For the iconic writer-director, who was diagnosed with emphysema before his death last week at 78, cigarettes were more than a habit—they were a form of meditation, a symbol of the art life, and an endless source of visual poetry.

It would be convenient to say that I was so cool that I watched it on purpose, an artsy queer suburban kid desperate for culture. I happened upon it by some mysterious channel surfing synchronicity and kept watching,

David Lynch was a visionary director of the strange and the surreal – but what we hear in his films is as important as what we see.

David Lynch famously abhorred explaining himself. “Believe it or not, Eraserhead is my most spiritual film,” the director once said of his esoteric debut feature, during a 2007 interview. When asked to elaborate,

Music played a huge role in defining the filmmaker’s distinctive atmosphere on the big and small screens. Hear 13 examples.

Books & the Arts / His visceral films, which reflect the best and worst of American life, affected viewers in realms both conscious and unconscious. Vikram Murthi In David Lynch’s Blue Velvet, college student Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) discovers that he’s both a detective and a pervert.