Lots of times I get ideas, I fall in love with them. Those ones you fall in love with are really special ideas. And in some ways, I always say, when something is abstract, the abstractions are hard to put into words unless you're a poet. But these ideas you somehow know. And cinema is a language that can say abstractions. I love stories but I love stories that hold abstractions. They can hold abstractions and cinema can say these difficult-to-say-in-words things.
A lot of times I don't know the meaning of the idea and it drives me crazy. I think we should know the meaning of the idea--and I think about them. I think about them and I tell the story about my first feature, Eraserhead. I did not know what these things really meant. And on that particular film I started reading the Bible. And I'm reading the Bible, going along, and suddenly there was a sentence and I said, forget it. That--that's this thing. That's this thing.
And so I should know the meaning for me, but when things get abstract it does me no good for me to say what it is, you know. It's better--all viewers, on the surface, we're all different, and we see something. And that's another place where intuition kicks in. An inner knowingness. And so you see a thing and you think about it and you feel it and you go and you sort of know something inside and you can rely on that.
Another thing I say is, if you go, after a film, withholding abstractions, to a coffee place and, having coffee with your friends, someone will say something and immediately you will say, "No, no, no, no, that's not what that was about. This is what." And so many things come out, it's surprising. So you do know. You do know, for yourself. And what you know is valid.
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