[fragments of thoughts, which maybe I'll return to later]

...Continued from Part 01.

Reminder: THIS IS JUST FOR FUN!

I'm responding emotionally and conceptually to things I see in Twin Peaks Season 3, not trying to deduce "the truth" or "the intent" or anything. I just think it's neat, and I had a lot of thoughts during that may or may not connect to the text itself. I'm also basically just free-writing. So there's no need for you to tell me I'm wrong about anything: I know!!!

OH ALSO: I'm gonna talk some about "David Lynch" as an artist here, but not because I think I "know what he means." When I talk about "David" or "DL," it's as the artist vector that connects all these works. I've learned a lot about the making of these things, and admire lots of the craft! But David's "intent" isn't what I care about. If I use language pointing that way, forgive me! I'm interested in what these cinematic objects do, and there are curious modulations I see across DL's work.

We're also hardly even getting to the Interesting Parts here; I'm touching on some stuff but I kinda wanna give y'all some of the tools I've gathered.

Okay, I've got a bunch of stuff pinging around right now about Art and Representation and Transformation. Let's jot these down! (I say, and then it takes several weeks of effort to get here.) Thanks for reading :)

A NEW FRAME

One of the purposes of art is to reframe our eyes. Show us something, give it a new context, so that the next time it crosses our brains, we can think differently about it.

Laura stepping into the painting in Fire Walk With Me.

(This made me cry the last time I watched it. It shows an extremely clear visual of dissociation, going into the closet, and the semi-conscious decision to suppress your reality in favor of a safer fiction. Notice the crossfade; Laura looking sadly at herself, holding her sleeping self in a closed fist, and then opening it. Empty, awake, gone.)

(And still here.)

I like it when art reminds us that it isn't real, when there's an interesting reason to do so. We can talk about "media literacy" and related topics, but basically it's important to learn and re-learn that just because you see something doesn't mean it's real. Nor should we believe everything we're told. And we're told an awful lot.

That's really tricky, because this same principle has been abused by life-hating conservatives to create an alternate political reality. But they use it as a double-flip; they undermine other sources, but say we have the truth. You can't trust anyone; but you can trust us. Do your own research: but make sure you get that information from us. Confirmation bias and forced consensus under the guise of counterculture.

It's so wild to live in this infinite bind!!!

I think that's why the deliberately theatrical and unreal can connect so deeply to our emotions and ideas. "See the artifice? I don't want you to take this literally." Reminders that we are in a theater, in a film, or as he always, that we are "dreaming" together. That there's a painting, and we're in it. Okay then, what are we here for? Not just to receive a happy little story, to be transported out of ourselves for a while. Vale told me this is something Bertolt Brecht did in theater in the early 1900s (thanks, Vale!!). Remind people they're watching a play, which makes you listen differently. If I'm not supposed to believe what I'm watching... then why are you showing me this?

So let's connect that to David Lynch's extensive work promoting the idea of Peace, for him achieved through Transcendental Meditation. Whether TM itself is legit / positive / negative, I can't say. I like a little mantra-based meditation now and then, but I have no experience or opinion of TM. What I do have is what DL says about it. And he states, repeatedly, that it's a good goal to increase the amount of positive introspection in the world. Sit quietly, turn inward, feel peaceful. Cultivating peace from within. More peace in the world. Sounds pretty good to me!

People then ask, "If David likes peace so much, what's with all the disturbing violence in his work?" To which he replies, paraphrasing, there's bad stuff in the world, and in us, too. And we can't hide from it. He has asserted repeatedly that looking directly at Laura Palmer's pain is at the heart of Twin Peaks; both he and Sheryl Lee, who portrays Laura, say publicly that if seeing Laura's suffering moves you, then you should do something about it. Teen girls are being harmed by people close to them all over the country, and the world, every single day. We have to create a more peaceful and compassionate world, somehow, and stop violence where it arises. A tall order! Intimidating! Impossible-feeling!

But we have to try.

So I've come to believe David's repeated depiction of violence, particularly upon women, isn't for entertainment purposes. (You can see a hundred punches in a Marvel movie and feel nothing; a single touch, a look, in DL's work can make your skin crawl off your bones.) It isn't prurient, sexual, or exploitative. He doesn't use the conventions of film to those ends. His films put us in a state of disorientation, and then burn into our minds that these are the worst things humans can do, that we must not do this. It hurts. It might not be for everybody at all times; sometimes you already know violence too vividly.

But there are many people, including survivors of abuse, who have spoken about how important Laura's story is to them, that it engages honestly with their pain.

And it does so with deeply surreal imagery, which makes sure you never mistake the story for reality... which simultaneously reminds us that there is a reality. Often in an uncomfortable way!

And for me, as a trans woman who was abused and bullied into the closet until my mid-30s, who has lived in poverty for most of my adult life, I connect viscerally with how Season 3 depicts confusion and heartache and the struggle against the darkness we can all become. How it feels to have your true self shoved into stasis for decades.

How it feels to die, and yet live.

YEAH, ME TOO, LAURA 😭😭😭

So what can be done? If we are dead and alive... how do you go on?

FUCK IF I KNOW

△△

Continued in Part 01b.