How David Lynch won his decade-long war against squirrels: “I called it the Disc of Sorrow”
David Lynch lived and breathed his art, and the fact that he was such a unique figure is a testament to his authenticity.
The director wasn’t making bizarre movies to shock people or confuse people, he was simply drawing from deep within himself and creating art that reflected the parts of himself that most of us are unable to access within ourselves.
Making his debut in 1977 with Eraserhead, Lynch would instantly divide critics with his shadowy, surreal exploration of anxiety and fatherhood set against a backdrop of urban decay and isolation. Some people adored it, but others, having never seen anything quite like it before, were absolutely taken aback by its apparent nonsense. Over time, however, more and more audiences have come to love Eraserhead, which is where it all started for Lynch.
The filmmaker would go on to make many incredible pieces of cinema over the coming years, from Blue Velvet and Lost Highway to Mulholland Drive, while also changing television forever by crafting Twin Peaks with Mark Frost. Lynch was so good at creating these worlds that utterly envelop you, his talent for setting a scene unlike anyone else. I mean, you find yourself wanting to live inside the world of Twin Peaks when you watch it, even though it’s full of murder, abuse, infidelity, and drug abuse. That takes real skill.
And even when he was exploring such dark topics – which was a recurrent theme that ran through his work – Lynch found both the strange and the comedic side of things, drawing attention to the innate absurdity of living. It seemed like embracing the mundane sides of life in the way that Lynch did was the key to living happily, like when he went to war with the squirrels in his garden – and somehow made an interesting story out of it.
When squirrels started getting into his bird feeders, he fashioned a metal stem that prevented the little pests from climbing and eating the seeds, and this suited him for a decade. But it finally broke, leaving Lynch in need of a new solution.
“I first made one of these in 1987, and then the squirrels really ruined it. Finally I got an LP record and put it on the stand and that did the trick,” he explained to The Telegraph.
In typical Lynch style, the director came up with an odd solution, which comes as no surprise. The filmmaker was always working away in his studio, often making sculptures when he wasn’t making films, but there came a time when his birds took precedence. He needed to make something that wasn’t for artistic reasons.
“The squirrels couldn’t get a hold of it. I called it the ‘Disc of Sorrow’,” Lynch said. “Grown squirrels I saw crying ‘cause they couldn’t get to the bird feeder any more.” Only someone like Lynch could turn a story about deterring rodents into something that sounded decisively Lynchian. A Disc of Sorrow sounds like something that would reveal a mystery in Twin Peaks.
