go to great depths; your idea awaits you there
Posted by thoughtnotstatic on 3 March 2008
“Ideas are like fish.
If you want to catch a little fish, you can stay in shallow water. But if you want to catch a the big fish, you’ve got to go deeper.
Down deep, the fish are more powerful and more pure. They’re huge and abstract. and they’re very beautiful.
I look for a certain kind of fish that is important to me, one that can translate to cinema. But there are all kinds of fish swimming down there. There are fish for business, fish for sports. There are fish for everything.
Everything, anything that is a thing, comes from the deepest level. Modern physics calls that level the Unified Field. The more your consciousness—your awareness—is expanded, the deeper you go toward this source, and the bigger the fish you can catch.”
- David Lynch, from his introduction to Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creatity
Jeff Graham said
It was great to see this book quoted on your blog, Todd. I read it a while ago, and found it very insightful and very intriguing, particularly in the seemingly paradoxical way in which Lynch’s movies–that often contain rather grizzly, grueling, and disturbing scenes (at least to me)–were born out of a very ‘tranquil’ meditative practice.
todd said
Thanks, Jeff. I completely agree with your observation of the paradox between Lynch’s films and his meditative practice. I could not sit through Eraserhead, for example. Near as I could tell at the time I tried to watch it, his intention with that movie was to turn the audience into psycho-paths intent on instigating violent acts upon leaving the theater.