After my philosophy class on Thursday, January 16, I received a flurry of texts containing the news that David Lynch had just died. It’s one of those pieces of information that I had to read again and again, processing the sentence in shattering silence, feeling estranged as if I had just finished watching one of his films.
I went online to see thousands of tribute posts and people expressing their grief. It was comforting to see that everyone was sharing their favorite photographs, quotes, and moments from Lynch’s life and praising the way he challenged conventional narratives and embraced the perverse. We all engaged with Lynch’s works differently. For me, their absurdity taught me to look for possibilities beyond the surface–– what could lurk beneath a quintessential suburb, an iconic Los Angeles street, or a conversation between two friends.
“Is it future or is it past?” asks MIKE in Twin Peaks: The Return. The show’s main character, FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper, has been trapped for 25 years in another dimension and is questioned by an interdimensional entity named MIKE about the fluidity of time within the real and alternate dimension.
Beginning as a typical murder mystery in a small-town story, Twin Peaks plunges into a mind-bending trip through supernatural entities and dimensions. In Twin Peaks, Lynch blurs distinctions between time as well as place. Reminiscent of the interplay between multiple worlds, the summer before arriving at Yale was a limbo between the Southern town of Murfreesboro I had lived all my life and the once-unfathomable realization that college—once a hazy dream—was approaching reality.
I had watched the world pass by at breakneck speed and always attempted to keep its pace. During the summer, I had a list of media to consume, people to see, memories to make, and places to visit; each task blurring so quickly into the next that they became disoriented dreams I’d happen to stumble upon into recollecting. It was also this time that I wanted to tackle the infamously slow and impenetrable works of David Lynch. I was struck by how Lynch imbued even the most mundane moments with an unsettling atmosphere, forcing us to savor each gesture, glance, and awkward exchange.
As my nightly walks veered into a mundane routine, I somehow felt more estranged from the familiar houses and trees and people I passed by. Soon enough, I would become a distant observer, a spectre lingering by flickering streetlights and holding silent gazes like I had just appeared in a place I once knew.
The night before I left, I went for a walk through my neighborhood like I had been doing every night that summer. The tranquil but eerie Twin Peaks soundtrack by Angelo Badalamenti, coupled with the haunting vocals of Julee Cruise, filled my earbuds. The soundtrack evoked a sense of nostalgia, but it was one I couldn’t pinpoint––unattached to a distinct person, place, or memory. I was simultaneously filling and leaving behind an empty space. I didn’t know where my own self began, now that the place that had shaped it was no longer in view. What parts of myself would remain constant?
Out of all of Lynch’s works, Twin Peaks captivated me the most because of its multifacetedness––simultaneously containing a devastating exploration of teenage girlhood, enigmatic quips between idiosyncratic characters, and surreal dream sequences. It was the first of Lynch’s works that I watched, hurling me deep into his feature films, then his short films, interviews, paintings, and music.
Amid the supernatural weirdness, it’s easy to forget the intensely palpable humanity that lurks behind the mysterious red curtains. Laura Palmer’s corpse, wrapped in plastic, is just as much of an iconic symbol as her picture-perfect homecoming queen photo. Both depictions strip her of her humanity, confining her to a fixed, aestheticized image. Still, the most disturbing part of Twin Peaks is how real Laura Palmer’s story was.
Laura’s realization that she was being raped by her father and that she had to die to escape her pain formed the emotional crux of the show. Her subsumption into the supernatural is not an escape from humanity, but a way of exposing the evils that bury themselves within cycles of abuse and complicity. It’s a reflection of how Lynch subverts familiarity by distorting narratives of normalcy.
The first two seasons of Twin Peaks featured scenes of warm red-brown hues and shots of mountains and waterfalls outlining the whimsical and charming Pacific Northwest. Yet in the third and final season, aired 25 years later, Lynch grappled with the cracks that broke the facade of an idyllic, small-town Americana. All that remained were corrupt institutions, deteriorating structures, empty landscapes, isolated individuals, and defeated heroes.
Over the past few years, my city has been in constant development. Developers carefully curate another corner of consumption, masses of modern apartments graze flattened landscapes, highways spiral everywhere as people are confined in a state of nowhere. The only way I recognize where I am is by which chain store is on the horizon of the endlessly fluctuating rows of cars–– stopping, going, never lingering for more than a moment. Even the traffic lights are invisible in the sprawling suburban mirage.
The highways connect to uneven roads that are perpetually under construction. These roads lead to the historic downtown streets, abandoned and peeling buildings, closed-down strip malls, empty theaters and restaurants and outdated shops that I’ve never wandered into. Even when I’m away, I try to recognize places by what they used to be, tracing the parts of myself that remain. I smile and shake my head when my father still calls it a small town because Murfreesboro has expanded past the once-distinct boundaries that I perceived and has changed more than I ever have.
I continue my walks under the Yale streetlights, Badalamenti and Cruise still in my ears. I take my earbuds off, and the familiar synths of the soundtrack are replaced with jarring background ambiance, the nostalgic image temporarily shattered. Like Agent Cooper returning to the town of Twin Peaks 25 years later, I allow my hometown–– though not quite what it used to be–– to follow me everywhere I go.
