nature's zodiac

Like many others, I feel lucky to have been alive in the Age of David Lynch. Thursday evenings were big in my family when I was twelve years old. From cliff hanger to cliff hanger we returned again and again to that iconic bird perched on a branch to the most healing twang of bass. Cares would melt away. There wasn’t any room for them. There was only room for the deepest engagement with Twin Peaks. 

My twin sister and I would go into elaborate theorizing mode the moment one episode ended, and the theories would build as the days went by. I even made her a Christmas advent calendar with nothing but beloved sound bites and images from this rich universe of a tv show. A strange moment like a mother asking her daughter to ‘pass the peas please’ would be exalted into something intensely iconic and meaningful, worthy of full illustration and Christmas ‘door’ concealment. 

I love David Lynch. I love his love for beauty, and his idea of what it is.

He said,  “I hate slick and pretty things. I prefer mistakes and accidents. Which is why I like things like cuts and bruises—they’re like little flowers. ..} When you see the same thing in nature, and you don’t know what it is, it can be very beautiful.”

Twin Peaks, despite the gory premise and occasional blood curdling screams, remains to be the most serene and beautiful show I’ve ever seen. The color scheme alone, with its warmth and same shade of orangey-red lipstick for various femmes, the emphasis on pie and coffee, the fool-card-esque essence of Agent Dale Cooper’s genius, they work together to create an incredible and consistent landscape of delectable beauty, brimming with discovery. Angelo Badalamenti’s music enhances this effect, saturating the scenes with rich feeling. Feeling! Is it not the soundtrack to all of our lives? When my sister started playing these themes on her keyboard I remember having a Promethean sense of fire-stealing from the gods; exhilarating and empowering!

And with all of the smoothness, there is no slickness. With all of the style there is no vapidness. Only substance, made rich by imperfections and strangeness, made hyper-real by dramatic effect, just as the imagination enhances mundane life. 

In fact, Twin Peaks still enhances my mundane life, from my black-as-a-moonless-night coffee to my favorite plaid skirt. My sister and I will still quote it all the time. And oddly, the lines we quote are the kind of non-lines, like “uhhh Jim” that a character responds in question to Cooper’s request to “leave them alone please”, or “take that Mr. Monkey wrench” screamed out from a bar fight.

Odd odd odd, and so soul-soothing! Lynch makes his taste for strange, unconventional, raw, non-slick things wonderfully contagious. It makes me want to be a detective too in discovering more of it and catching more treasures.

As Lynch would say about catching a ‘big fish’ of an idea during transcendental meditation, “It’s just so beautiful”.