David Lynch on Where Ideas Come From

The Atlantic has put up this terrific video interview with director David Lynch, in which he discusses the nature of creativity and how he develops his ideas for films and TV. Enjoy.


Lynch rejects some of the traditional ideas about creative inspiration, particularly that writers should try to "write what they know" and that artists must suffer for their art. He seems to feel that writing and creating is less about having an initial spark of inspiration and more about having the talent and discipline to collect numerous, stray thoughts or ideas into a worthwhile/coherent whole. Anyway, the guy's a genius, and it's just fun to hear him pontificate about bubbles of consciousness and oceans of the transcendent for a few minutes.

[Hat tip, Matthew Yglesias]