...Continued from Part 01b.

PREPOST

It's been over two months since I wrote Part 1. An entire bout of ups and downs. Day-to-day life is really hard for me at the moment; it often is, unfortunately. I think I'm often lonelier than I've ever been, find it hard to have energy to do much beyond my job each day, etc etc. I drag myself across the hot stones of corporate limbo each day, and convince myself to do it again. You know the drill. Maybe it helps to talk, but nobody can ever do anything beyond listen. We're all stretched too thin. Oh well. Thanks for listening.

I wrote several pages of digressions, realized they weren't what I wanted to say next, and then probably set my internal bar too high. I also started to think about technical changes to the site; I want to handle alt text and captions for these images better. But I'm so tired. So I took a "break" from this just to work and survive, and reflected for a while.

Reminders: this is just for fun! I'm creatively responding to art, not saying anything is the truth. These are just notes. And the only rule is that I can say whatever I want!!!

One day maybe we'll talk about Laura's painting, the fake bird at the end of Blue Velvet, the exultation of dying to be a woman in Inland Empire, or any of the other things that led me down abstract pathways. But for now, let's keep following "the text."

We've reached the trophy of Laura's head on the high school wall. I've touched on the river that splits in two, becomes waterfalls, splits again into mist and pool, crossfades into waving curtains, then fadecrosses again into a dizzying turn around the zig-zag dance floor. All of this with the credits on top, and Angelo's beautiful lullaby crooning along. Before that we saw 25 years ago, the young Dale and Laura in a red-curtained room. She says she'll see him (and us) again in 25 years, and then "Meanwhile."

OUR HOUSE NOW

Fade to black and silence. Fade up a low whooshing that wouldn't properly be called "white noise." Maybe it's black & white noise. The screen is black & white, an ungroomed carpet, moving forward.

Black shiny shoes, a black suit, hands in a lap like they're holding something hidden.

All the way up: look, it's Lurch! I love the Addams Family movies. (He's also in the earlier Twin Peaks, as a spectral Giant who speaks to Cooper while he lies dying on the floor. He was serious and cryptic then; clearly a visitor from another place. Maybe we're in his house now.)

He says, "Agent Cooper," in the same reverse-speech young Laura used in the opening scene. Cut to Special Agent Dale Cooper, still wearing his suit, but 25 years older. He's sitting in a wide, arch-backed chair with soft braided upholstery, black and white curtains behind, and a fancy lamp just off to the left. It never hurts to describe things!

The last time we saw Dale:

It wasn't exactly the same place, but it's damn similar. He hasn't... he hasn't been sitting "here" for twenty-five years? Has he????

Well... not exactly the last time anyone's seen Dale. That was the end of Season 2. In our chronology, we also have his unusual appearances in Fire Walk With Me to account for. Someday:

Laura takes Dale's place in the chair, elegant, crying, dead, and laughing. In understanding, and relief, and loss. Dale, someone she has never met, stands over her, in a position of counsel, concern, of protection. The ringed world is tiny, alight, a trinket on a table. The angel that left Laura returns, overlaid with a lamp, a source of light and comfort.

A living room arrangement, in a place outside the world. Blue flashes against the scene, like the glowing static television at the movie's opening. The angel lit blue; the world lit blue. She continues to laugh as everything fades to blue. A close-up, then a freeze on the face that never got to grow up, but here seems to get the joke.

Listen... to

The Giant says, "Listen... to the sounds," and directs our attention to the right. Dale turns to the left, and we see a Dr. Seuss-ass ancient gramophone, and hear a repeated scratching noise with a strange rhythm.

The camera upwards and in slowly, until the gramophone becomes just a circle, a gold-plated black hole. Before we cross over its regrettable eventuality, cut back to the Big Guy.

He and Dale exchange looks, while the sound begins to play. It doesn't sound like anything exactly, just a sound a record player might make if it reached the end of the side and just kept spinning. A loop, stuck, trapped.

Lou Ming said that some people messed with the speed of this sound, and matched it up with Laura unlocking her diary with a key in FWWM. That's extremely cool if true, and probably is! What would that mean? We're being told to listen to it; to Laura's secrets, and the mechanism of their keeping.

And then Lurch says, "It is in... our house now." Dale looks back at the record player, looks worried or skeptical, and asks, "... It is?"

The next bits are cuts back and forth between Giant and Cooper, and all the subtitles are split over multiple lines. so here's what the Giant says:

"It all cannot be said aloud now."
"Remember 4 3 0."
"Richard and Linda."
"Two birds with one stone."

Between each line, cut to Dale, listening intently. And after all that, he gets serious, and says, "I understand."

I'm afraid he doesn't.

OKAY, SO WHAT?

What's all this for? Is it just to be mystifying and strange? Well, remember that we're trying to take everything literally. What if everything that's said is true, in some way, even if we don't understand it yet?

Cooper says he understands, so maybe he does. But the problem with being certain, even if you're a supernatural detective faced with cryptic clues because it cannot all be said aloud now, is... well, you know what the problem is.

From a functional story perspective, I think this sort of thing is a way of telling the audience that the details matter. That we're going to be confused, but that we should pay attention to the details. The scene with Lil and the airplane in FWWM serves a similar purpose! The perspective characters are detectives, FBI agents; we're in a mystery. It might not all make perfect sense to you, but it is decipherable, if you pay attention. If you have the training.

Lil, a woman in a red dress, standing in the shadow of a garage, and a yellow prop plane with a black lightning bolt down the side.

As she runs up to them, the Director of the FBI (and of the film!) says some cryptic stuff, and makes an unusual sign to the special agent. Agent Chet says, "Federal," and David Lynch nods slightly.

Lil scrunches up her face, flexes her hand repeatedly, and turns in a circle. She has a red wig and a blue rose. David Lynch says, "Good luck!" and leaves.

This feels bewildering, and mostly silly! But then there's a whole scene in the movie after this where Agent Chet asks Young Twenty-Four what he noticed, and they do a whole long breakdown of everything and what it means.

This is another way of telling the audience, "It all cannot be said aloud now!" But it's also telling us that while we may be about to see some wild shit that doesn't make immediate sense, there is sense to be made, if we are observant and thoughtful.

Okay okay, fine, David's telling us to watch his movie closely. BUT: let's take it literally. Why does the Director of the FBI have to sneak information to one of his Agents? Really think about it. They're standing at a tiny airport in the middle of nowhere, with the loud sound of an engine behind him. And he's still speaking in code. This is covert spy stuff. He's afraid of being overheard. By whom?

And then 25 years later in this otherworldly monochrome room... who is the Giant afraid might hear if he says the truth directly?

!!! TRANS REPRESSION AND DEFENSE MECHANISM ALERT !!!

Back at 6 minutes into Part 1 of The Return (lmao), the Giant says, "You are far away." And then a wind picks up over the mechanical whooshing, and Cooper flickers and fades, strangely out of view.

Far away physically? Or far away from "the truth?"

PROBABLY BOTH LOL

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MORE TO FOLLOW...