donovan - The Screengrab

David Lynch Will Teach Your Children to Fly

Those who have read his book Catching the Big Fish or caught any of his lectures or interviews in the past few years know that David Lynch is a strong proponent of transcendental meditation. Now the Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive director is putting together “a ‘global benefit concert’ in New York, featuring Paul McCartney, Moby, Sheryl Crow, Eddie Vedder and Donovan, to raise funds to teach meditative techniques to schoolchildren.”

The overall goal of the benefit is, of course, world peace. “If a further 1% can be persuaded to take up yogic flying in groups, world peace would follow, according to the Transcendental Meditation Movement, of which Lynch is the public face,” The Guardian reports. Admittedly, I’ve never been a Maharishi follower, but I have seen Lynch’s lectures and I don’t think I’ve ever heard him mention “yogic flying.” So I did a little YouTube excavation and came up with this National Geographic clip:

The Rep Report (February 1-7)

NEW YORK: Since last Thanksgiving, Village audiences have been turning out in force at the Film Forum for I'm Not There, so the theater shouldn't have too much trouble drawing an audience for a week-long showing (February 1-7) of D. A. Pennebaker's Dont Look Back, the documentary record of Bob Dylan's 1965 tour of the United Kingdom, complete with Joan Baez singing away in her own little bubble, Dylan's notorious manager Albert Grossman auditioning for Tony Hendra's role in This Is Spinal Tap (and maybe Joe Pesci's role in GoodFellas), drop-in appearances by Donovan and Alan Price, and one of the all-time great pre-MTV music videos, with Dylan standing in the street flipping cue cards while Allen Ginsberg standing off to the sidelines looking as if he knows deep and ancient truths, even if he was really just wondering about the location of the buffet table.