughlin.
Professor WHAM:Yes. Harry Dean Stanton. Yeah. Well, and then make and then making the careers of people like, you know, David Duchovny and, Naomi Watts and and Laura Dern. I mean, they they base they owe a lot of their careers, basically, to starting out in his stuff, because he recognized something in them.
AP Strange:Although there Laura Dern is an interesting one because her her father, of course, was Bruce Dern, the actor, and her mother is, she's in Lost Highway. No. She's in Wild at Heart. The the woman that plays Laura Dern's mother in Wild
Professor WHAM:at Heart was her own little mother. Hold on. Let me look. Yeah. I know I know.
Professor WHAM:I my my I'm old and my brain doesn't work anymore either. This is what this is a useful function of of Google of Google search.
AP Strange:I just don't wanna say the wrong name, because we're covering kind of a lot tonight. So there's no no shame
Professor WHAM:Right. Right. Right. Right.
AP Strange:Right. Forgetting names.
Professor WHAM:Diane Ladd. Diane Ladd.
AP Strange:So she was she's Laura Dern's actual mother, and she's in that movie playing her mother. And what I what I found interesting about that is, he has this fascination with Hollywood too.
Professor WHAM:Mhmm.
AP Strange:Like, Hollywood is a big thing, like, recurring theme and, like, the broken dreams, I guess, of it, the broken dreams aspect. And he he has this habit of including actors, I think, that are kind of, like, part of a Hollywood dynasty. And then, Last Highway, you have that with with, well, I mean, yeah, there's Patricia Arquettes in that.
Professor WHAM:Yes. Yes.
AP Strange:And, Balthazar Getty. Mhmm. So you it's like you have these recognizable names. He includes Marilyn Manson, which, I mean, whatever. But the the but he's but his name is a combination of, obviously, Marilyn Manson or Marilyn Monroe and Charles Charles Manson.
Professor WHAM:Right.
AP Strange:So I think I think that's the whole reason he even put him in the movie was, like, he he is make he's making these references. Yeah.
Professor WHAM:Right. Exactly. Well, and then in the straight story I mean, in the straight story, you know, the guy who plays the main protagonist is Richard Farnsworth who was, you know, this well seasoned, well known actor. That was actually his last wall before he died because he was actually dying when that movie took when they were filming. So, you know, he he I think he he knew how to draw on people that were new and people that were seasoned actors.
Professor WHAM:Well, you know, in, Mulholland Drive, I can't remember. The the woman who plays the landlady in Mulholland Drive, she, you know, she was a well She she she was a well known a very, very well known actor as well, like, from the classic period of, see, I've gotta look that up too because, you know, this is what happens when you get old. I'm serious. You forget, like, it's like you know what's happening. Anne Miller, that's who it was.
AP Strange:Oh, yeah.
Professor WHAM:Anne Miller. And she plays this cameo role and she's great.
AP Strange:Mhmm.
Professor WHAM:And, you know, but I think that I think what I really have I mean, I I enjoyed their performances, but I what I have understood from listening to many interviews of people who worked with Lynch is that he was, like, actors almost universally loved him because he
AP Strange:It does seem that way.
Professor WHAM:They because he really was able to pull out of from them places and things. And he was collaborative, places and things, and emotions that they that they had not experienced before. And like Inland Empire was kind of experimental because it was experimental in kind of the way that, the Blair Witch Project was. It's a very similar kind of movie to that. It was all shot it was all shot on his shoulder, you know?
AP Strange:Yep.
Professor WHAM:And and it was shot without a a script, just a basic sort of overview of some of the themes. And every day, he and the actors would figure out what they were gonna do and say, which is kind of extraordinary when you think about it.
AP Strange:That's that's amazing for the film that it is. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, talking about actors and their relationship with him or feelings about him, I thought this was a really weird thing because, Michael J Anderson, he was the little person that played the Oh. From another place.
Professor WHAM:Yeah.
AP Strange:He was one that didn't I mean, the the he had, like, crazy conspiracy theories about David Lynch at one point.
Professor WHAM:Oh, really? Really? About that? I did not. Yeah.
Professor WHAM:I did not.
AP Strange:He went, like, full Pizzagate QAnon
Professor WHAM:Oh, really?
AP Strange:Saying, like, David Lynch was was involved in all this, like, sex trafficking and all this other stuff. And, yeah, he just totally lost his mind, and that's why he's not in the return. So they replaced him with a weird, like, Charlie Brown Christmas tree.
Professor WHAM:Yeah. I know. I know. Yeah. Well well, you know, I guess I mean, I can understand why maybe I mean, when you look at some of Lynch's the way one of the things that Lynch has been criticized about is that or for is that, you know, his his perspective is that of a of of an American sort of middle class white
AP Strange:guy. Yeah.
Professor WHAM:And so he's not always politically correct. And Yeah. And and when you and you can see some of this I mean, I think that he you know, if you look at the time in which he's filming, you know, the time in which he is portraying certain things that he's ahead of his time in certain ways, you know, just, you know, the whole the whole character that David Duchovny plays in the first Twin Peaks as someone who is clearly making a transition between, you know, we would call them a he that we would call them a we would call him a, you know, a trans person now. But at the time, he would have been called a cross dresser, or a transvestite. Those were the words that were used to describe what he was going through.
Professor WHAM:And, and then the and then the reason for that that he that the character gives in the show, it's, you know, it's very it's like, oh, you played women undercover and realized you were a woman. You liked it better. It's got it's kind of a weird thing to watch it now. It's weird. And there aren't a lot of people of color in his in his, shows.
Professor WHAM:I mean, there is Michael Horace in Twin Peaks. And certainly in the return, there are more people of color, because he's dealing with, scenarios in the Southwest, you know, and in the West. But I can imagine that the way in which he treated or inadvertently may have interacted with that actor, you know. Mhmm. Because if you watch if you watch it now, you know, he they use they use terminology that is not not appropriate now to describe him.
Professor WHAM:He is sort of exoticized in a kind of way, you know. So I can see where there might be some dissatisfaction.
AP Strange:Yeah. And and If if you listen to his claims though, I mean, he's really just
Professor WHAM:Oh, well, yeah. Well, if he if
AP Strange:he's if he's got
Professor WHAM:if he's gone full q and on, then, you know, you know, whatever. But I think that I think that Lynch was probably aware of some of those undercurrents himself.
AP Strange:Yeah.
Professor WHAM:And so that's why he sort of dips into them, but, nobody else makes that claim about him. And I mean, there were I mean, like, Julie Cruz was kind of upset with the with the very tiny bit that she got in the return, and she didn't feel like she got enough credit in a certain Mhmm. In certain ways, considering how much music that she was associated, you know, considering that she and Angelo Badalamente and and Lynch did, like, like, what is at least two whole albums worth of music together. You know, I I think that she may have thought that maybe Lynch could have done more for her career and given her more credit. You know?
Professor WHAM:I'm not saying he was perfect at all, but, oh, well.
AP Strange:Yeah. I mean, I also don't think he ever claimed to be. I mean No. I don't think I don't think yeah. No.
Professor WHAM:No. No. And in fact, if you I've been reading through, as I told you before we started, I I got his the biography room to dream, which is a very interesting biography that was published, I think, in 02/2017 02/2017 about him. And it's an interest it's done in an interesting way. Each chapter is divided into two portions.
Professor WHAM:There's one the one portion that is written by Christine McKenna, who's also done a lot of stuff with his artwork, is sort of straight biography. You know, she's the one that's done the interviews with people that he knew and, you know, collated all that information. And so she'll write it and then she gave it to him and then he wrote his own account of the same stuff.
AP Strange:Oh, wow.
Professor WHAM:Like what he remembered, his version of of it. He so it fills in some of the holes, but, it's clear that as a kid, he was not you know, as a young man, I'm just up to him in his twenties now. But as a it's right before he he made Eraserhead. But it's very clear that as a young man, a teenager, he was he he wasn't a bad kid, but he got himself into things, you know, and and, you can tell there are times when he's willing that stuff more stuff happened than he's willing to talk about in terms of in terms of stuff he got himself into. And at one point, he says in it was at a certain point in his life Let's see.
Professor WHAM:It's on page 56 here. He talks about how he got involved with a kid with a with a with an older teenage kid who was sort of into the bad stuff. You know, he was into drugs and he was into running around, and he sort of hung with that crowd for a while. And then he says, the reason why I did this is I didn't like myself.
AP Strange:Yeah.
Professor WHAM:So he he got out. He got away from those people. But, you know, I do kind of get the sense that he sort of he may have seen things or experienced a few things that he that were unsavory. He in here, he has his his first experience of being of of getting high on marijuana. It's hilarious.
AP Strange:That's okay. Well, wasn't he if I if I'm understanding this properly, he was born in the Midwest. Right?
Professor WHAM:And then
AP Strange:moved to, like, Pittsburgh or something?
Professor WHAM:He was born in, was, when was he born? I think he was born let me see here. He's he's he what he remembers first is, Missoula. Missoula, Montana. And, let's see here.
Professor WHAM:Yeah. He remembers Missoula, Montana First. And, I can't remember now if he was born there, but but it was very soon if if he was not born there, it was very soon after he was born that he moved there because his father worked for the forestry service.
AP Strange:Okay.
Professor WHAM:So, they moved around a lot. And he and as his father was doing work, not only for the forestry service, but also for the Department of Agriculture and, you know, other kind of connected agencies that are now they're trying to dissemble. And, so his father was a federal employee, but, so they had a fairly comfortable life. But one of his one of one side of his family lived in a very urban area and the other side of his family had like a ranch. And so he got to experience those two sides of things, you know, the the very rural and then also an urban existence.
Professor WHAM:And then at some point, they moved to Spokane, Washington, and then at another point, they moved to, Virginia and Arlington. So he he experienced different parts of the country, significantly Yeah. Parts of the country.
AP Strange:Yeah. Because I had heard that, you know, it was kind of a shock one of the first times he was in a more urban area because and that was kind of what inspired to raise your head and a lot of the kind of industrial setting of it and industrial dystopia kind of thing.
Professor WHAM:Right. Yeah. Yeah. He like like and when he was a little bit older, he ended up going to he was in Philadelphia for a while. And and he and he did not like Philadelphia Yeah.
Professor WHAM:At all. I say I like Philadelphia, which is kind of funny, but I but I like certain urban settings. And then he would then he was, he tried to go to school in Boston for a while and that didn't work, and then he went to Europe for a while after he had decided to be an artist or a painter. And, you know, it it so he it took him a while to find sort of his place to be, but eventually, he ended up in LA and and he and he has said numerous times that the reason why he liked LA and Hollywood is it was just the light. That's what he says.
Professor WHAM:Just the light the light there and sort of the vibe there. You know, lots of lots of things can happen. You know? Mhmm. People people can become stars here or they can become prostitutes here.
Professor WHAM:You know, those are
AP Strange:Yeah. Yeah. Well, like I said, it's like the city of broken dreams, and it definitely does seem to play a central role. Even if the movie doesn't play take place in LA, it seems like it's a the Hollywood aspect of it is is, like, as a place as a place you can go.
Professor WHAM:Right. No. Yeah. Yeah. I think so.
Professor WHAM:I think it has a lot, you know, he's and he's I think the thing to remember whenever you're watching one of his films is he's not just simply portraying other things. He there's always a self examination that's going on. So it's all there's always some part of himself that he's, I think, revealing. And so when once I kind of understood that about him, then I could then I could I could sort of put up with some of the imperfections of of his delivery or deployment on occasion because, you know, you're gonna see the you know, if there are there if there's prejudice there, that's the prejudice he was raised with. You know, if there is if there is if there is, if if there if there are wrong opinions here or if, you know, or if there's beauty here or the thing the things that he talks about.
Professor WHAM:Like, he in this book, he talks about how terrified he the subway system was for him when he encountered it in New York City. It just freaked him out.
AP Strange:Yeah.
Professor WHAM:You know, these kind of endless tunnels and the noise and the subterranean nature of it. He just he he really had trouble with it. It it haunted him. He it haunted him. And and, so he so there were cities he liked and cities he didn't like.
Professor WHAM:And I think When you
AP Strange:say that, it makes me think of, like, that makes me think of, like, Elephant Man with, like, the weird train station scenes and, like, the radiator pipe where you follow it down the pipe and stuff like that.
Professor WHAM:Right. No. Right. Exact right. Exactly.
Professor WHAM:Well, and he and if you and if you watch many of his films, you'll notice that their one motif that you see over and over again is going through halls, going through dark halls or they don't have to always be dark, but going through halls, through doors, and then going down dark roads. You know, there's just this kind of, you know, twisting and turning through these corridors and not knowing what's on the other side and and, and that stands in for lots of different things. It stands in for traveling. It stands in for, thoughts that people are having. It's it's it's it's like a dream image.
AP Strange:I I was gonna say it's like dream logic where it's a you suddenly find yourself disoriented on the other side. You know? I think Lost Highway does that really effectively because the moment kind of backs into the darkness of the hallway. And then from that point on, that's a demarcation point that you don't realize right away. Like, from that point on, things were very different.
Professor WHAM:Yeah. So Well yeah. Well, and you and you do have to well, and that's in Mulholland Drive has a similar kind of segue. It's like I it's why I tell people if you're gonna watch Mulholland Drive and you've never seen it before, think of the kind of the first half as as a dream, like a memory and a dream. And then the second half is like, well, it's still kind of a dream, but it's sort of the it's not it's it's something that's maybe really happening to this person.
AP Strange:Mhmm.
Professor WHAM:You know? So but yeah. I mean, it's like but so I think that the things that scare you or scare us in the films are the things that scared him.
AP Strange:Yeah. Well, that's interesting to know and interesting to realize, because I mean, it kinda means we have something in common with him. You know?
Professor WHAM:Yeah. You know?
AP Strange:Because, I mean, at the time when when my friend Jeff told me this and I put those pieces together, it was like I had written what ended up being I later realized was more of, like, a hyper sigil, and it was a series of 27 poems that I put into a booklet. And it's very surreal, and it's expressing, like, some stuff I was going through at the time that was really hard for me. And, actually, there's a bridge in the book that's super important, you know, as an image. And, I came to realize at some point that the it's like that that was my surrealist way of expressing a lot of things that I otherwise wouldn't wanna really admit. And I kind of Right.
AP Strange:Let him go by doing that, by producing a book and putting it out there. It was, like, kind of a, a sublimation of, of the the energy that that kind of push and pull within me to try to, like, rectify these opposite things. You know?
Professor WHAM:Right.
AP Strange:So, I mean, that that that's where where that made sense for me, but that that book was based heavily on dream images. And, I think that's where a lot of it just felt disconcerting for me in these movies. In Mulholland Drive, I found endlessly frustrating the first couple of times I tried to watch it. I just found it so frustrating. You know?
Professor WHAM:Yeah. Well, what I tell people is if you it's like one of my favorites of his, actually. And, I mean, when I first saw it, I was like, you know? I mean, I I don't know why, but I sort of get it. And and what I tell people is in his mind for him, Mulholland Drive is fundamentally linked with twin Twin Peaks.
Professor WHAM:In fact, he thought of Twin Peaks and Mulholland Drive as kind of being sister stories to each other. So, what I tell people is watch Twin Peaks, the first, you know, the first iteration of it. Watch Fire Walk With Me, which I think that film actually has aged really well.
AP Strange:It'd
Professor WHAM:be considering how much people hated it at the time. If you watch it now, it's it's timely in a really terrifying way. And and then watch Mulholland Drive. Watch those and then watch Mulholland Drive and you'll see that there are these return. There are these well, and then there watch well yeah.
Professor WHAM:Oh, Inland Empire. Yeah. Yeah. Watch Inland Empire. Well, it actually maybe watch Lost Highways too.
Professor WHAM:Watch Lost Highways and Inland Empire and then watch The Return. And like I told you, I think of The Return as an eighteen hour movie. I don't think of it as as a series that they he filled it, and he did they broke it up. Yeah. You know, which he did actually kind of do.
Professor WHAM:If you if you if you get, like, the the DVD or the Blu ray versions of of of the return. The, episodes, you can watch episode one and episode two separately, or you can watch them as one seamless piece. And if you do, it's edited differently, and it makes Wow. Even more sense.
AP Strange:Okay.
Professor WHAM:If that's and then when you go to, like, episodes three and four, it's the same way. You can watch them separately or you can watch them altogether. And and I don't think he has denied this because he was asked directly this and he denied it, but I've done it and there is something to it. When people first watched The Return, that many people noticed that if you played the last two episodes side by side with each other at the same time, they overlapped in really weird ways. And, in other words, you you find you find some of the same symbolism emerging in at the same time, but it's like the opposite stuff.
Professor WHAM:It's and so and so people concluded that he had purposely done that. He claims he did not purposely do that, but I was curious, so I just I did that myself. I rigged, you know, rigged a couple machines up. You know? Actually, this is when it was still on Showtime, and so I had I had gotten the return on I think I'd gotten it on Blu ray, and I set it up so that they would play at the same time.
Professor WHAM:I queued them up, and it it does work. It's kinda weird.
AP Strange:Wow.
Professor WHAM:It's like I don't I don't I don't think he well, it's kind of like you'll you'll have certain things like like, for example, I think probably the most notable thing because if people have watched The Return, they'll know exactly what scenes I'm talking about. The scene the scene where Bob is being killed. Bob is being killed and he, and, well, where where the doppelganger Cooper is being killed and Bob emerges out of his out of his body like this black ball and then is and then attacks, you know, has to be dispatched by Freddie, you know, the the the kid with the with with the with the weird green super glove on.
AP Strange:Right.
Professor WHAM:Yeah. Okay. Which I don't even know what the hell that was about. I mean, I still watch that. It's like Yeah.
Professor WHAM:What is that? But, anyway so at the at the same time that you see that that black ball emerge, With the last episode, what's happened is that the the, the the the and the other version or yet another version of Cooper and Diane who are staying at that motel where they have that weird sex and then they and then, you know, he wakes up and she's gone and it's completely different. You know, it's like the whole thing is different. He couldn't figure out what's going on right before he drives into town and finds the and finds Judy's Diner. Okay.
Professor WHAM:You know, and all that stuff happens. But at the very same time when that black ball is emerging out of the doppelganger's chest, you see him coming out of of of the motel after he's woken up. And there's this the way the scene is shot, what you see is as he gets in his car, the the the camera kinda pulls back and you see one of the big huge outdoor light fixtures and it's this big white ball.
AP Strange:So you
Professor WHAM:have this black ball over here with bob in it and this light this white ball over here. And then the very next thing he's gonna do is he's gonna go to Judy's diner. And from there, from Judy's diner, he's going to he's going to find eventually the iteration of Laura Palmer as a result of that. Right? As a result of that as a result of that and yet, and and then in in the scene in the other scene where Bob is killed, immediately after that, he goes down into the bowels.
Professor WHAM:He goes in down into the bowels of the, the the great northern motel where that we're where they've detected this weird portal, and he goes into that portal. And from that portal, he encounters Laura Palmer in the past and takes her away from being murdered. So in both of the ends of both of those sequences, he encounters, Laura Palmer or who Laura Palmer is in those realities. And one is in the past and one is in a parallel reality, and he brings them forward in a certain way. And in both those sequences, a Bob figure is killed.
Professor WHAM:Freddy kills Bob, and then when he finds the the Laura Palmer Laura Palmer Palmer kind of alternate in this other reality after encountering the people at Judy's Diner, He goes into her house and he looks into another room because she's she's getting ready to go with him and you see in there a dead body. He she's put a bullet to this guy's head.
AP Strange:Yeah.
Professor WHAM:Ordered somebody, and he looks just like Bob.
AP Strange:Wow.
Professor WHAM:It's very I mean, go back and look at it. It's very but that's happening at the same time in both like, the same sort of if you play them side by side, it's very odd. And like I said, I don't know whether he planned that or whether it's just sort of one of those interesting patterns that emerges from his stuff because that's part of it too. I mean, we, you know, synchronicity is part of what he's about. You know, happy happy accidents as Bob Ross would have called them.
AP Strange:Right. Yeah. And I mean, it's funny because he he allows Cooper to be kind of a mouthpiece for that in Twin Peaks
Professor WHAM:Right.
AP Strange:Explaining, like, synchronicity and deciphering dream images and all this stuff. And he comes off, like, kinda goofy and happy go lucky and just a likable guy in, like, the original the first season. You know? And, and and that's where maybe Lynch is is kind of giving away some of the secrets is by just having somebody kind of, you know, very heavily. Yeah.
AP Strange:Yeah.
Professor WHAM:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I but that's that's but you find the that notion of synchronicity popping up in all of his other work too. It's just a little bit more subtle.
Professor WHAM:You know, it has it has to do with you, you know, people finding themselves in certain places and then all of a sudden this other thing happens. This other thing happens. And according to people who worked with him on his films, he would incorporate things that just happened on set into into especially if they were inspirational or meaningful in some way into his, into the film. That that's how the character Bob was developed. Yeah.
Professor WHAM:Right. Yeah.
AP Strange:Because he was like a sound technician on the set or something or, like, one of the boom mic guys or something.
Professor WHAM:Well, yeah. And what happened was is that there's that scene right at the end of the very first what's the pilot episode where at the very end, Laura Palmer's mother played by Grace Sabrinski who has the creepiest faces. She can do the creepiest faces sometimes, but she's freaking out. She's had it had a dream and she's freaking out, and she starts screaming. And that's like the end of the pilot episode.
Professor WHAM:But if you look, there's like a mirror behind her. And and apparently apparently, they accidentally caught a reflection of the guy who played who played, Bob who ended up playing Bob in that, you know, he he put you know, you see his and so they you see his they accidentally caught the the the, reflection. And so, they decided that instead of reshooting and going back, they decided we'll use that and see what happens to it. And then they reshot part of it so that so that he would be, he would be, like, in that he would be the one crouching behind. Originally, they were gonna have, I guess, Leland crouching behind Lewis Bell and, you know, the guy who played, Leland, but they just they put they reshot it and had him be there.
Professor WHAM:So it's, and they did that because of that mistake, which, by the way, gray Grace Sabrinski plays some of the she is she does creepy so well. Yeah.
AP Strange:Yeah. And I mean, the guy that plays Bob is terrifying. Like, the first time he shows up really in the show and you see him and he's, like, crawling over the bed and he's, like, at this wild expression on his face, It just, like, looks like a wild animal. It's just, like
Professor WHAM:Right.
AP Strange:Really scary.
Professor WHAM:Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It's yeah. I mean, I think and and, yeah. Well I
AP Strange:can only imagine, like, straight laced TV watching audiences seeing that for the first time must, like, really freak people out. And, you know, because I I never watched it until later, but, you know, it freaked me out.
Professor WHAM:Right. Well and there's and there's a scene there's the at the at at the first episode of the second season, there is a highly edited shot, depiction of when Laura is murdered in the in the in the railway car car. And, you know, the way Lynch always does those kinds of murders is he does a lot of cutting and editing so that you see it from her perspective and then from Bob's perspective, like, boom boom boom boom boom boom like that. And then there's always he always uses sound effects. His sound effects murder you.
AP Strange:Yeah. Yeah.
Professor WHAM:It's like I think that's the part that most freaks me out about some of his horror sequences or his sound effects. Because even if you can close your eyes, you still hear it. You know? You still, like, hear the knife entering someone. It's really it's disturbing.
Professor WHAM:And but, you know, he's he's he's what he's doing is he's it's he's letting you understand how terrible it is, you know, this terrible thing that's happening. But when I watch that sequence now, and then later on when Bob slash Leland kills Maddie by the way, I'm apologizing to all people who have not seen these things. These are all all spoilers that were Well,
AP Strange:only kind of. Because if they haven't seen it at all, they're like, what? What? Who are you?
Professor WHAM:What the hell are you talking about? But but the scene where the scene where Leland Bob kills Maddie, both of those scenes, when I watch them now, I can only imagine how disturbing they were to audiences because that was not something that was shown on television at the time.
AP Strange:Yeah. Right?
Professor WHAM:I mean, at all.
AP Strange:Like, nineteen ninety ninety one, was it?
Professor WHAM:Or Yeah. Ninety one, '90 '2. I mean Right. You you did not portray murder like that, especially of young women.
AP Strange:Yeah. And this was a huge show. I mean, it really took off. Like, people wouldn't stop talking about it back then. So
Professor WHAM:Yeah. I I can I can remember? I mean, I remember it being talked about, and I had to sort of wait because I didn't have a TV. So I couldn't I couldn't watch it at the time. So I had to wait if it was available in other places to see that.
AP Strange:Yep. I will say, since you mentioned Fire Walk with me, the beginning of that movie, I think, is one of the coolest things ever filmed. Like, the whole little story with Chris Isaac and
Professor WHAM:Right.
AP Strange:What's his what's his butt? The What's his butt? Sutherland?
Professor WHAM:Yes.
AP Strange:Yeah. And then they meet David Lynch as as Cole at the airport, and he's got his, father's sister's girl or
Professor WHAM:Yeah. And and the and the the the the blue the blue rose girl. Yeah.
AP Strange:Right. Yeah. Lil. And she's wearing a sour face.
Professor WHAM:Yeah. Because she's wearing a sour face.
AP Strange:That whole scene, to me, that's, like, one of the most beautiful things ever filmed. He does this weird thing where he puts his hand over his head and his fingers down over his eyes, you know, and he's making And then as they're driving away, Chris Isaac explains, like, the insane encoding of messaging that happened in that one scene. You know? None of it makes any sense, really. But he's just saying it's very straightforward.
AP Strange:Like, this is an episode of Dragnet or something.
Professor WHAM:Right. Yeah. Well, and and there there are just yeah. And then and then, then that scene, I think it's in The Return. Yeah.
Professor WHAM:It's gotta be in The Return where David they they go into David Lynch's office and he's well, he's Gordon Cole. And he's Yeah. He's sitting here like this and, like, all leaning back and he's whistling in this strange way. And there's this big picture of, you know, the nuclear explosion at Los Alamos.
AP Strange:Right.
Professor WHAM:And he's just sitting there whistling, you know, it's so
AP Strange:Yep.
Professor WHAM:I don't know. There's something about that picture that I just remember.
AP Strange:Yep. And that's the thing is, like, he's really good at throwing absurdity at you in a way that's both funny and sometimes simultaneously funny and and disturbing where it's it's really black comedy.
Professor WHAM:It is. It's very, very much.
AP Strange:And, but, again, that's just another wild juxtaposition, where he does that so well. Like, because there's so much goofy funny stuff in Twin Peaks for how disturbing the story is. You know? And a lot of things that that seem like incongruities, but they they work together well when you when when you're already charmed by the characters and their weird quirky little, attributes with that, you know, you'll you'll accept a character like the log lady without questioning it too hard. And,
Professor WHAM:I think I think the log lady is brilliant. In fact, I think I think one of the the worst the worst things that that was done to the streaming version of Twin Peaks is that they took the long lady intros out.
AP Strange:Oh, alright.
Professor WHAM:And so and so I know, like, a bunch of young people who have seen Twin Peaks, but they have not seen the Log Lady intros. And I'm like, oh my god. You have to see the Log Lady intros because because it's she's kind of like her own version of a Greek chorus, you know, right at the very beginning
AP Strange:of of all that. And That's really cool way to put it. Yeah. And she's also like she's she's also kind of like an oracle. She's like just
Professor WHAM:She is an oracle.
AP Strange:Yeah. Right.
Professor WHAM:And and she and she has her own kind of way of both addressing what has been done so far, and yet telling you what's going to happen. But it's done in such a way that it's not obvious what the action's gonna be. It's just Right. You know? Yeah.
Professor WHAM:And but it's an introduction to the kind of the, feeling of it. The feeling of of the episode.
AP Strange:Now, see, like, I think this is all so important to, people like you and I who are looking at the phenomena and, like, UFOs and, paranormalia because, like, this kind of dream logic and absurdity and juxtaposition and and, like, speaking in bizarre code through acted out messages and stuff like that is really kind of, in a lot of ways, like, how the phenomena operates.
Professor WHAM:Absolutely. That is how it operates.
AP Strange:So if you wanna speak to the
Professor WHAM:That is exactly how it operates. Right. We'll just I mean, the example that comes to mind and this is something that, you know, people can look up if they want to. It's just a really good example of what I'm of what we just talked about. If you are familiar with the contactee Dorothy Izott, who who of which a documentary was made about her, like, in 02/2006, '2 thousand '7, and you can get it on Amazon Prime Mhmm.
Professor WHAM:And look at it. But there is a sequence yeah. She for people who don't know who she was, because a lot of people in the paranormal community don't know who she was. She she she passed not that long ago. She had to have been over a hundred or something when she died.
Professor WHAM:But she for a not for several decades, she took film and video of lights that she saw around the house in which she lived and other light phenomena that would occur in her home. And she's not the only one who experienced the stuff. Her daughters experienced the stuff, but she, some of her film is really kind of amazing.
AP Strange:It's
Professor WHAM:really, interesting. And she had at one point a base, I guess, Hynek came and visited her and looked at her film at the time that she had done at this time at the by that time. And he told her to keep doing it, but don't share it widely with the larger UFO community because they'll just they'll wreck the process. They'll tear it apart. Alright?
Professor WHAM:But there's this one sequence in the documentary where there where the documentarians are just trying to get kind of the story from, her family and from her daughter in particular, her oldest daughter about some of the experiences that she had with her mother. So she's she's, her the daughter is is in the kitchen, it's nighttime, she's sitting up against, she's standing up with the the window to the back, you know. Mhmm. It it's dark outside, you know. So it's the kitchen window.
Professor WHAM:She's just sitting here talking and they just film her telling a story about her mother and some of the, you know, when these experiences started and what her experience of her mother was. I mean, it's it's the the the dialogue is very normal. And then all of a sudden, as she's talking outside in the air behind her, a light pops on. A light pops on. And the light moves to the left, and then it moves to the right behind her head, and then it comes all the way over here.
Professor WHAM:And if you watch it really closely, I mean, the film is going, so it's moving pretty quickly. It's not until they until they notice they didn't nobody noticed it until they took the film home and processed it. And we're looking at it, you know, to edit it and eventually show it to the family. And then they noticed this, and they slowed it down, and they did they they, like, blew it up. And what it is, especially when it's over here, what it is is in fact, it's not just a light.
Professor WHAM:It's an oblong shape with several lights going on really quickly so fast that unless you slow it down, you can't see it. Now, like, if you're naked eye, you can't see it. But when it's it's going like this, and it's it it very much looks like a mechanical object. It's very bizarre. And one of the
AP Strange:like a spinning flying saucer with lights or light.
Professor WHAM:Very much. Well, and then you then you find out that the place where it happened, it could have been a reflection because that window didn't have a pane in it. It was open, and it didn't have a pane or anything. And the direction that it was coming from was not a place where there were no light there's no place where that could have been like, anything else. It couldn't have been it couldn't have been, like, cars or reflection or anything like that.
Professor WHAM:In fact, when they show this to the family and they they blow it up, like, two of the guys in the family who are the or who are the skeptics, they jump in their car and they race to see if there's any way that that these lights could have produced in some other fashion, and there isn't. So there's some there's something very symbolic about that. You know? It's like they don't know exactly what was happening, but this woman is talking about her mother and her experiences, and this stuff shows up over here. And Yeah.
Professor WHAM:It's whatever the phenomenon are, and I think that there's more than I personally think there's more than one kind.
AP Strange:Yeah.
Professor WHAM:What whatever they are, the way they communicate to us is through sim is through highly symbolic means. And I do think that I do I mean, my experience with it is that that comes can come in waking visions or dreams or in addition to just stuff that happens in real life to people that then cannot be easily explained.
AP Strange:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I would I would agree with all of that. It it it's a matter of of perception, I guess, and just being being there to witness it, you know, and having the eyes to see as it were. Yeah.
AP Strange:Being able to communicate some of these things. I did wanna mention since you brought up Dorothy Izott, the Blue Rose to me, that that name just, that was the name of the ministries that was run by the reverend Bob Short, who was, like, one of the original contactees. Like, he was right there with Van Tasselow and stuff. And I never knew if, Lynch was making a direct reference with that or if Mark Frost had made the reference or if that's just a weird coincidence. You know?
Professor WHAM:I I don't you know, that is something I don't know. I I don't I don't know whether he he he might he might have. That might have been. That's interesting because, actually, I didn't know that.
AP Strange:Yeah. I feel like I'm the only one that's ever picked up on that, but they also they reference project blue book in the show.
Professor WHAM:Right. Right. Exactly. Well, and Twin Peaks itself, I know I've mentioned this in other shows. Twin Peaks itself is based, you know, the the whole sort of conceit of it, of the murder of a young woman and all of that.
Professor WHAM:That is based on an actual unsolved murder case that hap that happened that Mark Frost knew about, that he grew up with, that happened just north of me in Troy, New York, the the murder of, Drew Hazel or Hazel Drew. Sorry. And, her her her murder has never been solved. But there because of the nature of that murder, all kinds of ghost stories developed around there. And Mark Frost grew up with those ghost stories, and so that's an element that he brought, into as part of the narrative feature of Twin Peaks.
Professor WHAM:So even that story is based on a ghost story. Yeah. You know, it's
AP Strange:I mean, I I feel like some of this stuff is intentional and some of it's not. And, like, I think David Lynch had a way of tapping into, the happenstance in a way, like, where something would if if it happened, it happened for a reason, so we have to include it somehow. You know? Right. But that ends up tapping into just weird synchronicities with the stuff.
AP Strange:And I think that happens with all good creative efforts. Like, all valid creative efforts in some way or another are going to to to be part of that spider web of meaning that's that exists out there.
Professor WHAM:That's a good way of putting it. Spreader web of meaning.
AP Strange:But but Lynch was particularly adept at it. Like, he was very good at editing in such a way, editing reality, really, is kinda what he's doing. But, like, it's a movie. But Yeah. Yeah.
AP Strange:But, I mean, just an example of that, I found an old UFO zine in a bookstore once. And it was, like, Max Miller's old zine that was just called saucers. And the picture on the cover is, a flying saucer photo that was taken near Twin Peaks. And, and, the place was called Twin Peaks. I think it was somewhere in California.
AP Strange:And I was just like, Twin Peaks? Wait. What? And they're, like, looking at it. I'm like, this this was published in 1955.
AP Strange:Like, what? It
Professor WHAM:I bet
AP Strange:There's no way there's no way they knew about this one little, like, weird saucer zine that was independently published in 1955.
Professor WHAM:Yeah. But you see something you see something like that, it makes your hair stand up. Yeah. It's it's like Yeah. Yeah.
AP Strange:Yeah. And then you get into, like, the Mike Cleland kind of stuff with owls and the the UFOs. And what owls kind of represent in mythology, their association with, like, conspiracy theories around Illuminati because the, like, the original Illuminati used it as a symbol and stuff like that.
Professor WHAM:Well, and then and then when he says, the owls are not what they seem. You know, that whole that whole thing, the owls are not what they seem.
AP Strange:Yeah.
Professor WHAM:Well, you know, people that he knew or, like well, for example, like, we we many who know about him know that he loved the wizard of Oz, that he that that was, like, one of his favorite movies. He also really loved I can't now now I can't remember what the movie was. But the the, but the movie that's has a character in it, of Gordon Cole.
AP Strange:Yeah. They play a little sound clip of it in the return. There's a part where
Professor WHAM:Right.
AP Strange:Yeah. We're all all all all all all all all all all all all there's watching TV and they're they're she's watching that one scene where somebody's like, where's Gordon Cole? You know?
Professor WHAM:And and that and that yeah. That wakes Doogie up. You know? That the the the the the the trapped Cooper is awakened because of that. Because it's Gordon Cole.
Professor WHAM:You know? And, so he he clearly referenced things well, and then the person, if you if you remember in the return, the the guy who is the owner of the insurance agency where Dougie works, His name is Bushnell. Well, Bushnell, Bushnell Keeler, I think that was his last name, was the man who, introduced David Lynch, a young David Lynch to what he called the art life. Like, that in sport inspired him. He he was, the father of a friend of his and, who had inspired him to become a painter, and his name was Bushnell.
Professor WHAM:So that's where that name comes from. So he he is always referencing things that are meaningful to him, things that had an to that had an impact on him in one way or another. So he draws from all of these different things, and he's he sort of reassembles them and puts them together in in a new pattern.
AP Strange:Yeah. Yeah. And unabashedly too or, like, you know, the Oz thing. For listeners, there's a whole documentary called Lynch slash Oz. Uh-huh.
AP Strange:It's phenomenal. You hear a bunch of different directors talking about the influence of The Wizard of Oz on Lynch's works, but kind of how it impacted their work as well. And you see this all kind of as a continuous narrative tradition, really, in cinema that that are that's carried through the works of Lynch to other directors now.
Professor WHAM:Right.
AP Strange:Which is which is a damn cool thing. I think it's at its most obvious and wild at heart, there's a lot of really direct references to the wizard of Oz.
Professor WHAM:Right. That that yeah. There yeah. I mean, that's what makes that movie fun. Yeah.
Professor WHAM:That, you know, that movie is that movie, I've told like I told you, that movie is problematic for me because it's actually fun in a lot of ways Right. And really funny. But it's so but it's
AP Strange:being Elvis is just kinda
Professor WHAM:Yeah. But it's so violent that I have trouble touching it. You know? It's so it's so violent that I have you know, it's like, ugh. Right.
Professor WHAM:But but it is it is I think it probably I agree with you. It probably encapsulates a certain aspect of who of of the different parts of of Lynch. Like, in his book, Room to Dream, one of the things he talks about is that when he when he looked back at his life, he realized that as a teenager, he had, like, these three different sides to himself. There was the person who was the kid, you know, that wanted to be that was the family kid, you know, that that loved his family and and because he had a good family. He was raised with lots of love.
Professor WHAM:You know, he had almost a bucolic childhood, and and he talks about that. You know? So there was that part of him that wanted to be part of his family, and then there was the part of him that wanted to be a painter.
AP Strange:Yep.
Professor WHAM:And he wanted that creative life. And then there was another part of him that was exploring things like, you know, kind of wanted to be a wild kid, you know. Right. So he was exploring sex and he did he experimented a little bit with drugs. And he never got himself into some real any really bad trouble.
AP Strange:Mhmm.
Professor WHAM:But he had these, like, three sides to himself, and he and as he puts it in the book, and I wanted them I wanted them clearly demarcated from each other, you know, in very different realms. Right? But obviously, eventually, you can't do that. You know, it's like it's all coming from you. So that's part of where I think he gets his tendency sometimes.
Professor WHAM:This is very clear in Lund Empire, and certainly clear in Mulholland Drive where you have one character, but all of a sudden you see them going off in different places with different names. You know? Yeah. That's super interesting. These kind of these different realities, these possibilities of what might happen if you go down this direction.
Professor WHAM:Well, and that's implied in the return too because because what what agent Cooper's big mistake is is that he thinks he can control all this.
AP Strange:Yeah. Yeah.
Professor WHAM:And and he fails.
AP Strange:Well, AJ Cooper's the the fool of the tarot deck Right.
Professor WHAM:In a
AP Strange:lot of ways. You know? And he starts out thinking he has all the knowledge already. You know? Yeah.
AP Strange:It's wow. That's, that's really wild too. And, like, Oz the the Oz and Kansas dichotomy is, like, a huge thing. The way you see the same characters that were on the farm or the mean old lady that's trying to take Toto away.
Professor WHAM:Right. Right.
AP Strange:And how they how they appear in the, in this, like, other world, the boss. You know? And, I think it's interesting too that, L. Frank Baum was a the a theosophist. He was a member of the Theosophical Society, and he would I think he worked Theosophical ideas into the books at least.
Professor WHAM:He did. Yeah.
AP Strange:Some some of which would have translated into the movie naturally even though the movie has notable differences from the book.
Professor WHAM:Right.
AP Strange:One thing that documentary really did was point out some of the the, illusions to the Wizard of Oz that I never would have picked up on, like the ruby slippers. Like, anytime you see somebody with red shoes in one of David Lynch's works, something's about to happen.
Professor WHAM:Right.
AP Strange:Like, like, wow. Okay. I never picked up on that before, but now now it really makes sense. You know?
Professor WHAM:Right. Well and he has this whole thing about women in stilettos and and and beautiful women too. I mean, he loved I mean, he loved beautiful women.
AP Strange:Yeah.
Professor WHAM:I mean, he really does. So that becomes really clear in all of those. He just really loves beautiful women. And, and and he talks about, like, when he was a teenager, you know, he always had one special woman a young woman that he dated, but then they both would date lots of other people. So he wasn't a going steady type.
AP Strange:Right.
Professor WHAM:You know?
AP Strange:I mean, well, that that thing kinda hit me too because it wasn't just women. It's like when David Bowie shows up as Philip Jeffries in Fire Walk with me, he's wearing red shoes. He's got this white suit on and a red and red shoes.
Professor WHAM:And red shoes.
AP Strange:Yeah. Yeah. And then he starts saying, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna tell you about Judy.
Professor WHAM:We're not gonna talk about Judy.
AP Strange:Right. And and you got these references to characters named Judy that you never see because of Judy Garland, which is just like, oh, shit. And it's like, I I I let Lynch's stuff just wash over me a lot, and then I and and you think, okay. Well, it's all open to interpretation. He doesn't want you to ascribe he doesn't want you to, like, ascribe his own specific meaning to it.
AP Strange:But then when you see these patterns, you're like, goddamn it. Just, you know but to the point where after I watched this documentary, I went to I was at a fast food joint. I was on I was driving somewhere and had to stop for food, and, the man in front of me in line is wearing these bright red sneakers. And I was like, uh-oh. Like, the the hackles went up a little bit, and those just got to happen.
Professor WHAM:It's like all all of a sudden, you're gonna see those wavy lines. There's wavy lines on the floor, and then the red curtain's gonna open.
AP Strange:Boy, man. Is my hamburger gonna start talking to me when I just
Professor WHAM:well and I've had I I've had some really weird Lynchian moments too. Like, I I this happened, like, maybe it was during the pandemic. Oh, what was it? It was yeah. It was during when I started commuting back to work, you know, as the pandemic was closing, there's this there's this place where I go I have to go across the Hudson River to go through Poughkeepsie to get to my job.
Professor WHAM:And Mhmm. The it's Mid Hudson Bridge, and this is one of the bridges all the bridges that are across the Hudson are bridges that people routinely I mean, and it's kind of terrifying jump off of to commit suicide. And, I was as I was as I was approaching the bridge, a lot of times, unless there's something else going on, they'll they'll have a sign there that says something like, your, you know, your life matters. You know, call 988, that kind of stuff. Your life matters.
Professor WHAM:And as I was driving down, I was listening I was listening to a song, and the song, the song had a lyric in it that said something about no life mattering or something. So as I was driving down, just as I saw that sign and it flashed all lives matter, the song said no lives matter. It happened at exactly the same time. And I thought to myself, yeah, I guess those are the two choices, aren't they?
AP Strange:Yeah. Those are the two opposite pieces.
Professor WHAM:Those are the two those are the two choices, you know. So, you know, I have I have a I have a wait. You're not your people aren't gonna see this, but I have a sign up here that just will you see this?
AP Strange:Nice. They Yeah. They make they make the decals that say directed by David Lynch now that you Yeah.
Professor WHAM:The d the decal is on my car.
AP Strange:There you go.
Professor WHAM:It's it it placed in such a way that I can look at it looking out so that it's like everything I see has been directed by David Lynch.
AP Strange:One thing I did kinda wanna bring up with with this kinda like symbolism that I find that's really interesting about the Wizard of Oz and as it applies to Lynch and all of all of the stuff is just kind of the story of that movie outside of the movie. Because we're talking about, like, the book by Balm and the slippers. In the book, they were silver slippers, not real. So it's that's one of those things that got changed in the movie. But then, also, the movie wasn't, like, the big blowout phenomena that people kind of assume it was because it became so classic.
Professor WHAM:Yeah. At the time, it wasn't. At the time, it wasn't. Yeah.
AP Strange:So in the documentary, they kinda mentioned that, like, the song Somewhere Over the Rainbow gets used as a musical motif in a lot of movies around that time because what didn't, like, cost a ton of money to get it, or there wasn't so tied to Wizard of Oz.
Professor WHAM:Right.
AP Strange:The because that wasn't such a huge hit. And it was in, well, a lot of, like, early film noir movies, which
Professor WHAM:is Uh-huh.
AP Strange:Really kinda crazy. And then,
Professor WHAM:Yeah. That's interesting.
AP Strange:And then Wizard of Oz kind of building a following because it got shown on holidays. Like, for a while, it was showing always on Easter, and then and then it eventually became Thanksgiving, I think.
Professor WHAM:Yeah. I could that's that's when I remember seeing it.
AP Strange:Yeah. So, I mean, it's this evolution of a narrative and how it takes a different shape and form for different people at different times that
Professor WHAM:Right.
AP Strange:I think is, like, super interesting when when you have, like, a hundred years of a story. Because I think it was originally written in, well, the the early part of the twentieth century anyway.
Professor WHAM:I think it was the eighteen nineties is when it was first or at least the first volumes of it were published. Yeah. I mean and the other thing about it too is that when it first the first version of it that came out had to be was edited because there were, like, two or three sequences in the movie that were that were considered to be too terrifying. And so they they edited them. One was the sequence of the of when, you know, when the wicked witch first shows up and there's that fireball.
Professor WHAM:You know? And and and and, you know, the the woman, the actress who played the witch, she got actually burned for real, like, really badly in that. But apparently, when they first shot it, they it was too they kept in some of the graphic nature of what happened because she actually really screamed. And they kept that they kept that in and it was which is rude to to begin with, but, they they had to cut part of that and edit it. Yeah.
AP Strange:And the
Professor WHAM:other and another thing that they edited was the tornado sequence. Because apparently, the original tornado sequence was so terrifying to people. I have the unedited version. You can get the unedited version of of that's been it's been which has had some of that stuff restored. And because I would I was curious as to what they edited out and and I wanted to see that tornado sequence because, you know, for it's actually a pretty well done tornado tornado, you know, for for the time period.
Professor WHAM:You know, they they came up with a really good kind of prop way of doing it, and the original sequence is pretty scary. If you've ever been in a tornado, I was watching it. I was like, oh my god.
AP Strange:Oh, yeah. I was about to say, if you've ever actually seen one before Yeah.
Professor WHAM:Or you've been one. Like, I've been in one, like, coming towards the house. You know? It's like Yeah. You know, I can see why people would be completely freaked out about that.
AP Strange:I only got that close once in in Pennsylvania. A tornado tore through when we were camping, and I could see it in the distance. And it looked just like the Wizard of Oz. It looked just like let's say, you know, it's like, wow. This is scary.
AP Strange:You know?
Professor WHAM:Yeah. They they did a really good job of figuring out how to I mean, and they I mean, I don't know if you know how they they they figured out a way of using a weighted silk bra a silk stocking and and whirling it in a certain way. And I don't know exactly how they manipulated it, but it's to me, it's it's actually because it's an actual object whirling, it's Mhmm. It still is better than any of the CGI tornadoes I've ever seen in terms in terms of, you know, being realistic. But I
AP Strange:love those practical effects for sure. Yeah.
Professor WHAM:Well and and and also I think that, my understanding of when The Wizard of Oz first came out, you know, it was it was it was released right as war was beginning to break out in Yeah.
AP Strange:Nineteen thirty eight. In Europe
Professor WHAM:in 1938, you know, right before, you know, the invasion of Poland. And so it reflects a lot of that tension. And it was kind of seen as a scary movie by a lot of people.
AP Strange:Yeah.
Professor WHAM:You know? It it
AP Strange:what right.
Professor WHAM:You know, at the time, which is why it wasn't as popular, I think, as it became later on.
AP Strange:Yeah. Yeah. Because people are looking at it with rose tinted goggles, I think, later on. You know? So, but, yeah, I mean, then the added layer of that is the reality of it with, like, Judy Garland's life story as a male actress that you know, and her rocky journey through Hollywood and stardom.
AP Strange:So I I mean, there's so many layers to that for for David Lynch to draw on, which is just a super interesting thing. So I can't recommend the documentary enough because it'll really make you look at it. Everything it looks like you look at everything differently after that.
Professor WHAM:Yeah. Yeah. I'm good. Yeah. I'm I I I that's that's something I had not been able to watch before we started talking so that I Yeah.
Professor WHAM:I'm I'm going to watch that.
AP Strange:And it has John Waters talking about David Lynch. And I could listen to John Waters talk probably for, like, an hour and not get sick of it. So
Professor WHAM:He's terribly interesting. Yes. He's
AP Strange:Yep.
Professor WHAM:He's he's got
AP Strange:The, one thing that we didn't get to yet, and I definitely want to before before we run out of time here is, the the transcendental meditation as a
Professor WHAM:Oh, yes.
AP Strange:Part of Lynch's story. And you actually took his, what was it? The master class?
Professor WHAM:Or what what
AP Strange:is the yeah.
Professor WHAM:Yeah. There yeah. There's there's that platform that you can subscribe to online that's called master class. And in in it depending on, like, what what you're interested in, whether it's cooking or a skill or other creative things. Like, I I joined I joined it during the beginning of the pandemic because I I just I needed while I was doing other things like job hunting and stuff, I needed something to listen to that would sort of I I like to listen to creative people talk.
Professor WHAM:Like, one of the things I really love is listening to directors and actors talk about their craft because that is one thing I don't do. I do many things, but like you, I've written a lot. I've written poetry. I've I've written short stories. I, you know, I've that's sort of where I have focused a lot of my creative attention is writing.
Professor WHAM:But I, like, I love to know how actors do things because acting is like to me, if you to me, what actors do is remarkable. It's it's Yeah. It's it's, like, the most amazing thing. I don't know how they do it. I really don't, but I love to listen to them talk about how they do it.
Professor WHAM:So I wanted to listen to Helen Mirren talk about her stuff. I wanted to list and David Lynch has he talked about being a director and about the process of creativity. And as part of that process, a lot of his master class is about TM, and it's about his meditative practice and how important that is for his ability to, as as he put it in other places, catch the big fish. You know?
AP Strange:Yeah. Right.
Professor WHAM:It's part part of how he put it catch the big fish. So he talks about and there's like a whole sequence in in there. It's like a if you subscribe to it, you you you watch the episodes, the classes, and then there are these extra little things that he did. And so he did, like, fifteen or twenty minutes on transcendental meditation. He doesn't teach you the technique because he's not a transcendental meditation teacher, but he does describe it and he describes, what he did, you know, and how he did it.
Professor WHAM:And and transcendental meditation is a very simple form of meditation. I mean, I guess we would call it a mantra form of meditation.
AP Strange:I mean, it's simple but really effective.
Professor WHAM:Right. Well, and if it if it and especially if it resonates with you. I mean, my my form of meditation is a little bit different than that, but, he he talks about, you know, obviously, he doesn't tell you the syllable he was given because everybody's given a separate syllable, yeah, from the Sanskrit language or word to focus on, and you focus on the sound of it, what the sound of it is, and you let the sound of it resonate in you.
AP Strange:Yeah.
Professor WHAM:And and then you let it take you where it takes you. And so he described the process of how it originally caused him to literal as he puts it, he dropped down and down and down and down and down in an elevator. It's kind of like going down into the depths, and he experienced what he calls, you know, the universal mind or the universal unified field. That's how he described it. And from that that place, these images come up and that's it's like being in it's like being in a dream world and these images come up and then those images stay with you and you work with those images to see, as he put it, to see where they show up in your life, to see where, they connect with other things.
Professor WHAM:You let the the the image and the emotion connected to that image take you somewhere, take you where it goes. I mean, there's this one sequence in the return where he has a dream. He talks about how he's in a dream having a coffee with Yeah. That that famous actress, whoever her name is, that famous French actress, and she's and she's she's got her hand in a mudra. I don't know if Yeah.
Professor WHAM:You know, she's got her hand in a mudra and she's talking about how we're all in a dream. This is all a dream.
AP Strange:Right.
Professor WHAM:And it and that's a dream that he's sharing with other people. And and in the background, there's there's this picture of of over kind of superimposed on it, this picture of agent Cooper just there having, you know Yeah. So it's it's it's a it to me, it's like a central part of that whole show is is just that right there. But he got those images and how they connected to his dreams. He got that from, his meditation practice, which apparently he did twice a day religiously for decades after he was exposed to
AP Strange:it. Yeah. Every single day. Seeing him respond in some interview somewhere. He was like, I haven't missed a meditation since 1972.
Professor WHAM:You imitated him really well, by the
AP Strange:Oh, I've I've been doing that for a long time. I was kinda making fun of him a little bit during the return because, my wife was getting frustrated with the lack of actual Cooper in the return and, like Oh. And it so I was watching it by myself pretty much. And then there's a scene where he's, there's a a scene in one episode where they're just playing the song Green Onions by Yes. And the MGs.
AP Strange:Uh-huh. And somebody's just mopping the floor, and it's the whole song.
Professor WHAM:That yes. And that is so that's such a brilliant he says yeah. And and you hear and you hear the guy in the back the background going, he he's talking about how he owes me for two.
AP Strange:Right.
Professor WHAM:He owes me for two.
AP Strange:Basically, nothing happens in that scene. It's just a guy mopping and a guy counting the register down.
Professor WHAM:And But he and he's and he's talking on the phone explaining to this guy that he has he has to he has to pay him for the two the two grade a high school horrors that he
AP Strange:Oh, yeah.
Professor WHAM:Yeah. Yeah. Right. So
AP Strange:I watched this scene, and I was like, this is this is where, like, the old me comes back where I'm like, come on. Come on, David Lloyd. What are you doing? So I was making fun of him, and I was just like, I had always wanted to film a scene where someone just mops the floor and green onions by Booker T and the MG's plate. And, I did that same invitation for my friend, SJ, and they told me that he actually said that exact thing in an interview once.
AP Strange:He was like, I just really wanted to film this scene. I always had it in my head that somebody should be mopping a floor while green onions plays.
Professor WHAM:But they're actually they're actually sweep they're actually sweeping the floor.
AP Strange:Is this sweeping out there?
Professor WHAM:They're actually sweeping the floor. You know?
AP Strange:Or whatever the case, that was something he always wanted to do. And then he just, like, got a chance to do it. And I said it in a way that he has to, like, make fun of him, and I was like, well, I guess I tapped into something there. But I mean I mean, I don't know. Like, it's kinda funny because it seems like even just talking to you now, I feel like I find things that that I, had in common with them that I didn't even really know.
Professor WHAM:Right.
AP Strange:But, and and TM is one of them. I mean, when I was a teenager, I knew a girl that introduced me to a whole lot of things. She's the one that got me into, like, tarot and punk rock and a whole lot of other stuff. But she was learning TM, and her teacher, I guess, had given her permission to give me a Sanskrit syllable because, you know, I couldn't go to the teacher directly for whatever reason. They were kinda far away.
AP Strange:I guess she was given permission to give me one, and I still know it. Like, I know it in my head, and I used to do it pretty regular. And I I would get those kinds of images and stuff. So I guess this stuff has a way of overlapping where, you know, every once in a while, I still do, and I do different kinds of meditation now. But but, yeah, it was kinda wild.
AP Strange:And that was one of those things that with mysticism in general was eye opening for me. Because this friend that had given me a syllable to use for TM said that I wasn't allowed to tell anybody what it was. And I said, okay. And she goes, I mean, I'll tell you mine. I don't care.
AP Strange:And she did. And then, her teacher cut her off. She went back for more lessons, and the teacher was like, I told you not to tell anybody what your syllable was, and you did. Like, I know that you did, so I'm not gonna teach you any further because you can't follow directions. And she was, like, heartbroken about it.
AP Strange:But I was
Professor WHAM:like, okay. How did he know?
AP Strange:Yeah. How how how did this person know? I think it was a woman that taught her, but I'm not I'm not sure. It was some Ashram out in Western Mass that you would go to. But it was just like, or the p pagoda of some kind.
AP Strange:But, I think I think it was associated with Ram Dass, and George Harrison used to go there, whatever this place was. But, but, yeah, that blew my mind. I'm like, there's no way for them to have known that she could told me this.
Professor WHAM:Or no logic no logical way.
AP Strange:Right.
Professor WHAM:I mean, part of the part of the reason why I, you know, I I did I I followed the spiritual path that I follow is because I had because it was a series of dreams that led me to it. And Yeah. It was a series of really bizarre, syncretic syn synchronistic experiences that included the only experiences of honest to God, person to person telepathy I have ever encountered. So my my reaction to all that was, oh, there's there's something to this, whatever it is, you know. Right.
Professor WHAM:And it it isn't it isn't what he did, but I have some of the same kinds of experiences with what I do, you know. I'm given information about things that I should do. I'm given information about, like the state of the world right now. I'm given information about how to proceed, how to help other people, things to say. It's there's you know, I think that what I mean, and and we and we talked before we got into this about, you know, the Seth material and how this might overlap with some of the Seth material because there are some concepts that are similar between what Lynch does, you know, from the kind of the spiritual underpinning of what he does or metaphysical underpinning of what he does.
Professor WHAM:And some of the ideas in Seth like, simultaneous time, multiple lot multiple lives, the importance of synchronicity, the importance of emotion Mhmm. In in influencing events, and desire in influencing events. All of these things are things that overlap with ideas that you'll find in the Seth material. But to me, what it really comes down to and I think and and I know this sounds so bizarre because what I experience at the very foundation of what everything Lynch is doing is is love. It's a kind of interesting love about that depth, about those symbols, about, the creative process, and he does talk about that in in that master class about how the core of everything is this kind of and and I know it sounds so sappy, universal love.
Professor WHAM:You know, but it's a love that can somehow it's not there's nothing sappy about it. It's a love that can somehow hold hold all things. I mean, even things that we wouldn't normally consider to be evil or bad or dark or scary. That somehow the some of those things emerge out of the same kind of you know, we they may twist themselves because of the experiences of people or we may interpret misinterpret some of them. But at the at the at the bottom of the the unified field that he's talking about, at least from him at least from him is this love for these things.
Professor WHAM:And so underneath all that, there is a love. And that's why I think that, you know, he does things like there's a kind of rough justice in in his films. People are violent, but people who are truly villains, they kinda get theirs.
AP Strange:Yeah. Usually.
Professor WHAM:They do they kinda get theirs. They kinda die the way they've treated other people. He likes he likes real love stories to resolve in a happy way.
AP Strange:Yeah.
Professor WHAM:I mean, and he really he really does. You know?
AP Strange:He likes that storybook ending. You know?
Professor WHAM:Yeah. Well, even though he knows there's this dark part of it. And and when he like in Blue Velvet, when he shows that bizarre d s sadistic relationship between, you know, the Dennis Hopper character and the Isabella, character. He understands that behind that, there is this weird love between the two of them.
AP Strange:Yeah.
Professor WHAM:Even if it's terrifying to watch what the outcome of that is. And that's why she doesn't want what the Kyle MacLachlan character wants to give her. She doesn't want it.
AP Strange:Yeah. And he's an he's he's an outsider looking in. He's the innocent kid wandering into kind of, like, really dark territory where he doesn't belong. You know?
Professor WHAM:Right. Right. And he thinks that the love that he has is the love that she wants, but they both want love. You know? That's the love is undergirding all of that.
Professor WHAM:And I think that that's part of what makes people uncomfortable is too is that, you know, these deep desires and these longings that we have that that that kind of join, you know, sex and violence and and love and all these things together, it's difficult when we're facing that in ourselves. Well, first of all, to know what the hell to do with it, but also a lot of people don't wanna face that in themselves. You know, they they don't want I mean, what's going on with some people in the world right now is this desire to try to create a world that they think everybody should have. Yeah. And it's like Yeah.
Professor WHAM:It's first of all, it's never gonna be that way. That's not the way reality is. It's it's never gonna happen. I mean, every attempt to do this, it's it's what cults attempt to do. You know, you you you encounter the reality of the world and it freaks you out, and so you gravitate towards trying to control the fear by tamping everything down.
Professor WHAM:What he does is he just, first of all, shows that's crazy, but also just he releases it. It's just like, boom. You know? Here it is.
AP Strange:Yeah. Paradoxically, through the control he exerts as the director with, like, a Exactly. About it. You know?
Professor WHAM:Well, you've got you've gotta have some control to create a product. You know what I mean? And it's
AP Strange:Yeah. No. I mean, yeah, that's all that's all fantastic. It's a great way to look at it because, I mean, there is David Lynch, the personality, and then there's the the work. And, I mean, if you're to watch something super violent in one of his movies or really scary in one of his movies, you you might get some weird ideas about who the director is.
AP Strange:And then you see him in an interview. He's always really likable, and his passion and energy and, I mean, even when he's inscrutable, that just comes off as as as absurd and kinda funny. You know? Yeah.
Professor WHAM:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, one of his friends described him as, Jimmy Stewart from Mars.
AP Strange:That's perfect. Yeah. But I love that stuff. And I mean, during the pandemic, I mean, that's come up a couple times now in the conversation, our via our relationship to the work. But, David Lynch was on Twitter every day in weather reports.
AP Strange:You know? And Yes. And there's so many great ones. And even just things you would tweet. Like, I saw this shared after he was dead, a series of tweets, one on a Friday and one on a Sunday.
AP Strange:And what the Friday one just said, I I think this weekend, I'm gonna find out if I'm connected to the moon. And then the Sunday one says, pretty sure I'm connected to the moon.
Professor WHAM:Oh god. You know? I I mean, ugh.
AP Strange:But, yeah, there's a lot of eerie stuff with it, that always just I I think he he's able to meet most people where they are in some way or another as long as at some point in their life, they're ready to accept that kind of that kind of dark mirror or or, I guess, fun house mirror version of of what everything really is, what we all really are.
Professor WHAM:Well, what we really are. What we you have to be able to accept that in yourself. You know, be willing to see it.
AP Strange:Right. And it's a little puppet theater, but there's, you know, the the the hands are attached to somebody and it's all very real, ultimately. You know?
Professor WHAM:Yeah. I mean, what it reminds me of is I mean, I'm sure you know in the Kabbalistic tree of life, you have, you know, you have the sphero, you know, so you have you can have all these different meditations that kinda go with that. But then there's the Klipa, you know, the tree of knowledge. And and and so you have, you know, you have certain people like, you know, Kenneth Grant who have taken you through the tunnels and you have all these different things. So it was maybe about, I don't know, maybe about six or seven years ago, I decided, you know, I had gone through the regular tree of life.
Professor WHAM:I decided I would I would use all of the different sources available to me and do a for a year, I would concentrate on the clip boat. Mhmm. And go through all those meditations. And what I felt so disturbing is that, while I had had difficulty with certain of the meditations of the sparrow, I had no difficulty with any of them on the. It was like, they would get instructions.
Professor WHAM:I'd go right in. Boom. You know?
AP Strange:Right
Professor WHAM:in. I'd have these weird experiences. You know? I'd like and and they and it was like, why is it that the Klipa seems more natural to me than the Sphero? What does that say about me?
Professor WHAM:I'm
AP Strange:not sure if we say about yeah.
Professor WHAM:And and and and the conclusion that I drew from that is that I have never bought the external view of things. I've just this I don't relate to it. I've never bought it. I'm one of these people that I look it up my backyard and, you know, you see the backyard and it's got all these this beautiful grass and these trees and you hear the crickets and, you know, it's looks very bucolic in the in the in in the, summertime, you know, and all I'm thinking about is all the bugs who are eating each other. That's literally when I hear everything, I hear I hear all the bugs.
Professor WHAM:It's like, this is just a realm of hungry mouths.
AP Strange:Yeah. That's Wow.
Professor WHAM:That's what I see. You know? I have to pull back and see the beauty. It's It's like
AP Strange:Yeah. And I guess the the the ultimate aim is to just synthesize those things. Right?
Professor WHAM:Exactly.
AP Strange:You put them together and square those opposites so that that that's the I think that's that's probably what you would see if you find that unified field at the bottom. You know?
Professor WHAM:Yeah. Is that they both they both emerge. They are both there. Yes. Yeah.
Professor WHAM:So Yeah.
AP Strange:Well, I mean, I think we covered a lot of ground. We've been talking for a while. We could probably talk forever on this, but, yeah. The a lot of esoterica around David Lynch that is I actually got chills a couple of times in this conversation because
Professor WHAM:I Wow.
AP Strange:It's all just making too much sense to me. You know? So, I, I thank you so much for coming on to talk with me about this. It was kind of a kind of a short notice thing because, like, within a week or two of his passing, I was like, I was poking you on Messenger and being
Professor WHAM:like, do
AP Strange:you wanna come on? So
Professor WHAM:Yeah. Well, actually, it's it's helped a lot. I mean, I I I do, actually I mean, I have to say that his death I feel like his I I this sounds so I say this and I sound so egotistical, but I don't mean it in in an egotistical way. I really feel like a geist do you know what a geist is?
AP Strange:I know the term, but
Professor WHAM:Oh, oh, it's it's a Celtic term and it means Okay. It means, like, if a geist has been laid on you, that means you've been given a task. Something has been you know, it's like you've been given a message and you need to do something. And I I do feel like a geist was laid on me, because of the synchronicity surrounding his death, And it has to do with me focusing a lot more on my creative processes, which I have been sort of ignoring.
AP Strange:Yeah. Yeah. So it's kind of a get to work.
Professor WHAM:Yeah. Yeah. It's because he was such a work dog. You know, he was always doing stuff. Even when he wasn't doing films, he was painting and and Yeah.
Professor WHAM:Because that was his first love. He was painting and he was all and doing music. He was always involved in that kind of thing. So you know?
AP Strange:But he also loved all of it. I mean
Professor WHAM:He loved all of it. Yes.
AP Strange:He was always he was always fishing. You know? So He
Professor WHAM:was always fishing. Looking for the big fish.
AP Strange:Yep. Yep. Alright. Well, I mean, yeah, this has been a wonderful chat. So, if people wanna find you online and read some of your work, I would highly recommend, professor Wham's YouTube and and website, which you'll if you go to one, you'll find the other, I think.
Professor WHAM:Right. Right. It's professorwham.com.
AP Strange:Professor wham Com. Yeah. And, I mean, you have a a lot of great stuff up there. And we've actually had a couple synchronicities between us recently too because we both talked about the the debit enigma in videos, like, pretty much at the same time.
Professor WHAM:Right. Right. That's true. That's true. That's very interesting.
Professor WHAM:It's true. And that is those are weird cases, man.
AP Strange:Yeah. Absolutely. So definitely go check out the, you you can you can either read well, what's really cool about what you do, is that you can either read it or watch a video, and you and you can for a lot of them, you have a transcript and a video where you read it. So it's, Right. Yeah.
AP Strange:I think that's awesome because people have options. I know a lot of people have a hard time reading things on the screen. I'm kinda I'm kinda there. If it's a little too long, sometimes I can't I I can do I can do it like a page or two, but then my eyes start bugging out on me. So
Professor WHAM:Right. Well, and I do I do various of the blogs in different ways, but, it it's a lot of times the audio version will have, like, additional material and some visuals and I'll ad lib
AP Strange:stuff Yeah.
Professor WHAM:That comes up, you know, as as it occurs to me. So stuff you can't do in print. So
AP Strange:Yep. But yeah. I mean, I I think I I think listeners to this show, if they haven't already, will will very much enjoy your YouTube channel and your website, because it's just it's a lot of fascinating stuff. And as I said at the top, you're one of my favorite people to read and listen to. So
Professor WHAM:Oh, thank you. I appreciate that. Appreciate that.
AP Strange:Of course. So, thanks so much for coming on. And, until next time, we'll try to keep our eyes on the doughnut and, on the whole.