The night after my favorite director died, I was upstairs watching YouTube clips of “Twin Peaks: The Return,” David Lynch’s 2017 resuscitation of his landmark TV series, when I was unsettled by a sound downstairs.

His visceral films, which reflect the best and worst of American life, affected viewers in realms both conscious and unconscious.

When David Lynch died last week, it was almost hard to know whom exactly to mourn. He was a Renaissance man: musician, painter, meditation instructor, YouTube personality. Most, of course, mourn him as a filmmaker,

David Lynch directed many scenes throughout his illustrious career that have never left our minds, but these ones stand out.

I’ve never been much of a Lynch fan. I’ve loved some of his works. Loathed others. Confounded by much of it. Yet I found the sadness of the news distracting. For now, our culture has lost a truly original guy who stuck to his vision despite controversies and detractors.

David Lynch famously abhorred explaining himself. “Believe it or not, Eraserhead is my most spiritual film,” the director once said of his esoteric debut feature, during a 2007 interview. When asked to elaborate,

For the iconic writer-director, who was diagnosed with emphysema before his death last week at 78, cigarettes were more than a habit—they were a form of meditation, a symbol of the art life, and an endless source of visual poetry.