David Lynch knows he could stand to improve some as a father.
“See, I’m not — I’m not the greatest parent,” the director, 72, told Vulture.
While the “Twin Peaks” co-creator said he cares about his four children — Jennifer, 50, Austin, 35, Riley, 26, and Lula, 5 — his art comes first.
“I love all my children and we get along great, but in the early years, before you can have a relationship of talking to them, it’s tough,” he said. “And I would get divorced and stuff — I’ve got four kids and three divorces. The work is the main thing, and I know I’ve caused suffering because of that. But at the same time I have huge love for the kids.”
Lynch, whose parents weren’t particularly involved in his life growing up, also feels that today’s parents are too involved in their children’s lives.
“Emily, my wife, sends me pictures if she’s at the park and sees a dad there,” he said. “She’ll say, ‘Look, a dad is here’ and I’ll say, ‘That’s a homeless man.’ But I shouldn’t make fun. It’s beautiful for that man’s kid that he’s there. Everybody’s got their own way.”
But the filmmaker, who recently said Donald Trump could be “one of the greatest presidents in history,” also admitted that his need to create affects all his relationships, not just those with his children.
“It’s like I’ve got a compulsion to do stuff and anything that gets in the way of that — it’s so painful,” he explained. “Relationships, if they’re not smooth and I don’t have room to work, they’re a torment. I can love people, and I do love people, but I need the space to work.”
That said, Lynch said he does make sure to at least introduce his children to Transcendental Meditation.
“All my kids started when they were 6 or 5,” he said. “I’ll tell you a story: I was in Italy, and this nun was asking me about Transcendental Meditation for children and wanted to know at what age kids were old enough to start. I said, ‘When they’re old enough to keep a secret.’ She said, ‘Oh, no! No secrets!’ But you get your mantra and you’re not supposed to say it out loud because it’s meant to take you inward, not outward. The nun freaked out about that. Maybe that tells you something about nuns.”