A small‑town memorial for David Lynch, or rather, a speculative version of one. A brief piece about memory, invention, and the glow someone can leave behind.
We in the community of Hope continue to mark the passing of David K. Lynch, known locally as Firebug, who departed this world one year ago, on the 16th of January, 2025. Formerly of Missoula, Montana, and later of the Hollywood Hills, the late Mr. Lynch – though long absent – remains vivid in the recollection of many here, and is still sorely missed around town. The commemorative book, kept at the library for upwards of five weeks, was filled to its margins before being dispatched to the family.
Though ailing for some months, Mr Lynch’s sudden expiration, occurring in the midst of Los Angeles’s so‑called Sunset Fire, came as a fearful shock to his friends and was regarded by several as a melancholy coincidence. His fondness for flame and smoke had been well known, a peculiarity that made him the subject of idle talk and gave rise to the notion that he bore some responsibility for the town’s incendiary troubles, when nine fires broke out in a single week. Nothing was proven, and the constable at the time declined to pursue the matter further.
So too was remembered his strange interest in electricity and trembling lights. It was remarked by more than one resident that Mr. Lynch could often be found lingering beneath the streetlamps, taking slow pulls on a cigarette as he studied the bulbs buzz, dim, or waver on the edge of going out. Some now claim that the pavement where he used to stand carries a faint scorch‑mark that no amount of scrubbing has ever quite removed.
While most set the habit down to his artistic vocation – light being, in his own words, the very heart of all things cinematic – there persisted among many the belief that his fascination reached beyond mere aesthetics and touched something more elemental in his nature. Members of the TM circle, who still convene each month in the Radical Reading Rooms (last Sunday, 11 o’clock sharp), later affirmed as much. They spoke of his longing to sink into what he called the source of all things: an ocean, a soft violet radiance. He was known to discourse at length upon meditation. “Boom,” he would say, “I fell into bliss—pure bliss,” sometimes adding, with a casualness that unsettled some, “Wanna try it?” More than a few did. Several later reported that their first attempts coincided with a brief flickering of the lights in the Triple-R, though no fault was found in the wiring.
Much as when the news first broke, a sorrowful crowd again gathered in the Square this year. People spoke as the mood took them. Newsman Dr. Billie Adam moved through the gathering recording a few words. Documentary filmmaker Lynn Burns (RedAnts Productions) was also present, visiting to collect material for her forthcoming study of Mr Lynch’s life and work, saying “In every account, there is a sense that he never quite left this place.” She declined to reveal the title of her film, but, owing to our curiosity, allowed a brief preview of her footage, and we are pleased to note that the townsfolk acquitted themselves most admirably.
“He once told me he loved seeing people come out of the darkness,” said Ward Shotgoe. “Firebug’s eyes are closed now, but I hope they open again in the bright light of the ever after.”
Roselle P.: “He treated life like a dream. Magical. I loved–”
R.W.: “–Right. The imagination. The risks. The possibilities. He made you feel the world still held its strangeness–”
A newly arrived fan: “He’d follow his nose and – bang – there was Bob. Bob!”
Lantern-Waldo: “–don’t… lose the wonder of our lives.”
After speaking at length about Eraserhead and the Bible, Mary Grant concluded, through tears, that “He was a visionary soul, whose moving‑pictures showed me that things need not make sense to possess meaning or beauty.”
“–a wierdie,” Judas Booth said, lifting his steaming Triple-R one-cup.
“The world,” murmured Candy Consigliere, lighting her American Spirit, “just got a whole lot greyer.”
As the crowd thinned and the January light withdrew from the Square, several remarked upon a faint tremor in the lights overhead, though the evening was still and the electric fixtures had no cause to stir. Dr. Adam noted this without comment. By nightfall the people of Hope had returned to their homes, yet many reported an unusual brightness lingering in the windows, as though some pale radiance had followed them in. Whether this was owing to memory, imagination, or some remnant trace of Firebug himself, no one cared to say. It is only recorded that, for a time, the town seemed illuminated in a manner not seen before nor since, and that those who witnessed it remember the hour with a mixture of sorrow and quiet wonder.
What brilliant, broken plans are lost now in the wind…
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