We're big ol' dorks for David Lynch here at Boombox Serenade, so we have—of course—been idly wondering where the Renaissance man will go after having written and recorded some of his own music for INLAND EMPIRE as well as inspiring and co-creating one of 2009's best albums, Dark Night of the Soul, in conjunction with Dangermouse and Sparklehorse. Here's what Lynch had to say about his ever-deepening relationship with music during a recent guest DJ stint on KCRW:
"I always of course loved music but was way more involved with sound
effects because of film, and I loved sound that approached music. I'm
not a musician but I love to play and I love to experiment. And I love
musicians. Musicians are, generally speaking, like children. They love
to sleep late. They're happier than most people. They get along well
(unless they're in a band and then they start fighting). They're very
special people and I love to be in the studio with musicians. It's a
thrilling, thrilling thing and it all led to more experiments with
music."
Modest talk for a man who is now inspiring entire albums' worth of material, who has himself recorded some of the most atmospheric music we've heard in a long time, and whose very name has become a cliche of music review—a shorthand way of saying "dark, mysterious, and a little perverse." Yet as always, Lynch seemed less interested in his own accomplishments than in new influences:
"I’m going to go to Richard Strauss. We’re getting into long haired
stuff now. I was in a really swank Mercedes Benz in Germany one night.
Black, deep black and snow flakes the size of silver dollars coming
down. And I'd been left in the car -- I forget who I was with but they
had gone into a building and I had been left in the car -- and I turned
on the radio and I heard this thing. And it thrilled my soul. This
particular piece of music at that particular time, I saw in my minds
eye, my four year old son coming down a flight of stairs and it made me
start crying."
It makes sense, of course, that Lynch would be drawn to a genre full of voices so rare—and rarely heard in mainstream culture—that they are, in their way, surreal. And he's always loved velvety textures, so what must it be like for him to enter an entire sonic world made of velvet and butter? I once had a fantasy of corralling an entire herd of electro-hippie ravers into a room and making them listen to Lorraine Hunt Lieberson perform Handel live, but I'll trade in this fantasy for one David Lynch film with lots of opera in it.
You can hear Lynch's full KCRW guest DJ spot here. And since KCRW couldn't be bothered to play the whole "Im Abendrot" track by Strauss that Lynch was referring to, here are a few links to some performances recommended by the excellent Opera Chic blog:
It's worth noting that "Im Abendrot" means "at sunset," and it's from a poem by Joseph von Eichendorff. Strauss happened upon this poem during his final days of his life and set it to music:
We've gone through joy and crisis
Together, hand in hand,
And now we rest from wandering
Above the silent land.
The valleys slope around us,
The air is growing dark,
And dreamily, into the haze,
There still ascends two larks.
Come here, and let them flutter,
The time for sleep is soon.
We would not want to lose our way
In this great solitude.
O vast and silent peace!
So deep in twilight ruddiness,
We are so wander-weary -
Could this perchance be death?
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