What happens to art when the artist dies?

When I first heard about David Lynch’s passing, I didn’t quite know what to think about it. It’s always struck me as strange to see people online mourn celebrities - people they never have or will truly know - but then again, I’d never watched any of Lynch’s work. Maybe I was just missing something. So I went to find out and ended up watching What Did Jack Do? which was an, uh, interesting choice. Still, though, while it might not be the best introduction to Lynch, it did help clarify something for me. Because for all I’ll never understand crying over a person you didn’t know, I’m starting to understand mourning the art they leave behind.

David Lynch

First of all, I want to be clear that I’m not judging you for mourning a celebrity - not exactly, at least. I understand that public figures can be important in people’s lives, helping them get through hard times or work through hard emotions. Hell, these days you’re basically encouraged to have a parasocial relationship with celebrities because that kind of loyalty is very bankable, so if you’re sad about the passing of Lynch or any other celebrity, I understand and sympathise with you.

Except.

Isn’t it a bit weird? Like, think about everything that’s happened with Neil Gaiman recently - that’s pretty solid evidence that we never really know the celebrities we claim to love. So when you’re mourning their passing, who are you really mourning? A person, or the image you had of them? It’s almost dehumanising in a way, to mourn someone not for who they were but for who you imagined they were. It’s normal to feel sympathy for his family, to feel that twinge of pain that comes with any random human’s death, but to cry and grieve, especially publically online, it feels off to me.

When I watched What Did Jack Do?, though, I got a slightly different perspective. Like I said before, I doubt it’s the most representative of Lynch’s work, but its premise caught my eye - a noir short film about a monkey being interrogated in a train station about a murder? Lynch directed and played the roles of both the detective and the monkey? Yeah, I’m going to watch that.

But it was deeply confusing, a seemingly nonsensical parody of the noir genre as a whole. Though I liked it well enough, when it ended, I was left unsure of what I was supposed to take away. As I would soon read, that’s not unusual for a Lynch film. Various comments online advised that I focus on the experience and how the film made me feel without trying to analyse it. I did my best, but what I felt was that I wanted to understand. It was then, as I tried to come to terms with that experience, that I remembered that the man who created it was gone. I’d never get to ask him what he meant, nor would there be any more films to help me find my answer. If I wanted one, I’m limited to searching in what he’s left behind.

And that’s just it. Now that Lynch is gone, everything feels… behind.

What Did Jack Do? might not have been a conventional choice, but it was an apt one. The grainy black-and-white images, the dated language and fashion, the noir genre, it all just amplifies the feeling that Lynch's work no longer belongs to our contemporary world. No matter how eternal a work is, the second its creator dies, it acquires the shine of the past. That means that its flaws are washed out by our respect for the dead and forgiveness of that which belongs to a “different time”, but it also means that the art belongs to the world that existed in Lynch’s eyes, a world that has now solidly and forever fallen behind us.

This happens with everyone, of course - when I die, the world as I experience it will end too, with only glimpses left behind in letters and emails and social media posts. But when it happens to an artist like Lynch, he leaves behind a whole audience who knew his world. Some of them no doubt felt like they found themselves in it, maybe wanted to live in it. Now, though, they find themselves lurched back into the world they were trying to escape. And that? That’s worth mourning.

I don’t think I’ll ever truly get into Lynch’s work. I don’t see myself in it. Lynch’s death is only as meaningful as the death of a stranger to me : sad only in a distant way. But his work has left a mark on me now, thanks to what What Did Jack Do? helped me realise, and I feel a little more pain knowing that I'll only ever get to see his work after it started belonging to the dead world of the past. So while I might not feel a deep mourning for the man himself, I do mourn the part of his art that he took with him, the part that kept the work alive and present and real. It’s no doubt nothing compared to what his friends and family feel, but I hope it brings them some comfort to know that Lynch’s world, his soul, will be missed.