Salon converses with David Lynch about his new album Crazy Clown Time. The director discusses transcendental meditation, his attraction to sound, and finding humor in the disturbing.

“When you get something that’s thrilling, if it’s working on a couple of different levels, it’s more thrilling. How you get there is not an intellectual thing. You stumble on it, really.”

A few years ago, when I was finishing up the final edits on Cinema in the Digital Age, a colleague and I got into a heated debate about a section of the book where I argued that some of the images and sequences in The Ring (Gore Verbinksi, 2002) were as visually radical and avant-garde as, well, so-called avant-garde films. …more

“I really believe that most writers in America have taken on this idea that we’re never going to get paid–and so we accept so little for what we do, when what we do is so valuable. And it’s wanted.” –Ali Liebegott

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Ed Ruscha, photographer of twenty-six affectless Standard gas stations in LA, Every Building on the Sunset Strip, and painter of words floating in space, with or without a setting, is the subject of a retrospective at London’s Hayward gallery, and the Times of London decided to ask David Lynch what he thinks of it. (Who better to ask, really?) Bottom line: “I like to think the California sun has burnt out all unnecessary elements in his work.” …more

At BushwickBK.com, Mimi Luse reports on a one-night-only multimedia Lil’ Wayne-related show, curated by Audrey Berman and Pete Deevakul. With Claude Léveque and Bruce Nauman squaring off at the Venice Biennale, Studio Von Birken’s Louis Vuitton-meets-Lil’-Wayne parody is as potent as a neon spliff.

It’s hard to look at some of Nauman’s work and not think about the fonts that haunt us, and it’s hard to think about that without visualizing the fabled Twin Peaks letterjobs. Now, writes LENSCRATCH, David Lynch is a “photographer,” too.

At Frieze.com, politics and kitsch at Akram Zaatari’s solo show.

In Cabinet, rhythmic role playing: “As far as­ we know, onl­y one man took him up on the proposal, an expat American card-carrying communist jazz trumpeter and polyrhythmic prodigy named Conlon Nancarrow.”

In the past couple years whenever anyone has asked for a movie recommendation, I steer them in the direction of Alejandro Jodorowsky. …more

David Lynch’s most recent project seems to be a complete departure from the epic, surreal fictions that made him famous: a collection of oral histories of ordinary people, which he has called simply Interview Project. The research concept was straightforward: send a film team out on a long road trip, and along the way, stop people on the side of the road, in bars, and in restaurants, and ask them to talk about their lives. …more

For a limited time, NPR is offering an Exclusive First Listen to a collaboration of Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse‘s multi-instrumentalist Mark Linkous that may never be released. …more

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I’m fascinated by cultural cross-pollination when it comes to art. The Beatles dug Buddy Holly, the psychedelic bands of San Francisco dug the Beatles, the Britpop bands of the nineties dug those psychedelic bands, and the Dandy Warhols watered down those Britpop bands. When it comes to movies, I don’t think there’s much more fascinating case study of cross-pollination than how Akira Kurosawa influenced westerns (particularly the spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone) and they influenced him right back. Case in point, Yojimbo, starring the always magnetic Toshiro Mifune.

I feasted my eyes on this western-inspired samurai tale this weekend. One might call it an udon western. It has the trappings of the genre, including wind-swept streets, frightened villagers, and guys who walk toward each other really, really slowly. Even the music sounds like something Ennio Morricone might come up with if he had access to an orchestra of koto and shamisen players. Mifune plays Sanjuro, a samurai who stumbles into said wind-swept town to find it torn asunder by two warring factions. A moral relativist, Sanjuro takes then switches sides, playing the feud to his benefit. Here’s a trailer.

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