13 July 2018

"Room to Dream" by David Lynch and Kristine McKenna (2018)

One should attempt to devote one’s life to what one enjoys most and should not fight one’s nature---as long as doing so enables one to earn enough to maintain a decent lifestyle.

Being an artist is a decease, an obsession. The artist can be poor; he does not create for money. (A failure liberates unless it impoverishes.) Or the artist can be rich, owing to his obsessive work ethics.

Art deserves a life of its own.

Life’s narrative is nonlinear. Any linearity is imaginary; it emerges as one observes the world and cherry-picks facts and frames to make up stories. Reading history is a much saner enterprise than following the news because history has been pre-digested by historians, whereas the news is a madman’s nightmare.

(Similarly, one's train of thought is typically nonlinear and rarely adds up to a logically consistent system, unless one sets out to produce a mathematical model. Hence, it is nonsensical to ask, say: "What did John Rawls really mean?" He did not.)

Improvisation is ultimate art: mould the circumstances, do not get attached to what was supposed to be. The best directors and choreographers improvise off of their actors’ and dancers’ idiosyncratic skills. (Ballet trustees canonise the letter and neglect the spirit of the work, thereby euthanising it.)

Life is complete without answers.

Lynch is an inherently kind man and does not resist the impulse of kindness. But each has his own driver of creativity. Not all drivers are so benevolent, towards the creator as well as his collaborators.