What is this book about?

Filmmaker David Lynch describes his personal methods of capturing and working with ideas, and the immense creative benefits he has experienced from the practice of meditation.

Lynch typically reveals very little of himself, or the ideas behind his work. Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity is a window he provides into his methods as an artist and his personal working style. In Catching the Big Fish, Lynch writes about the tremendous creative benefits he has gained from his thirty-two-year commitment to practicing Transcendental Meditation.

In hilariously super brief chapters, Lynch describes the experience of “diving within” and “catching” ideas like fish-and then preparing them for television or movie screens, and other mediums in which Lynch works, such as photography and painting. I say hilariously super brief chapters because if you’ve ever watched, seen or read any of Lynch’s other books, media, commentary, etc. The man has a tendency to be overly verbose. So I’m curious what the editing process was for a book like this.

The book comes as a revelation to the legion of fans who have longed to better understand Lynch’s deeply personal vision. And it is equally intriguing to anyone who grapples with questions such as: “Where do ideas come from?” and “How can I nurture creativity?

Why should you read this book?

Catching the Big Fish provides unprecedented insight into Lynch’s methods, as it also offers a set of practical ideas that speak to matters of personal fulfillment, increased creativity, and greater harmony with one’s surroundings.

I’ve always been pretty skeptical about meditation. In a way, I feel like I practice meditation every day anyhow. For me, meditation is the open mind. I don’t feel as though you have to practice the cliche sitting Indian style humming “Om.” I feel like I practice meditation when I’m running, laying in bed, sitting on the toilet, drawing, cooking, basically doing things that my mind and body otherwise feels is mindless work where it then lets my mind think about things I wouldn’t be able to while I have to concentrate.

I guess I always stereotyped meditation thinking that it was always a get-healed-quick-type-solution for your problems. Where you just push your anger down and never deal with it, creating obvious problems later. But a quote from Lynch from the book made me feel otherwise:

“There’s no guarantee that meditation or delivering the Wall Street Journal is going to make you a success. But, with focus and with meditation–although the events of your life may stay the same–the way you go through those events changes and gets so much better.”–David Lynch

Which really gets me thinking about my life and how to go about making it better.

I actually made an appointment with a therapist recently to try and make my life better and am also just as skeptical about therapy, if not more, than I am about meditation. But, clearly I’m not doing so well, so I’m looking at anything else to try and make things better. And Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity couldn’t have come at a better time.

It’s a very quick read and although I feel that the book caters more to the fans of David Lynch as an inside look into his psyche and rationale, it’s intriguing and interesting outside of David Lynch fandom. If anything I feel like it’s better than a regular “how-to” guide on transcendental meditation because you can actually see how someone was able to apply to their work and how it changed them and their impact on the world.

Buy it here.

Also, here are some really great quotes from the book:

“If want to get one hour of good painting in, you have to have four hours of uninterrupted time. You don’t just start painting. You have to sit for a while and get some kind of mental idea in order to go and make the right moves.”–David Lynch

“I went to a psychiatrist once, I was doing something that had become a pattern in my life, and I thought, Well, I should go talk to a psychiatrist. When I got into the room, I asked him, “Do you think that this process could, in any way, damage my creativity?” and he said “Well, David, I have to be honest: it could.” And I shook his hand and left.”–David Lynch

“Instead of instilling fear, if a company offered a way for everyone in the business to dive within- to start expanding energy and intelligence-people would work overtime for free. They would be far more creative. And the company would just leap forward. This is the way it can be. It’s not the way it is, but it could be that way so easily.”–David Lynch

“Sometimes accidents happen that aren’t happy, but you have to work with those as well. You adapt. You throw out this thing, and throw out that thing, and throw out another thing. But if you pay attention to the original idea-stay true to that-it’s surprising how, at the end, even the things that were accidents are honest. They’re true to the idea.”–David Lynch