David Lynch Recounts His Surreal Dream of Being a German Solider Dying on D‑Day

Some of last week’s major head­lines:

Police forcibly remove a large num­ber of peace­able pro­tes­tors from the area in front of a Wash­ing­ton DC church, so a 73-year-old white man can be pho­tographed stand­ing there alone, hold­ing a prop bible.

An unarmed 75-year-old white man approach­es a Buf­fa­lo police offi­cer at a protest and is shoved so force­ful­ly that he cracks his skull open, lying uncon­scious and bleed­ing as mem­bers of the force step past him with­out offer­ing assis­tance. But first the weath­er, as per­ceived by a 74-year-old white man peer­ing out the win­dow of his stu­dio of his Hol­ly­wood Hills home (one of three), pri­or to shar­ing a dream in which he is a Ger­man sol­dier dying on D‑Day….

What makes this news­wor­thy?

The date and the iden­ti­ty of the self-appoint­ed weath­er­man, film­mak­er David Lynch.

For the record, June 6, 2020 start­ed out cloudy and a bit chilly. The hope just off Mul­hol­land Dri­ve was for increased “gold­en sun­shine” in the after­noon.

(One does won­der how much time this ama­teur spends out­doors.)

76 years ear­li­er, an absolute­ly accu­rate weath­er fore­cast was essen­tial for the Allied Inva­sion of France. Mul­ti­ple mete­o­ro­log­i­cal teams con­tributed obser­va­tions and exper­tise to ensure that con­di­tions would be right, or right enough, for the inva­sion Gen­er­al Dwight D. Eisen­how­er envi­sioned.

As author William Bryant Logan details in Air: The Rest­less Shaper of the World:

In the end the Allies won the day because in order to pre­dict the weath­er, they act­ed like the weath­er. Com­pet­ing groups jos­tled and maneu­vered, each try­ing to pres­sure the oth­ers into accept­ing their point of view. In just the same way, the high- and low-pres­sure cells fought and spun into one anoth­er over the Atlantic. The fore­cast­ers rein­forced their own ideas, and none of their ideas was the win­ner,  just as each gyre and each cen­ter of low and high pres­sure pressed against the oth­ers, squeez­ing out the future among them. The Ger­mans, on the oth­er hand, believ­ing that they could con­quer uncer­tain­ty by fiat, declared that weath­er and peo­ple would con­form to their assump­tions. They were proved wrong. The Allies appeared on the beach­es of Nor­mandy, just like a sur­prise storm.

Lynch’s D‑Day anniver­sary report for Los Ange­les was his 27th, part of a dai­ly project launched with­out expla­na­tion on May 11.

His emo­tion­al weath­er seems to run cool. He relays his his­toric life or death uncon­scious encounter (it involves a machine gun) in much the same tone that he uses for report­ing on South­ern California’s pleas­ant late spring tem­per­a­tures. For the record, Lynch was born 593 days after D‑Day, and has no plans for a WWII feature—or any oth­er big screen project—in the fore­see­able future.

In a vis­it with The Guardian’s Rory Car­roll, he expressed how tele­vi­sion has become the medi­um best suit­ed to the sort of long and twist‑y nar­ra­tives he finds compelling—like art, life, and rein­car­na­tion:

Life is a short trip but always con­tin­u­ing. We’ll all meet again. In enlight­en­ment you real­ize what you tru­ly are and go into immor­tal­i­ty. You don’t ever have to die after that.

So maybe he real­ly was a luck­less 16-year-old Ger­man sol­dier…

One whose cur­rent incarnation’s foun­da­tion cre­at­ed a fund to pro­vide no-cost Tran­scen­den­tal Med­i­ta­tion instruc­tion to vet­er­ans as a way of cop­ing with Post-Trau­mat­ic Stress. Lynch named the fund in hon­or of Jer­ry Yellin, a fel­low TM prac­ti­tion­er and peace activist who, as an Amer­i­can fight­er pilot, flew the final com­bat mis­sion of World War II on August 14, 1945.

Sub­scribe to Lynch’s YouTube chan­nel to stay abreast of his dai­ly weath­er reports, like the install­ment from June 3, below, which finds him voic­ing his sup­port for Black Lives Mat­ter.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch Cre­ates Dai­ly Weath­er Reports for Los Ange­les: How the Film­mak­er Pass­es Time in Quar­an­tine

David Lynch Releas­es an Ani­mat­ed Film Online: Watch Fire (Pozar)

David Lynch Teach­es an Online Course on Film & Cre­ativ­i­ty

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her dai­ly art-in-iso­la­tion project is close­ly tied to the weath­er in New York City.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.