Somewhere in the fall of my third year of grad school, I was immensely, inhumanly frustrated. This was shortly after my real analysis prelim - more on that and what I did here - and I was in a very strange state where I didn't have an advisor or any direction for research, but completed all my necessary requirements before starting research. For a while I was very aimless, not really knowing what to do about grad school, and felt very sad and frustrated. It was somewhere around this time that I got interested in David Lynch.
David Lynch is a US film director known for his usage of surrealism and surrealist imagery in his work, which includes TV shows like Twin Peaks and movies like Blue Velvet. I have not yet seen any David Lynch movies, though I hope to rectify that at some point. But I got interested in him for two reasons:
But yeah, people have compared me to lots of different people - and also things - in my life, and I remember that one girl I knew in high school said I reminded her of David Lynch, or his movie Eraserhead, I don't know which. I then got that again from a few different people in college. And grad school. A pattern was emerging that I did not understand.
\But, I watched a video of David Lynch talking about art, doing some manner of interview - and then I watched another, and another, and another. I was fascinated by his philosophy on art, except I wouldn't really call it a philosophy - it just seems like a fixation. He is just massively, absurdly, ridiculously passionate about art, whether that be movies or paintings or music or whatever else. He knows exactly what he wants to do, knows how absurd and noncommercial it is to people, knows people won't get what he's going for - and does it any way. As a mathematician I can relate strongly, no one I know outside my math department entirely understands what I do or why. As an "eccentric" I can relate to - I've always been seen as a little off-kilter by others, and his total certainty in what he's doing is amazing to me. Often I'm afraid of coming off too strange to people and scaring them off, and kind of hide things away.
Eventually I found the daily weather reports that he recorded and posted for years on a Youtube channel, throughout the COVID pandemic, the plague years. It was years at this point since I made a Youtube video, but I could do that. I wanted to do something creative, to get used to making something new and interesting again. Weather reports would be small, noncomittal, and daily. So I started on it mid-September. Truthfully they are only mostly daily - I often take breaks or just forget to post one day - but I still enjoy it strongly and like posting a report every morning. My first is below.
Throughout the series I've tried to develop my own sort of tone, a semi-imitation of Lynch's very distinctive voice with my own touches. I like what I've done fine. First I only reported on the weather, then I added one of Lynch's touches of having a song of the day, and now recently I've started adding a holiday for the day as well. I've been having fun doing it, it's a short but important part of my morning routine.
Something else about it that has been fascinating has been the effect that the weather reports - which I freely first thought of as being kind of stupid and not much worth watching - have had on other people. Some friends of mine - some I haven't seen in years - watch them regularly. Some have told me that it makes them want to make YouTube videos of their own. One friend has apparently made a playlist of all the songs of the day, which I think is cool. A relative of mine got me a storm glass for Christmas to assist with the videos, it looks quite nice. A lot more people have cared about them than I thought would.
In addition to people I know, a fair few people on the Internet have seemed to really enjoy them as well, certainly more than I ever expected. I get left comments about how people enjoy the reports or watch them every day. People ask where the reports are from, why I do them, or just talk about their own reaction to them. Recently one guy commented that the only weather report they watch is from a continent they're not on. I question the wisdom of that plan, but I'm glad to have been of service.
I won't do the weather report forever, but I do enjoy this while it's going on, and I'll probably keep it going for a while. I'm really glad people have liked it. I hope to do more creative stuff in the future, and I think this will definitely help with that.