David Lynch

Harper's Bazaar March 2015

Twin Peaks is still one of the best bits of television that I've ever seen. It was dark and quirky. Unspoiled by the pattern of what television was at the time. And decades ahead of what is happening now with the series being created for Netflix, HBO, Showtime now. Intense, sometimes perverse, and right on the line of propriety at all times.

I remember, so clearly, working late in the store where I worked at the time during renovation moves. I had gone out for a birthday fete and landed on my ankle on the dance floor. It was five times its normal size, but I had to go to work to manage the moves. Because I couldn't walk on it, I pushed myself around on an wheeled office chair. The biggest part of the work finished, I had one more night to go, which also happened to be the finale of the show. It was just 1990 and the idea of On Demand, or TiVo (well, that wouldn't work for me 'cause I still don't have it), and such, I had to get home to watch the show. For one of the few times in my work history, I actually pulled an "oh, oh my ankle" to get home on time. It worked. But what I encountered has haunted me since ...

What I didn't know is that David Lynch is now developing a new series for Twin Peaks, twenty five years later. In this interview, it says: "So it happened that there was a scene where Laura said to Special Agent Dale Cooper, 'I'll see you again in 25 years.' And, lo and behold, it's coming pretty close to being true." Is it kismet? "No, no, no," he says enigmatically. "It's part of the big show."

Are you kidding me? He knew that sometime ago, he'd pull us back into the world of Special Agent Dale Cooper and Laura Palmer. Amazing. yet it doesn't entirely surprise me. For this man, David Lynch, isn't like ordinary men is he? And it would make sense that he has a mind that sees the past, lives in the present, and certainly knows something of the future ... or at least, the Blue Room.

Probably twenty years ago, a friend of mine came to visit. With him, he brought me the box set of Twin Peaks. Coincidentally, I had also bought him one. We sort of worked that way. We spent a winter weekend in Chicago, holed up, drinking wine, eating cherry pie, and wondering about a lot of things that had to do with the show. In the middle of the night, and it was in the middle of the night, we decided that it would be a good idea to call David Lynch. Did we have the Internet then? I don't remember ... I probably didn't. I just bought a smart phone last year, and I don't have TiVo, so that says something of the timeliness of technology coming into my life. So what did I do? I dialed 411. Los Angeles, please. A Mr. David Lynch, please. His number isn't listed? Why not?! In fits of giggles, we ate the last of the pie and passed out.

The show was on so many years ago that I don't think that this will be a spoiler alert, but at the end of the series, Agent Cooper becomes Bob. Without going through the entire plot of the series, let's just say that Agent Cooper represents all that is good and wholesome of this world, and Bob represents pure evil. How could that be? How could Lynch allow the devil-incarnate into the soul of Agent Cooper. That's not how it works. I'm all for strange, weird, and perverse, but that broke every rule of what keeps us mere mortals from falling into the pit of despair, horror, and wickedness. Shakespeare taught us this! All of his heroes are flawed. And they do horrible things to their families, legions, and crown, but they recognize their flaws and redeem themselves. Perhaps, this is why Lynch comes back to do because the good becoming evil reveal was at the end. We didn't get any more after that twist. And Lynch has had to put his protagonist into a deep freeze to work out how to extract the evil that has possessed him. I surely hope that is what Lynch has in store for us next year.

I'll have the pie baked. And my dream catcher at the ready. Who knows what will come out of the series to come in to my own malleable mind.