Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity

Written by David Lynch

Narrated by David Lynch

In this “unexpected delight” (The Boston Globe), visionary filmmaker, musician, and actor David Lynch describes his personal methods of capturing and working with ideas, and the immense creative benefits he has experienced from the practice of meditation.

David Lynch’s Catching the Big Fish provides a rare window into the internationally acclaimed filmmaker’s methods as an artist, his personal working style, and the immense creative benefits he has experienced from the practice of meditation.

Catching the Big Fish comes as a revelation to the legion of fans who have longed to better understand Lynch’s personal vision. And it is equally compelling to those who wonder how they can nurture their own creativity.

Catching Ideas

Ideas are like fish.

If you want to catch little fish, you can stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch the big fish, you’ve got to go deeper.

Down deep, the fish are more powerful and more pure. They’re huge and abstract. And they’re very beautiful.

I look for a certain kind of fish that is important to me, one that can translate to cinema. But there are all kinds of fish swimming down there. There are fish for business, fish for sports. There are fish for everything.

Everything, anything that is a thing, comes up from the deepest level. Modern physics calls that level the Unified Field. The more your consciousness—your awareness—is expanded, the deeper you go toward this source, and the bigger the fish you can catch.

—from Catching the Big Fish

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Audio
• Release date: Dec 28, 2006
• ISBN: 9781429587181

Reviews for Catching the Big Fish

[arewenotben · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I don't have a great deal of time for the meditation that he eulogises so much about (although it obviously works for him), but the book is a fascinating insight into his working practices and his way of thinking.

Don't expect any great revelations on what is in the box or how to crack the secret of Lost Highway as you won't find it, but there's some fascinating little tidbits scattered throughout the short duration.

I listened to the audiobook narrated by Lynch himself which I'd highly recommend.

[pivic-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

While providing some clear, lucid insights into his creative process, how he worked before discovering transcendental meditation, and interesting trivia such as descriptions of happy accidents on how his films are made and what Kubrick's favourite film was ("Eraserhead", according to Lynch), there's also a downside.

Lynch does get me interested in transcendental meditation, but the theme is so regurgitated and repeated throughout the entire book that he feels a bit like a cult member trying to lure you in. It's very "transcendental meditation can cure anything, make you do anything, will overcome anything". I particularly disliked the chapter where you're to imagine you're the Empire State Building and transcendental meditation is electric gold; just swap the junk in all your rooms for the electric gold and you're all good. Yeah.

To me, it all reeks of an empty promise, mainly because Lynch doesn't explain how transcendental meditation works. And that knowledge, my dears, is expensive to attain.

So, if you can shut the lid on that all-permeating aspect of the book, Lynch does bring interesting stream-of-consciousness stuff to the table, especially on how he's overcome obstacles in his creative process and how he seems very open to new things that influence and come to him.

[els04 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Hoe vang je de grote vis door David Lynch

In dit boek krijg je aan de hand van korte en heel korte fragmenten (telkens puur de essentie, zonder extra opsmuk) een inkijkje in het hoofd van de creatieve geest van David Lynch. De man achter o.a. Twin Peaks en Blue Velvet. De man ook die (bijna in zijn eentje) TM (Transcendente Meditatie) groot heeft gemaakt.

Ik heb in het ganse boek boeiende dingen onderlijnd waar ik het met eens ben of die me aan het denken zetten. Zoals het idee dat een maker zijn films/boeken niet moet uitleggen. Kijkers begrijpen meer dan men (en zij zelf ook) denkt. Intuïtief voelen zij dingen aan; die intuïtie/dat begrijpen kan je aanscherpen door er over te praten met vrienden.

“De wereld is zoals je bent.”

Boeiend is ook zijn uitleg over TM, waarvoor trouwens steeds meer en meer wetenschappelijk bewijs komt. Bij dat soort van meditatie ga je naar het Verenigd Veld, diep in jezelf. En daar kan je dus die grote vissen vangen.

Hoewel Lynch zichzelf niet verlicht noemt zie ik het wel een beetje zo, dat maakt het contrast met zijn vaak donkere films groot. Hoewel hij in dit boek uitlegt waarom er volgens hem geen contrast is.

“Gelukzaligheid is als een kogelvrij vest.”

TM en meditatie klinken ietwat zweverig maar Hoe vang je staat ook vol praktische tips voor toekomstige filmmakers. Het is een inkijkje in het hoofd van een zeer boeiend mens plus een pleidooi/pamflet voor Transcendente Meditatie. Klinkt misschien te activistisch maar dat is het niet. Als TM Lynch heeft gemaakt tot wie hij is (zen én geniaal) dan wil ik het iedereen van harte aanbevelen.

Naast dit alles is het ook een boeiend boek voor Lynch fans door alle achter-de-schermen-informatie.
Een schitterende kleine parel op papier.

[booksfordinner · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Wonderful. Read on plane on way to vacation. Quick read, love his view of things. A lifelong meditator who just recently took up TM, I enjoyed this even more.

[jen6e6moore · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

There's an awful lot of quantum nonsense in this book, but if you can get past that, it's my very favorite kind of creativity book: an artist telling specific stories about their own life and experience doing the work, which somehow manages to convey more universal ideas at the same time. I'm intrigued.

I also think that David Lynch doesn't understand people very well.

[monamie-2 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book was a bit weird and not at all what I was expecting. I was expecting it to be more of a treatise on using meditation in your creative practice, but it didn't go deep enough into the subject to be of practical use. It was interesting as a read for understanding Lynch and his creative process, and learning a bit about his work. And learning that he's been big into Transcendental Meditation for a number of decades. So into it that the book read as something of a sales pamphlet for the practice and his foundation.

[borrows0n0wants · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

 As a fan of David Lynch's films, I thought it would be interesting to peer into his mind a little bit. I really liked when he discussed his films or his thought processes except for the meditation parts. I expected this book to deal with his transcendental meditation, so I wasn't offput by it, but I still kind of grazed over those sections in favor of stuff that dealt with who he was as a director or an artist. I wouldn't let a lack of interest in the meditation part of the book keep you from reading this. There is some interesting stuff about Lynch that can be learned by sifting through this book.

[debnance_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

David Lynch makes films. Odd films. Zany films. Nevertheless, I’ve run across many people who are creative yet cannot write and still try to write.

It’s okay. David Lynch is not one of these.

[djalchemi · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

You don't have to be a fan of David Lynch's films to like this book, but it surely helps. It begins and ends with Lynch's reflections on his 30+ years' practice of Transcendental Meditation (TM). The gist is a development of Flaubert's dictum "Be regular and orderly in your life... so that you may be violent and original in your work" that goes on to another level, literally, in its appreciation of how meditation has allowed Lynch to tap into a Unified Field (his italics) of consciousness. His account is not out of sync with the testimonials of other advocates of TM, but (a) it clearly operates at a level beyond language, and Lynch's own descriptions don't really come to terms with this: they remain mostly superficial and repetitive, and (b) as someone who's done a course in TM and not had the same experiences he claims, he makes it all seem like falling off a log, so has no guidance for those like me that don't get it straight away. The book is written as a series of short observations, few of which are more than two pages, and, aside, from TM, cover various autobiographical comments about how various ideas in Lynch's work emerged, plus a range of values that he holds dear. These generally aren't very detailed (though he does admit he has no idea what the box and the key are about in Mulholland Drive), so you don't need to be an obsessive fan, but if you don't know or care much for his films, you may want to skip through them even faster than I did.

[misscrabtree_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I must confess I haven't read the book, but that is because I have the audio version, which is fantastic. Lynch has such a quirky vocal style that it really makes his quirky stories come alive. He gives many little anecdotes about his life and how it has developed, how he became an artist and film maker and his overall personal and spiritual journey. Its sort of like a bio but a very light and entertaining one that moves along quickly and just hits the highlights of his rather unusual life.

[takah_4 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This is a bite-sized book in both size and scope. Lynch grants no deeper insight into Transcendental Meditation than to say it works for him. Fans of his films will be left unfulfilled as well. 180 pages (with at least 50 blank) and nearly as many chapters means, if you have to read it, you'll knock this book out in an hour.

[kawika_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a nice, easy reading book to take in when you want something easy, breezy, and won't take more than a day or two to finish. It's divided into tiny sections of mostly one or two pages per piece, but it still flows together well enough to not be jarring. The focus is on how Lynch feels about meditation and its relationship to greater creativity. He shares anecdotes and sprinkles in a little commentary on a few of his movies for good measure. All in all, it's very worthwhile, especially when proceeds end up going to his foundation that donates money to schools to promote Transcendental Meditation. After you're done with the book, you'll understand why this is a wonderful thing to do.

[fikustree_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I thought this book was fantastic, although I am a huge David Lynch fan. This would be a terrific book if you are interested in meditation, art, and where ideas come from. Lynch often sites the Upanishads and the Gita in his very short chapters. If you are huge fan of Lynch, get the audio book, he reads it and I couldn't ask for anything more.

[addict_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

n this rare work of public disclosure, filmmaker David Lynch describes his personal methods of capturing and working with ideas, and the immense creative benefits he has experienced from the practice of meditation

Over the last four decades, David Lynch has created some of the best-known and widely discussed screen works of our time. This distinctive writer-director's art bears not only the mark of box-office success but also criticalacclaim and cultural posterity.

Yet Lynch generally reveals little of himself, or the ideas behind his work. Now he provides a rare window into his methods as an artist and his personal working style. In Catching the Big Fish, Lynch writes candidly about the tremendous creative benefits he has gained from his thirty-two-year commitment to practicing Transcendental Meditation.

In brief chapters, Lynch describes the experience of "diving within" and "catching" ideas like fish-and then preparing them for television or movie screens, and other mediums in which Lynch works, such as photography and painting.

In the book's first section, Lynch discusses the development of his ideas-where they come from, how he grasps them, and which ones appeal to him the most. He then shares his passion for "the doing"-whether moviemaking, painting, or other creative expressions. Lynch talks specifically about how he puts his thoughts into action and how he engages with others around him. Finally, he discusses the self and the surrounding world -and how the process of "diving within" that has so deeply affected his own work can directly benefit others.

Catching the Big Fish provides unprecedented insight into Lynch's methods, as it also offers a set of practical ideas that speak to matters of personal fulfillment, increased creativity, and greater harmony with one's surroundings.

The book comes as a revelation to the legion of fans who have longed to better understand Lynch's deeply personal vision. And it is equally intriguing to anyone who grapples with questions such as: "Where do ideas come from?" and "How can I nurture creativity?