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The Twin Peaks Effect
I just finished watching the first season of Twin Peaks on my friend’s computer. I had never gotten into it when it was out - nevermind the fact that I would have been pretty young at the time. But anyway, I’m only seven episodes in (plus the pilot) and I can see why there are so many really hardcore fans of this series. It’s really wild. Last night, after watching a bunch of episodes in a row, I went to sleep really late, and it was like the show just kept happening in my mind. Or rather, the weird logic of the show extended itself into my dream processes. It almost felt like my mind was like re-programming or re-formatting itself somehow. I’ll have nights of dreams like this every now and then - where it’s like some part of my mind is trying to crack some secret code or something. Really freakin’ weird and awesome though. I’m currently burning the season two files to disc before I head home shortly. I won’t be in till late though, so I’ll get back to updating this blog more regularly tomorrow, and once I’m done with this series, I’m sure I’ll have a lot of crazy things to write about based on it.
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- The Power of the Unfinished Story
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November 15th, 2005 at 4:41 pm
I ignored it the first time around, but there are lots of occultic messages in the show. Watching it years after the fact (as you are doing, as I have done) is more enjoyable, because at the time it was all anybody could talk about and that took away the pleasure of the show for me. Now that it’s old hat, it is somehow more satisfying to watch…
November 15th, 2005 at 5:11 pm
heh, i’ve watched it all the way through nine or ten times already. i could do it again, too. i still find new stuff every single time.
not that i’m obsessed or anything . . . .
November 15th, 2005 at 6:35 pm
We’re on the same wavelength. I just watched the whole first season over the weekend. I’m in the process of getting the second season right now. Viva la internet!
November 15th, 2005 at 6:47 pm
That’s exactly what’s happening. You’ve stuck an unfamiliar ‘pattern’ and your hypothalmus is goiung into overdrive to solve it..and that’s a good thing.
November 15th, 2005 at 9:29 pm
i get creeped out by kyle whatshisname because every time i see him i am reminded of the kid in blue velvet, trapped in a hormone induced nightmare. ruuuuuuuun.
November 15th, 2005 at 10:43 pm
Wow–I’m glad I’m not the only one that does the “rerun” thing in my dreams!
November 15th, 2005 at 11:34 pm
Yah, that same exact thing happened to me when I started watching the latest Battlestar Galactica series. Not only did my mind reprogram itself for a while there, but one time I may have gotten a little too drunk and convinced myself that the bar I was in was crawling with cylons who befriended me only to take me back to their place and create a cylon/human hybrid. Thankfully, I escaped their fiendish grasp, but just barely.
November 16th, 2005 at 1:02 am
David Lynch is supposedly deep into trancendental meditation.
November 16th, 2005 at 3:07 am
the owls are not what they seem.
November 16th, 2005 at 6:12 am
It went downhill badly in the second season, as I recall it. Once they actually revealed who killed Laura Palmer, it lost what minimal interest it had for me.
I haven’t seen it since it was on TV. I’d be interested in seeing it again.
November 16th, 2005 at 11:17 am
David Foster Wallace wrote a really good essay about Lost Highway before it came out where he touches on Twin Peaks after the Laura Palmer murder got wrapped up. I haven’t watched the show in a zillion years, so I don’t remember too much on that front, but his take was that things actually got more interesting after the murder was solved because Lynch had to basically experiment with other shit.
I’ve been watching the new Dr. Who from the BBC and while my brain hasn’t yet done any rebooting in my sleep it definitely gets me high. The first time I watched Fight Club it also made me high–as if I’d just smoked ten bowls and then meditated for two hours.
I can believe Twin Peaks would do interesting things to your mind. Lynch is way into the surreal and the magickal. Hell, Eraserhead blew my shit away (’course maybe not the wisest choice, there–the first time I did shrooms and didn’t fall asleep, I watched Eraserhead).
Tim–Is there a site where you’re downloading the TP episodes? I wanna check it out!
November 16th, 2005 at 12:18 pm
a friend got it on bittorrent for me!
November 16th, 2005 at 1:30 pm
Yeah, that is how I got Season Two, through the .torrents, as it’s been up in the air for many years whether they’ll release it commercially. (I saw Punky Brewster on DVD, but they question Twin Peaks?)
Many people attribute Twin Peaks solely to David Lynch, but if anyone is looking for something new to read, check out the novel, The List of 7, written by Mark Frost, the other fellow behind the show. Again, dealing with heavy occult themes…
November 16th, 2005 at 4:02 pm
Lynch’s aim in TP was to open up the viewer to the mystery of daily life,beyond rational interpretation, all true art succeeds in this. BTW ‘Picnic At Hanging Rock’ by Peter Weir would be a possible influence on Lynch. ‘Picnic’ is a haunting movie precisely because ‘nothing’ happens.
November 17th, 2005 at 12:40 am
owl are held as archetypal images of knowledge. they are also screen memories for alien abduction.
November 17th, 2005 at 2:19 am
yaaaarr- be quite about yer downloaden boy. there still be thems that mights come a lookin fer yas openly admiting such activities caution is advised.
November 17th, 2005 at 1:52 pm
Well, I’m not personally downloading anything. Downloading thirty episodes of something via bittorrent is way beyond my capacity as a dial-up user.
November 17th, 2005 at 10:47 pm
don’t you know that downloading tv shows funds terrorism? LOL
Anyway, you’ve got me planning to start re-watching the show, it’s a remarkable artistic effort. Ask your friend to look around for David Lynch’s Rabbits. It’s a series of 7 short pieces for live stage, very weird but it has an interesting effect, lynch’s style is very haunting, he truely has his own visual language.
You might also enjoy his Industrial Symphony No 1