The One That Got Away
Last Memorial Weekend I attended with my wife and family a conference at the Maharishi University on creativity and Transcendental Meditation billed as “Catching the Big Fish,” titled after a book by the Keynote speaker David Lynch. It seemed like an interesting pairing and I must admit I was perversely drawn to the possibility of seeing the David Lynch, especially if he were to hold forth on the subject of creativity. My wife, Jenna, a long time practitioner of TM was also intrigued and we shared one seat at the conference trading opportunities to attend sessions and swim with our boys at the hotel pool. The conference was really a celebrity media event with film cameras everywhere that seemed to function only to intimidate attendees and create the aura of newsworthiness, as if every moment needed to be captured for posterity. I actually found it easier to watch the conference on the giant flanking rear projection screens as they seemed to offer a more satisfying experience than the people seated in front of me who, slightly bored, reiterated sound bites to the attendees’ questions. Lynch did not give any talk at all instead used his sessions to answer questions from the audience while he let fly his pearls of wisdom.
My sarcasm betrays my deep disappointment as the questions were far more interesting than the answers, which seldom offered any real personal insight, often obfuscated details, and frequently avoided critical issues. In the first question to Lynch a woman asked about how it was possible for everyone to make use of their ideas, some ideas might contradict the needs of other ideas, and that perhaps not everyone can find a way to cook and eat the fish they catch. Lynch punted on this rather than concede the truth of the matter–that material needs do limit ideal creation–he insisted ideas will find a way into being when they are fully understood and beautiful. Prior to this conference I was greatly impressed by Lynch’s evident creative resourcefulness, especially when he directed a short film using a simple Lumier Brother’s style camera for the documentary Lumiere & Company (1995). His film was a brilliant and complex narrative that challenged what was possible within the narrow technical means of a single focus hand crank camera. At the conference he contented himself to talk like a spiritual guru on a high mountain that must make every utterance universally applicable to all questions. The result was a wash of platitudes and empty advice that was no better than his skimpy self-help book on the same topic. After one session with Lynch I decided skip the other two planned events with him as it was clearly more rewarding to do my fishing at the hotel pool with my kids.
