Peggy Reavey and David Lynch outside the home of Reavey’s parents in Philadelphia in 1968 | Photo: Bernard V. Lentz

Author’s Note: Episodes 1 and 2 of Song of Lynchadelphia (Season 3 of Hidden City’s Song of Philadelphia Podcast) focused on the creative big bang that took place during David Lynch’s time in Philadelphia, between 1965 and 1970. Episode 3 examined the wild ways in which the city—Lynch’s impression of the city—manifests itself in Eraserhead, Mulholland Drive, and the Twin Peaks universe. Episode 4 explored the Lynchian happenings in Philly. Episode 5 is the first part of a long interview with Philadelphia’s own Peggy Reavey, who married Lynch at 20-years old, in 1968, and is the mother of Jennifer Lynch. Available today on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, this episode interlaces Reavey’s memories with Jack Fisk’s and soundscapes from David Lynch’s films and shows, as Reavey explains how Lynch projected his deepest terrors on his living environment at the time.

“Philadelphia, Pennsylvania was a filthy city.” During his final years, David Lynch repeated those words like a mantra in interviews near and far. When he lived here from 1965 to 1970, he said, the city was filled with fear. Violence, corruption, insanity. You know how the chorus goes.

When I set out to produce the Song of Lynchadelphia season for the first anniversary of Lynch’s death, I had no reason to doubt him. I even explored a personal theory that Lynch had been traumatized by Philly and that his entire body of work, on screen as well as on canvas, could be seen as a form of catharsis. Although I came to nuance this initial view with other factors—how young Lynch was when he came over, the city’s artistic effervescence at that time—I still believed that, as he put it, Philadelphia had been his greatest influence.

And then, I talked with Peggy Reavey, Lynch’s first wife and the mother of their Philly-born daughter, Jennifer. And listening to Peggy Reavey made me realize how I little I knew—how superficial some of my assumptions had been. Now I wonder if Lynch’s mantra could have been both a crowd pleaser and a form of personal revisionism. According to Reavey, when Jack Fisk introduced her to Lynch in early 1966, Lynch had just arrived in town with a luggage full of fear. The fear, Reavey told me, was inside him. He projected it on things to create his art.

Peggy Reavey Lynch in David Lynch’s 1969 film The Alphabet

As a twenty-year old man who had just received a student deferment that allowed him to avoid being drafted during the war in Vietnam, Lynch had a lot to be fearful about. He was afraid he would disappoint his parents, and at the same time he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to live the “art life” he was meant for. He was worried about not getting the money he needed to produce the films he was dreaming up. Most importantly, he was terrorized of failing as an artist—as all artists are. Not all artists get to become David Lynch.

“We were there,” Peggy told me. “We didn’t know what was going to happen.” The David Lynch we know in 2026, the master, the genius, the icon, was anything but a foregone conclusion. Sixty years ago, when Lynch and Reavey started dating in Philadelphia, there was an infinity of futures ahead of them in which he did not become what he aspired to. I have no idea how close he came to giving up in the face of that adversity, but I am convinced that not giving up demanded tremendous willpower, endurance, and resilience, emotionally as well as artistically.

2429 Aspen Street, the house where The Alphabet was shot | Photo: Julien Suaudeau

Contemplating the worlds in which my all-time favorite filmmaker, the artist who changed my life when I was a teenager, does not exist, is a most humbling and thrilling experience. Thanks to Peggy Reavey, who witnessed first-hand how all those parallel universes folded back into nothingness, and whose presence helped forge Lynch as we know him, I now know a lot more about where the present version of me came from.