Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity

This autobiographical tour through the creative process of one of the most interesting and influential American filmmakers may give you a few ideas of your own. Lynch's metaphor for finding inspiration -- catching fish -- seems an especially apt one for writers and, of course, filmmakers. The ocean where Lynch goes fishing is the unconscious, accessed (for him at least) through transcendental meditation. He's a tireless advocate for TM, but this book doesn't sound like a commercial message for the practice. In his folksy, matter-of-fact voice, he simply explains how it has helped him to come up with the mind-bending narratives and stunning images that define his films. The audiobook is divided into numerous brief chapters that would make it quite listenable on either short breaks or extended commutes.

This is directly gets to the creative process and where it comes from. It explains those Aha moments we have all had and makes you realize how important it is to take time and dive deep into the deep waters of the mind. As Mr. Lynch says, 'Where the Big Fish Are.'

Also, David Lynch turns out to be a great reader who catches you right away. I really enjoyed this little book!

Don't miss it!

The catchy title brought this book to my attention, never having heard of David Lynch. The book is a series of friendly "rants" by Lynch raging from getting creative to solving world peace. Lots of energy in his narration as well as interesting points of view reflecting how Lynch thinks we can improve our lives.

I listened to this because I'm interested in using meditation to help alleviate writer's block. I found it useful for that purpose. And it was a lot of fun to hear a director whose films I love talk about the process of making them. On the other hand, a lot of this book consists of Lynch's sincere but somewhat naive promotion of the Transcendental Meditation movement. I quickly started feeling like he was trying to sell me something. And I definitely winced on his behalf when he started explaining that physicists "have discovered a Unified Field" underlying all of reality. The Unified Field Theory, as anyone who's had a college physics course knows perfectly well, is the Holy Grail of theoretical physics. But despite the grandiose sounding name, all it means is the ability to mathematically describe the force of gravity in terms of quantum mechanics. It's just an equation. That equation hasn't been discovered yet. And if and when it is, it will not introduce some new "unified field" underlying all of creation. It will just let us describe very large and very small events in the same mathematical language. Any copy editor worth his or her salt should have caught this mistake long before the book went to press, and it's just plain embarrassing that it made it into the audiobook. There was a lot of this kind of stuff scattered through the book though. Maybe it's just standard California New Age nonsense, but it definitely left me feeling like the kool-aid factor in TM was way to high for me. I still want to pursue meditation -- but this book made it clear that the transcendental meditation movement is not the place I want to do it. That said, if you love Lynch's films or if you are a working artist or writer, this book gives some really interesting insights into Lynch's creative process. You just have to take the TM stuff with a grain of salt, I guess ....

David Lynch is amazing. He has a way of telling you things in a direct and interesting way without it feeling condescending or preachy. At times, it felt a little cultish in the way he pushed Transcendental Meditation, but it's worth it for the gems that are included throughout the book.

I have a feeling that I'll come back and relisten to this over and over again, each time picking up a new lesson about life.

Completely inspiring book.

David Lynch will inspire you to meditate daily. He narrates the book himself, which is a plus. If you like him at all, you must give this a listen

If you want to learn about transcendental meditation and how that helps David Lynch, then you could go to the internet and save some $. This book was marginally about what makes him creative and more an advertisement for transcendental meditation.

If you like movies, specially David Lynch's, and additionally you are familiar with Budhism, this book will be interesting.

If you only like buddhism, is not for you. If you only like David Lynch filmography...hmmm, maybe you will like it.