David Lynch: The Art Life Page #3

and my father...

instead of taking a bus

or driving to work,

would, many days,

wear his forest service uniform

and a ten-gallon cowboy hat...

and walk out the front door

and walk into DC.

It was so uncool to me...

uh, to see him going off in this, uh,

cowboy hat and this uniform.

But then later,

as it always happens with kids,

uh, now it seems, uh, supercool.

And he was his own guy, you know.

He didn't give a sh*t

about what was going on.

This was what he was.

Since my father grew up on a ranch,

and you had to...

if something's broke, you have to fix it.

And we were always building things.

Always projects.

Always, you know, working

on one thing or another on the weekends.

So this kind of goes into your brain

that you can do these things,

and they're fun.

It made all this work really fun.

And he was, uh, a research scientist.

Meaning, he was, uh, looking into things.

There's a lot of... things,

like when you punch a pin into a bug,

there's incredible textures

just to a little bug.

Incredible legs on insects,

and wings

and innards.

It's unbelievable.

I wanted to get a studio

in Bushnell's studio,

a room he was renting me.

I think it was 40 bucks a month.

And my father, bless his heart,

said he would pay half if I paid half.

So I got a job at Hurley's Drugstore

delivering prescriptions at night.

One time I came in during the daytime,

and I went to the soda fountain

to get a Coke.

And Jack Fisk was the soda jerk.

And so he said,

'I hear you have a studio."

And I said, "Yeah."

He said, "Uh, you want somebody else

to share the rent with that?"

Then pretty soon, Jack was painting

all the time down there with me,

and it was too small.

So then Jack and I got

three more different studios.

And I knew, uh, my stuff sucked.

But I needed to burn through...

I needed to find what was mine.

And the only way to find it

is just to keep painting and keep painting

and keep painting

and see if you catch something.

My father wanted me home

at 11:
00 on school nights.

I didn't wanna come home at 11:00.

All I wanted to do was paint.

So we had a big fight.

And we never had fights.

But this particular time,

it was really bad.

And I remember, like, you know,

it was terrible.

And I said I wanted

to stay out later than 11:00,

and I might have said something like,

'well, I'm going to stay out later than 11:00."

And my father said, "fine,

you are no longer a member

of this family."

And he just left the room.

And this hit me like

a, you know, sucker punch.

You know, just really.

And I went up to my room.

And I remember I just was,

like, you know, devastated.

But then Bushnell called my father.

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