Fishing in the Dark

You sit still. Watching the surface. Waiting.

Sometimes an idea floats in from nowhere. It lands in front of you, big and bright. But as you reach for it, you realize it’s only part of something larger. Something deeper. So you have to dive. Further down.

You find fragments: a velvet-like shadow, a road that suddenly bends left, a woman whispering a name you don’t know, while cuddling a resting deer. A car standing motionless under a bluish light, yet it feels like it’s moving. It all seems familiar, but you don’t know why.

David Lynch knew how to search. It’s seemed He waited in the silence, letting the big fish come to him. Catching the Big Fish. He caught dreams and made them real. Layer upon layer. A nightclub where someone sings without sound. A highway with no end. A town that never leaves you, even after the credits roll.

But time, it moves on. We think we have more of it than we actually do. And then, suddenly, it’s gone. The one thing we know for sure, yet the hardest thing to understand.

And still—if you catch something strong enough, it answers. A sequence, an atmosphere, an image that keeps living in others. The logic of dreams is universal, even if our dreams are different. Some see them in films, others in a theater, on a stage. Maybe even in real life—in an unexpected moment, in the feeling that something strange and beautiful has taken place, even if you can’t quite explain it.

Tonight, I watch one of his films again. I listen to the way light flickers in the background, the way a hand hovers over a cup of coffee. I see a story I’ve seen before, but it’s new. Because I am new. Because I, too, have moved on.

Everything leaves traces. Images, sounds, emotions that sink into us and become part of how we see the world. We catch them, if we’re quiet enough. If we listen.

So I listen.

Both pictures taken by Christian Elgvin. Performance made for “Murder in Dreamland” by Ella Fiskum Danz. Coda Dance festival.