David Lynch’s Doll of a Girlfriend Explains Transcendental Meditation

The Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Awards are granted annually to the people how have participated in what Harvard Business School professor Clayton M. Christensen would deem market disruption. The big idea, extending to culture as well as business, is that old paradigms don’t fall due to inefficiency or ineffectiveness, but rather due to new competitors scaling down the product to remove all the frills no one wants.

Think about how Jetblue or Southwest Airlines got rid of all the trappings and just offered the people what they want: the cheapest flight available that’s passably safe and comfortable.

The awards, however, are not limited to airlines. (Though this years innovators include Airbnb and the founder of Scribd.) The David Lynch foundation received recognition for its work promoting Transcendental Meditation.

As if to prove he is the innovator they take him to be, Lynch innovated some efficiency by not showing up.  Instead, he sent this bizarre (read: typical Lynchian) video of what appears to be a barbie doll named Trixie sending Lynch to the store to buy makeup. What follows is an exchange which, in classic Lynch fashion, mixes the mundane with surreal, including a long explanation of exactly what Transcendental Meditation does supposedly.

In the words of Trixie: “Gee Dave, it sounds so good.”