Peggy Reavey and David Lynch outside Reavey’s parents’ home in Chestnut Hill, 1968 | Photo: Bernard V. Lentz

Editor’s Note: Today, Hidden City published the second episode of season 3 of Song of Philadelphia Podcast. This season is “Song of Lynchadelphia” and it’s dedicated to the ways Philadelphia influenced the work of David Lynch, throughout his entire career. You listen to the episode right here on Hidden City’s Podcast page, on Spotify, and on Apple Podcasts. Here, host and creator Julien Suaudeau reflects on Lynch’s idea of the “art life,” which he cultivated in late-1960s Philadelphia.

It’s not just about Philadelphia’s “filth.”

Granted, when looking back on his early years, David Lynch often emphasized “the violence, the insanity, and the corruption” he had witnessed in the city when he came from Alexandria to study at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. He would lean fully into the idea that he’d been both terrified and delighted during his time
here, and that Philly had left a powerful “impression” on him. Philadelphia, he said, was his greatest influence.

I have no mind to argue with my favorite filmmaker. Still, I think it’s worth nuancing and investigating beyond the trauma sublimation theory I explored “in Smiling Bags of Death,” Song of Lynchadelphia’s season opener.

According to Jack Fisk, Lynch’s roommate during those years, PAFA classmate, best man, brother-in-law, and lifetime collaborator, two lesser-known, Philly-centric factors also came into play.

When Lynch arrived in Philadelphia, he was just twenty years-old. “It’s crazy what you do when you’re young,” Fisk told me. “Everything’s new, and it’s all kind of vibrating inside of you, and it affects you for the rest of your life.” Youth, as the power to see beauty in anything. Like Arthur Rimbaud, another precocious seer, Lynch tuned in to the deep frequencies of his living environment. He allowed himself to be moved by Philly, and he allowed Philly to become part of him. Years, decades later, his subconscious was still processing and translating that experience in works that we’ve come to recognize as masterpieces: Eraserhead, Twin Peaks, Mulholland Drive, Twin Peaks: The Return.

David Lynch and his best man, Jack Fisk, at the party following Lynch’s marriage to Peggy Reavey, 1968 | Photo: Peggy Reavey

And then, there was the vibrant artistic scene of late 1960s Philadelphia, at the Academy and beyond. Bruce Samuelson, who studied at PAFA at the same time as Fisk and Lynch, said they were part of a very special close-knit group, in which people showed each other their work and discussed their influences, such as Francis Bacon. That effervescence emboldened Lynch to explore across media—drawing, painting, sculpture—and eventually led him to film, a collective craft. But, Samuelson said, “he never gave up painting.”

What strikes me the most about the three films Lynch made in Philly is how deeply their fabrication is woven in the fabric of his personal life. Lynch and Fisk cast each other’s faces on the screen of Six Men Getting Sick (Six Times). The cries of Jennifer, the baby Lynch had with Peggy Reavey, yet another PAFA alum, are
present on the soundtrack of The Alphabet, which was shot on the third floor of the “Father, Son, and Holy Ghost” trinity house, at 2429 Aspen Street, where Lynch lived with Fisk and Reavey. The Grandmother was shot entirely at 2416 Poplar Street, the home Lynch and Reavey bought after getting married. A neighborhood boy plays the lead.

David Lynch in the “Father, Son, Holy Ghost house” – 2429 Aspen St – 196 7 | Photo: C.K. Williams

Lynch and Fisk referred to their time in Philadelphia as the “Art Life.” But art is the most fragile process—anything in life can derail it. There are so many things that could have prevented that life from happening. Both friends had the drive and the resilience to pursue their dreams, and both eventually made it big in Hollywood. Yet, they never forgot about Philadelphia. “The fact that we were there together the whole time,” Fisk said, “bonded us in a way that lasted for sixty years.”