There's Always Music in the Air

CWs: death, food, sex mention

“Where we’re from, the birds sing a pretty song, and there’s always music in the air” - The Little Man From Another Place, Twin Peaks 1x03, “Zen, or the Skill to Catch a Killer”

I learned of David Lynch’s passing, sadly, on 16 Jan 2025. Although he was a complicated figure, as many people are wont to be, it will be a great loss, not only for culture in general, but for myself more personally. I remember years ago, one of my friends spoke fondly of Twin Peaks, with random snatches of information about Agent Cooper and other strangeness within. I had heard of the show, naturally, but had never watched it. I remember the Fire Walk with Me theme being on Pure Moods back in the day (ha!), but I really had zero context for it. It was a weird pop culture artifact that had somehow passed me by, probably largely since it had come out in 1990-91, when I was around 6-7, and it was something I just never followed up on, although I love just about everything weird and strange. My spouse recently showed me a bizarro Sesame Street parody of Twin Peaks with Cookie Monster called “Twin Beaks,” which was pretty amusing, but undoubtedly everything would go over the children’s heads, unless their parents had them watching some weird stuff! Hollywood and the fandom in general have been mourning for the last few days, and understandably so.

I remember my parents always mentioning David Lynch as a purveyor of the bizarre, and my mom mentioned my uncle enjoying Eraserhead and thinking it was one of the weirdest films ever made. I didn’t see that particular film for many, many years, but when I finally did, I loved it and reveled in the weirdness. But Lynch was always just a name until I got older, a figure floating in the pop-culture aether to check out at some indeterminate future time. Although I was always into weird stuff, I don’t feel like my parents either encouraged or discouraged it. My parents were weirdly puritanical at times; I remember when a sex scene (very tame, to be sure) came onscreen in The Rock (I was maybe 12), my parents told me to “look away” or wanted to fast-forward it. I get it, that’s parent stuff at times, trying to shelter kids, but they did that sort of thing way longer than one would expect, and were just awkward in general about it. I think that’s changed since I became an adult, but still…

Anyways, back to Twin Peaks. My friend was talking up the show at some point back in 2009 or 2010, and one day I found that the whole series was on Netflix. I thought, what the hell, and fired it up one day. I had no idea what I was in for! Just like a good Netflixian, I remember shotgunning a number of episodes that day; I was obsessed immediately. The pilot was so delightfully strange, and so were the episodes that followed. I had never seen anything like it on TV before, and I feel like many shows have tried to replicate it to varying degrees of success. Lynch somehow nailed exposing the seedy underbelly of polite American society, revealing the horrors lurking just beneath the thin veneer of respectable suburbia. Just because you have the proverbial white picket fence and cute little house doesn’t mean you’re safe from enemies without or within. And incomprehensible forces were at work, almost completely unbeknownst to most of the townspeople; they were either blissfully unaware or in denial (most likely the latter). The town collectively mourns the violent death of the homecoming queen, herself a canvas for their hopes and fears, but also a damning indictment of their callous carelessness and indifference to her various cries for help.

I remember getting to the end (at that time!) of the series, and I was dumbfounded, outraged, and also completely content with the final scene (y’all know it). Watching Fire Walk With Me (which Tarantino, with his customary complete lack of self-awareness, famously panned), I didn’t really get any further answers, although tantalizing glimpses at the periphery beyond the series proper were provided (cf. Agent Cooper, “And I’ve started to focus out beyond the edge of the board. On a bigger game,” 2x11, “Masked Ball”). But that was it. I’m no stranger to unfinished works; the Aeneid ends in overturning all the piety and moral high ground (arguably) Aeneas built up over the course of the epic, in rage and abject horror, or Lucan’s frustratingly unfinished Pharsalia/De Bello Ciuili, or countless others. I like things being unfinished, especially since one can write their own conclusion, imagine what would come next. The narrative loop isn’t closed. So Twin Peaks being unfinished was fine, and I delighted in it. I’ve watched the series through probably 5-6x since that first viewing, and I love it very much indeed.

The Return, or Season 3, in 2017, answered a few things, raised even more questions, and also ended on a frightening, unmoored downer. It’s frustrating but I also love it. It’s like life, nothing ever really ends except for life itself, and I’m OK with that. I was happy that we got a bit more time in the world of Twin Peaks before Lynch passed, and I’m honestly OK if that’s all we get. I have been a little worried that they’d keep revisiting it, and therefore cheapening the whole experience. It had its time and I’m totally OK with it.

Back in 2012, I actually got a tattoo on my upper left arm of the “Owl Cave” ring symbol, which, when taken as a whole, looks like an owl in flight, but if you look at the wings, they resemble the eponymous twn peaks. I really liked the symbol and thought it was a cool way to embrace my fandom of the show. I have three tattoos now; the symbol is the second of them, and my first was on the upper left of my back, a reproduction of a Greek vase painting scene depicting a prothesis, or “laying out” of a body for burial. That particular depiction really spoke to me and I still love it. The third is a little tattoo of mountains, and my spouse and I both got matching tattoos; it is on my upper right arm. In any case, Twin Peaks meant enough to me to permanently tattoo a symbol of it on my body, a decision I did not make lightly.

After Twin Peaks, I figured I’d check out the rest of Lynch’s corpus slowly but surely. As I mentioned, I loved Eraserhead with its bleak industrial hellscape, terrifying imagery, and discordant music. I tried watching Lynch’s Dune not too long after my initial run with Twin Peaks, but I really couldn’t get into it, despite really enjoying the original books. I’ve since revisited Dune and really, really enjoyed it; Kyle MacLachlan does a fantastic job both in that as well as Twin Peaks. I remember watching Wild at Heart with my dad and one of his friends sometime as a teenager, and found it really disturbing and weird, but would like to revisit it, of course. We watched Lost Highway at a movie night with friends, and I really couldn’t figure it out and didn’t love it, but I’d also like to give it another spin. I watched Mulholland Drive a few years ago and thought it was fantastic and dreamy, and would gladly watch it again. I’ve never seen The Elephant Man but would like to. Inland Empire made little sense to me but I would give it another shot sometime. I remember watching Blue Velvet, which is probably closest to the aesthetic and subject matter of Twin Peaks, and really enjoying it. My spouse bought it for me on Blu-Ray not long after we started dating, but I haven’t watched it since that first time, which was years before that. I haven’t ever seen The Straight Story and would like to, as it seems good.

His corpus is relatively small but layered and varied, for sure. I recently read a book on Lynch by Michel Chion, and it helped me understand a little more about the man himself and his work, and made me want to fill in the gaps of movies I haven’t seen. A few months ago I watched On the Air, a very short-lived TV show from 1992 hot on the heels of Fire Walk with Me, and featuring many players from Twin Peaks. It was a bizarre, as expected, experience, but worth checking out. I’ve read pieces that it was ahead of its time, and it’s unfortunate that network TV didn’t allow it more room to grow and breathe, given the ridiculously abundant TV landscape we are living in presently. I don’t think Twin Peaks would be made today, though, and I’m astounded that the stars aligned and it was able to be made in the early ’90s, and grateful.

So what’s all this add up to? Well, Twin Peaks is at the core of my appreciation for David Lynch’s work, and I deeply love and appreciate that show. I have pretty much all of the music from it, including the massive Twin Peaks Archive, a collection of 211 tracks with various outtakes and unreleased songs from the series and Fire Walk with Me. I remember buying the whole thing from David Lynch’s website and immediately loved it. I have no idea where it’s available now for purchase, or even just to download, but it’s quite an expansive album, and well worth listening if you’re a fan. The regular releases for Seasons 1-3 are also excellent and worth checking out. The music is a big part of it for me, but I just love all of it. I’ve read quite a bit of secondary literature and criticism on Twin Peaks and Lynch’s work in general, too, which has enriched my experience overall. The Twin Peaks FAQ by David Bushman & Arthur Smith came out in 2016, and is still on my shelf, despite coming out before 2017’s The Return, which nullifies a lot of the speculation therein. It’s still a really interesting read and worth checking out. There is so much literature written about the show, and its impact on pop culture, film, and TV, is far-reaching. I’m grateful we have it, and got to spend a little time with Lynch and his thoughts.

So I guess this is a love letter to Twin Peaks as much as it is to Lynch and his memory, but that’s OK. If you don’t like Twin Peaks, there is plenty else in his corpus to engage with. But if you haven’t checked it out, I highly recommend it; I feel like if you watch the pilot and enjoy it, the rest will suck you in as well. RIP David Lynch, and thanks for all the cherry pie.