Every so often in the course of my time manning the nightlife section in this paper, I find myself in the unenviable position of having to note the passing of an artist, whether local or more famous. It’s never a fun thing, but I consider it an essential aspect of the job, as “all hands bury the dead,” and it is the duty of the living to memorialize the departed. But in my seven-plus years on this beat, last week’s death was perhaps the most affecting for me personally, as although I rarely get emotionally attached to famous strangers, this fella was someone very special to me for most of my life. I am talking about David Lynch, the director, artist and sometimes musician whose work navigating the unique existential horror and beauty of the American inner and outer landscape is as irreplaceable as it was brilliant. To understand his fine balance of reckless, violent nihilism with a true love of innocence and redemption in the often hilarious and absurd camp of our nation’s lost highways, Tinseltown underbellies and lurking, malignant suburbs, is to understand the soul and beauty of a yearning people born in a post-nuclear cauldron of ultra-violence and tendrilled evil, and redeemed through the impossible thrust of pure love into a howling, frozen void. He understood something that he was able to hint at in various ways, some more successful to the masses than others, none of them ever off the mark or boring, about the true nature of finding purity and sincerely good people amid the fallout blast zone of widespread, ever-encroaching cruelty and destruction. He portrayed the Other and possession, and the rift in the universe created by the Unspeakable that haunted the cool and the beautiful and the awkward alike. He dealt in contrasts without being so clumsy as to force messaging and metaphors because he trusted his audience to engage with the same universal subconsciousness that he was adept at channeling, in a language whose argot was never clearly defined, but instantly recognizable as a multimedia, multi-dimensional and eternal tone oozing as pestilence from the wounds of worldly evil and the balms of pure love alike.
There has never been, and will never be, another like him. Although many have tried, nobody has captured the heart of his expression, his humor, his earnestness, in the face of the unknowable vacuum into which we are all thrust at birth, and in which we forge the compass of our moral beings to explore the infinite reaches of our essential souls. He was as American as apple pie, black coffee and mass murder. He was a seer every bit as transcendentally brilliant as William Blake and the world is so much blinder without his vision. Thankfully, he left a lifetime of work that one could study over several lifetimes and for that, we are all in his debt. A debt that, I suspect, he would simply ask us to pay with our own thoughts and attention. Rest easy.
Thursday
Swing by the Basement tonight at 8 p.m. for a free celebration of the music — and birthdays — of Stéphane Grappelli and Django Reinhardt, the pioneering jazz violinist and guitarist, respectively, who changed the world of music forever beginning in the 1930s with their group the Quintette du Hot Club de France, ground zero for the genre of music now known as jazz manouche, ever since a certain “g” word has been deemed a slur. Tonight’s show features an all-star ensemble of local musicians, Rob Diggins and Jolianne Einem on violin, John Ludington on bass, Ryan Roberts on guitar, Amanda Malachesky on mandolin and Beverly Twist performing guitar and vocal duties. Should be a blast.
Friday
Wednesday’s queer dance party at the Miniplex, Big Mood, is back, and has now moved to the fourth Friday of every month. Tonight’s return will be celebrated by regular DJ Pandemonium Jones, along with guest spinner DJ Satanica and hosted by local diva of drag Val De Flores. The fun starts at 9 p.m. and there is no cover at the door. Ages 21 and older.
Saturday
Trumpeter Nicholas Talvola and company return with a redux of their popular appreciation of the music of jazz and world genre bender and multi-instrumentalist Yusef Lateef at the Arcata Playhouse tonight at 8 p.m. ($15). Tonight’s ensemble includes Gary Lewis on flute and sax, Brian White on trombone, and the lads in RLAD will be providing the guts and bones of the rhythm section.
Sunday
The Chamber Players of the Redwoods presents a 2 p.m. matinee trio of programs for the public. The Zug Consort will be playing music from the Renaissance, followed by Humboldt Harmoniemusik performing a piece by mid-20th century English composer Ruth Gibbs, and capping the show will be pieces by former Cal Poly music professor John Carr, performed by Trombones @ 5. The fun all happens at the Arcata Lutheran Church and, while the gig is free, donations are graciously accepted.
Monday
Dual headlining comics from Los Angeles will be taking over Savage Henry Comedy Club tonight at 9 p.m. Come join Justin Lentz and Curtis Taylor III as they work the mics and sing for their supper for a mere $5 at the door, quite a deal for a show so far from home.
Tuesday
Malibu rapper Shwayze has a career going back into the mid-00s, with summer jams, beach anthems, and summer grooves dominating the overall vibe of his career. If you would like a little bit of that sunshine during our fairly bipolar winter, then come by the Arcata Theatre Lounge tonight at 7 p.m. Bikini Trill and Twin Fin feature on the undercard ($28, $116 for the VIP experience).
Wednesday
Forget a bad moon. There is no moon rising tonight, at least not one we can see, which makes it a perfectly safe evening to indulge in one of the greatest werewolf films ever made, An American Werewolf in London. Goofy humor mixes with vicious and shocking flesh-rending violence in this classic from 1981, courtesy of “Thriller” music video director and human shithead John Landis. (For more information on the latter designation, look up how actor Vic Morrow and two children died on one of Landis’ sets.) Evil work practices and awful offspring notwithstanding, Landis had the gift, and this one’s a classic. Check it out at the Arcata Theatre Lounge at 6 p.m. if you’re game for some humor, carnage and a rare serious role from the late Rik Mayall of The Young Ones and Drop Dead Fred fame. Only $6 gets you in the door; $10 lets you leave with a poster.
Collin Yeo (he/him) welcomes the black night of the year’s first new moon with the memorial spirit of light. He lives in Arcata, where the owls are not what they seem.
This article appears in Sanctuary in the Storm.