‘Lux Vivens’: David Lynch’s esoteric ode to a 12th-century nun

Posted On October 2, 2025October 2, 2025

David Lynch took a visionary approach to cinema, crafting surreal and beautifully dark worlds which tap into the most uncomfortable and confusing parts of humanity. Yet, at the core of Lynch’s psychosexual horrors and nightmare-ridden suburbia is a desire to find a brighter side, a belief that not all hope is lost.

Lynch saw the most beauty in what people can do with art, something that’s brought us together and stirred emotion for as long as we’ve been around. He didn’t just stick to filmmaking either, getting stuck into sculpture, painting, writing and making music too. Music, in particular, was a big part of Lynch’s creative world. Every one of his films comes with a proper memorable soundtrack, carefully stitched together from a mix of pre-existing tracks and originals, mostly thanks to his long-time collaborator Angelo Badalamenti.

The pair often made music together, including a joint album, Thought Gang, with Lynch finding him to be a creative equal, totally working on the same wavelength. Badalamenti wasn’t the only one, though. Throughout Lynch’s career, he found various people with whom he connected on a deep musical level, resulting in collaborative pieces, such as Cellophane Memories with Chrystabell and Lux Vivens with Jocelyn Montgomery. 

Lux Vivens often flies under the radar when it comes to Lynch’s musical tenure, but it’s actually one of his most astounding projects. The album draws inspiration from Hildegard von Bingen, a 12th-century nun often seen as one of the earliest known composers. It’s a haunting listen, with Montgomery’s voice taking on something almost otherworldly as she channels this centuries-old sound – the kind that carries echoes of a time so far gone, it’s hard to get your head around in the modern day. Yet, her voice evokes the image of von Bingen working on her craft, cementing the legacy of the medieval icon.

“Jocelyn is an incredible singer,” Lynch told LA Weekly. He met the musician through the producer (and Lost Highway cowboy) Monty Montgomery, whom she would go on to marry. “He said he wanted me to meet this girl Jocelyn, who was coming to New York on her way to L.A. Well, it just so happened we had this extra track we made, and we wrote this kind of melody,” the director explained, referring to a song called ‘And Still’.

“So Jocelyn shows up and she was supposed to say hello and then leave, but I said, ‘Jocelyn, we got this song,” he added. “Would you stay here and sing it?’ And she said yes. And she also brought her violin. So it’s beautiful what she did. And she sang and played the fiddle in this and it’s a haunting, beautiful song.”

Soon, Lynch realised that he’d stumbled upon something special. “Then remembering all that, Jocelyn, while floating down the Rhine River, or the Blue Danube, or I don’t know, something, with her friend Heidrun [Reshöft] — now Heidrun is another special person — they went down the river, visiting monasteries, thinking only of Hildegard. And people would let them stay in the monasteries and Jocelyn would sing for the nuns in the morning. So beautiful she sang that many of the nuns were weeping. Imagine!”

So they got this deal to make an album of Hildegard music, and that’s the first thing we made in the studio downstairs [at Asymmetrical]. The very first thing. And I got to produce it, and that was really, really fun.” 

It seems like Montgomery was on the same esoteric wavelength as Lynch, making for a great collaboration between the two, which now remains a tragically underrated element of Lynch’s creative oeuvre.

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