Watching David Lynch’s first film, Eraserhead, in a 1980s vintage West Los Angeles theatre was a paradigm shifter. For a twenty-something from the rural American South, a heightened sense of boundless creativity soaked into me in that threadbare movie house and changed my newly acquired urban trajectory.

Lynch’s connection with the fecund space of infinity exposed his viewers to the parts of ourselves beyond conscious awareness. It was dangerous to sit in front of a huge screen and absorb the realm he invited you into through the flicker of 35mm black and white illusion. Celluloid captures the ability to dream and feeds it to you eyes wide shut. As a result it is the most powerful form of media in existence and Eraserhead is an effective portal into the unravelling darker edges of domesticity.

As a byproduct, Lynch, who centers his first film on an aspect of life that was radically changing for him personally, filmed a cogent birth control device for a generation of people, like me who had been inundated with old cultural messages from our ancestral genetic influences and relationship to guilt and progeny.

I emerged from the dark cave free of the expectations the two hour stream of Lynchian imagination had eviscerated less naive and more aware I knew nothing about the potential of cinema in the hands of a confident artist.