I don’t remember the first time I heard about David Lynch.
It must have been around 1991 when the Italian private television channel Canale 5 started airing a TV show called I segreti di Twin Peaks. I didn’t watch it - it was aired late at night and I used to go to bed early. But nobody could ignore the question: Who killed Laura Palmer?

I believe the first David Lynch film I saw was on a VHS that a friend lent me, curious to know what I would think about it.
The film was Lost Highway, and what I thought about it was: what’s this ugly nonsense?
Back then, I thought stories in films should be clear and understandable. 

Plus, I didn’t like his aesthetic style.
The next memory I have about him is Naomi Watts and Laura Harring looking at me in a defiant way from the pages of an Italian film magazine. I really didn’t like that photo, I thought their look was inelegant.
Then, at some point in the early 2000s, something changed.

I don’t remember the first time I watched Mulholland Drive.
But whenever I did, it changed my mind. The shift in Lost Highway was a simple idea, but what happened in this film shattered so many narrative dimensions that it felt like it broke a barrier in my brain.

I started enjoying art that freed itself from rigid frames. I realised that discontinuity in form can still communicate story and emotions.
I began to appreciate surrealism.
I started to appreciate unpredictability in art.

It was a change that was bound to happen anyway, but I think Lynch accelerated it.
I went back and revisited his work. I realised I was wrong.
I became a fan.
Some of his films I love, others I don’t. I still don’t like the coarseness of the looks of his characters and environments. 
But he embodied for me the symbol of free creativity, a true surrealist with the power to show and refuse to tell. 
He famously loved to follow the inspiration provided by accidental events, so he became an inspiration to ‘listen to the Universe’ and transform accidents into creative opportunities. I still have a lot to learn in this sense.

Now he’s gone.
Born in January, passed away in January. Like another artist, whom I initially dismissed before becoming a big admirer, did nine years ago.

I have one episode left in my rewatch of ‘classic’ Twin Peaks. Re-experiencing it, and then Fire Walk With Me and The Return, will be a very different path.
Despite all my nihilism, I won’t be able to avoid thinking that, somewhere, today, Gordon Cole and Phillip Jeffries are together, not talking about Judy.

There will never be a new David Lynch film, but there is one I haven’t watched yet.
The one that I left behind because it’s supposedly the least lynchian of them all.
Should I watch it as a tribute, or should I treasure it, unseen, for a bit longer?
Anyway, I can’t wait to be surprised.