I'll See You Again in 25 Years... Ramblings on Death, David Lynch and Those Who Influence Us Creatively, and Growing Older

As I'm beginning writing this, it's January 16th, 2025. David Lynch has died.

David Lynch giving a peace sign
Image edited from an original featured on IndieWire

Note: What is written has been edited solely in an attempt to fix up grammatical errors and typos. This was written in a very stream of consciousness fashion as part of process the passing of famed director David Lynch and the thoughts that spurred from the tragic loss of this wonderful human and artist. If it comes off as incoherent, that's because in many ways ... it is.


As I'm beginning writing this, it's January 16th, 2025.

David Lynch has died.

Before we go any further: a content warning for addiction, suicide, murder, and self-harm.

I've been crying. I've been processing it. So many thoughts, feelings, errant figments of ideas popping into my head as I do. Why am I crying so much over someone I didn't even know? Why did he have to die? I felt, intuitively, it would happen soon (I knew he was sick) ... why am I still shocked?

The last time the death of a stranger - that is someone I've never actually known, someone I've never even met - hit me this hard was nine years ago. It was 2016. I'm sitting in an office in Boston, MA and learning that David Bowie has died, just days after his (now) final album, Blackstar.

"Blackstar" by David Bowie

Since 2020, three of my aunts and uncles have died. One was in a coma for a couple weeks beforehand, but I wasn't told until it was too late. My grandfather was diagnosed with dementia last year, and had what seems like (but I guess, medically wasn't) a stroke. He's had like, three rounds of cancer. He's nearly 90.

He ran the Dublin Marathon 7 times when he was younger. Did the Belfast one, at least once. I decided last year to run my first marathon in Ireland in the hopes he could be there, fearing I could lose him physically (if I haven't already lost him mentally, in many ways) without accomplishing a goal I already wanted to achieve.

In my head, I still see him as that man in his late 50s that would bring me into Blanchard's Town on Saturday mornings. But he's not. I'm not that four-year-old. In fact, I'm told it's been nearly thirty years since I was that four-year-old.

I'm getting older. He's gotten older. When I was born, in 1991, David Bowie was 44. My grandfather was 58. Trent Reznor was 26 (wait... how did he get in here? we'll get there, I promise).

I'm 34 this August. My grandfather will be 88. At some stage this year, Trent Reznor will be 60. David Bowie would've been 78. David Lynch was 78 at the time of his passing.

Should they be so lucky, everybody gets old. But everybody eventually dies.

I think about this a lot. I think about time a lot. I think about aging a lot. Part of it is, I think, that there's a sliding door moment for me, 19 years ago, where I'm not here to write this.

Maybe you're reading this and already know, maybe you don't. I'm a survivor of a suicide attempt. An overdose, to be precise. I've dealt with suicidal ideation for the majority of my life now, with serious thoughts of it festering as recently as fall 2020. Adopting a puppy, who was originally going to be named Cooper (yes, like that Cooper), gave me purpose, comfort, and helped me cope. At least for a little, bit. That's a capital-T Traumatic story for another day. In 2013, while standing in a parking lot working as a game design instructor, I learned that my cousin Gavin had died suddenly overnight while camping with friends in Ireland. He was 34. For a while it was ruled a suicide, but ultimately it was a different kind of tragedy. Sometimes I wonder, will I make it past 34?

And so, I ruminate a lot on my age. On the passage of time. To think of how the sheer act of being alive and surviving a suicide attempt is a traumatic experience itself. I will always live my life knowing death is close, and yet I'm still afraid of it. And still struggle when those in my life, directly, or otherwise leave this world. The two aunts I've lost post-2020. My uncle, Michael, who my first memory of is still fresh in my brain. At the age of 16, on the slippery slope of a major depressive episode again, seeing him on a trip home to Ireland as he stumbled out a car, needing my cousins to literally walk him into the house. It's a sharp, vivid memory. A painful one.

Michael was an alcoholic. So much so that at times he could barely stand or walk, it would seem. A couple years after I first met him, he'd find a reason to get sober. To stay sober. And, with time we developed a relationship. I could see this old uncle of mine, with his at-times dated beliefs trying to be good. Trying to live a life he could be proud of, even in his 50s, his 60s, and ultimately his 70s. He was a gentle soul, plagued by addiction for so much of his life. And I empathized with that.

After attempting suicide, I went into a dual diagnosis program and met many young addicts. Knowing I had some history of addiction in my family, it very quickly acted as a prolonged scared straight program for "not doing drugs or alcohol", or as I got older ... being incredibly mindful of how much I took and how often. There were times in 2020 when I had panic attacks because of how much I was drinking, or how often I was getting high to make it through the day. Running helped offset that, I guess.

When I was in that program, it was media (or, art if you prefer) that got me through each day. A second, intense round of suicidal ideation with serious intent to follow-through was literally prevented by playing, and finishing Kingdom Hearts II, and realizing that maybe, just maybe I could get through this dark patch of my adolescence.

Thinking of you, wherever you are...

But it wasn't just that, it was also... music.

Music video for "The Hand that Feeds" by Nine Inch Nails

I got into Nine Inch Nails the summer before high school, hearing "The Hand that Feeds" on an Official Xbox Magazine demo disc. I quickly dove headfirst into the rest of With Teeth, learned more about Trent Reznor and his life and listened to Pretty Hate Machine, The Downward Spiral, Broken, and The Fragile in quick succession. The rage, the self-loathing, the self -destruction, it was all so relatable to 14 year old me. I mean okay, yeah I wasn't doing (and never have done) heroin, but I mean overdosing on a bottle of a very high dosage of Prozac isn't nothing. And I really did hate myself. And often I still do.

Needless to say, it was a comfort. And then I learned that that guy from Labyrinth worked with Trent Reznor and that now that I wasn't a ten-year-old I could appreciate the works of Ziggy Stardust, Low, Heroes, etc. more. I fell in love with the works of David Bowie as well. In quick succession, I found two people to at a formative time, idolize. I now better understand that idol worship is bad, but hey I was 14.

I'm rambling. I'm going to keep rambling. But I promise David Lynch is involved in all this.

In late 2007, I was sliding again. I didn't want to die... but I stopped leaving the house. I stopped going to school. I was having panic attacks almost everyday. Multiple times a day too. I was 16. Rock Band came out that year. I got it for Christmas and in early 2008 a Nine Inch Nails DLC pack was released. It had "The Collector" from With Teeth, "March of the Pigs" from The Downward Spiral, and a song that was unknown to me at that point: "The Perfect Drug". I'd enter the hospital for my depression and anxiety again around that time.

I put out a video last year about the game Link's Awakening and why it's so formative for me. Maybe I should link that here. I go into this same story there, so I'll get to the point - this is how I learnt who David Lynch is. A couple years would pass before this connection would really take hold. I would see Twin Peaks in early college. I'd finally see Lost Highway around then too. And I'd learn of that formative connection. The game that set me on a path to wanting to make games, informed by the work of this television show from this man who a musician who was so relatable to me made music for.

Something about my inspirations, my taste started to sharpen in this reflection. The allure of darker ideas, themes. But wrapped in something more accessible. Maybe it's the sheer idea of Link saving himself by destroying a world that only exists in a dream in a game that is ultimately weird and wacky and kid-friendly. Maybe it's the polished sheen applied to the dingy industrial music scene that Reznor brings to so much of his work. Maybe, the goofiness belaying a dark underbelly of America so omnipresent in Lynch's work. And somewhere in there, is another element, a persistent shifting - the idea of the only constant being change. Something exemplified by Bowie as an artist.

When we moved to the US in 1996, we ended up in a fairly affluent, mostly white suburban town in Central MA. Good school system, low crime etc. But it's also a town where, a mile away a brutal murder of a baby and wife would happen. The husband would flee the country. Years later, a former classmate would hang themselves. While in college, another kid just up the road would commit suicide as well. I lived. They didn't. Not everything was quite as hunky dory and perfect as people would want you to think.

Here's a photo of my dog, Bowie "Miles 'Tails' Prowler" Cooper Rice - yes that is his full name, to lighten the mood.

It would remind me of watching Twin Peaks. Remind of Lynch.

My own often goofy behavior, even when I'm internally screaming, sometimes makes me wonder if I'm a parody of not only myself, but of my interest in Lynch's work.

And then, I feel like I'm missing the point. For all the fucked-up shit. For all the goofy, surreal freak shit. That's not what matters about David Lynch. Sure, the aesthetics and the narratives are influential in their own right. But just as important is the man himself, and what he brings to the work, and to those who work with him. He was kind to those around him, he brought joy to their lives. And, for as weird, as dark as his work could be - he brought joy to so many people who watched and engaged with that work. Even when he's just telling you what day it is.

There's the Cooper of it all. The aim to be good, to be a paragon for good. To be good to yourself, for yourself. But to also be good to others, for others. When I think of something like The Return I see it so much. Dougie Jones creates joy around him, helps those around him. Accidentally or not. It doesn't matter. Meanwhile, a dark tulpa inverts the Agent Cooper we've known for 25 years. He's brutal, unflinching in his violence and cruelty. A creation of a dark place. There will always be bad. There will always be good. That distinction will not always be a clear-cut binary.

I think it's telling that David Lynch works with so many of the same people time and time again. It's because, well, they like him. They like working with him, they respect him, but there's this sense that more than "tools" to fulfill a creative vision, he cares about them as people. He brings joy to their lives through the art they create together. It's how they can work on a (very, very, deeply interesting) trainwreck of a movie like Dune and still go "I need to work with David Lynch again". And I think that's something I didn't intuit at first, but with age came to appreciate.

And then I start thinking again about the fact that he's gone. That Bowie's been gone for almost a decade. That one-day, Reznor will be gone. That more and more of my family is gone. That even people I went to school with are gone. That even a family friend I last saw when he was a literal toddler is gone, volunteering to help aid the fight against Russia in Ukraine and being killed in the process. That one day, maybe sooner than I want to admit, my grandfather will be gone. My parents. Other loved ones. That my dog, Bowie, will also probably be gone before me. That I've already lost one dog in the last four years.

My last dog, Brogan who had to be put down under soul-crushing circumstances 11 months into his life.

There's so much death in Lynch's work. And that's part of life. There's a violence. But try as we might, that's a part of life too.

The people who we look up to, the people who influence us will leave us before we leave them. That's part of life. Their work is a part of their legacy, and we should never forget the impact that work may have on us, but we also shouldn't forget the people.

From Bowie, I learned the importance of changing, adapting. By not confining my form of expression to a single aesthetic form. Becoming something new when I need to be. But also, the important of staying true to the core of who I am.

From Reznor, I've learned how to channel so much of my anger and the messier parts of me through my art rather than my life. Nobody needs to be around someone who is so pissed off all the time, but sometimes you also just want to scream along to a song like "Wish". And, much like Reznor in his sobriety, I've learned to take better care of myself. A decade ago I was someone who clocked in at 5' 8" and 215 lbs. I've reshaped myself into someone who is fairly fit and clocks in at a much leaner 155lbs, helping improve my mental health in the process of taking care of my body.

Trent Reznor got sober, then got SWOLE. Image from https://ilarge.lisimg.com/image/15826055/740full-trent-reznor.jpg

From Lynch I've learned to embrace the weirdness, and to not be afraid of conforming to my own logic in my work but also that darkness can't just be darkness for darkness's sake. That kindness, that joy is just as important. Not just because there has to be some sort of light at the end of the tunnel, but because those glimmers of hope, those moments of joy make the darkness easier to bear, easier to endure. Thinking back to my times hospitalized for my mental health, we found time even amidst talking about how we wound up where we were to laugh, to show empathy for one and other, to have our little in jokes. To show who we were when we weren't consumed by our depression, our addictions, our fucking whatevers.

I want my work to reflect my values, to be defined by my life, but to also show that it was influenced by so many others along the way. And as I get older, and as I cope with the fact that the people who inspired me are getting older, and are leaving this place, I just hope that I can have my ideals come through not only in my work, but in the life, I lead outside of that.

Because, when I'm (hopefully) old and nearing the end of my life I would like to be remembered for something. Not just something I made, but for what I've done in the world and my actions.

I'll miss you, David Lynch. See you again in 25 years...

The "see you again in 25 years" scene from Twin Peaks


So, that was 2600+ words of rambling and musings prompted by the death of an artist whose work has meant a lot to me.

If you read all of this, thank you! I've written a few other things lately but haven't finished or published any of them. Maybe this will be the thing that pushes me over the edge. I hope reading this, nonsense as it may be, helped you process anything about getting older, about loss... about literally anything at all. Writing it helped me put my head back on after crying for a good bit about David Lynch's passing.