At 70, filmmaker David Lynch is one of those Third Agers who have the time and opportunity to remember and share their stories. The "looking back" process is a primal task for older adults who want to pass on their legacy. Stories have power. The Kalahara Desert bushmen describe them as containers for the soul of their people. And every life story is unique. As Henri J. M. Nouwen puts it in Life of the Beloved:

"Your life and my life are, each of them, one-of-a-kind. No one has ever lived your life or my life before, and no one will live them again. Our lives are unique stones in the mosaic of human existence — priceless and irreplaceable."

For this reason, documentaries about lives are particularly interesting to us; we often learn new things about an individual from them. In David Lynch: The Art Life, the director of such twisted and complex films such as Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive, and Lost Highway is shown hard at work on his paintings and sculptures in a spacious studio perched high in the Hollywood Hills.

Here are a few of the stories he tells about his past. As a small boy in Missoula, Montana, he loved sitting in a mud puddle with a friend. He delighted in exploring an area no larger than a couple of blocks. His arrival at a new school coincided with the peace shattering arrival of a hurricane.

Talking about his films, he makes a bridge between a scene in Blue Velvet and his seeing a bloodied, nude woman on the sidewalk when he was still a young boy. Unlike other chroniclers of suburbia, Lynch does not slam the place and winds up paying tribute to his humble parents.

Opens on March 31, 2017.