AD8: Blue Velvet

Artist dates don’t have to involve getting out of the house. On Saturday I did a quick catch-up artist date, as going to Portsmouth the weekend before, and running the Bath Half Marathon yesterday ate up a fair bit of my available artist date time.

Instead of going out, I stayed in, and watched a film that’s been sitting in my in-tray for quite a long time: David Lynch’s Blue Velvet. I’d never seen it before; I’m very slow at getting around to watching films, and people are frequently surprised about the things I’ve not seen. This is a bit self-perpetuating, in fact: on our weekly evenings in, my friend Emm and I often struggle to find something from my list that she’s not already seen. We’ve now settled for watching Borgen instead, most weeks.

I tried to make it as good an experience as I could manage, switching off my Mac and my phone, darkening the lights, putting a comfy chair front and centre, and watching in one unpaused, uninterrupted sitting.

It was surprisingly hard work. I’m glad I turned off the phone, especially, as I found myself reaching for it a few times, wanting to head for Wikipedia to find out such answers as “What’s Kyle MacLachlan been up to recently”, and so forth. I resisted.

I… think I liked it. It’s often a bit hard to tell with Lynch. It takes a while to decide. It probably doesn’t help that I’ve watched it so long after it was made, and many aspects seem quite dated, especially the original bits of soundtrack, which is that synth-pad stuff that he seemed to favour back then. Having re-read his Wikipedia entry, maybe the next Lynch I should try should be Lost Highway, which at least gets a fair bit of praise for its music…

Anyway. Basically, yes, I watched a film. I’ll try to do something a bit more out-and-about for this week’s date.