Remembering David Lynch’s unnerving musical
Three seasons of television redefining what the medium was capable of. Ten feature films that each interrogated the darkest parts of the human psyche. Three studio albums. Several art exhibitions and a hardcover book that brings all 95 paintings, drawings and sketches together in one collection. A YouTube channel in which the weather is forecast. All of these came from David Lynch; the gift that keeps on giving. But there is yet one more creative endeavour, a particularly hidden gem, that some of you may be unaware of.
Industrial Symphony No. 1: The Dream of the Broken Hearted was conceived by Lynch and life-long collaborator, composer Angelo Badalamenti, for the ‘New Music America Festival’ in November 1989. It played twice, then was never staged or revived again. Fortunately for those unlucky enough to miss the shows in person, a recording exists that details the show in all its nonsensical glory.
Concocted around the same time that he was several episodes deep into Twin Peaks, and midway through the production of Wild At Heart, Lynch’s bizarre musical is every bit as unnerving as you might expect. Unable to completely abandon his passion for celluloid, Lynch begins the show with a filmed scene between Wild At Heart stars Nic Cage and Laura Dern. “Where are you?” Dern asks over the telephone, “You sound far away?” “Listen,” responds Cage, taking a moment to gather himself. “I’m taking off, baby. I can’t do it no more.” Some more fraught exchanges happen, the general gist being: Dern’s been dumped. It takes only a second to assume that Dern is, in fact, the titular Broken Hearted, before the show descends headfirst into a feverish and macabre hybrid of music, performance and visuals that lasts 50 minutes.
“It’s one great big long mood,” says Lynch in A Conversation With David Lynch, Angelo Badalamenti & Julee Cruise. Badalementi agrees. “Each piece is one great mood thing, but those moods are interrupted at times”. Referring, perhaps, to an aggressive transition between singer Julee Cruise’s performance and a hideous cacophony of sirens accompanying fighter jets and dangling baby dolls. Cruise, whose track ‘Falling’ was used as the theme song for Twin Peaks, was a frequent collaborator with Lynch and Badalamenti, and this seems to be no different with Industrial Symphony No. 1.
“It’s a real spacious type of music. Otherworldly type of music,” Cruise says, as a close-up of her face is projected real-time on a television screen behind her. Recalling the types of direction Lynch gave, and the sort of aesthetic he was after, Cruise explains a helpful note given by Lynch to one of the show’s trumpet players. “Y’know, Al, big chunks of plastic! Can’t you play that?” What was meant by that, only Lynch can know for sure, but it seems like Al gets the job done because the music throughout the show is beautifully evocative. “The music’s going along, and it’s making pictures in your mind,” states Lynch. “And if you can build those pictures, and put them up, it might do the same to others.”
The result is an undeniably intoxicating experience that confirms everything you may have thought about Lynch to be true. Wildly imaginative, bordering on lunacy and supremely talented, he’s able to evoke sensations in a way no other artist can. Considering the team had less than two days to stage and rehearse the whole thing, The Dream of the Broken Hearted should be considered a triumph. Watch the full thing below.
