Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity
by David Lynch
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Book Summary Information
Author: David LynchEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Published)
Format: Bargain Price
Published: 2006-12-28
ISBN: N/A
Number of pages: 192
Publisher: Tarcher
Book Reviews of Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity
Book Review: Very enjoyable but left me wanting more
Summary: 3 Stars
I've read it over and over again regarding this book - it's not a guide to meditation. It will not tell you what to do. Being the avid David Lynch fan that I am, I thought, well, of course Lynch wouldn't write a guidebook - almost all of his films are surreal and non-linear. Yet I still hoped to find some clues of how to use meditation to create, to which the title and the back cover allude. And I suppose that I did - expand your consciousness, your awareness of things, don't be negative and so forth; besides a few interesting ways of putting things and one technique - not one technique of many, but the one technique to which Lynch alludes - these are more or less common sense, in my opinion. He points the reader to transcendental meditation as a means to expand one's consciousness, be more aware, but he provides so little in the way of what transcendental meditation actually is. It might come as a great disappointment to some that their cries of "You've convinced me, I'm ready to meditate, let's go!" are never answered. Reading Lynch's thoughts on the practice is quite enjoyable, the way he writes does redeem the book to a large degree. He is very informal and friendly, and gives what he writes a very warm and helpful mood. This did not surprise me, nor will it surprise anyone who's listened to an interview with Lynch, but it's still enjoyable to be an audience to his unique voice, even once one is conditioned to expect it. If you have listened to his interviews, chances are you've heard him talk about TM, and thus can basically get the gist of this book minus a few more specific concepts and metaphors. These concepts are enjoyable to learn about, though, so even if you have heard Lynch talk about meditation it's still worthwhile to read the book. He also provides some tidbits about his work and his process, interesting anecdotes about film and so forth, but many are only vaguely linked to TM - not as vague when considering the unified field, which is interesting to read about and about which Lynch provides some interesting stories and thoughts, yet to bring them up to tie the book's content together more neatly is a bit reaching. This brings me to something else I found frustrating - he points to research on the unified field and yet does not provide us with it, nor with any specific source material (besides those from which he takes his epigraphs. Though I'm willing to take his word for it, I'd like to go read about it myself, and the more skeptically minded among us will probably find this lack of specificity more detrimental to Lynch's arguments. Nor does he give us any further reading recommendations at all - no books about the process of TM itself, no books about exercises for beginners, no nothing - and these you will yearn for after listening to Lynch espouse the benefits of TM for as long and as passionately as he does. Not that listening to Lynch passionately espouse is a bad thing, it's actually very enjoyable, but that does not excuse the lack of further reading recommendations. And it's short. The chapters are generally less than two pages long, which creates a lot of blank space and though Lynch perhaps took this into account and found it fitting, (the chapter about the areas between states of consciousness comes to mind as a metaphor), it is a bit disappointing when, after only a few hours, you're finished. The format is also a bit annoying at times - while it suits the material fine and, for the most part, the chapters end when it feels appropriate, it is somewhat discomforting to have to switch one's train of thought as one would if flipping through a small booklet or a day calendar. This is made more apparent by the few longer chapters, which are noticeably more captivating simply because of one's ability to stick with Lynch's thoughts for an extended period of time. It just feels better to be able to really cozy down into a chapter before it breaks and moves on to another topic. Not that the chapters don't relate to each other at all - sometimes, in the sections about Inland Empire for example, the chapter breaks seem largely unnecessary. As I previously mentioned they do create a lot of blank space and awhile it becomes apparent that the book is much shorter than previously imagined. And then you're finished, and you still don't how how to meditate, and you have no idea which book to read next, or what to do next. In the end, minus Lynch's thoughts about his own films and a few anecdotes, Catching the Big Fish feels like a very enjoyable introduction to a book about TM, and is about the right length. It is well written, entertaining and thought provoking, and his conversational style of writing is fun to experience - his voice is very warm, and with that voice he tells some inspiring accounts of how TM helps him and can help others (the segment about public education utilizing TM is fascinating, yet, like most of the chapters, feels too short and provides the reader with no source material to go read about the topic more extensively - I know Lynch didn't want to write in such specific and academic detail, but at least give us a way to go find it if we want it!), as well as some very cool stories from his own life and his own experiences with filmmaking and art. In the end, though I very much enjoyed the book, it ultimately left me wanting more.
Summary of Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity
In 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.Book Subjects
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