La fumée de cigarette s’étirait en fines volutes depuis le bout du mégot avant de s’enrouler en tourbillons miniatures dont la lente progression vers les hauteurs de l’atelier dessinait de petits cyclones hypnotiques, tournant au ralenti sur eux-mêmes. Leurs vrilles finissaient par se dissiper dans le silence de la pièce, semblables à des spectres réintégrant le non-être, s’évaporant dans un inaudible fondu enchaîné.
Les doigts du fumeur oscillaient lentement au rythme de ses pensées, le tube de tabac coincé entre le majeur et l’index, la main reposant sur l’accoudoir du siège qu’il occupait dans un étrange mélange d’indolence et de tension. Autour de lui, des toiles de toutes tailles occupaient l’espace. Devant lui, sa nouvelle création. Son travail en cours.
Les yeux plissés, se mordillant le coin des lèvres, le regard du peintre voyageait sur la surface de la large toile de trois mètres sur deux. Par moments, des bribes de fumée s’accrochaient à ses cheveux blancs coiffés avec méthode avant de poursuivre leur course ascendante. Le visage creusé de rides du septuagénaire, rocailleux, arrêtait aussi occasionnellement le lent cheminement du nuage de tabac.
Le fond de la toile était d’un noir intense, profond, prêt à avaler tout spectateur se risquant à la contempler. Une maison stylisée dépourvue de porte, sinistre et oppressante, aux murs blanchâtres et aux fenêtres grandes ouvertes sur des puits de pénombre, occupait la droite de l’image. A l’avant-plan sur la gauche du tableau, comme en suspension dans cette immensité nocturne, flottant, un individu vêtu d’un costume vert pomme croqué de dos toisait la demeure du regard. Dans sa main droite dégoulinante de sang, une roue de bicyclette à la rotondité déformée, comme fondue, brisait la bidimensionnalité de l’œuvre. Entre l’homme et la bâtisse, une tension tangible faisait vibrer l’air, crépitant tel un flux d’électrons le long d’une ligne à haute tension. Au-dessus du personnage, inscrit d’une main volontairement tremblante en lettres majuscules, le message suivant s’étalait: “JE VEUX SAVOIR QUI EST CHEZ MOI !”. Un vent sombre paraissait vouloir s’échapper de la toile et un étrange mystère suintait des fenêtres de la maison. Le bourdonnement commença à enfler peu à peu, le tissu du costume se mit à frétiller, à vibrer, un castor apparut à la fenêtre de la maison…
“Monsieur Lynch ?”
Surpris dans sa rêverie, l’observateur silencieux se retourna dans son siège pour découvrir la source de cette soudaine interruption. Il vit approcher Neil, un jeune homme d’une trentaine d’années en charge de son emploi du temps et de ses rendez-vous professionnels.
“Le journaliste des Cahiers du Cinéma vient d’arriver pour l’entretien que vous lui avez promis. Je lui ai demandé d’attendre un moment à l’extérieur. Souhaitez-vous que je le fasse entrer ?”
L’artiste se leva en grimaçant, la bouche fermée en une moue indécryptable.
“C’est bon, Neil, dites-lui de venir.”
“Tout de suite, monsieur.”
Avant qu’il n’ait eu le temps de trop s’éloigner, Lynch ajouta :
“Et Neil ?”
“Oui ?”
“Pourriez-vous m’amener une assiette d’Oreos et un Coca, par la même occasion ? J’ai besoin de faire le plein d’énergie.”
Neil sourit largement, habitué à la gourmandise légendaire de son employeur.
“Sans souci, Monsieur.”
“Merci, Neil…”
Lynch se dirigea vers la porte de son atelier juché sur les hauteurs de Los Angeles, située à l’autre extrémité du lieu où il travaillait à son tableau. Neil faisait déjà entrer le journaliste français, lui indiquant la venue du célèbre cinéaste.
“Bonjour Monsieur Lynch, déclara le français d’une voix haut perchée.”
“Bonjour, bienvenue !”
Ils se serrèrent la main avant de se diriger vers une table basse entourée de fauteuils, le tout conçu par Lynch lui-même. Son intérêt pour la confection de meubles en tous genres, au design avant-gardiste, sa délectation à travailler le bois, à lui donner forme, contribuaient au plaisir esthétique qu’il prenait à séjourner longuement au sein de son atelier.
“Un Oreo ?”
“Euh… non merci !”
“Vous avez fait bon voyage ?”
“Très bon. Enfin… à part le fait que l’aéroport a égaré mes bagages et que l’avion de mon collègue a été détourné en direction de Las Vegas.”
“Las Vegas ?”
“Oui.”
“Désolé d’apprendre ça…”
Lynch croqua dans son biscuit chocolaté avec une expression de profonde extase peinte sur le visage.
“Vous vouliez parler de quoi, au juste ?”
“Je me demandais si nous pourrions discuter de la prochaine saison de Twin Peaks ?”
“Le passé dicte l’avenir…”
“Pardon ?”
“Non, rien… je réfléchissais à voix haute.”
Le journaliste hocha lentement la tête, indécis quant au sens à donner à ces propos. Lynch le regardait en souriant, tout en continuant de mâcher son biscuit avant de l’arroser d’une rasade de Coca-Cola. L’entretien promettait de confirmer l’opinion selon laquelle Lynch était un original dont les propos confinaient au mieux à l’ésotérique, au pire à l’incompréhensible.
Avant que le français n’ait le temps de poser sa première question, Lynch l’interrogea:
“Vous savez coudre ?”
“Coudre ?”
“Oui, coudre. Je viens de m’acheter une superbe machine à coudre et je cherche à apprendre comment procéder, mais je n’ai pas le début d’une idée quant à la façon de faire.”
“Je… euh, je peux me renseigner si vous voulez ?”
“Non non, ne vous tracassez pas, je demandais ça à tout hasard. Je réfléchis actuellement à un costume que j’aimerais préparer pour un court-métrage, quelque chose d’assez baroque mêlant des étoffes de velours avec des os de lapin, et je me renseigne à gauche à droite sur la marche à suivre.”
Pris de court, le journaliste fit lentement “oui” de la tête tout en cherchant la façon dont il allait s’y prendre pour ramener la conversation sur de meilleurs rails. Il se racla la gorge afin de masquer son désarroi.
“Pour en revenir à Twin Peaks…”
“Oui.”
“Vous allez donc commencer le tournage de la quatrième saison de la série ?”
“Le tournage “d’une” quatrième saison de la série, oui.”
“Je… je ne comprends pas la distinction…?”
“Il ne s’agit pas de la quatrième saison d’un point de vue chronologique. Ce n’est pas la suite de la série.”
“Ah bon ? Et alors, comment se situe-t-elle vis-à-vis des trois pre… des trois autres saisons ?”
“Avant le début de la fin du retour.”
“(…) Je vois.”
Nouvelle gorgée de Coca-Cola pour faciliter le passage d’un second Oreo.
“Et vous collaborez de nouveau avec Mark Frost ?”
“Oui.”
“Vous pouvez nous en dire plus ? C’est toujours lui qui produit les scripts des épisodes, n’est-ce pas ?”
“Oui, mais nous allons procéder un peu différemment cette saison.”
“C’est-à-dire ?”
“Il rédigera les scripts après que j’ai fini de tourner les épisodes, pour rester en phase avec la thématique générale de la saison.”
“(…)”
X X X
Vingt minutes d’entretien plus tard, Lynch retourna à son tableau les sourcils en accents circonflexes, quelque peu étonné de l’étroitesse d’esprit du journaliste des Cahiers.
X X X
Le lit ondulait au rythme des vagues, oscillant moelleusement sur la surface d’un vaste océan s’étendant à perte de vue. Il faisait nuit noire, mais les flots émettaient une légère radiation pourpre qui permettait de distinguer l’horizon, où sévissait un orage silencieux, laissant aussi parfois entrevoir le passage d’une créature marine en profondeur. Une légère brise soufflait en produisant un ronronnement sourd qui aidait à bercer le dormeur étalé sur le lit, les draps repoussés, plongé dans son rêve.
Une silhouette sombre flottant à la surface de l’océan se rapprocha lentement du lit, avant de se positionner à proximité de l’oreiller sur lequel reposait la tête du dormeur. La silhouette se pencha vers lui.
“David…”
Le dormeur remua légèrement à l’annonce de son nom, mais décida de rester immergé dans ses songes.
“DAVID !”
Cette fois, les yeux de Lynch s’ouvrirent tout grands sur le ciel surplombant l’océan. Il tourna la tête en direction de la silhouette en lévitation près du lit.
C’était le Maharishi, en vol yogique.
“Guru…”
“Oui, David. J’espère que tu vas bien depuis notre dernière rencontre ?”
“Je vais bien… mais le Kali-Yuga est entré dans une phase particulièrement cruelle sur Terre.”
Le vieux sage indien avait certes depuis longtemps quitté son enveloppe charnelle, mais il avait bien meilleur mine depuis sa mort, son crâne toujours aussi dégarni et sa longue barbe blanche tombant sur ses jambes croisées, assis en tailleur à quelques centimètres des flots. Il aimait de temps à autre venir aux nouvelles auprès de son disciple favori. Lynch n’avait certes pas la même innocence un peu mièvre que les membres de ce groupe de rock britannique ayant jadis fait sensation, mais sa dévotion était intense. Il l’avait de surcroît aidé à plusieurs reprises à résoudre des conflits psychiques alambiqués, des histoires de réincarnation mal engagées, et il lui en savait gré.
“Je sais, reprit le Maharishi, mais je sais aussi que tu luttes contre son extension grâce à ton art, aux films que tu tournes, aux conférences que tu donnes.”
Lynch répondit sincèrement :
“Je fais de mon mieux, guru.”
Le sourire qui barrait le visage du chantre de la méditation transcendantale ne semblait jamais faiblir. Cela devait être lié à l’intense état de félicité que lui prodiguait le contact permanent avec la conscience pure. Sa technique avait constitué une vraie révélation pour Lynch, une bouée qui lui avait permis de poursuivre sa pratique artistique, de plonger dans les profondeurs de son inconscient, tout en étant assuré de toujours pouvoir remonter à la surface, de ne pas se noyer dans les méandres horrifiques qui nous attirent parfois sous la surface des flots. Notamment, ce souvenir d’enfance, cette excursion en compagnie de son père dans les forêts du Montana un beau matin de…
“David, je suis venu t’avertir. Je crains que quelque chose de mauvais ne se trame actuellement dans les coulisses du théâtre.”
“Il est de retour ?”
“Lui… ou un autre, je ne sais pas. Mais tiens-toi sur tes gardes. “
Lynch hocha la tête. Ce n’était pas la première fois qu’il avait affaire à lui, il connaissait le danger qu’il représentait. Il valait parfois mieux ne pas dire les choses, de façon à ne pas leur donner trop de force. Cela n’enlevait rien pourtant à leur force négative, à leur pouvoir de nuisance. Lynch récita mentalement le mantra qui lui avait été spécifiquement attribué, celui qui devait l’aider à atteindre la quiétude intérieure, d’évacuer toute trace de peur et de se focaliser sur la tâche à accomplir.
“Savez-vous quand il frappera ?”
“Rien n’est écrit, David. Souviens-toi de cela : le script n’est pas ce que l’on pense !”
A peine le Maharishi eut-il prononcé cette sentence qu’il se mit à être zébré d’éclairs silencieux, son corps disparaissant peu à peu derrière un orage électrique découpant sa silhouette dans la nuit océanique. Seul son sourire resta un instant en suspension derrière lui, avant de s’évaporer à son tour.
X X X
Lynch s’empara du mégaphone :
“C’était très bien, Kyle. Mais n’oublie pas que tu ne sais plus qui tu es. Joue la scène avec un peu moins de Cooper et un peu plus de Mr. C, sans oublier une pointe de Richard, et ce sera parfait ! Ah oui, et puis aussi, il y a un peu de Laura et de Diane en toi. Et d’Osiris. (…) Enfin, tu sais tout ça…”
Il déclara cette tirade en opérant de lents mouvements de sa main droite, levée à hauteur des yeux, pianotant des doigts en fonction des sentiments à transmettre, soulignant ainsi son propos. Kyle MacLachlan fronça les sourcils sans rien répondre, pas forcément décontenancé, mais pas nécessairement en complète phase avec les indications de jeu de son mentor.
Laura Dern intervint:
“Oui mais, David…”
“Laura ?”
“Si Kyle joue une partie de mon rôle, moi, qui suis-je censée être, en fait ?”
“Eh bien, Naido, bien sûr !”
“Ah bon ? Parce que je croyais que Naido…”
“Ne t’inquiètes pas, c’est très simple en fait. Il suffit que tu fasses comme si Kyle était ton fils dans cette scène, sans oublier qu’en fait, Cooper est ton amant et qu’il détient une portion de ton âme.”
“(…) Je vois.”
Elle ne voyait pas.
Lynch souria :
“Ben oui, c’est limpide.”
Neil s’approcha de lui avec un smartphone dans une main et un plateau sur lequel reposaient deux énormes donuts au chocolat ainsi qu’un grand gobelet de café.
“Monsieur Lynch ? Quelqu’un pour vous au téléphone.”
“Qui est-ce ?”
“Il n’a pas voulu dire, mais il prétend que c’est urgent.”
Une moue interrogative se peint sur les traits du réalisateur tandis qu’il reprenait le mégaphone dans sa main gauche:
“Écoutez-moi tout le monde, “Lynch break” !”
C’est ainsi qu’il appelait ses innombrables pauses sucreries au cours des tournages. Quelqu’un, un jour, avait déclaré qu’il devait avoir le métabolisme d’un bourdon pour ingérer autant de friandises en tous genre (avec une certaine prédilection pour les moins raffinées, à vrai dire). Tout ce qu’il savait, c’est qu’elles l’aidaient à se concentrer. Sans elles, son esprit tournait à vide. Elles le propulsaient dans un état de félicité que seul le sexe pouvait occasionnellement égaler. Correctement arrosées de café chaud, elles fondaient en une pâte rassurante dans sa bouche, une bouillie qui le replongeait en enfance, dans les années 50, ce paradis perdu auquel il aspirait tant à revenir.
Il agrippa un donut et le smartphone au passage et prit la direction de l’envers du décors, la façade d’une maison en bois, un devant sans derrière, juste une illusion. Il n’avait pas encore tourné de scène avec des rideaux rouges pour cette nouvelle saison de Twin Peaks. Cela viendrait bientôt et là aussi il pourra passer en coulisses sans jamais quitter la même pièce.
Observant Kyle et Laura à travers la fausse fenêtre, occupés à débattre de leurs rôles respectifs, la mine froncée, Lynch croqua une ample bouchée de donut avant de porter le téléphone à son oreille:
“Malloche ? Chavid Mlynch malapareil.”
“Monsieur Lynch ?”
“Mouiche.”
“Je suis chez vous.”
“(…) Quoiche !?”
“Je suis chez vous et vous ne me voyez pas.”
Le cinéaste contempla son smartphone avec horreur, comprenant aussitôt à qui il avait affaire. Il déglutit bruyamment, manque de s’étouffer, se frappa bruyamment la poitrine à plusieurs reprises afin d’aider les morceaux de donut à poursuivre leur course le long de son oesophage. Il reprit son souffle, et demanda:
“Que voulez-vous ?”
“Nous savons tous deux fort bien la réponse à cette question. Ce qui importe, ce n’est pas tant ce que je veux, mais ce dont j’ai besoin !”
Le Maharishi avait donc raison, le script était bel et bien menacé.
La voix au bout du fil… enfin, la voix au bout du fil qui n’en était pas un et qui se réverbérait à travers le champ électromagnétique jusqu’au lieu où se tenait Lynch, déclara:
“Ce soir, les jeux seront faits. J’aurais commencé le barrage.”
“Vous ne pouvez pas bloquer les flots de la rivière !”
“Ce soir. A la télévision. Sur CNN.”
Le mystérieux interlocuteur lui raccrocha au nez.
Lynch demeura interloqué quelques secondes, tentant vainement de remettre ses idées en ordre. Si ce que prétendait l’individu était vrai, il venait de mettre le pied dans une nouvelle mésaventure dont les résultats pourraient bien s’avérer catastrophiques. Comment s’y était-il pris pour obtenir son numéro de portable ? Et que voulait-il dire par “je suis chez vous et vous ne me voyez pas” ? Parviendrait-il à contrer les manigances de ce criminel ?
Il croqua de nouveau à pleines dents dans son donut et reprit le chemin du plateau. A peine sorti de la maison bidimensionnelle dans laquelle il avait répondu au téléphone que Kyle et Laura vinrent à sa rencontre, l’air décidé.
“David ?”
“Oui, Kyle ?”
“Nous avons un peu réfléchi à nos rôles respectifs, avec Laura.”
Les deux acteurs échangèrent un bref regard en coin, totalement perdus.
“On a essayé de comprendre ce que tu nous avais expliqué, toutes les nuances que tu avais apporté à notre approche, et on a une proposition à te faire.”
“Je t’écoute.”
“On s’est dit qu’on allait échanger nos scripts, en fait… que j’allais jouer le personnage de Laura et qu’elle jouerait le mien. Enfin, la version des personnages décrite dans le scénario… Qu’est-ce que tu en dis ?”
“Formidable ! J’adore.”
Il les laissa sur cette répartie tout en se dirigeant vers sa chaise de réalisateur. Kyle et Laura, pas nécessairement plus avancés, reprirent leur exégèse méthodique du texte, l’air dubitatif. Lynch s’assit lentement, le regard plongé dans le vide, l’esprit ailleurs. Il fouilla dans les poches de son veston à la recherche de son paquet de cigarettes et gratta une allumette. Le feu jaillit, accompagné de l’odeur du soufre, qu’il aimait tant. La première bouffée lui fit un bien immense, l’aida à focaliser son attention sur ce qui l’attendait. Sur son alter ego. Sur sa némésis.
Le Castor.
X X X
Les lunettes de soleil portées par David Lynch reflétaient la luminosité thermonucléaire du soleil en cette fin de matinée. Le ciel d’un bleu uniforme grésillait à l’instar d’un écran de téléviseur parcouru de bruit blanc. Les mains posées de façon symétrique sur le volant de sa voiture, le vent filtrant par les fenêtres entrouvertes faisant onduler sa crinière grise, le cinéaste parcourait méthodiquement les rues de la ville où il avait élu domicile depuis plusieurs décennies – Los Angeles, la ville du septième art, celle de tous les rêves. Et de tous les cauchemars aussi. La bouche pincée en une mimique pensive, insensible à la chaleur croissante de cette journée d’été, il scrutait les véhicules le précédant sur le ruban d’asphalte, ralentissait derrière certaines voitures, accélérait parfois pour en rattraper d’autres, changeait soudain de direction en fonction de ce qu’il voyait ou croyait voir. Il était visiblement à la recherche de quelque chose. Cette étrange chorégraphie motorisée n’aurait eu aucun sens pour un éventuel spectateur tant elle ne paraissait guidée par aucune structure. Le cinéaste semblait naviguer au gré de son intuition du moment, sans avoir établi de véritable plan de conduite.
Neil, assis sur le siège passager, se racla la gorge: “Monsieur Lynch ?”.
Tiré hors de sa rêverie par ce passager qu’il avait un temps oublié, l’air étonné, Lynch finit par répondre : “Oui, Neil ?”.
“Je me demandais si nous ne devrions pas nous diriger en direction du studio ?”
“Le studio ?”
“Oui, nous avons déjà une demi-heure de retard. Nous avons rendez-vous pour tourner la scène avec le Fireman et K….”
Le brusque coup de frein envoya le café de Neil sur le pare-brise. Lunch venait de repérer une automobile rouge dans une rue perpendiculaire. Il obliqua à sa poursuite, le pied au plancher, faisant violemment rugir le moteur. Neil se terra dans son siège, paniqué.
“Monsieur Lynch ?”
“Un moment, Neil.”
Les allées défilaient de part et d’autre du véhicule à une allure ahurissante, le vent sifflant par les fenêtres. Le café répandu sur le pare-brise dégoulinait en longues traînées marron, diminuant sensiblement la visibilité.
“C’est-à-dire que le studio avec le Firemaaaahh…”
Nouveau crissement de pneus. Brusque arrêt. La voiture de Lynch s’immobilisa à quelques centimètres de sa proie. Laissant tourner le moteur, il se pencha en avant pour lire la plaque d’immatriculation du véhicule le précédant sur la chaussée. Un air de dépit s’inscrit sur son visage.
“Mince, je croyais pourtant…”, pesta-t-il.
Se redressant avec précaution jusqu’à retrouver une posture à peu près normale, Neil contempla son employeur avec de gros yeux. Les gouttes de café finissaient de glisser le long du pare-brise.
“Vous… Enfin, comment…”
“Les plaques d’immatriculation, Neil, les plaques d’immatriculation. Je ne peux pas retourner au studio avant d’avoir repéré ma date de naissance sur ces plaques.”
“Votre date de naissance ? Mais, euh, pourquoi ?”
Lynch se rembrunit.
“Ce serait trop long à expliquer. Mais c’est très très important.”
“Votre date de naissance ?”
Lynch regarda Neil comme si ce dernier avait eu une embolie cérébrale.
“Oui, Neil, ma date de naissance. Rien ne pourra fonctionner avant que je parvienne à la recomposer à l’aide de ces plaques. Quatre et six, dix, le numéro de l’accomplissement.”
Plusieurs coups de klaxon convainquirent Lynch de reprendre sa partie de chasse brièvement interrompue. Il s’engagea dans une nouvelle direction, à contre-courant du flot de véhicules se dirigeant vers le studio. Tout ceci commençait à devenir inquiétant. Il ne lui avait jamais fallu aussi longtemps avant de repérer les bons chiffres. Le Castor avait-il déjà commencé son action délétère ?
Arrivé à un feu rouge, il immobilisa son véhicule à contrecœur. Ses mains se crispaient sur le volant tandis que ses yeux scrutaient le passage des voitures de toute sorte. En apparence obnubilé par ce qu’il voyait, son esprit voyageait en vérité ailleurs, à bien des années de distance. Il se remémorait une autre balade en voiture, effectuée avec Jack Nance, à travers les zones industrielles de Los Angeles. Son acteur fétiche, auquel il avait donné le rôle principal de son premier long-métrage, l’avait souvent accompagné de la sorte, une bouteille de Coca-Cola à la main. Ils se délectaient tous deux de ces architectures métalliques baroques, ronronnantes, empanachées de fumée, sources de vie et de chaleur au sein d’un univers hanté par la présence terrifiante d’entités spectrales malignes. Ils aimaient s’imprégner de la puissance sourde de ces monstres gigantesques, parfois désaffectés, toujours évocateurs. Leurs longues déambulations lui manquaient, leurs interminables discussions jusqu’au bout de la nuit. Jack l’avait parfois épaulé dans ses investigations paranormales, il n’avait pas hésité à jouer le rôle d’éclaireur dans ces contrées mal défrichées.
C’était lors de ce circuit au sein du soubassement industriel de la cité des anges que Jack, assis sur le siège arrière, s’était soudain penché par dessus son épaule, affolé, le doigt pointé :
“Regarde, là-bas !”
Lynch avait plissé les yeux, cherchant à situer ce que désignait son comparse.
“Quoi ?”
“Là-bas !”
“Où ça ?”
“A l’angle de la rue, derrière ce mur… c’était…”
“Quoi ?”
“C’était toi !”
“Quoi !?”
“Je te jure, j’aurais juré que c’était toi.”
La bouche entrouverte dans une expression d’incrédulité, Lynch rangea sa voiture le long du trottoir, à proximité du mur indiqué par l’acteur. Il s’agissait d’un mur recouvert de graffitis et d’affiches de films à demi arrachées, celle de Retour vers le Futur parmi d’autres. Au coin du mur, quelqu’un avait tracé une longue flèche à la craie, surmontée de l’inscription “entrée des artistes”. Un rien inquiets, le cinéaste et son acteur s’étaient dirigés vers l’angle du mur. Derrière, ils découvrirent un terrain vague, au milieu duquel trônait un téléviseur abandonné, l’écran défoncé. Tout autour de l’appareil, quelqu’un avait confectionné une espèce de “barrage” constitué de branches entremêlées. Hormis cela, nulle trace de qui que ce soit.
Lynch dévisagea Nance. “Je t’assure”, déclara ce dernier, “il y avait quelqu’un qui te ressemblait comme une goutte d’eau”.
“Je te crois, Jack.”
“Je n’en reviens pas…”
Le souvenir de cet incident s’évapora de l’esprit de Lynch et son attention se fixa de nouveau sur le flot de véhicules circulant devant lui.
“46 !!!“
Sitôt après avoir craché ce chiffre, celui de son année de naissance, il enfonça la pédale d’accélérateur et fit démarrrer son véhicule en trombe à la poursuite d’un pickup truck. Neil n’eut d’autre solution que d’agripper la poignée située au-dessus de son siège, en espérant que les réflexes de son patron leur permettraient de se sortir vivants de l’intense trafic de la mi-journée.
X X X
“Tu ne peux pas dire ça, Diane !”, cracha Laura Dern.
“Je t’assure que si, Dale”, répondit Kyle MacLachlan.
“Si tu n’arrêtes pas immédiatement ce cinéma, je te préviens, je vais tout dire à Gordon.”
“Va te faire foutre.”
Lynch écoutait cet échange tout en hochant régulièrement la tête, l’air satisfait. La nouvelle approche développée par les deux acteurs semblait convenir à merveille à ses attentes. Kyle et Laura, pour leur part, affichaient toujours un air décontenancé devant la tournure que prennaient les choses, toujours plus incapables de cerner leur personnage respectif.
“Je suis certaine que as une liaison avec Laura.”
“Mais elle est morte, Diane !”
“Non, plus maintenant – tu as réinitialisé la ligne temporelle où elle était tuée par son père…”
“Par BOB.”
“…et maintenant elle est de nouveau en vie.”
“Oui, mais tu sais bien que nous sommes passés dans une autre dimension, où elle est devenue Carrie.”
Tout en débitant ces réparties, Kyle et Laura fronçaient lourdement les sourcils, les yeux écarquillés, s’efforçant tant bien que mal de tirer au clair le sens de leur échange.
“C’est parfait, j’adore ! Coupez !”, lança Lynch.
Il se leva de sa chaise de réalisateur pour s’approcher du duo phare de la série. Il fit signe à Mark Frost, resté assis derrière la caméra : “Tu pourras m’écrire tout ça, Mark ? Je pense que nous allons dans le bon sens maintenant que nous rédigeons la version définitive du script après que les acteurs aient improvisé sur la trame que nous leur avons confiée”. Frost se tourna vers son assistant pour lui signifier son incompréhension totale vis-à-vis des attentes du cinéaste.
“Kyle”, reprit Lynch, “c’est très bien, mais essaie peut-être de mieux garder ton équilibre avec les talons hauts de Diane, tu es sensé être une femme et savoir marcher avec ces choses là”.
“David ?”
“Oui, Laura ?”
“Est-ce que je pourrais éventuellement avoir un téléphone portable un peu plus récent que celui qu’on m’a donné ? Je croyais que l’action de la série devait se dérouler dans le futur.”
Il porta à sa bouche le donut qu’il grignotait depuis le début de la scène et le mordit à pleines dents, arrachant une ample bouchée sucrée au beignet. Il le mastiqua en silence durant une quinzaine de secondes avant de reprendre.
Il fit demi-tour et découvrit David Lynch, le réalisateur de la scène qu’ils étaient en train de tourner. Il était en train de se lever de sa chaise pour s’approcher du trio phare de la série. Chemin faisant, il fit signe à Mark Frost, demeuré derrière la caméra : “Tu pourras m’écrire tout ça, Mark ? Je pense que nous allons dans le bon sens maintenant que nous rédigeons la première version du script après que les acteurs aient improvisé sur la trame que nous leur avons donnée”.
Gesticulation. Incompréhension.
“David”, reprit Lynch, “c’est très bien, mais essaie peut-être de moins insister sur mes tics avec ton donut. Je sais bien que tout le monde pense que je mange trop de sucre, mais n’exagérons pas”.
“David ?”
“Oui, Kyle ?”
“Non, moi c’est Laura.”
“Ah, pardon… Laura ?”
“Crois-tu que je pourrais potentiellement avoir un smartphone ? Je ne crois pas que l’idée de m’équiper d’un “pager” fasse vraiment sens, bien que l’action de la nouvelle saison doive se dérouler avant le meurtre de Laura Palmer, si j’ai bien compris ?”
Lynch se donna quelques secondes avant de répondre à cette question. Il enfourna dans sa bouche l’intégralité du donut que Neil venait de lui donner et prit tout son temps pour bien le mâcher, observant la réaction des acteurs devant sa petite pantomime.
“En fait, je me suis dit que…”
“C’est parfait, j’adore ! Coupez !“
X X X
L’univers est un vaste utérus et David Lynch flotte en son sein à la vitesse de la lumière, bien au chaud, de vague de plasma en éjection d’ions et d’électrons, tel un foetus cosmique aux bras en croix. Le vent des étoiles fait onduler son costume impeccable durant son interminable trajet instantané, voyage astral devant le mener jusqu’à la Loge Blanche, où le Maharishi l’a convié. Il profite du périple pour s’allumer une cigarette ou deux afin de se désembrumer les idées. Il évite une ceinture d’astéroïdes, file à travers une nébuleuse, et s’interroge sur la marche à suivre. Le Castor parasite sa dimension physique avec une assiduité chaque jour plus effrénée et si rien de concret n’était rapidement entreprit, la situation pourrait se gâter. Mais que faire ? Comment contrer les agissements néfastes de ce doppelgänger de mes deux ?
Qu’avait déjà indiqué le Maharishi, concernant le chemin à suivre pour le rejoindre ? Troisième trou noir à droite avant d’obliquer en direction de la galaxie NGC-430 ? Ou était-ce plutôt la quatrième à gauche, juste avant le quasar du bout du monde ? Non, ça c’était la direction de la planète Dune – hors de question de retourner dans ce trou perdu. Autant passer rendre visite au Baron Harkonnen, merci !
Dépassant un satellite artificiel abandonné, Lynch se dit qu’il avait encore le temps de fomenter sa contre-attaque. Il avait rendez-vous hier avec la cafetière géante interprétée par David Bowie. Depuis son départ pour l’au-delà, le chanteur britannique n’avait de cesse de concevoir de vastes blagues. A l’image du jour, dans deux ans, où il avait remplacé le Garmonbozia de l’équipe par de la purée liquide avec des grumeaux de pâte à crêpe au milieu, en lieu et place des grains de maïs. La rigolade quand tout le monde avait recraché sa pitance ! Un bon vivant, euh… enfin, un bon mort-vivant, quoi – mais bon, il dépassait quand même parfois les bornes, il faudrait penser à lui rappeler le sens du devoir quand on bosse pour le FBI.
Sur le point d’arriver à destination, Lynch aperçut la tête géante du Major Garland en train de faire le tour de la sphère dorée du Fireman. Cela faisait longtemps qu’il n’avait pas eu l’occasion d’échanger avec le militaire. Il se la coulait douce depuis sa décollation, il faut dire, se contentant de naviguer à travers l’Océan de l’Être en se la jouant Moby Dick. De temps à autre, il crachait même un peu d’eau à l’image d’un cétacé soufflant de la vapeur via son évent. Le fait qu’il ait accepté de tenir le rôle de Fat Man avec Ruth Davenport à la fin de la saison 3 de Twin Peaks poussait toutefois Lynch à fermer les yeux sur ses errements.
Alors qu’il aurait souhaité pour une fois se poser légèrement au sommet de la Loge Blanche, Lynch s’aplatit de nouveau comme une crêpe à l’atterrissage. Pas facile facile de passer de la vitesse de la lumière à deux kilomètres heure en l’espace de trois secondes. Il se releva en se tenant les hanches et se dirigea vers la porte vitrée donnant sur le salon.
“David !”
Assis en tailleur, le Maharishi flotta jusqu’à lui depuis le gramophone sur lequel il écoutait en boucle le White Album des Beatles (encore !?). Il arborait son sempiternel sourire, comme à l’accoutumée, tel une marque de transcendance copyright ™. Une vive luminosité émanait de sa personne, un arc en ciel d’ondes régénérantes. Baigné de ces puissantes émanations spirituelles, Lynch se sentit immédiatement revivifié. Il se pencha légèrement en avant, joignit les mains à hauteur du cœur en inclinant la tête.
“Namasté, guru.”
“Je vois que tu dois encore perfectionner ta technique d’atterrissage, n’est-ce pas ?”
“Quelques petites améliorations à mettre au point, oui.”
“Je t’ai mis quelques donuts et des muffins astraux sur le guéridon près du canapé, là-bas. Vas-y, sers toi, tu dois être affamé après ce périple !”
“Merci guru !”
Lynch ne se le fit pas dire deux fois. Il s’empara sans tarder d’un beignet croustillant et mit à le dévorer consciencieusement. Il observa la pièce tout en mâchonnant. La déco n’avait pas changé depuis sa dernière venue : un tapis de sol reproduisant l’atmosphère de la planète Jupiter, une cloche électromagnétique géante posée comme une bouse en plein milieu, un canapé suranné dans le fond…
“Le Fireman n’est pas là ?”
“Non, il est encore en train de regarder des films dans sa salle de cinéma à l’étage. Depuis que Dido l’a quitté, on ne peut plus rien tirer de lui. Il passe son temps à regarder de vieilles copies du Magicien d’Oz.”
“Il faudra que je lui parle.”
“Fais-toi plaisir. Moi, je jette l’éponge !”
Le Maharishi s’éloigna en direction du canapé. Il s’installa confortablement au-dessus de ce dernier, à quelques centimètres de sa surface. Lynch s’assit dans un fauteuil lui faisant face.
“Le Castor a commencé à bâtir son barrage, n’est-ce pas ?”
“Oui, guru.”
“Tu es parvenu à la localiser ?”
“Pas encore. Il se glisse dans les replis du rideau de scène pour disparaître à chaque fois que je suis sur le point de lui mettre le grappin dessus.”
“Il est malin, oui…”
Une bulle de pensée prit lentement forme au-dessus des deux hommes, une émanation du passé commandée par le Maharishi. Ils orientèrent leur regard dans sa direction de manière à voir ce qu’elle dépeignait, tel un magnétoscope rejouant une scène tirée d’un épisode précédent de la série. Une scène se dégagea progressivement du brouillard initial, de la masse informe de souvenirs contenue dans la sphère. Une image du Maharishi barbotant dans l’Océan de l’Etre jusqu’à la poitrine, en train de jouer avec un canard en plastique d’un jaune intense, finit par se détacher clairement sur un arrière-plan indistinct. Le Maharishi gesticula soudain, son éternel rictus se figea en une grimace gênée, et il effaça aussitôt l’image : “Oups, désolé – mauvais souvenir…”.
Une nouvelle séquence se fit bientôt jour dans la bulle de pensée. Lynch ne parvient pas immédiatement à distinguer ce qu’elle était censée dépeindre. L’action évoluait à la vitesse grand V, comme si quelqu’un avait pressé la touche “avance rapide” d’une télécommande. Et puis les choses ralentirent, se stabilisèrent peu à peu. On devinait la présence d’un homme mûr en train d’enrober une jeune femme nue dans une toile de plastique. Norman Bates dans Psychose ? Cristo à Philadelphia ? BOB à Deer Meadows ? En y regardant de plus près, Lynch remarqua que la jeune femme n’avait pas de visage, à l’image de certains tableaux de Giorgio de Chirico. La scène se modifia et la cascade de Twin Peaks vint remplacer l’enrobage de la jeune femme. Les tonnes d’eau tombant au ralenti dans le lac, fracassant sa surface, prirent un air menaçant. Comme si la fragile couche d’un miroir s’apprêtait à se fissurer devant l’assaut incessant de cette masse surgie de nulle part, d’en en-deçà insondable. L’image resta stable quelques secondes avant de vaciller puis de s’éteindre à l’identique d’une ampoule électrique.
“Rancho”, murmura le Maharishi.
“Yee-ha !”, répondit Lynch du tac-au-tac.
Les deux hommes se dévisagèrent en silence quelques instants, tentant de digérer ce qu’ils venaient de voir. Troublés.
Le Maharishi reprit : “Tu es loin”.
Lynch cligna des yeux, regarda autour de lui, fronça les sourcils. “Euh, non… je suis là, Maharishi”.
The sunglasses worn by David Lynch reflected the thermonuclear brightness of the sun in this late morning. The sky of a uniform blue crackled like a television screen filled with white noise. With his hands symmetrically placed on the steering wheel of his car, the wind filtering through the half-open windows making his grey mane wave, the filmmaker methodically drove through the streets of the city where he had made his home for several decades – Los Angeles, the city of film, the one of all dreams. And of all nightmares too. His mouth pursed in a pensive grimace, unaffected by the increasing heat of the summer day. He scanned the vehicles preceding him on the asphalt ribbon, slowing down behind some cars, sometimes accelerating to catch up with others, suddenly changing direction depending on what he saw or thought he saw. He was obviously looking for something. This strange motorized choreography would have made no sense to a potential spectator, as it didn’t appear to be guided by any structure. The filmmaker seemed to navigate according to his intuition of the moment, without having established a real driving plan. Neil, sitting in the passenger seat, cleared his throat: “Mr. Lynch? Drawn out of his reverie by the passenger he had forgotten for a time, with a surprised air, Lynch finally answered: “Yes, Neil? – I wondered if we shouldn’t head in the direction of the studio? – The studio? – Yes, we are already half an hour late. We have an appointment to shoot the scene with the Fireman and K…. The abrupt braking sent Neil’s coffee onto the windshield. Lynch had just spotted a red car on a perpendicular street. He swerved in pursuit, his foot to the floor, making the engine roar violently. Neil fell down in his seat, panicked. – Mr. Lynch? – One moment, Neil. The lanes passed on both sides of the vehicle at a bewildering speed, the wind whistling by the windows. The coffee spilled on the windshield was dripping in long brown streaks, diminishing visibility significantly. – That is, the studio with the Firemaaaahh… New squeal of tires. Abrupt stop. Lynch’s car stopped within a few centimeters of its prey. Leaving the engine running, he leaned forward to read the license plate of the vehicle preceding him on the road. A look of annoyance came over his face. “Damn, I thought so…”, he grumbled. Straightening up with caution until finding a posture more or less normal, Neil contemplated his employer with big eyes. The drops of coffee finished sliding along the windshield. – You… Well, how… – The license plates, Neil, the license plates. I can’t go back to the studio until I get my date of birth on those plates. – Your date of birth? But, uh, why? Lynch frowned. – It would take too long to explain. But it’s very, very important. – Your date of birth? Lynch looked at Neil as if this last had had a cerebral embolism. – Yes, Neil, my date of birth. Nothing will work until I manage to recompose it using these plates. Four and six, ten, the number of completion. Several blows of the horn convinced Lynch to return to his briefly interrupted hunting party. He took a new direction, going against the current flow of vehicles moving towards the studio. All this was becoming alarming. It had never taken him so long to spot the right numbers. Had the Beaver already begun his detrimental action? At a red light, he reluctantly stopped the car. His hands clenched on the steering wheel as his eyes scanned passing cars of all makes. Seemingly obsessed by what he was seeing, his mind was actually traveling elsewhere, many years away. He remembered another car ride through the industrial areas of Los Angeles with Jack Nance. His favorite actor, to whom he had given the main role in his first feature film, had often accompanied him like this, with a bottle of Coca-Cola in his hand. They both enjoyed the zone’s extravagant metallic architecture, humming, full of smoke, sources of life and warmth within a universe haunted by the terrifying presence of malignant spectral entities. They liked to fill themselves with the dull power of these gigantic monsters, sometimes in disuse, always evocative. He missed their long walks, their endless discussions until the end of the night. Jack had sometimes supported him in his paranormal investigations, he had not hesitated to play the role of scout in theseunknown lands. It was during a tour of the industrial underpinnings of the City of Angels that Jack, sitting in the back seat, suddenly leaned over his shoulder in panic, pointing: – Look, over there! Lynch had squinted his eyes, seeking to locate the source of his companion’s attention. – What? – Over there! – Where? – At the corner of the street, behind the wall… it was… – What? – It was you! – What!? – I swear, I could have sworn it was you. His mouth half-opened in an expression of incredulity, Lynch parked his car along the sidewalk near the wall indicated by the actor. It was a wall covered in graffiti and film posters half torn off, including Back to the Future among others. At the angle of the wall, someone had drawn a long arrow in chalk, topped by the inscription “Stage Entrance”. A little worried, the filmmaker and his actor made their way towards the spot. Behind it, they discovered a vacant lot, in the middle of which sat an abandoned television set, the screen smashed. All around the set, someone had built a kind of “dam” made of intertwined branches. Otherwise, no signs of life. Lynch stared at Nance. “I assure you”, declared the latter, “there was someone who was a dead ringer for you”. – I believe you, Jack. – I can’t believe it… The memory of this incident evaporated from Lynch’s mind and his attention fixated again on the flow of vehicles circulating in front of him. – 46 !!! Immediately after having spat out this number, his year of birth, he pushed the accelerator and started his vehicle like a shot in pursuit of a pickup truck. Neil had no choice but to grab the handle above his seat, hoping his boss’s reflexes would get them out of the mid-day traffic alive.
X X X
“You can’t mean that, Diane!” spat Laura Dern. “I assure you I can, Dale,” replied Kyle MacLachlan. – If you don’t stop this act immediately, I’m warning you, I’m going to tell Gordon everything. – Fuck you. Lynch listened to this exchange while nodding his head regularly with a satisfied air. The new approach developed by the two actors seemed to suit the director’s expectations to a T. Kyle and Laura, however, looked slightly disconcerted in response to the turn that things had taken, still unable to determine their respective characters. – I’m sure you’re having an affair with Laura. – But she’s dead, Diane! – No, not anymore – you reset the timeline where she was killed by her father… – By BOB. – …and now she’s alive again. – Yes, but you know we’ve gone to another dimension, where she became Carrie. As Kyle and Laura spouted these lines, they frowned heavily, eyes wide, trying to make sense of their exchange. “This is perfect, I love it! Cut!”, yelled Lynch. He rose from his director’s chair to approach the show’s leading duo. He motioned to Mark Frost, who had remained seated behind the camera: “Will you write all this down for me, Mark? I think we’re headed in the right direction now that we’re writing the final version of the script and the actors have improvised the storyline we gave them.” Frost turned to his assistant to indicate his complete lack of understanding regarding the filmmaker’s expectations. “Kyle,” Lynch continued, “that’s fine, but maybe try to keep your balance better with Diane’s high heels, you’re supposed to be a woman and know how to walk in those things. – David? – Yes, Laura? – Could I possibly have a slightly newer cell phone than the one I was given? I thought the action of the series was going to take place in the future. He brought the donut he had been nibbling on since the beginning of the scene to his mouth and bit down on it, taking an ample sweet bite out of the pastry. He chewed it in silence for about fifteen seconds before resuming. – I wonder if… “This is perfect, I love it! Cut!” someone behind him shouted. He turned around and discovered David Lynch, the director of the scene they were shooting. He was getting up from his chair to approach the leading trio of the series. On the way, he signaled to Mark Frost, who remained behind the camera: “Will you write all this down for me, Mark? I think we’re going in the right direction now that we’re writing the first draft of the script and the actors have improvised the storyline we gave them. Gesticulation. Incomprehension. “David,” Lynch resumed, “that’s fine, but maybe try to put less emphasis on my tics with your donut. I know that everyone thinks I eat too much sugar, but let’s not exaggerate. – David? – Yes, Kyle? – No, I’m Laura. – Oh, sorry… Laura? – Do you think I could potentially have a smartphone? I don’t think the idea of getting a pager really makes sense, although the action of the new season is supposed to take place before Laura Palmer’s murder, if I understand correctly? Lynch gave himself a few seconds before answering this question. He inserted the entirety of the donut that Neil had just given him in his mouth and took his time chewing it well, observing the reaction of the actors in front of his small pantomime. – In fact, I thought that… – This is perfect, I love it ! Cut!
X X X
The universe is a vast uterus and David Lunch floats within its heart at the speed of light, warm, from a wave of plasma to an ejection of ions and electrons, like a cosmic foetus with his arms in the form of a cross. The wind of the stars undulates his impeccable suit during his interminable instantaneous journey, an astral voyage leading up to the White Lodge, where the Maharishi invited him. He takes advantage of the journey to light a cigarette or two in order to clear his mind. He avoids an asteroid belt, runs through a nebula, and wonders about the way to go. The Beaver has parasited his physical dimension with an assiduousness more frantic by the day and if nothing concrete is quickly undertaken, the situation might come to ruin. But what to do? How can the harmful actions of this doppelgänger of mine be counteracted? What had the Maharishi already indicated concerning the way to join him? Third black hole on the right before turning towards the galaxy NGC-430? Or was it instead the fourth one on the left, just before the quasar at the end of the world? No, that was the direction of the planet Dune – there was no way he was going back to that hellhole. Might as well pay Baron Harkonnen a visit, thanks! Passing an abandoned artificial satellite, Lynch told himself that he still had time to foment his counter-attack. He had an appointment yesterday with the giant teapot interpreted by David Bowie. Since his departure for the beyond, the British singer had not ceased to conceive massive pranks. Like the day, two years from now, when he replaced the team’s Garmonbozia with liquid mashed potatoes full of lumps of pancake batter in the middle instead of corn kernels. What a laugh when everyone had spit their food out! A bon vivant, uh… well, a good undead vivant – but then, he sometimes crossed the line, so he should remember his sense of duty while working for the FBI. Just about to arrive at destination, Lynch saw the giant head of Major Garland making the turn of the golden sphere of the Fireman. It had been a long time since he had exchanged with the serviceman. He had been taking it easy since his decapitation, I must say, content to sail across the Ocean of Being as Moby Dick. From time to time, he would even spit out a little water like a whale blowing steam through its blowhole. The fact that he accepted to play the role of Fat Man with Ruth Davenport at the end of season 3 in North-by-Nortwest Passage however pushed Lynch to turn a blind eye to his erring ways. Whereas for once he would have liked to land lightly atop the White Lodge, Lynch was flattened like a pancake at the landing. Not easy to pass from the speed of light to two kilometers per hour in the space of three seconds. He got up while holding his hips and went towards the glass door connected to the living room. – David! Sitting cross-legged, the Maharishi floated over to him from the gramophone on which he was listening to the Beatles’ White Album (again!?). He wore his ever-present smile as usual like a copyright ™ mark of transcendence. A bright luminosity emanated from his person, a rainbow of regenerating waves. Bathed in these powerful spiritual emanations, Lynch felt immediately revived. He bent slightly in front, joining his hands at the level of his heart while inclining his head. – Namaste, guru. – I see that you still have to perfect your landing technique, don’t you? – A few small improvements to work out, yes. – I put some donuts and astral muffins on the table by the couch over there. go ahead and help yourself, you must be starving after that trip! – Thank you guru! Lynch didn’t need to be told twice. He seized a crunchy donut without delay and devoured it conscientiously. He observed the room while chewing. The decor had not changed since his last visit: a floor carpet reproducing the atmosphere of the planet Jupiter, a giant electromagnetic bell placed like a dung heap in the middle, an old-fashioned sofa in the back… – The Fireman is not here? – No, he’s still watching movies in his upstairs theater. Since Dido left him, we can’t get anything out of him. He spends his time watching old copies of The Wizard of Oz. – I’ll have to talk to him. – Knock yourself out. I’m throwing in the towel! The Maharishi floated away in the direction of the sofa. He settled comfortably above it within a few centimeters of its surface. Lynch sat down in an armchair facing him. – The Beaver started to build his dam, didn’t he? – Yes, guru. – Have you managed to locate him? – Not yet. He slips into the folds of the stage curtain and disappears every time I’m about to get hold of him. – He’s clever, yes… A thought bubble slowly took shape above the two men, an emanation from the past commanded by the Maharishi. They looked in its direction to see what it depicted, like a VCR replaying a scene from an earlier episode of the series. A scene gradually emerged from the initial fog, from the shapeless mass of memories contained in the sphere. An image of the Maharishi splashing around in the Ocean of Being up to his chest, playing with a bright yellow plastic duck, finally stood out clearly against the indistinct background. The Maharishi suddenly gesticulated, his eternal grin turning into an embarrassed grimace, and he immediately erased the image: “Oops, sorry – bad memory…”. A new sequence soon appeared in the thought bubble. Lunch could not immediately distinguish what it was supposed to depict. The action was moving at high speed, as if someone had pressed the “fast forward” button of a remote control. And then things slowed down, stabilized little by little. You could make out the presence of a mature man wrapping a young naked woman in a plastic sheet. Norman Bates in Psycho? Cristo in Philadelphia? BOB in Deer Meadows? By looking at it more closely, Lunch noticed that the young woman did not have a face, like certain paintings of Giorgio de Chirico. The scene changed and the waterfall of North-by-Northwest Passage came to replace the wrapping of the young woman. The flow of water falling in slow motion into the lake, smashing its surface, took on a threatening air. As if the fragile layer of a mirror was about to crack in front of the incessant assault of this mass from out of nowhere, from an unfathomable below. The image remained stable a few seconds before flickering and then going out like a lightbulb. “Rancho,” whispered the Maharishi. “Yee-ha!”, answered Lynch without skipping a beat. The two men stared at each other in silence a few moments, trying to digest what they had just seen. Troubled. The Maharishi resumed: “You are far away”. Lynch blinked, looked around, frowned. “Uh, no… I’m here, Maharishi”. New silence.
The cigarette smoke stretched in fine swirls from the end of the butt before rolling up in miniature whirlpools whose slow progression towards the heights of the studio drew small hypnotic cyclones, turning in slow motion on themselves. Their tendrils eventually dissipated in the silence of the room, like specters returning to non-being, evaporating in an inaudible fade.
The smoker’s fingers swayed slowly to the rhythm of his thoughts, the tobacco tube stuck between his middle and index fingers, his hand resting on the armrest of the seat he occupied in a strange mixture of indolence and tension. Around him, paintings of all sizes occupied the space. In front of him, his new creation. His work in progress.
With squinted eyes, biting the corner of his lips, the painter’s gaze traveled over the surface of the large canvas of ten feet by six. At times, snatches of smoke clung to his methodically coiffed white hair before continuing their upward course. The septuagenarian’s wrinkled face, rocky, also occasionally stopped the slow progress of the tobacco cloud.
The background of the canvas was of an intense, deep black, ready to swallow any viewer who dared to contemplate it. A stylized house without a door, sinister and oppressive, with whitish walls and windows wide open on shafts of darkness, occupied the right side of the image. In the foreground on the left of the picture, as if suspended in this nocturnal immensity, floating, an individual dressed in an apple green suit, sketched from the back, looked down on the house. In his right hand, dripping with blood, a bicycle wheel with a deformed roundness, as if melted, broke the two-dimensionality of the work. Between the man and the building, a tangible tension made the air vibrate, crackling like a flow of electrons along a high voltage line. Above the figure, inscribed with a deliberately trembling hand in capital letters, the following message was displayed: “I WANT TO KNOW WHO IS HOME!” A dark wind seemed to want to escape from the canvas and a strange mystery oozed from the windows of the house. The buzzing began to swell little by little, the fabric of the suit began to wriggle, to vibrate, a beaver appeared at the window of the house…
“Mr. Lynch?”
Surprised in his reverie, the silent observer turned in his seat to discover the source of this sudden interruption. He saw Neil approaching, a young man in his thirties in charge of his schedule and his professional appointments.
“The journalist from Cahiers du Cinéma has just arrived for the interview you promised him. I asked him to wait outside for a moment. Would you like me to let him in?”
“Is it today?” asked Lynch, looking surprised.
“Yes, that’s what we agreed.”
The artist stood up with a grimace, his mouth closed in an indecipherable pout.
“It’s okay, Neil, tell him to come.”
“Right away, sir.”
Before he had time to get too far, Lynch added:
“And Neil?”
“Yes ?”
“Could you bring me a plate of Oreos and a Coke, too? I need to refuel.”
Neil smiled broadly, used to his employer’s legendary sweet tooth
“No problem, sir.”
“Thank you, Neil…”
Lynch moved towards the door of his studio, which was perched upon the hills of Los Angeles. The door was located at the other end of the space opposite to where he had been working on his painting. Neil had already ushered in the French journalist, indicating to him the famous filmmaker’s arrival.
“Hello Mister Lynch”, declared the Frenchman with a high voice.
“Hello, welcome!”
They shook hands before moving towards a coffee table surrounded by armchairs, all designed by Lynch himself. His interest in building furniture of all kinds with avant-gardist design, his delight in working with wood and giving it form, all contributed to the aesthetic pleasure he took in staying for long periods inside his studio.
“An Oreo?”
“Uh… no thanks!”
“Did you have a good trip?”
“Very good. Well… except for the fact that the airport misplaced my luggage and my colleague’s plane was diverted to Las Vegas.”
“Las Vegas?”
“Yes.”
“Sorry to hear that…”
Lynch bit into his chocolate cookie with an expression of deep ecstasy painted on his face.
“What exactly did you want to talk about?”
“I was wondering if we could discuss the next season of North-by-Northwest Passage?”
“The past dictates the future…”
“Sorry?”
“No, nothing… I was thinking out loud.”
The journalist nodded slowly, undecided regarding the weight to give these words. Lynch looked at him while smiling, continuing to nibble his cookie before washing it down with a glass of Coca-Cola. The interview promised to confirm the opinion that Lunch was an original whose remarks, at best, were limited to the esoteric, at worst to the incomprehensible.
Before the Frenchman had time to launch into his first question, Lynch asked him:
“Can you sew?”
“Sew?”
“Yes, sewing. I just bought a beautiful sewing machine and I’m trying to learn how to do it, but I don’t have a clue how to.”
“I… uh, I can ask around if you want?”
“No no, don’t worry, I was just asking. I’m currently thinking about a costume I’d like to make for a short film, something rather baroque mixing velvet fabrics with rabbit bones, and I’m asking around about how to do it.”
Taken aback, the journalist slowly nodded his head while trying to figure out how he was going to get the conversation back on track. He cleared his throat in order to mask his dismay.
“Returning to North-by-Northwest Passage…”
“Yes.”
“So you’re going to start shooting the fourth season of the series?”
“The shooting of a fourth season of the series, yes.”
“I… I don’t understand the distinction…?”
“This is not the fourth season from a chronological point of view. It’s not a continuation of the series.”
“Really? And then, how does it compare to the three pre… of the other three seasons?”
“Before the beginning of the end of the return.”
“(…) I see.”
Another sip of Coca-Cola to ease the passage of a second Oreo.
“And you are collaborating again with Mark Frost?”
“Yes.”
“Can you tell us more? He’s still producing the scripts for the episodes, isn’t he?”
“Yes, but we’re going to do it a little differently this season.”
“What does that mean?”
“He’ll write the scripts after I’ve finished shooting the episodes, to keep in line with the overall theme of the season.”
“(…)”
X
Twenty minutes later, Lynch returned to his table, eyebrows arched, somewhat astonished by the narrow-mindedness of the journalist from Les Cahiers.
X
The bed undulated to the rhythm of the waves, swaying softly on the surface of a vast ocean stretching as far as the eye could see. It was pitch black, but the waves emitted a light purple radiation that made it possible to distinguish the horizon, where a silent storm was raging, also occasionally hinting at the passage of a sea creature in its depths. A light breeze was blowing, producing a muffled hum that helped to lull the sleeper spread out on the bed, the sheets pushed back, immersed in his dream.
A dark figure floating on the surface of the ocean slowly approached the bed, before positioning itself near the pillow on which the sleeper’s head rested. The figure leaned towards him.
“David…”
The sleeper stirred slightly at the pronunciation of his name, but decided to remain immersed in his dreams.
“DAVID!”
This time, Lunch’s eyes opened wide onto the sky overlooking the ocean. He turned his head in the direction of the silhouette levitating close to the bed.
It was the Maharishi in yogic flight.
“Guru…”
“Yes, David. I hope you are well since we last met?”
“I am fine… but the Kali-Yuga has entered a particularly cruel phase on Earth.”
The old Indian sage had long since left his physical body, but he looked much better since his death, his head still bald and his long white beard falling over his crossed legs a few inches from the water. He liked to visit from time to time his favorite disciple for news. Lynch certainly didn’t have the same naive innocence as the members of that once great British rock band, but his devotion was intense. He had also helped him on several occasions to solve convoluted psychic conflicts, stories of reincarnation badly engaged, and he was grateful to him.
“I know,” said the Maharishi, “but I also know that you are fighting against its spread through your art, the films you make, the lectures you give.”
Lynch replied sincerely:
“I do my best, guru.”
The smile that crossed the face of the founder of transcendental meditation never seemed to falter, thanks to the intense state of happiness lavished on him by a permanent contact with pure conscience. His technique had constituted a true revelation for Lynch, a buoy which had allowed him to continue his artistic practice, to plunge into the depths of his unconscious, while always being assured of returning to the surface, not to drown in horrific meanderings which sometimes attract us beneath the surface of the waves. In particular, this childhood memory of an excursion in company of his father in the forests of Montana one beautiful morning of…
“David, I came to warn you. I fear that something bad is going on behind the scenes of the theater.”
“Is he back?”
“Him… or someone else, I don’t know. But be on your guard.”
Lynch nodded. It was not the first time that he had to deal with him, he knew the danger he represented. It was sometimes better not to say things, so as not to give them too much power. That did not however remove any of their negative force, their capacity to harm. Lynch mentally recited the mantra which had been specifically allotted to him, that which was to help him reach internal peace, to evacuate any trace of fear and to remain focused on the task at hand
“Do you know when he will strike?”
“Nothing is written, David. Remember this: the script is not what we think!”
As soon as the Maharishi had uttered this sentence, silent lightning rapidly crisscrossed his body. He began disappearing little by little behind an electric storm, outlining his silhouette in the oceanic night. Only his smile remained for a moment in suspension behind him, before evaporating in its turn.
X
Lynch grabbed the megaphone:
“That was very good, Kyle. But don’t forget that you don’t know who you are anymore. Play the scene with a little less Cooper and a little more Mr. C, and a touch of Richard, and it will be perfect! Oh yes, and also, there’s a bit of Linda and Diane in you. And Osiris… Well, you know all that…”
He accompanied these notes with slow movements of the right hand, raised to eye level, tapping his fingers according to the feelings conveyed, thus underscoring his point. Kyle MacLachlan frowned without answering, not necessarily disconcerted, but not necessarily in complete phase with his mentor’s indications.
Laura Dern intervened:
“Yes, but David…”
“Laura?”
“If Kyle is playing part of me, who am I supposed to be, really?”
“Well, Naido, of course!”
“Really? Because I thought that Naido…”
“Don’t worry, it’s actually quite simple. You just have to pretend that Kyle is your son in this scene, without forgetting that Cooper is in fact your lover and that he holds a part of your soul.”
“(…) I see.”
She couldn’t see.
Lynch smiled:
“Yes, it’s crystal clear.”
Neil approached him with a smartphone in one hand and a tray on which rested two huge chocolate donuts and a large coffee cup.
“Mr. Lynch? Someone on the phone for you.”
“Who is it?”
“He didn’t want to say, but he claims it’s urgent.”
A questioning pout surfaced on the director’s features as he took the megaphone in his left hand:
“Listen to me everyone, “Lynch break”!”
That’s what he called his countless sweets breaks during filming. Someone once said that he must have the metabolism of a bumblebee to ingest so many sweets of all kinds (with a certain predilection for the less refined, to be honest). All he knew was that they helped him concentrate. Without them, his mind would go blank. They propelled him into a state of bliss that only sex could occasionally match. Properly washed down with hot coffee, they would melt into a comforting paste in his mouth, a mush that would take him back to his childhood, to the 1950s, that lost paradise to which he longed to return.
He grabbed a doughnut and the smartphone as he passed and headed for the back of the set, the front of a wooden house, a front without a back, just an illusion. He had not yet shot a scene with red curtains for this new season of North-by-Northwest Passage. That would come soon and there too he could go backstage without ever leaving the same room.
Watching Kyle and Laura through the fake window, busy debating their respective roles, with a frown on his face, Lunch munched on an ample mouthful of donut before bringing the phone to his ear:
“Mallo? Chavid Mlunch mmshpeaking.”
“Mr. Lynch?”
“Mmyesh”
“I am at your place.”
“…Mmwhaat!?”
“I am in your house and you don’t see me.”
The filmmaker contemplated his smartphone with horror, understanding at once who he was dealing with. He swallowed loudly, almost choked, and noisily hit his chest several times to help the pieces of donut continue their journey down his esophagus. He caught his breath, and asked:
“What do you want?”
“We both know the answer to that question. It’s not so much what I want, but what I need!”
So the Maharishi was right, the script was indeed threatened.
The voice at the other end of the wire… well, the voice at the other end of the wire that was not a wire and that reverberated through the electromagnetic field to where Lynch was standing, declared:
“Tonight, all bets are off.”
“You can’t block the river’s flow!”
“Tonight. On television. On CNN.”
The mysterious caller hung up on him.
Lynch remained taken aback a few seconds, trying in vain to put his thoughts in order. If what the individual claimed was true, he had just put one foot towards a new misadventure the results of which could prove to be catastrophic. How had he managed to get his cell phone number? And what did he mean by “I’m at your house and you can’t see me”? Would he be able to counter the criminal’s schemes?
He took another bite of his donut and headed back to the set. No sooner had he left the two-dimensional house in which he had answered the phone than Kyle and Laura came to meet him, looking determined.
“David?”
“Yes, Kyle?”
“We thought a little about our respective roles, Laura and I.”
The two actors exchanged a brief glance, totally lost.
“We tried to understand what you explained, all the nuances you brought to our approach, and we have a proposal for you.”
“I’m listening.”
“We said we’d swap scripts, actually… I’ll play Laura’s character and she’ll play mine. I mean, the version of the characters described in the script… What do you think?”
“Great! I love it.”
He left them with this repartee while heading towards his director’s chair. Kyle and Laura, not necessarily more advanced in their research, returned with a dubious air to their methodical exegesis of the text. Lunch sat down slowly, his gaze plunged into emptiness, his spirit elsewhere. He searched in the pockets of his jacket for a pack of cigarettes and struck a match. Fire burst forth, accompanied by the smell of sulfur, which he loved so much. The first puff did him a world of good, helping him to focus his attention on what was waiting for him. His alter ego. His nemesis.
One of the reasons why I insist that it makes sense to continue describing season 3 as The Return, whether or not David Lynch likes it (and by the way, he himself calls it The Return several times in his autobiography Room to Dream), is because it resonates with what takes place in the season. In addition to being a return to the series Twin Peaks, season 3 also highlights multiple themes and characters focused on returns in its 18 parts. It is most interesting to study the various famous “returners” it evokes, from Odysseus to Rama, from Jesus Christ to The Sandman. One of these “returners” who appears to have been missed, though, comes from one of Mark Frost’s favorite authors: Alexandre Dumas. “I liked big books. Sir Walter Scott and James Fenimore Cooper at eleven. I checked out Ben-Hur at the library and worked my way through that, by Lew Wallace, who’d been a Civil War general. Robert Louis Stevenson, Jack London, H. G. Wells, Jules Verne, Dumas—they all thrilled me” (Conversations With Mark Frost, David Bushman). The character in question is named Edmond Dantès, and he is the hero from Dumas’s famous novel The Count of Monte Cristo (a very big book indeed).
What does this character from a 19th Century adventure novel (1844) have in common with what takes place in The Return? The novel actually begins with its own return: Napoléon Bonaparte’s return to power after he had been exiled to the island of Elba in 1815 (a return known as the Hundred Days, which led to the apocalyptic battle of Waterloo). This is meant to mirror what happens in the novel to Edmond Dantès, who escapes from jail after having been wrongfully imprisoned, acquires a fortune, and sets about exacting revenge on those responsible for his imprisonment. It is not difficult to see how this reflects what takes place in season 3 surrounding Dale Cooper: imprisoned in the Red Room, acquires a fortune in Las Vegas, trying his best to right his wrongs as the season progresses.
The novel begins with Dantès bringing the ship Pharaon into dock at Marseilles. In a former blog post, I have described in detail the many ways one can connect Twin Peaks with Egyptian mythology. I especially noted how Cooper himself could be seen as a pharaoh of sorts, something made especially clear in part 4 when he wears his tie on his head, reminiscent of an Egyptian ruler’s headdress. If Cooper is the equivalent of Dantès, it makes sense that the latter would be the captain of such a vessel.
Dantès is about to get married to his Catalan fiancée, Mercédès. It is worth noting that in our first encounter with Mr. C, in part 1, he is at the wheel of a… Mercedes!
In chapter 2, after having spent some time with his old father, Dantès does meet his fiancée again. It is in part 2 of The Return that Cooper sees Laura, his otherworldly partner, again in the Red Room.
Chapter 2 ends with these words, highly reminiscent of Twin Peaks: “they sat down under the budding foliage of the planes and sycamores, in the branches of which the birds were singing their welcome to one of the first days of spring”. The weeding is indeed going to take place at Easter: ““You see, Mercédès,” said the young man, “here is Easter come round again; tell me, is this the moment for a wedding?”” — a moment of the year of the utmost importance in season 3.
But as Edmond and Mercédès are about to get married, he gets arrested in chapter 5 because of a conspiracy driven by those who are jealous of his success.
It’s in chapter 7 that Dantès gets interrogated about his alleged crime (being a Bonapartist traitor).
As a result, he gets sent to the Château d’If in chapter 8, a fortress and prison located on the Île d’If, off the shores of Marseille (a place reminiscent of Alcatraz, in California). In The Return, Yankton and Las Vegas are very much depicted as prisons of sorts for Mr. C and Cooper. But in part 8, it’s the Fireman’s peak that closely resembles the Château d’If.
But can this place be described as a prison? One brief scene from part 18 tends to prove this is the case, when Mr. C is kept behind bars there…
Between chapters 15 and 16, Edmond manages to communicate with his next cell neighbour, the Abbé Faria (“The Mad Priest”). The latter, a middle-aged Italian prisoner, has dug an escape tunnel exiting in Dantès’ cell. Knowing himself to be close to death from catalepsy, he tells Dantès the location of a treasure on the Island of Monte Cristo. Cooper manages to leave his Las Vegas prison in a very similar fashion, crawling to an electrical outlet as Dantès used to crawl to remove the rocks from the tunnel in his cell.
Finally, it’s in chapter 18 that Faria tells Dantès about the treasure on the island, while it’s in part 18 of The Return that Cooper finds Laura/Carrie again and tries to bring her back home. Dantès, who has spent altogether 14 years in le Château d’If, manages to escape and finds the treasure in question. He then becomes the powerful and mysterious Count of Monte Cristo, and he enters the fashionable Parisian world of the 1830s to take revenge on the men who conspired to destroy him.
I hope this short blog post has convinced you of the links between The Count of Monte Cristo and Twin Peaks: The Return. I strongly encourage you to read the novel — you won’t regret it! A few years ago, I visited the Château d’If with my wife. If you travel to Marseilles, you should definitely go there too. It’s only a short boat ride away from the port and well worth a look.
The world of season 3 is a world haunted by the evil that BOB and Judy have been unleashing since the end of season 2 while Cooper was trapped in the Black Lodge. Malevolent forces have spread like a disease, contaminating everything in their path — a slew of murders, violence, drugs, sickness, and hatred. No part of the USA appears immune from this epidemic that spans South Dakota to Nevada, New York to Odessa.
David Lynch and Mark Frost have found a most original way to represent the omnipresence of this plague: working on a subliminal level with superimposed images beyond what one can naturally observe. What I mean by this is that by playing with the light and contrast levels of the image, it is possible to distinguish latent visual content hidden behind/beneath/beyond the manifest visual content. Lynch also (foremost) being a painter, it’s not surprising that he would hide such clues in plain sight.
Playing with a limited set of archetypal images from the series, these subliminal superimpositions inform every scene of the season. At first, I though they were limited to the opening credits and a few important sequences, but close scrutiny of part 1 and several other moments of the season has convinced me that every shot contains at least one such superimposition. They colour the subtext of the season with dark undertones, as most of the superimposed images represent evil forces from the show (BOB, Leland, Judy, etc.). Working like “visual ultrasounds”, they are constantly there in front of us while we are never consciously aware of their presence. It’s nonetheless possible that on an unconscious level, our brains might be able to distinguish them, connoting the obvious visual elements from the show.
Here are some of the most recurring images used throughout the season:
The amazing thing is that when one starts superimposing these images on top of those already discernable in the show, new hidden images appear, revealed by the new superimpositions. It’s like a puzzle, a slow process of unveiling that brings to the surface hidden secret visual messages buried beneath several layers of decoys. Even rotating the whole image 180 degrees reveals new fascinating paths.
They’ve been used in a variety of ways, most often left as they are presented here, but in some cases they have been diminished, made bigger, tilted to the left or to the right, or flipped horizontally (since so much about Twin Peaks is about mirror images). As I mentioned above, those are only the most frequent examples, others have been used during the season, but with less regularity.
The season begins with an exchange between The Fireman and Cooper, punctuated by the sounds from a gramophone. Mysterious clues are given by The Fireman that don’t yet make much sense at that point in the story. But there’s more to what’s happening here. A careful study of these images suddenly reveals a deep visual subtext.
I understand that not everyone will agree with me, that some people will not see the hidden images I’m trying to reveal , or if they see something, they will not agree with what I see. That’s perfectly fine. I’m not claiming that my decryption is perfect, it’s a process and I might later change some of my choices. Nonetheless, the fact that the proportions match the set of images I’ve listed above and that they make sense thematically speaking with what’s happening at these moments in the season lead me to think that I’m possibly right. Of course, only David Lynch and Mark Frost could confirm or deny this.
Returning to the season’s prologue, it doesn’t take long to discern shapes behind The Fireman and Cooper, visible on the curtains. After a series of trial and error, here’s what I have come up with. Do notice how The Fireman is surrounded with images of Laura, while Cooper’s cloud of subliminal images is more diverse, including notably an owl and Leland sitting in the Black Lodge, conferring something of a parental authority over Laura to Cooper.
It’s highly interesting to closely scrutinize the image with the gramophone, especially in relationship to The Fireman’s warning “it is in our house now”. What do we discover here? Superimposed images of Sarah Palmer and the Palmer house in Twin Peaks. The fact that the season is cyclical, that its end leads directly to its beginning, juxtaposes the last sequence of the show (in front of the Palmer house) with this prologue.
But that’s not all. One then notices Ruth Davenport’s head, pointing towards the left of the image, with the gramophone’s horn planted right in the middle of her forehead. And what kind of sounds emanate from the horn? Laura/Carrie’s shriek that closes part 18, swallowing everything with its waves, extinguishing the electric fire inside the Palmer house. Here too, several shrieking Laura/Carries can be seen, engulfing the totality of the screen in a sonic and visual progression.
In fact, when slightly repositioned in relationship to Ruth Davenport’s, Major Garland’s head appears to be blowing in the horn. This resonates with my claims concerning the apocalyptic nature of season 3. The Major appears to be blowing the famous trumpet of the Apocalypse from the Book of Revelation. This would explain why he plays such an important role in Mark Frost’s The Secret History of Twin Peaks.
Incredible as it may seem, we are given a summary of the whole season with this first shot, treated by David Lynch like a multilayered painting. This is absolutely astounding! The echo of the final Big Bang/Crunch, the sonic explosion generated by Carrie/Laura at the closing of part 18 ripples in space-time to reach us right from the opening of the season, via The Fireman’s phonograph. This return sets the story into motion, but it also concludes it. It is both genetic and apocalyptic, Brahma and Shiva.
But that’s only the very beginning of part 1.
Once the prologue has come to an end, the first image of the season shows us a mountain in Twin Peaks, close to where Doctor Jacoby now lives. Nothing special apparently about this establishing shot, just a way to signal to us viewers where the action takes place, at what moment of the year, etc. Except that there’s a lot hidden underneath this bucolic surface. Rapidly, some shapes hidden beneath the surface of the rocks and vegetation become apparent, especially the one in the very middle of the image: Laura Palmer herself in the Red Room.
Little by little, other iconic images of Laura reveal themselves all over the image, arranged in a chronological arc from left to right in a colourful rainbow taking us from the beginning of the series to its very end.
However, the most amazing is yet to come. discernible behind this collection of portraits one can guess the presence of something else, bigger and white: the horse regularly associated with Laura throughout the series. Laura IS the white horse.
And last but not least, it’s possible to see two circles crossing each other in the background, drawing the vesica piscis symbol. When arranged like this, so that the lens in the middle is placed vertically, it has been said to be a yoni, a depiction of the vagina, and therefore symbolic of femininity and fertility. This echoes strongly Laura’s role in Twin Peaks.
Part 1 then truly starts and it would take too long to go over each image like I have done until now. I am just going to post the various superimpositions I have discovered to give you an idea of their omnipresence. They really point towards a proliferation of evil in the world of Twin Peaks. No space appears to be immune to their infiltration, including the Sheriff’s Office and the Log Lady’s cabin. You can visualise where the superimpositions have been added by moving the cursor in the middle of the images towards the left or the right.
The first image of the Great Northern is another one that deserves more attention, as it is filled with clues. Here’s a first glance:
But there’s a lot more:
What is this supposed to mean? First, it definitely stresses the importance of Laura/Carrie’s scream in part 18. Once again, we’re only at the very beginning of part 1, and the conclusion of the season is already everywhere to be seen here. Then, Mark Frost’s pyramid from The Final Dossier separates the two peaks of good and evil, The Fireman and BOB. Between them, one finds Major Garland, superimposed over Fat Man, the atomic bomb that destroyed Nagasaki. And when the image is rotated 180°, the overwhelming presence of the Fireman is stressed, the bomb falling originating from his head (like Laura). All this probably means that The Fireman has designed The Major/Fat Man as a tool to annihilate the evil in Twin Peaks.
I believe it is necessary here to jump to the conclusion of part 18 in order to stress the role of the bomb. When Laura/Carrie shrieks, she releases the bomb from her mouth, where it was hidden. Its nuclear blast blows Judy’s electric fire from the Palmer house.
Once more, if we rotate the image 180°, we find out that all this was engineered by no other than The Fireman:
Let’s get back to part 1 now:
The parallel between the sex magick sequence between Cooper and Diane from part 18 and the one between Tracey and Sam in part 1 has already been extensively discussed. Yet, examining superimposed images brings us confirmation of the link between the two scenes, as we discover Cooper and Diane superimposed over the machine entrails below the New York glass box. Moreover, the superimposed images clearly play at mixing Cooper and Diane’s faces, something indicating that Diane’s disappearance on the next morning might be because she and Cooper have somehow merged.
Further scrutiny presents us with the inverted mirror images of the Owl and The Fireman:
This image needs closer examination. Laura/Carrie can be added to the various superimposed images displayed above. Several shrieking Carries/Lauras appear to swallow the head and body.
This makes perfect sense as we will see when we take a look later at Mark Frost’s The Final Dossier‘s front page. We’ll see that Ruth Davenport’s head is basically what Mr. C wants, the atom bomb designed by The Fireman to annihilate all evil in Twin Peaks. How so? Take a closer look first at Ruth Davenport’s head on her pillow. The folds in the pillow precisely replicate the shape of the black spot on Mr. C’s card. The antenna overlapping the Major’s forearm is less visible, but nonetheless present as well.
Let’s continue. Here, the body of The Major is reminiscent of Ray Bradbury’s The Illustrated Man.
Now, let’s study Mark Frost’s front pages for The Secret History of Twin Peaks and The Final Dossier. What do we see? Superficially, nothing beyond canonical images of Twin Peaks’s Great Northern. But here too, it is worth digging a little deeper.
I haven’t gone further with this image yet, but I’m convinced there is much more to discover. On the other hand, I have examined the first few images in the book, those concerning the dossier left behind by Major Garland, and here’s what I have found:
As for The Final Dossier, on the other hand, I have been much more thorough with the front page. Here’s what I have found:
This grid of triangles over both heads enables us to make the following link:
Once again, the link to the atomic nature of both Ruth Davenport’s and Major Garland’s heads is made clear by the fact that the three triangles point towards their foreheads/hole. They are The Fireman’s atomic head(s).
But let’s get back to the first image, the one with Ruth Davenport’s head, and add the two “antennae” from Mr. C’s card in the position described above in the image when we can see her head on its pillow. When we do that, we start to see similar “antennae” surrounding the head, the result of the crossing of 3 similar “insect heads” in a triangle of sorts (see the three triangles above). The result: a cockroach. And who appears in season 3 who is automatically linked with such insects? Franz Kafka, of course. Proceeding carefully, we finally end up with a monstrous creature with many eyes, the eyes of a multiplied Franz Kafka covering its surface.
But it’s not just the front pages of Frost’s books that use this technique of superimpositions. When one starts examining the images they contain, the same method be can revealed. For instance, let’s take a look at the one depicting the Trinity Test explosion (which, of course, comes from part 8, which might explain the superimpositions here):
At first look, nothing more than a bleak landscape with a “small” nuclear mushroom in the distance. Nonetheless, little by little, one ends up revealing multiple images of Carrie’s shriek all over the image. There’s even one that’s superimposed in such a way that the explosion appears to originate in her mind.
So far, here’s what I have found in the image. There might of course be much more hidden there.
Last but not least, if you’ve always been wondering about Mark Frost’s choice for a Twitter banner (I know you have), this should explain a lot:
Also, take a look at David Lynch and Mark Frost’s Twitter pictures:
I guess I will stick to these explorations for now. I have found many other interesting superimpositions throughout the season, but I will save them for a later post. Let me conclude by noting that all these superimpositions truly function as a haunting of sorts. This is evocative of Jacques Derrida’s famous notion of “hauntology” (mixing “haunting” and “ontology”), the idea that the past, contrary to what we might think on the surface, does not always really “pass”, that it still lives in the present (and future) and influences them. The past dictates the future, one could say. Like a repetitive dream/nightmare, (visually) repressed elements haunt season 3. They return, again and again, obsessively. A well-known trope of ghosts in general is their tendency to repeat their actions, to return to the same spots. Season 3 is a very ghostly season and its characters are very similar to ghosts, to spectres, or “revenants”. This is true of the many moments when a character suddenly remembers something that was somehow “forgotten”. It was still there, nonetheless, haunting them below the level of consciousness. This is the case for Dougie Cooper, slowly remembering that he was once an FBI agent. Think of Gordon Cole and his Monica Bellucci dream. Time is dislocated in The Return, not linear — “out of joints”, to quote Macbeth and the ghost of his father. And the perfect illustration of this are the numerous superimpositions added to the surface images of the season, immaterial and translucent as ghosts, neither visible nor invisible, neither present nor absent.
Although my abstract was selected by the conference committee for the upcoming James Joyce Symposium at Trinity College in Dublin, I am sad to announce that for various personal and professional reasons, I will not be able to travel to Ireland this June to give my presentation about the links I have found between Twin Peaks: The Return and Ulysses. Nonetheless, in an attempt to trace the research I had prepared for the conference, I have decided to share my notes in the form of a blog post. These thoughts include previously-published ideas found in my book The Return of Twin Peaks, alongside additional insights, both textual and visual, regarding what, in my opinion, links the two works.
First, I believe it is important to establish why reading Twin Peaks through the lens of Ulysses (and vice versa) makes sense:
To start with, Mark Frost has mentioned on several occasions the role that Homer’s Odyssey played in the development of the script: “- Did Homer’s Odyssey play any role in the conception and construct of season three? – I did have The Odyssey in mind, but Lynch was not overly familiar with it, so I kept that to myself.” (David Bushman & Mark Frost, Conversations With Mark Frost). The Return, just like Ulysses, recalls and recasts events from The Odyssey.
It is worth noting — although it remains anecdotal and does not confirm that Ulysses played a role in season 3 — that Frost spent time in Ireland while he was working on Goddess, the project that somehow led to Twin Peaks. Even though this is very indirect evidence, it should nonetheless be mentioned due to the celebrated role that Joyce holds in Ireland and the ways in which Ulysses has permeated contemporary Irish culture.
Alongside Ulysses, I argued in a former blog post that Finnegans Wake was also referenced in season 3. Since Ulysses and Finnegans Wake are considered twin works (the book of the day and the book of the night), It makes sense that if one figures in The Return, the other would as well.
As one reads Ulysses, it becomes apparent that the work (is it really a novel?) shares with Twin Peaks a common interest in Theosophy, Helena Blavatsky’s spiritual tradition. Blavatsky, the Akasic records, and planes of consciousness, are mentioned at several instances during the course of Joyce’s Ulysses. Set in 1904, the narrative of Ulysses runs concomitant to the spiritual movement’s heyday. Also, being set in Dublin, one cannot escape the fact that several of the best known writers of the day were theosophists themselves, including William Butler Yeats and George William Russell (who wrote with the pseudonym Æ ).
YEATSRUSSELL / AE
Like Ulysses, the action of Twin Peaks takes place at the confluence of two orders of literary time: dramatic time and epic time. If Ulysses depicts the drama of a single day (Bloom’s Day: 16th June, 1904), it also paints the whole course of a major phase in the life of its characters. Both works, as every epic, begin in media res, but that’s also where they remain (in the present tense). The Return does not take place over just one day — but one could be argued that it nevertheless does, in a figurative sense : not a full rotation of the Earth on its axis, but a cosmic/Brahma day (“Someone was to read them there after a few thousand years, a mahamanvantara” — a Day of Brahma is 4,320 million years) — the first part of season 3 opens at dawn with Doctor Jacoby, and the last segment of part 18 closes in front of the Palmer house in the middle of the night. Cooper’s Brahma Day takes place in 2016, 102 years after Bloom’s Day. Similarly, the journey of The Odyssey takes place over a period of 10 years. The time of heroes in myths and the time of humans in reality do not flow at the same pace. TS Eliot actually once argued that Joyce made the novel obsolete by replacing the narrative method (consistency in the point of view) with the mythical method (parallels between contemporaneity and antiquity). Ulysses and The Return are ancient and modern all at once, Bloom and Cooper being reincarnations of Homer’s hero.
Another point worth noting is that both Ulysses and The Return take place at moments of crisis: the action of Ulysses develops during the debate over the land reform and Home Rule in Ireland. Similarly, season 3 depicts the effects of the 2008 financial crisis, and even though it was shot before Donald Trump was elected, one can nonetheless feel the populist impact of the politician and his voters within its narrative.
Perhaps most importantly, both The Return and Ulysses are composed of 18 parts/chapters. This is a slightly atypical number of episodes for a television season. Indeed, since the late 1960s, the broadcast programming schedule typically includes between 20 and 26 episodes. Why 18 parts, then? Besides Frost’s love for golf (18 holes), the link with Ulysses appears like a sound bet. While the connections with The Odyssey are undeniable, one needs to remember that the epic poem is composed of 24 books, not 18. The link that can be drawn between The Return and Ulysses is of a structural order, much more so than owing to the various characters and elements they contain (which can also be connected to The Odyssey).
A series of other themes creates bridges between the third season and the novel: metempsychosis and reincarnation (think of the many incarnations of Laura Palmer, for instance); free-masonry (Leopold Bloom belongs to a Lodge and the free-masons play an important role in Frost’s The Secret History of Twin Peaks); questions of motherhood (Stephen’s mother in Ulysses is of the utmost importance, just as Sarah comes to mind in Twin Peaks); homelessness and homecoming (Stephen ends up homeless in Ulysses while Leopold returns to his home; the Woodsmen are described as homeless people in The Return and Laura is the homecoming queen).
HomelessHomecoming
Because of the palimpsestic nature of season 3 (a palimpsest is a manuscript, typically of papyrus or parchment, that has been written on more than once, with the earlier writing incompletely scraped off or erased that remains partially legible beneath the new layer of text –> The Return is rewriting Ulysses which is retelling The Odyssey, and with each of them, one can still find visible traces of the original model), intertextuality is at the core of the story. While telling their tale, Lynch and Frost are also retelling various other tales, both literary and filmic, connected to the surface narrative by a myriad of references. Of course, this paper focuses on the links with Ulysses, but it is important to note here that this is only one level of intertextuality. Others have already been discussed on this blog in the past (The Wizard of Oz, for instance) and I am currently preparing another post about the links I have recently found with another return/nostos story: The Count of Monte-Cristo. Coming soon!
Another thing that needs to be said before I dive into specific episodes and what unites Ulysses and The Return is the fact that beyond Cooper’s and Laura’s odysseys, Stephen’s and Bloom’s, the season and the novel include a variety of characters who follow their own “minor” odysseys in both works. I have not yet spent enough time analyzing each and every one of these examples, but they certainly contribute to the richness of both worlds.
As mentioned above, the season is composed of 18 parts. My argument is that each part of The Return reflects what takes place in the corresponding chapter of Ulysses. Moreover, the general outline of the narrative follows that of the book:
a 3 parts-long moment akin to The Telemachiad,
followed by 12 parts mirroring The Wanderings of Ulysses,
concluding with a segment of 3 parts echoing the final Homecoming (the nostos, the return).
THE TELEMACHIAD
1- Telemachus
Before we begin with Ulysses as such, let’s note first that The Odyssey opens with a council of the Gods during which Zeus decides it is time for Odysseus to return home. It is fitting then to consider the opening dialogue between The Fireman and Cooper, before the action of The Return truly starts, as akin to this council. Cooper and his doubles (Mr. C, Dougie Cooper, Richard) are the equivalents of Odysseus/Ulysses during the course of season 3. Not only that: they are also impersonating Telemachus, Ulysses’ son, as the parting words between The Fireman and Cooper tend to prove: “you are far away”, he says, before Cooper disappears/disintegrates/teleports. It so happens that Telemachus’s name in Greek means “far from battle”, or perhaps “fighting from afar”, as a bowman does – far, in space or time.
The first three chapters of Ulysses (The Telemachiad) follow Stephen Dedalus (Telemachus) before we turn to the character of Leopold Bloom (Odysseus) with the next 12 chapters. The same outline is used in The Return, Cooper’s actions first echoing those of Dedalus/Telemachus until part 4 (the end of part 3, really), when he becomes more like Odysseus than his son. Indeed, one could argue that Cooper represents both father and son in The Return — the original Cooper being copied, doubled, cloned, by Mr. C, Dougie Jones, his “children” of sorts.
Telemachus
Ulysses revolves around the affair Bloom’s wife Molly is having with a certain Blaze Boylan, the manager of her upcoming concert in Belfast, while Leopold is wandering around Dublin on this special day at the beginning of the 20th Century (Joyce chose the day he began his relationship with Nora Barnacle, his wife-to-be, for Bloomsday — which becomes something of a Doomsday in The Return). While on the beach, in chapter 13, for a brief moment of respite between various vexations, he notices that his watch has stopped at the exact time when Molly and Blaze have consummated their affair: 4:30.
As the Fireman would say: remember 430.
The central theme of Ulysses chapter 1 is that of usurpation. The novel takes place in a country, Ireland, that has been stolen by an invader, the United-Kingdom, which imposed its own language (English) at the expanse of the island’s native language, Gaelic, almost extinct in 1904. Similarly, Mr. C has usurped Cooper’s life, led his life by procuration, pretending the former’s life belongs to him. This is also what the various thought-forms/tulpas of the season do.
The usurper
2- Nestor
In Ulysses chapter 2, the young Stephen Dedalus (Joyce’s alter ego) gives lessons in a south-Dublin school to earn money and is handed a manuscript by his boss Deasy, who asks him to try and get it published in one of the town’s newspapers. It is a letter concerning a possible solution he has come up with for the foot and mouth disease currently plaguing the country. Deasy is the opposite of Nestor, the wise and respectable old man, king of Pylos, whom Telemachus goes to see when hoping to get information concerning his father’s whereabouts. Deasy is sententious, arrogant, and racist (strongly antisemitic). But like Nestor (the master charioteer), he has a strong interest in horses: “Framed around the walls images of vanished horses stood in homage”.
The character in The Return whose role is closest to Nestor is likely MIKE. He behaves as Cooper/Telemachus’s mentor, in part 2 and during the rest of the season. It is also in his realm of the Lodges that we first see the white horse associated with Laura, reminiscent of Nestor’s role as a charioteer and of Deasy’s interest in races.
Concerning Deasy’s antisemitism, one might wonder if the various sequences with intermodal containers carried by trains that intercut the season might not be a hint of the fate of the Jewish people during World War II. The links to WWII are clearly established in part 8 with the Trinity Test explosion, and the name of the main evil force in The Return — Judy — is reminiscent of Judaism. The indirect parallel Deasy makes between the foot and mouth disease and the Jewish people, whom he blames for “England’s decay” echoes here. One needs to remember that in 1904, three-fourths of the land under cultivation in Ireland was devoted to cattle and crops as a result of England’s policy to suppress industry on the island. As the Jews were literally the king’s chattel, one wonders if the situation in Rancho Rosa is not somehow meant to reflect all this. Stephen Dedalus might be right when he says: “History… is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake”.
So does Cooper.
What is certain, though, is that Cooper represents another mythical figure of the returner in relationship to the Jewish people: that of the Wandering Jew (a legendary Jew who taunted Jesus on the way to the Crucifixion and who was cursed to walk the Earth until the Second Coming as a punishment). This is important because Leopold Bloom, Stephen’s surrogate father, is of Jewish origins and regularly experiences antisemitic acts and insults during the course of the novel – and as Cooper is both Ulysses and Telemachus, he is also both Bloom and Dedalus. “They sinned against the Light, Mr Deasy said gravely. And you can see the darkness in their eyes. And that is why they are wanderers on the earth to this day”.
Cooper’s wanderings start when the floor of the Lodges opens up under his feet and he plunges into outer-space. This is another moment that echoes chapter 2 of Ulysses: “For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead, Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor” (Milton). Him that walked the waves : Cooper is both a Jesus figure and the Wandering Jew.
The Wandering Jew
3- Proteus
Ulysses‘ third chapter is famous for its stream of consciousness interior monologue (which owes a lot to Edouard Dujardin’s 1887 novel Les lauriers sont coupés (The laurels are cut) — except that in The Return it’s a specific type of laurel, i.e. Laura, that got cut), accompanying Stephen’s meditative walk along the beach. Most of the chapter takes place inside his head. One could argue that it is as experimental and abstract as episode 3 of The Return, part of which also takes place by the sea (“our mighty mother”, primal matter), in Naido’s realm.
The chapter actually begins with the following words: “Ineluctable modality of the visible… Shut your eyes and see”. Difficult no to think of Naido in relationship with such a statement.
Since Stephen Dedalus is at the heart of the chapter, it is important to remember that in Greek mythology Icarus was the son of Daedalus, creator of the wooden cow for Pasiphaë, the Labyrinth for King Minos of Crete which imprisoned the Minotaur, and wings that he and his son Icarus used to escape Crete. It was during this escape that Icarus did not heed his father’s warnings and flew too close to the sun; the wax holding his wings together melted and Icarus fell to his death. With Cooper being Stephen’s alter ego in The Return, his cosmic fall in part 3 should come as no surprise.
The chapter is named after Proteus, an early prophetic god of rivers and oceanic bodies of water. Able to foretell the future, he would change his shape to avoid doing so and answer only to those capable of capturing him. From this feature of Proteus comes the adjective “protean”, meaning “versatile”, “mutable”, or “capable of assuming many forms”, like the water in the ocean. Besides the fact that this is referenced in part 3 by the presence of the purple ocean, one also might reflect on Cooper himself, who undergoes a process of mutation when he is transported from Naido’s realm to Rancho Rosa via an electric outlet. Not only does his body become fluid, stretches in improbable ways, but his very personality mutates too from point A to point B. He becomes Dougie Cooper, an immature version of himself. He is “reborn”, as the whole chapter equates the sea to a mother, and Naido’s place is highly reminiscent of a womb.
Just like Proteus, Dougie Cooper seems to be gifted with the power of prophecy when he goes into the Silver Mustang Casino. He appears to know which slot machines are about to win a jackpot and uses this ability to amass a large sum of money.
It is also worth noting that Ulysses chapter 3 corresponds to Telemachus’s visit to Menelaus, king of Sparta, and his wife Helen in The Odyssey. The rape of Helen by Paris is at the root of the Trojan war. But in Ulysses, one finds a slightly different story: “Another version of the Helen of Troy Story… only an ‘imitation’ of Helen went to Troy with Paris, while the real Helen… sat out the Trojan War under the protection of King Proteus of Egypt”. Could Naido be this ‘imitation’ of Helen, while the real Diane remained trapped in the Lodges?
Interestingly, Proteus was associated with the island of Pharos, his residence in Homer’s Odyssey. It is on this island that the Lighthouse of Alexandria, sometimes called the Pharos of Alexandria, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, was built. Is Naido/Diane kept prisoner inside the equivalent of that lighthouse, the electrical device on-top of the structure being akin to the lamp of the building?
Additionally in this chapter, note the references to birthing which can be found on several occasions: “coming down to our mighty mother… her midwife’s bag… One of her sisterhood lugged me squealing into life. Creation from nothing”. There is no denying that Cooper’s arrival in Rancho Rosa is both a transformation and a sort of rebirth, also linked to Egypt with the visual reference to Osiris and the fact that Jade drives a “Sahara” car.
THE WANDERINGS OF ULYSSES
4- Calypso
After having focused on Stephen Dedalus during its first three chapters, Ulysses then moves on to his father figure, Leopold Bloom, the “hero” of the book. Similarly, part 4 is the first segment of the season completely dedicated to the wanderings of Dougie Cooper, the new version of our protean FBI agent.
In both works, the narrative does not necessarily progress in a linear temporal fashion, but in a spatial one, in which sequences are juxtaposed next to each other. The story is always on the move and evolves according to the principle of the synchronised narration, of the “meanwhile” narration – telling two or more stories that take place at the same time (events in Las Vegas, Twin Peaks, Buckhorn, sometimes simultaneously).
Meanwhile
While Bloom sells advertising space for a living, Dougie works for an insurance company. Bloom’s house is in the northwest quadrant of Dublin, and Cooper’s spiritual home is of course Twin Peaks, in the northwest of the USA. And just like Leopold is “the people’s prince”, Cooper is Laura’s knight. While Bloom is truly Odysseus’ reincarnation, so is Cooper. The question of reincarnation actually plays a central role in chapter 4, when Bloom explains the meaning of the word “metempsychosis”, the “return” of the soul, to his wife Molly, his Penelope: “Metempsychosis, he said, frowning. It’s Greek: from the Greek. That means the transmigration of souls… Reincarnation: that’s the word. Some people believe, he said, that we go on living in another body after death, that we lived before. They call it reincarnation. That we all lived before on earth thousands of years ago or some other planet. They say we have forgotten it. Some say they remember their past lives… Metempsychosis, he said, is what the ancient Greeks called it. They used to believe you could be changed into an animal or a tree, for instance. What they called nymphs, for example”.
Cooper’s 25 years-long sojourn in the Lodges was akin to death, and now he is reincarnated as Dougie, a new avatar. Like Bloom, he is not conscious at the beginning of the season that he is the reincarnation of a hero (an FBI agent of ulyssean proportions). Little by little, though, he will start remembering snippets of his past life.
Bloom, like Dougie Cooper, cherishes the needs of the body. They both love to eat, for instance. And they both enjoy bodily functions a lot: while Bloom happily defecates in chapter 4 (“Quietly he read, restraining himself, the first column and, yielding but resisting, began the second. Midway, his last resistance yielding, he allowed his bowels to ease themselves quietly as he read, reading still patiently, that slight constipation of yesterday gone… feeling his water flow quietly”), Dougie is seen taking intense pleasure from peeing in part 4.
But since Ulysses chapter 4 is about the nymph Calypso, one might wonder who she might be in The Return. Odysseus spent 7 of his 10 years-long return trip to Ithaca in the arms of Calypso (“the Concealer”), on her island of Ogygia, where she offered him immortality if he remained with her. It is reasonable to consinder that Janey-E might be Calypso’s equivalent in season 3. First, she also lives in an island of sorts, Las Vegas, an oasis trapped in the midst of an ocean of deserts and sands (it’s worth mentioning here that Las Vegas is located close to a place called “the Valley of Fire”, where one can find petroglyphs not dissimilar to the onces Dougie traces on his Lucky 7 Insurance reports).
Then, like Calypso, Janey-E traps Cooper in a prison of love from which he will have the utmost difficulty to escape (while at the same time Mr. C goes to prison in Yankton, in a mirror situation to the one experienced by Cooper — at this point of the story, they are both in captivity).
This prison is reminiscent of the exile in Egypt that the Jewish people endured and many elements in season 3 point towards the role of Cooper as a new Moses, “returning” his people to the Promised Land. This echoes the Zionist leaflet Bloom is given in chapter 4, encouraging the colonisation of Palestine. Even though he is a secular Jew, Bloom cannot escape his identity. Similarly, Cooper’s past is slowly rising to the surface, until he finally “wakes up” in part 16.
As far as Ulysses is concerned, this is the moment when Bloom serves breakfast in bed to his wife Molly (who grew up on the island of Gibraltar). Above their bed, there’s a painting called “the bath of the nymphs”, connecting this moment to Calypso. Janey-E is akin to Cooper’s wife in The Return — at least, she is Dougie’s wife. Nevertheless, while Bloom is the cuckolded in Ulysses, it’s Janey-E’s husband — the original tulpa Dougie Jones — who is seen in the arms of Jade in part 3 (concerning Cooper’s arrival in Rancho Rosa, note that In 1893-94, ten years before the present reality of Ulysses, Bloom worked as a clerk superintending sales in a cattle market; one may wonder if it’s not humans who play the role of the Rancho Rosa cattle). The usurper in The Return is Cooper himself, who acts as if he were the true Dougie Jones — he is the one who usurps another man’s home. And contrary to the death at 11 days of little Rudy in Ulysses, Bloom and Molly’s boy, Sonny Jim is alive and kicking in season 3. He is about the age Rudy would have been in Ulysses had he not died so young.
5- Lotus Eaters
Bloom’s dedication to his home and wife are tested in chapter 5 of Ulysses, as he is tempted to relax and do nothing, thinking about the languor of life in the Far East, the farniente of the land of the “Celestials”, taking a mental journey there in the context of a tea company. The chapter relates to the moment in The Odyssey when Ulysses and his men come to an island full of “lotus flowers” when they eat the fruit of the plant and just want to remain there, become indolent and stupefied, and forget about going home. Ulysses, who contrary to his men, does not eat the plant, does not forget his destination. He does not succumb to forgetfulness.
Interestingly, Bloom’s pseudonym in Ulysses is Henry Flower.
In season 3 of Twin Peaks, one should note Janey-E’s flower shirt (the language of flowers), but there are no roses without thorns: she too is a drug making Cooper forget about his true home.
Part 5 of The Return introduces us to a crowd of drug addicts seeking artificial narcosis. There’s Becky and Steven, of course, sniffing cocaine in front of the RR. There’s also the 119 woman, stuck in her Rancho Rosa home, unable to do anything outside of getting high. It’s their way to deal with frustrations and pains. “The chemist turned back page after page… Quest for the philosopher’s stone. The alchemists. Drugs age you after mental excitement. Lethargy then. Why? Reaction. A lifetime in a night. Gradually changes your character” (Ulysses).
To a certain extent, one could argue that Dougie Cooper is also part of the group with his addiction to coffee, though this is not enough to make him forget his home, as proved during the last sequence when he examines the shoes of the cowboy statue in front of the Lucky 7 Insurance building (they may represent “home” because of the shoes he left behind in Naido’s realm). If he does forget to come back to his Las Vegas home, that’s because he still remembers his true home, Twin Peaks.
6- Hades
Hades, in the ancient Greek religion and myth, is the god of the dead and the king of the underworld, with which his name became synonymous. Joyce gave Hades name to the 6th chapter of Ulysses as Leopold Bloom accompanies a group of men to a cemetery in the northwest of Dublin, for the burial of someone they knew, Paddy Dignam, who officially died of a heart attack, but who really drank himself to death. The entire time Bloom remains mentally isolated from the others due to the inescapability of his Jewish identity.
Besides stressing the inescapability of death, this moment echoes Odysseus’s trip to the underworld, to the land of the dead, where he meets the shade of Tiresias, the blind prophet. Several moments in part 6 give us the feeling to be taking such a trip, but none as much as Richard’s exchange with Red, truly life threatening.
For the first time in the novel, there is a brief moment of convergence between Bloom and Stephen as the former sees the latter walking on the beach in the distance (see chapter 3, as the book’s events are not always diachronic). Also, before arriving at the cemetery, the funeral procession passes the coffin of a child : “A tiny coffin flashed by”. This leads Bloom to think of Rudy, his dead son, and to imagine what he could have become. He doesn’t brood about Rudy’s death, though, but celebrates his birth : “If little Rudy had lived. See him grow up. Hear his voice in the house. Walking beside Molly in an Eton suit. My son. Me in his eyes. Strange feeling it would be. From me.“
In addition to the relationship between Dougie Cooper and Sonny Jim, this is reflected in part 6 by the sequence when Richard runs over a child at a crossroad. The senseless violence of the moment underlines how fragile the links that unite us to our beloved truly are. “In the midst of life… we are in death”.
Ike the Spike’s bloody murders near the end of the episode are also evocative of the hellish nature of life in Las Vegas, plagued as it is by demonic entities. “Tomorrow is killing day… Roast beef for old England… All those animals could be taken in trucks down to the boats”. (Ulysses)
Bloom then reflects on the Christian doctrine of resurrection (Lazarus). For him, the human body is not the temple of the Holy Ghost, just a mechanical apparatus. This is his way to affirm the power of this life, the fertilising power of corpses giving life to other beings, in an endless cycle — the body lives on forever. The Return argues differently, as the child’s life force is seen rising up towards the sky above his corpse.
Just in case someone is buried too fast, Bloom nonetheless suggests putting a telephone in the coffin. This goes along with the discoveries of the time linked to the preservation of the human voice (gramophone) — listen to the sounds. “Have a gramophone in every grave or keep it in the house… Remind you of the voice like the photograph reminds you of the face”. (Ulysses)
The fact that Bloom’s father committed suicide is mentioned by several people during the procession: “But the worst of all, Mr Power said, is the man who takes his own life… The greatest disgrace to have in the family, Mr Power added”. This is echoed in The Return when Sheriff Truman’s wife has a breakdown, unable to get over the death of their son. Joyce argues that Christians have no pity for suicides and infanticides (does Bloom believe he killed Rudy? Is this why he hasn’t had sex with Molly for 10 years?).
7- Aeolus
The 7th chapter of Ulysses, out of order in relationship to The Odyssey, is about Aeolus, the King of Winds who lived on a floating island. It describes the second convergence between Bloom and Dedalus, at noon, in the offices of two Dublin newspapers, in the heart of the metropolis. Bloom is there doing his job and Stephen to deliver Deasy’s foot and mouth letter. Myles Crawford, the editor of the Evening Telegraph, blows Bloom off.
The chapter is a critique of journalism and rhetoric, intercut with impersonal headlines, that is to say with a language no one speaks. These break up the flow of the narrative into readily digestible bits. Part 7 of Twin Peaks plays with this notion after Ike’s failed attempt to kill Dougie in front of the Lucky 7 Insurance building. A television team gives a sensationalist account of what occurred with several interviews of witnesses that don’t really tell us much about the attack itself.
Journalism is described by Joyce as an impersonal, mechanical writing industry that differs from Stephen’s vision as an artist. There is no real human breath in the newspaper, no human voice, contrary to the short-story written by Dedalus about two middle-aged spinsters who climb Nelson’s phallic pillar, and eat plums while looking at his statue. This is meant to show how Ireland has lost its virginity to English power.
In this chapter, there is a description of the printing machines at work in the newspaper. Their impersonal repetitive qualities seem somehow antithetical to the work of a real writer: “Machines. Smash a man to atoms if they got him caught. Rules the world today”. This link between machines and atoms echoes the moment when Gordon is caught whistling in front of a (mechanical) reproduction of the Trinity Test explosion. A visual parallel is then created between Gordon and the figure of Aeolus, his whistling metamorphosing (a portrait of Franz Kafka faces him) into a blowing wind at the base of the nuclear mushroom. One may wonder: is he trying to blow the fire away or kindling it?
Blowing on the atomic Cole
Other references to the powers of the wind can be found during part 7: Janey-E acts as her usual whirlwind in this episode, while Cole and his team fly through the air in their private jet, Beverly’s husband is attached to an air bottle, Mr. C and Ray leave the Yankton Federal Prison free as the wind.
In contrast, a lot of characters appear trapped inside their environment in part 7 : Jerry in the forest, Mr. C in the prison, Beverly Paige in her relationship with her sick husband… Perhaps this reflects the tale told in Ulysses about the Egyptians trying to persuade the Jews to give up their ways and reject liberation from their house of bondage : “Israel was weak and few are her children; Egypt is an host and terrible are her arms… he would never have brought the chosen people out of their house of bondage nor followed the pillar of the cloud by day”. Only Cooper/Moses is able to free his people. But at this point in the story, he still needs to wake up himself. Nonetheless, at the end of part 7, both he and Mr. C are leaving prison, the latter literally and the former with his memories beginning to return.
Finally, another reference to Theosophy in this chapter of Ulysses : “What do you think really of that hermetic crowd, the opal hush poets: A. E. the master mystic? That Blavatsky woman started it”.
8- Lestrygonians
I am a bit atypical in the sense that I tend to prefer part 3 to part 8 of The Return, more diverse and experimental in my opinion, but there is no denying that part 8 is an important moment in the recent history of television. It corresponds to the eighth chapter of Ulysses, named after the Lestrygonians, giant cannibals who destroy most of Odysseus’s ships by throwing huge boulders at them, slaughtering their crews. Only Odysseus and his crew manage to escape the massacre.
In the novel by James Joyce, it’s 1 p.m., lunchtime, and Leopold Bloom looks for a place to satisfy his hunger. As made clear earlier, Bloom loves food, but he is disgusted by the animalistic way that the customers are eating in the first restaurant he stops at — leaving, he feels he has escaped from cannibals. Interestingly, he somehow links cannibalism to sexual potency, which reminds him of the fact that he hasn’t had sexual intercourse with his wife since the death of their son ten years ago. Meanwhile, he is eaten alive by the memory of Blazes Boylan cuckolding him with Molly. He nonetheless finds the time to feed a flock of gulls bits of cake — as a benevolent deity, something reminiscent of the mana the Israelites were given as they were starving in the desert, during Exodus ; this desert is echoed in part 8 with New Mexico — on route to see statues of Gods, so as to better digest. The Gods have nothing to do with excrement because they have no anus. Bloom sees the whole of life as a digestive cycle going nowhere. We are born to be devoured by death.
It might not be evident at first, but there is a lot about Gods, sexual potency, and eating in part 8 of The Return. First, the Trinity Test explosion is a clear phallic symbol illuminating the sky of New Mexico. It is a “let there be light!” moment, usually ascribed to a male deity — not a moment of creation in this case, but of destruction. Toxic masculinity actually plagues many portions of The Return, and this might be its archetypal summit.
It is followed by another phallic symbol, the peak in the middle of the purple ocean, but this one leads to a non threatening male figure, that of the godlike Fireman. No toxic masculinity there but a desire to extinguish passions on the contrary, to blow out the fire ravaging the world.
As for eating and cannibalism, it might not seem evident at first, but I believe this is what takes place when the Woodsman lays his hand on the head of his victims — he feeds on them, on their blood. This vampiric mode of feeding is evocative of the way Rakshasas, Hindu demons with long beards, are said to proceed. They are most often depicted as shape-shifting monstrous-looking creatures, with two fangs protruding from the top of the mouth, with claw-like fingernails. These insatiable man-eaters that can smell the scent of human flesh, drink blood with their cupped hands or from human skulls (similar to representations of vampires in later Western mythology). Generally they can fly, vanish, and have maya (magical powers of illusion).
The Woodsmen are basically the equivalent of the Lestrygonians in The Odyssey.
As far as eating is concerned, there is also the scene with the Frogmoth, which carries a strong sexual undertone of rape, the ingesting of the viscous beast taking place as the young Sarah Palmer is unconscious.
Of course, what comes in must eventually come out, and though we do not see a deity excreting in part 8, we do see one vomiting (in a moment highly reminiscent of Marcel Duchamp’s famous work The Bride and her Suitors, even), likely a result of the Trinity Test explosion. But this vomiting is akin to giving birth as well — many eggs can be seen floating in the gelatinous substance (the Milky Way, according to Duchamp) released by the Experiment in space.
How does this relate to Ulysses?
In Chapter 8, Leopold Bloom enquires about a woman who now has been in childbirth labor for three days. He shows much compassion for her suffering. He also remembers the first time he made love to Molly. Interestingly, this first time mixed the pleasures of sex and eating, as they shared food while they kissed and he made love to her as if he were eating her. These two pleasures are interchangeable in his mind, joyous consummation. But the memory also leads him to think about Rudy’s death. From food, to sex, to giving birth, to death. After the death of his little boy, Bloom never managed again to enjoy sex. This event left a gulf between his past and present self.
In part 8, several sequences are evocative of childbirth : there’s the moment mentioned above when the Experiment vomits a large number of eggs; there’s also the scene when the Fireman “summons” Laura’s orb/pearl out of the lips of a golden vagina/seashell; but one should not omit Mr. C’s near death experience, when the Woodsmen act as midwives around him, while BOB’s orb almost leaves Mr. C’s “womb” in a bloody caesarean section — the woodsmen even hold Mr. C’s head up, so that he can admire “the fruit of his womb”.
9- Scylla and Charybdis
Chapter 9 of Ulysses takes place in Dublin’s National Library, where Stephen delivers another of Deasy’s letters. There, he becomes a storyteller, expounding his theory about Shakespeare’s Hamlet to a group of friends, among whom the Theosophist George Russel (many references are made during this chapter to esotericism, creating a clear link to the Twin Peaks universe : “The beautiful ineffectual dreamer who comes to grief against hard facts”; “Seven is dear to the mystic mind. The shining seven”; “Brothers of the great white lodge always watching to see if they can help”; “Hold to the now, the here, through which all future plunges to the past”; “So in the future, the sister of the past, I may see myself as I sit here now but by reflection from that which then I shall be”). Stephen argues that Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets express his life.
His argument basically goes as follows : Hamlet’s father was murdered by his uncle, and his ghost appears to his son to ask for vengeance. “What is a ghost? Stephen said with tingling energy. One who has faded into impalpability through death, through absence, through change of manners. Elizabethan London lay as far from Stratford as corrupt Paris lies from virgin Dublin. Who is the ghost from limbo partum, returning to the world that has forgotten him? Who is king Hamlet?”. Here is the usurpation theme once more, as well as the father-son relationship, similar to The Odyssey.
According to Stephen, Shakespeare is the ghost (king Hamlet) talking to his dead son Hamnet (who died at 11 — years, not days). He argues that Anne Hathaway, his wife, committed adultery with one of his brothers when he was gone for 20 years. “The theme of the false or the usurping or the adulterous brother or all three in one is to Shakespeare, what the poor is not, always with him. The note of banishment, banishment from the heart, banishment from the home”.
Cooper too was gone for more than 20 years, trapped in the Red Room, and Dougie is the ghost of who he was. He regularly sees ghostly hints of his previous life. After all, what is a revenant if not a returner? He was banished from the Lodges and now he longs for a return to the womb.
Bloom is basically Stephen’s surrogate father, which makes him Shakespeare to Hamnet/Hamlet. The two notice each other for the first time in this chapter. Mulligan also calls Bloom “the wandering Jew”. He is akin to Odysseus “sailing” the strait between the two dangers of Scylla (the she-monster who lives in a cave, with 6 heads = self-facts, matter // Aristotelian materialism: “hold to the now, through it, all future plunges to the past”) and Charybdis (the whirlpool = of formless spiritual essences, self-absorption // According to Russel, a neoplatonic, art should be mystical, about formal essences, similar to Plato’s world of ideas… dreamy mysticism, stuck in the past)).
In other words, he neither falls into intellectualism or sensuality, journalism or the Irish Literary Revival (Yeats and Russell).
In a sense, similar to Shakespeare, he is banished from his home for the day, while Stephen has to leave the Martello tower — this echoes Cooper, who was banished from the Red Room.
Shakespeare avoided the dangers of pure materialism and pure essentialism by fusing the subjective life with the objective world (neither Scylla nor Charybdis). His art reflects both himself and the world: “He found in the world without as actual what was in his world within as possible… Every life is many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love. But always meeting ourselves. The playwright who wrote the folio of this world… is doubtless all in all in all of us”.
Mulligan makes fun of this pretention : “Himself his own father, Sonmulligan told himself. Wait. I am big with child. I have an unborn child in my brain. Pallas Athena! A play! The play’s the thing! Let me parturiated!”. Athena was the guardian angel and patron saint of Odysseus and his family in The Odyssey. She was supposedly born from Zeus’ forehead by parthenogenesis — which echoes the way The Fireman gives birth to Laura in part 8.
Stephen is the Icarus whose only flight was to Paris: “Fabulous artificer, the hawklike man. You flew. Whereto? Newhaven-Dieppe, steerage passenger. Paris and back. Lapwing. Icarus. Pater, ait. Seabedabbled, fallen, weltering. Lapwing you are. Lapwing he”. Even Mulligan calls him a bird: “Come, Kinch. Come, wandering Aengus of the birds” (Irish god of beauty, youth, and love. Continually in search of his ideal mate, who had appeared to him in a dream).
10- Wandering Rocks
The next chapter of Ulysses sees the various characters leave the National Library into the labyrinth of Dublin, in which they bump into each other. The chapter is conceived spatially in 19 sections focusing on various aspects of life in Dublin, without any apparent order – the great machine of the city is turning its wheel. Thanks to the advice of Circe, Odysseus avoids the wandering rocks, supposedly somewhere in the Bosphorus (here akin to river Liffey), between Europe and Asia, impossible to negociate. The novel is full of stories that don’t really have endings, resolution, which is very much alike what takes place in The Return.
The chapter begins with a letter to be posted, which echoes the one Richard intends to stop in part 10.
Among other things happening, Bloom buys a book for Molly, Sweets of Sin (a woman who cheats on her husband — “He read the other title: Sweet of Sin. More in her line. Let us see”).
It is clear that he is not the typical cuckold; a conversation about his knowledge of astronomy also takes place (“Bloom was pointing out all the stars and the comets in the heavens to Chris Callinan… But, by God, I was lost, so to speak, in the milky way. He knows them all, faith”).
The chapter also describes Blazes Boylan buying pears and peaches for Molly; Stephen, scanning books, meeting his poor sister, another drowning woman he cannot save — their father Simon has given up his responsibilities and he therefore searches for a surrogate one; meanwhile, a paper boat is floating down the river…
Mostly, part 10 resonates with chapter 10 in the way characters “bump” into each other, often in a violent manner. They are the dangerous wandering rocks, always ready to sink each other’s boats.
Besides the fact that one notes a mention to a Sycamore Street in the chapter, one last segment is of interest in relationship to Twin Peaks, when the following sentence is read: “I between them. Where? Between two roaring worlds where they swirl, I”.
Between two worlds is a recurring motif in the series, of course, and it’s interesting to link this to the two following quotes: “Wandering between two worlds, one dead, / The other powerless to be born” (Matthew Arnold) and “We have two lives about us, / Two worlds in which we dwell, / Within us and without us, / Alternate Heaven and Hell:– / Without, the somber Real, / Within, our heart of hearts, / The beautiful ideal” (Richard Henry Stoddard).
11- Sirens
Set in Dublin’s Ormond hotel, chapter 11 is centred around music and one song follows the other, music recreated into words on the model of a fugue (Subject / Answer / Countersubject / Climax / Coda). Music is used as a way to seduce, just like Molly uses her voice to catch Boylan. This refers to the moment in The Odyssey when Odysseus meets the sirens, who lure men to their island. He manages to resist their call because he asked to be tied to his ship’s mast while the ears of his men are stuffed with wax. The sirens of chapter 11 are the barmaids of the hotel. Bloom, while he writes a letter to his secret lover Martha, resists a song about a martyr from the Irish revolution. He shares Ulysses’s will to hear and taste everything, but music never puts his mind to sleep. One could argue that singing is a kind of drunkenness.
While there is no actual singing in part 11, there is music in its last section when the Mitchum Brothers offer Dougie a meal to thank him for the check he’s given them — and the nostalgic music (“nostos”, the root for nostalgia, is a theme used in Ancient Greek literature, which includes an epic hero returning home by sea) does catch his attention, bringing on memories to his mind. The arrival of Candie and her two pink companions is reminiscent of the waitresses/sirens at the Dublin’s Ormond hotel.
Bloom’s final homecoming is prefigured by the many homecomings of his thoughts. The same goes for Cooper.
One of the sirens, Ligeia, was known as “the one who utters a piercing cry”. This might very well apply to Becky and her mother Shelly, who are both seen shrieking during part 11. In Edgar Allan Poe’s eponymous short-story, Ligeia is also seen shrieking: “”O God!” half shrieked Ligeia, leaping to her feet and extending her arms aloft with a spasmodic movement, as I made an end of these lines –“O God! O Divine Father! –shall these things be undeviatingly so? –shall this Conqueror be not once conquered?”.
Finally, one might wonder if the sequence when Gordon almost gets sucked into the sky whirlpool is not also a reference to the sirens. Even though his ears are “stuffed with wax” (his hearing apparatus functions occasionally at best), he seems to succumb to the call of the Woodsmen. If Albert hadn’t caught him before it was too late, Gordon might have been swallowed by their Charybdis-like vortex.
12- Cyclops
While Odysseus met the original cyclops Polyphemus in his cave, where he liveed isolated with his livestock, chapter 12 takes us to a pub where the monster’s equivalent is a myopic and xenophobic character called the Citizen, surrounded by a pack of Irish men/sheep. Part 12 of The Return also begins in a bar.
But as in the 2003 (Bloom) and 1967 (Ulysses) filmic versions of the novel, when we get to meet the true one-eyed cyclops — the one throwing rocks at Odysseus’s ships as they leave / a biscuit tin at Bloom’s head as he escapes — the Citizen becomes a one-eyed man in The Return. In season 3, the evil racist Citizen is replaced by Hutch killing the Yankton prison’s warden from a distance, his right eye becoming enormous through the rifle’s telescope. It’s worth noting that Hutch and Chantal are hardly brighter than the original Cyclopes, but just as dangerous.
He is not the only one throwing something at someone else, as Dougie Cooper himself becomes the target of another throw of a lesser magnitude, Sonny Jim trying to play catch with him, hitting him in the head with his ball.
This is all of course out of order compared to The Odyssey, as Odysseus’ curse is a direct result of his encounter with Polyphemus, at the very beginning of the story. His ten-year long return journey is caused by this initial encounter.
Meanwhile, everyone eats from other people’s flesh like cyclopes : Kriscol from the Fat Trout Trailer Park sells his blood to get money, and Sarah Palmer gets upset when she sees a new set of beef jerky at the drugstore. Hutch and Chantal can’t wait to be done with their assassination of the warden to go eat at Wendy’s.
To close this section, let’s not forget two other “cyclops” of sorts: James Joyce himself and Nadine Hurley.
13- Nausicaa
In this chapter, Bloom goes to the beach at Sandymount, literally walking in Stephen’s footsteps (see chapter 3). He has just taken care of Dignam’s insurance money, the friend to whose funeral he went in part 6 — which echoes Dougie Cooper’s job at Lucky 7 Insurance. This visit to the beach resonates with Odysseus’s arrival on the island of Phaecia, when he meets Nausicaa, daughter of King Alcinous. She is there with other women, washing clothes and playing ball. She gives him things to wear, food and a bath. Later on, she tempts him to stay with her, to forget about Penelope — but nothing happens between them.
Her equivalent in Ulysses is named Gerty McDowel, who is on the beach with several girlfriends and children playing ball. She and Bloom only look at each other from a distance, but while fireworks are being shot in the sky, she leans back and exposes herself to him. These sexual fireworks lead Bloom to turn into a voyeur and a masturbator, releasing some of the tension accumulated thus far. When she leaves, he notices that she’s lame and he feels empathy for her.
That’s the point at which he notices that his watch has stopped at 4:30, the precise time when his wife Molly and Blaze Boylan must have consummated their affair. I have already discussed the importance of this moment in relation to The Return when analysing the first part of the season.
In part 13, there are reasons to think that Leslie, the waitress working at Szymon’s Famous Coffees, located near the entrance of the building hosting the Lucky 7 Insurance offices, plays a role similar to that of Nausicaa’s. Like her, she brings food and a drink to Cooper. Her general attitude towards him is extremely motherly (Leslie means “holly-garden”), which is also true of Homer’s Nausicaa. Besides, Szymon’s is clearly connected to the Red Room (home?), as exemplified in part 11, when MIKE calls Cooper from the shop so that he buys a cherry pie for the Mitchum Brothers. This saves his life, and similarly, his actions with Leslie might also have saved him from Sinclair’s poisoning.
Before leaving the beach, Bloom traces a few words in the sand, a message to Gerty if she comes back the day after. And then he realises that it will get washed out by the tide and stops. He only draws: “I am a…”. This could mean that he defies characterisation, being a complex human being; this could also mean “I am A/Alpha”, the first letter of the alphabet — there are reasons to believe that Laura/Carrie might be his “Omega”, as proven by her necklace in part 18, an inverted horseshoe that could be read as the Greek way to write the symbol.
14- Oxen of the Sun
The next chapter of Ulysses takes place at the National Maternity Hospital, where Bloom comes to enquire about how Mina Purefoy — the woman who has been in labor for three days — is doing. He finds out that she has finally given birth. In the visitor’s waiting room, he meets Stephen among friends, and he develops paternal thoughts about him, convinced that his drinking and partying are killing the young man’s creative energy.
These considerations about childbearing and creation echo the portion of The Odyssey centered around Helios, the God of the Sun. Circe and Tiresias had warned Odysseus of disaster if he came to his island. He was told not to slaughter any sheep or oxen while on the island. But when his crew runs out of Circe’s food, they start feasting on Helios’s cattle. As a result, a storm sinks everyone but Odysseus who, grasping his ship’s mast, drifts to the island of Calypso.
How does this relate to part 14?
The equivalent of Helios in this episode is The Fireman. Their relationship to fire is self-explanatory. The Fireman is also akin to Ra, in Egyptian mythology, another Sun God.
The disobedience of Odysseus’s crew, their killing of Helios’s oxen, is a crime against fecundity. Stephen defends creation of human life against men who only want to copulate. Stephen and Bloom are friends of cattle, i.e. they support life and fertility, and attack the use of contraceptives. They are apostles of creation.
In The Return, The Fireman tells Andy to protect Naido, found alone and naked in the forest. She might very well be the cattle that needs protection from the forces of evil — those that ranch human beings in Rancho Rosa, turn cows into Beef Jerky, and send containers via train up to Odessa and Judy’s diner there.
15- Circe
After their stay at the National Maternity Hospital, as the bell strikes midnight, Stephen heads for Dublin’s red-light district. Joyce turns the story into a gigantic play, full of hallucinations, kaleidoscopic transformations, a funhouse of mirrors. The chapter corresponds to the time spent by Odysseus with Circe, the enchantress. In The Odyssey, he does not succumb to her magic thanks to moly, a magical herb that protect him from her powers. In Ulysses, the moly becomes a potato — first, Bloom gives it up and is overwhelmed by hallucinations, which stop altogether when he recovers the potato. Zoe, one of the girls, first takes it from him, his talisman, an heirloom inherited from his mother, a hard black shrivelled potato (perhaps a reminder of the Irish potato famine?). Doing this is akin to giving up his manhood, to symbolically becoming castrated. As soon as he gets it back, though, he does his best to protect Stephen when the latter risks being overcharged (and later arrested). He frees him and manages to bring him “home”.
Circe’s equivalent in Ulysses is named Bella Cohen. She is a massive woman with a moustache. A complex transsexual relationship with her takes places in the chapter, as Bloom first kneels down to lace Bela’s boot, who then becomes Belo, turning Bloom into a sow, made to submit, animalised and emasculated. Though he eventually recovers himself and his manhood at the end, beginning to act like a father to Stephen and standing up to Bela, the chapter reveals the extent to which he can be described as a “womanly man”, dreaming of having a son, womanly in his care for other people. Bloom’s transexual hallucinations at Bella’s are also reminiscent of the bosomy woman welcoming Mr. C at the entrance of Philip Jeffries’ room (played by a man).
Mr. C’s “pregnancy” has already been discussed above. It is worth noting that it is also in part 15 that he meets his son Richard for the first time, as he is expelled from the room with Jeffries via the telephone line.
The corresponding figure to Circe in The Return appears to be the new version of Philip Jeffries. Trapped in room 8 of the hotel “behind” the convenience store, he works his magic from this place. The fact that Bela becomes Belo in Ulysses might explain why Philip turns into Circe.
Before he enters the realm of Jeffries/Circe, Mr. C is welcomed by a Woodsman holding a staff. In Joyce’s book, mention is being made of the Black Rod, an official in the parliaments of several Commonwealth countries, meant to keep order during their meetings.
Also, the Flying Dutchman (another “returner”) is mentioned for the first time in chapter 15 of Ulysses. Likewise, part 15 is the first time Cooper (as Mr. C) goes to the Dutchman’s: “These Flying Dutchmen or lying Dutchmen as they recline in their upholstered poop, casting dice, what reck they? Machine is their cry… laboursaving apparatuses”. The convenience store appears and disappears like a ghost ship, in a thick cloud of smoke.
A variety of spectral accusers and tormentors manifest themselves to Bloom during the chapter, from his wife Molly to former flames, Martha Gerty, his former servant, etc. Even more ghostly, an emaciated figure rises from the floor — the spectre of Stephen’s mother, devoured by the crab of cancer. Difficult not to make a parallel between this apparition and the last of the Log Lady’s, in part 15, another motherly figure victim of cancer. When she dies, all the characters of Twin Peaks become orphans of her presence.
Horns are traditionally the sign of a cuckold and in chapter 15, Bloom’s head is antlered as he watches Boylan with Molly in a vision. This is probably a form of psychological defence on his part, punishing himself, repressing a sense of self-loathing. It’s important to recall that while they were having their affairs, he was masturbating on the beach. In English, to wear the horns means to be cuckolded because a horned beast cannot see its own horns — or perhaps this is an allusion to the mating habits of stags, who forfeit their mates when they are defeated by another male. In part 15, it makes sense to see a deer’s head in the background in the scene between Ed and Nadine, when she releases him from her bond.
Finally, there’s one last parallel between chapter 15 and part 15 that should be noted: in Ulysses, at the end of chapter 15, Stephen is knocked unconscious by a private (Stephen is a pacifist, he refuses to fight the privates from the British army), while at the end of part 15 of The Return, Cooper electrocutes himself unconscious. Similarly, Freddie knocks unconscious two men at the Bang Bang Bar.
Concerning Cooper’s electrocution, it might also be linked to Bloom’s immolation with a bag of gunpowder, carbonised, while an Apocalyptic passage in the book describes Dublin burning and the dead arising.
NOSTOS
16- Eumaeus
Chapter 16 is the first step of the return to Ithaca. Ulysses and Telemachus are not totally one yet.
It’s now 1 o-clock in the morning on Bloom’s day/night and Bloom finally gets to talk with his surrogate son, Stephen. They go to a cabman’s shelter run by Skinny-the-Goat, an ex-convict, who serves them coffee. There, they meet Murphy, a sailor with the face of a Greek sailor tattooed on his chest, who spent seven years away from his wife, and tells many stories of his travels — this pseudo-Ulysses sometimes feels more Ulyssean than Bloom, but it’s an illusion.
In The Odyssey, Eumaeus was a kindhearted swineherd on Odysseus’ estate, who received his incognito master with hospitality. In his hut, the latter tested Telemachus’s filial commitment and then revealed himself. Bloom and Stephen repeatedly fail to understand each other in chapter 16, but there are nonetheless moments of real communication between them. At the very least, Bloom is not dismissed for his Jewishness by Stephen, like he was by so many other people on that day.
In part 16, at night, Mr. C and Richard reach the place corresponding to one of the sets of coordinates, and Richard climbs on a huge rock to the exact location. When he gets there, he gets electrocuted and disappears in flames. Before he does the climbing, though, Mr. C lets him know that he is 25-years his senior, and right after his death, he says goodbye to his son.
This sequence is of course a mirror image of what takes place in chapter 16. Even though this is indeed the beginning of the return to Ithaca / Twin Peaks for Mr. C (paralleling Cooper’s awakening in the same part), no true exchange or discussion take place between father and son, and Mr. C displays absolutely no feeling of loss when Richard dies. This is also the complete opposite of what happens when Cooper leaves Janey-E and Sonny Jim — he acts as a true husband/father with them, even though they are Dougie Jones’s family in reality.
As far as Eumaeus himself is concerned, his equivalent in part 16 is probably Bushnell Mullins. He has taken care of Cooper like a father for the whole duration of his stay in Las Vegas. Cooper, like Odysseus, was incognito, but that didn’t stop Bushnell’s sense of hospitality. He took care of him as if he had been one of his herd.
17- Ithaca
The penultimate chapter of Ulysses sees Bloom and Stephen finally reaching Ithaca, i.e. their true home. They sit in Bloom’s kitchen for a while, chatting about various subjects (among others the similar fates of the Irish and the Jews, both persecuted), bonding, drinking cocoa in communion (there’s something Christ-like about Bloom — the Christ’s human nature came from Jewish ancestors). Bloom would like to make Stephen part of his family, but Stephen declines as this would essentially mean sacrificing his literary ambition. All this echoes Odysseus’s arrival at his palace in Ithaca. Bloom who forgot his house key enters via a stratagem, like Odysseus who disguised himself in order to get close to his wife’s suitors. Both Bloom and Stephen can be described as keyless — Bloom even lost his key to Molly’s lock, and he finds his place usurped by Blaze Boylan.
In part 17, both Cooper and Mr. C make it back to Twin Peaks, their own version of Ithaca. Mr. C, like Odysseus, can also be said to be in disguise, pretending to be the real Cooper until Sheriff Truman unmasks his deception and Lucy shoots him dead. Their “encounter” is quite short, like the one between Bloom and Stephen, and it does not take long before one of them disappears — Stephen leaves Bloom’s house, while Mr. C is taken to the Black Lodge thanks to the owl ring. Cooper thus retakes possession of his “house” in Twin Peaks, getting rid of the usurper.
Shortly beforehand, Freddie Sykes boxes BOB’s globe into little pieces. Could this floating rock have something to do with comets, said to be “hirsute” because the word comet derives from the Greek kometes, “having long hair”?
The second half of chapter 17 is dedicated to Bloom’s return to his bedroom, where Molly is waiting for him. It’s his real homecoming, his return to the marital bed — he lies with his head at Molly’s feet, back to his point of departure, opening up to the infinity of space and time. Contrary to Odysseus, he seeks no violent revenge and achieves equanimity.
This portion echoes the fact that Odysseus built his bed around the trunk of an olive tree, a fact used by his wife Penelope to make sure that he truly is who he says he is. The question concerning The Return is whether Molly/Penelope is supposed to be Diane or Laura. Cooper tries to play the role of Moses with the latter, bringing her out of the House of Bondage (Egypt) and back to the Holy Land (Twin Peaks). But isn’t her true House of Bondage the one in which she grew up? And isn’t Cooper’s love affair with Diane made evident in part 17, in the Sherriff’s office?
If one is to decide based on the fact that Diane and Cooper kiss in part 17, it should be remembered that Cooper and Laura also kiss in the Red Room. I would personally suggest that Diane is more akin to a wedding with the anima side of his personality (she disappears after they have communed in sex magick), whereas Laura would be something of a spiritual bride that transcends this earthly realm. Diane feels like a late addition to the mythology of Cooper’s sentimental life, as we have never seen her prior to this season. On the other hand, it’s clear that he is obsessed with Laura and shares a transcendental bond with her.
If history is repeating itself with a difference in Ulysses, where Bloom reenacts the major events of Ulysses’s odyssey, Cooper is about to start a spacetime loop with his decision to bring Laura back from the dead.
Before moving on to the last portion of Ulysses and The Return, note the similarity between Bloom’s pot and the new version of Phillip Jeffries.
Interestingly, the Linati schema (written by Joyce) lists as Time for chapter 18 of Ulysses the recumbent 8 (∞), the sign for eternity, as well as a symbol of female genitalia. The symbol drawn in smoke by Jeffries announces what is going to take place in part 18, reminiscent of the last portion of Kubrick’s 2001: a Space Odyssey:
18- Penelope
The last chapter of Ulysses is famous for its long internal monologue (a female monologue balancing the male monologue from chapter 3) within Molly’s head (Bloom’s wife), in bed. It is over 40 pages long, with only 8 sentences in total. She reflects on her entire day, and the whole of her life, inside her head. It’s a real flood of words, paralleled by her menstrual flow. The keyword of the monologue is “yes”, which she repeats at central moments of her rant, most importantly at its beginning and end.
She thus becomes akin to an Earth mother, the embodiment of female fertility. Her frustrations are expressed in this chapter, especially the fact that she is denied her sexual rights by Bloom because of Rudy’s death, which leads to her distrust of other women, whom she sees as rivals. But she is also fond of remembering the day he proposed to her, the “yes” she told him then. Like him, she links Stephen to her child’s death. And she somehow sees in Bloom men at their best (the way he serves her breakfast in bed, brings her books, etc.), but she also thinks of the times when he suckled her breasts to relieve her pain — she is his wife, but also plays the role of mother and child. All of this makes an emotional homecoming for Molly. In this chapter, Molly is clearly compared to Penelope, Odysseus’ faithful wife, his true home, the place and person to whom all his journey aimed for.
As explained above, two options arise in The Return for this character: it’s either Diane, or Laura. Even though it’s with Diane that Cooper has sex in part 18, I still believe that Laura is Cooper’s true Molly/Penelope. I have several reasons for this. First, Laura is Cooper’s end destination in the season, she’s the one who comes at the very end of the journey. Then, she’s the one who discusses matters linked to her home in Odessa while they drive towards Twin Peaks, she talks about the way she did her best (as Carrie) to take care of it, in spite of all the difficulties — this monologue in the dark feels very much like the one Molly has in her Dublin bedroom. Cooper’s car becomes something of a driving bed in this sequence.
If one pays close attention, it can be noted that in the frame behind Carrie there is an exposed piece of lace. Penelope was known for weaving, day after day, a shroud for her husband’s father, which she would undo at night. This way, the shroud would never be finished, and her suitors would never get to marry her. Additionally, on Carrie’s mantelpiece, one can also see a thimble, once again linking her to textiles.
Interestingly, if Molly has a father, almost no mention is made of her mother in the book. Her father was in the British military, stationed in Gibraltar, guarding the edge of the classical world. This is reminiscent of Laura’s relationship with the Fireman, her father of sorts, also perched on-top of a rock in the middle of the ocean, guarding the universe.
Gibraltar
As far as a marital relationship between Cooper and Laura is concerned, it seems to me that the sequence when they both climb the stairs to the Palmer house at the very end of the episode brings to mind a couple walking down the aisle of a church to the altar. This is reminiscent of an alchemical wedding, a union of two complementary forces of the universe at last coming together — she, the “moonchild”, and he, the solar Apollo.
As I believe that Cooper and Diane summoned Carrie into existence with their sex magick ritual (they caught her in their crowleyan “butterfly net”), one could argue that Laura is akin to Cooper’s child. But she is also something of a wife to him if one thinks of their wedding of sorts at the end of part 18 and of their kiss in the Red Room in part 2. Finally, she is very much of a feeding mother to everyone (like the angel on her bedroom’s painting), in charge of the RR “meals on wheels” in Twin Peaks, taking care of everyone as Gaia is supposed to do.
She is “the One”, after all.
Child, wife, mother. Laura is the one saying “yes” to the world, despite all the horrendous things she’s seen and experienced in her short life. If Judy is pure negativity, Laura is absolute positivity.
One last thing that links Ulysses and The Return is Carrie’s shriek at the very end of the season, reminiscent of the famous Irish Banshee (mentioned in Joyce’s novel: “Strangers in my house, bad manners to them! (She keens with banshee woe)”, ch.15), this female spirit who heralds the death of a family member, usually by wailing, shrieking, or keening (a form of vocal lament for the dead).
Is this the death of her mother Sarah (Judy the Obscure) that Laura announces that way? It would seem so, when one remembers that her shriek provokes the extinction of all the electric lights in the house. Yes.
Someone once said that Ulysses cannot be read, it can only be re-read. I would argue that the same is true of Twin Peaks: The Return. No matter how good one is at gathering all the information spread over the season’s 18 parts, it’s impossible to truly understand its meaning after one single viewing session. Or after two. Or even after a dozen. The intertextuality at work here is incredibly dense, with references to a large amount of works (novels, films, records), mythological elements, esoteric quotes, historical allusions, and so on and so forth, that it takes years to get to the bottom (if possible) of such a masterpiece. James Joyce’s Ulysses might very well be what comes closest to this feeling of dealing with a complete world,connected with vast areas of global culture, interconnected to such a wide number of archetypal themes and figures.
Someone else said that if Dublin were destroyed, it could be reconstructed from the pages of this novel; Twin Peaks too could come to life if someone wanted to (re)create such a place in real life.
While Ulysses abounds with characters who have no clear motivation, who don’t achieve much by the end of the story; and is composed of a dazzling diversity of voices and styles, breaking apart the codes of the novel, a very similar statement could well be applied to Twin Peaks in general, and to season 3 in particular. This work does not try to simplify the world it depicts or its complexity. Even though one could argue that it functions according to an underlying order, hidden to the view of its audience, it certainly does not make things easy for us — and this is good. Joyce used to say that he had “put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that’s the only way of insuring one’s immortality”. Lynch and Frost might very well have achieved something similar with their television series.
Of course, Twin Peaks quotes many other works besides Ulysses. I do not mean to reduce it to just this one novel. If we think of James Joyce, Finnegans Wake also comes to mind. Icarus’s fall is related to this novel, and Joyce’s last work is mostly about the flow of the unconscious taking place at night, when one dreams, resonating strongly with The Return. But Joyce is not the only Irishman referenced in season 3: Wilde, Yeats, Beckett, Russell… they’re all there as well. Think about the tree in Waiting for Godot, or about the face in the painting/mirror in The Portrait of Dorian Gray. Note the links between Theosophy and Crowley in relationship to Yeats and Russell. Ireland could be said to play an important role in this season.
And beyond Ireland, there’s The Wizard of Oz, Alfred Hitchcock, Marcel Duchamp, Edward Hopper, etc. Not to mention all the mythological and religious links — from the Ramayana to the Niebelungenlied, from the Bardo Thodol to The Egyptian Book of the Dead, from The Epic of Gilgamesh to The Bible.
In chapter 16, we learn that Leopold Bloom once played with a famous mathematical problem: “in 1886 when occupied with the problem of the quadrature of the circle”. Yes, Bloom himself tried his best to square the circle, i.e. to construct a square with area equal to that of a given circle using only the methods of classical geometry… and failed.
If I had presented my research as planned during the James Joyce Symposium in Dublin, I would have added more theory to this paper (much more about intertextuality, the return of the repressed, etc.). Academics LOVE theory. I don’t mind it myself, but in this case, I don’t think it’s absolutely necessary for this blog post. I hope you like it the way it is.
I have proposed various thoughts regarding the mysteries of The Return in my bookThe Return of Twin Peaks, in which there is a segment dedicated to Ulysses. If you’re interested in learning more, the paperback version of the book has recently been released and it’s also available in an affordable ebook copy.
David Bushman is the co-author with Mark Givens of Murder at Teal’s Pond: Hazel Drew and the Mystery That Inspired Twin Peaks (Thomas & Mercer). His previous books include Twin Peaks FAQ, Buffy the Vampire Slayer FAQ, and Conversations with Mark Frost. He was a longtime television curator at The Paley Center for Media as well as program director at TV Land. He is co-president/publisher/managing editor with Scott Ryan at Fayetteville Mafia Press (www.fayettevillemafiapress.com), specializing in books on pop culture, true crime, and sports. His greatest professional achievement was interviewing Alan Moore about the TV show The Prisoner.
Franck Boulègue:Who was Hazel Drew?
David Bushman: Ha! Exactly! This question is a lot easier to answer factually rather than existentially. Hazel Drew was an upstate-New York woman who was murdered on July 7, 1908. The murder was never solved. No one was ever charged with the crime, and no likely suspect ever identified. Mark Givens and I were drawn to Hazel because of the role she played in inspiring Mark Frost’s contributions to the Laura Palmer arc of the original Twin Peaks. Mark had mentioned the significance of the case for him on several occasions, including at the University of Southern California tribute to the series in 2013 (although at that event he said he believed her name was Hazel Grey, which initially complicated our task, though just briefly). Mark Frost said that his maternal grandmother would tell him and his brother, Scott (also a writer for Twin Peaks, plus the author of The Autobiography of F.B.I. Special Agent Dale Cooper: My Life, My Tapes), about the unsolved murder of a young woman in the woods of Taborton, New York, where she lived and where Mark and his family would vacation in the summers.
Calhoun house as it now looks (Betty Lawson Calhoun was Mark Frost’s grandmother)
There are indeed similarities between the stories: Hazel was, like Laura, young, though slightly older — twenty at the time of her death. Her body was found not on the banks of a lake but floating in a pond. By all indications, Hazel too lived a secret life, though certainly nothing like Laura’s lurid existence. But there were many things about Hazel that emerged during the course of the investigation that her closest friends and relatives either didn’t know or refused to acknowledge knowing, especially with respect to her romantic life. By the end of her life, Hazel was living in Troy, a bustling city at the turn of the twentieth century, and had worked as a domestic servant for three of the city’s powerful families. But she died in Taborton, a neighborhood in the small town of Sand Lake, which itself bears many similarities to the titular town of the TV series, including twin mountain peaks, a host of eccentric characters, the woods (where Hazel’s body was found), and a history as a lumber mill town.
FB: Do you know if Mark Frost has done research of his own concerning the case, or did he rely on the memory of his grandmother’s story when he co-created Twin Peaks with David Lynch?
DB: He definitely did some research into it, with lots of assistance from his friend John Walsh, a lifelong resident of Taborton (whom we met and spent some time with, but who unfortunately passed away during the time we were researching and writing the book).
FB: To what extent was David Lynch aware of the Hazel Drew case when he started work on Twin Peaks? Did Mark Frost share his interest in the case with Lynch or did it remain an unnamed source of inspiration? DB: Lynch’s inspiration for Twin Peaks had nothing to do with Hazel. Mark might have mentioned it to him, but it was never the source of Lynch’s inspiration in any way. We all know about Lynch’s obsession with troubled young blonde women, based on his oeuvre, and that is likely where you will find Lynch’s inspiration (though I never interviewed him, so I can’t say that with any certainty). FB: When did the idea to write a book about Hazel Drew take shape and how did you and Mark Givens proceed to investigate a case over 100 years old?
DB: For me, the idea of doing a book on Hazel Drew began stirring in 2015, as I was researching and writing Twin Peaks FAQ: All That’s Left to Know About a Place Both Wonderful and Strange for Applause Theatre & Cinema Books. I can’t resist unsolved puzzles. Mark Givens hosts and produces a Twin Peaks themed podcast titled Dear Meadow Radio, and separately developed his own interest in the case. I listened to the episode in which he explored the Hazel Drew murder in a very surface manner (given what we know now) and reached out to him to inquire if he would be interested in collaborating on a book, which he was. Once we connected, we started investigating. This was an incredible amount of fun and really one of the most absorbing experiences of my life. One of our first contacts was a man by the name of Bob Moore, who is the Sand Lake town historian and couldn’t have been more helpful. He gave us access to so much information. He guided us on tours of the area. He introduced us to descendants of some of the people involved in the case. He arranged roundtables at which we got to speak to, and hear from, people who lived in the area and were invested in the case for reasons of their own. We also picked the brains of other historians in the area, like Kathy Sheehand (Rensselaer County), Don Rittner (author of numerous books on the history of the New York State Capitol Region), and Jack Casey (author of The Trail of Bat Shea). One person in particular who was so incredibly helpful was Mark Marshall, a retired public- school employee who lives in East Poestenkill, not far from where Hazel was born and is buried. The foundation of the church the Drew family attended is on Mark’s property. For these reasons and others, Mark was profoundly invested in the Hazel Drew case, and fed us so much information and so many theories.
Every conversation was a rabbit hole leading us deeper and deeper into the mystery of not only who killed Hazel Drew, but also who was Hazel Drew, and why her murder important, other than as inspiration for Twin Peaks. And we believe it is, because I think it tells us a lot about who we are as people, even today.
We also spent days and days and days and days — I can’t even begin to count them — scouring contemporaneous publications: newspapers, books, city directories, census reports, and so forth. Sometimes from our computers at home but many times at libraries in Troy (where Hazel lived at the time of her death), Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (where her last employer worked), Sand Lake, and Albany.
FB: Can you tell us more about the circumstances of her death?
DB: Hazel’s body was found floating in a manmade pond in the woods of Taborton on Saturday, July 11, 1908. Her last sighting was at approximately 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, July 8. Nobody reported her missing. Cause of death was determined to be a blow to the head from an unknown instrument. There was no definitive ruling over whether she had been “outraged,” as the papers called it at the time, which was a euphemism for sexual assault, because the body was so badly decomposed.
Hazel had been working as a domestic servant for a family in Troy — a professor at RPI, his wife, and their young daughter. On Monday, July 7, she suddenly and mysteriously walked out on her job. She went from there to the house where her aunt was employed, also as a domestic servant. According to the aunt (an unreliable narrator), she was on her way across the river to visit friends. In all probability she never went there (or got there, depending on whether you believe she was really heading there, which I don’t). She was spotted at the Union Station in Troy on both Monday and Tuesday, and then again near the pond in the Taborton woods on Tuesday night. Where she spent Monday night and why she was in the woods on Tuesday are both among the unresolved questions even to this day.
FB: You mentioned the fact that she had a secret life – could you elaborate?
DB: So much mystery surrounds Hazel Drew. Why did she suddenly walk out on her job on the morning of Monday, July 7? Why did she tell her aunt — if in fact she did — that she was planning to visit friends across the river if, as authorities believe, she never went there? Why was she spotted twice at Union Station on July 7, once on her way to boarding a train that, authorities believe, was bound for Albany? Why did she return to Troy so quickly? Where did she spend Monday night? How did she get to Teal’s Pond on the night of Tuesday, July 8 — the night of her murder? What was she doing there? Where did she plan to go next, and how? Why did no one — even her family and closest friends — seem to know so little of her relationship with the men in her life, sketchy details of which emerged once letters and postcards were discovered among the belongings she left behind? Was her aunt telling the truth when she said Hazel once told her she was in love with a railroad man, or was the aunt merely deflecting suspicion from elsewhere? Why did her aunt refuse at first to cooperate with authorities by identifying any of Hazel’s friends or the two men she and Hazel were seen riding with? Who was the mystery man she refused to identify who was eager to marry her, even though she had no interest in him? What was the meaning of the postcard in her possession from an artist named Harry, who apologized for being “rough” with her? Why was she so eager to have a new dress made for her visit to Lake George on the July 4 weekend before her death, yet, again according to her aunt, was so easily talked out of going there? What was the mysterious illness that motivated her to seek refuge at the remote house of her uncle for three weeks in the winter before her death? Was she, as certain newspapers suggested, pregnant? If so, what happened to the baby? Who was the father? These are but a few of the many, many secrets Hazel took with her to her grave.
Jarvis O’Brien headed the investigation into Hazel’s death
FB: Were you and Mark Givens able to “crack” any of these cases?
DB: Solving a 113-year-old cold case isn’t easy, but Mark and I believe we have come up with a very plausible explanation as to who killed Hazel Drew, which also addresses several of the other mysteries in her life.
FB: Can you tell us something about your book about the case and its TV adaptation?
DB: The book is titled Murder at Teal’s Pond: Hazel Drew and the Mystery That Inspired Twin Peaks. Foreword is by Mark Frost. The book is being published by Thomas & Mercer. I know a documentary is being planned by Metabook Entertainment.
Our presentation is largely chronological, though we sometimes veer from our timeline to address certain characters and themes. For example, we devote a chapter to William M. Clemens, a bombastic newspaper columnist who claimed to be the world’s foremost expert on crime, but, in his zeal to crack the case and enhance his own reputation, wound up getting many things wrong, in a most sensationalistic way. This allows us to not only look at this one idiosyncratic character, but also to examine the history of the press up to that point in time, particularly the role it played in local politics. There are other themes that we delve into through the lens of the crime, like the toxicity of local and state politics and the way they had insinuated themselves into almost every aspect of life in Troy, including the criminal justice system.
In the same vein, we are able to explore the religious and socioeconomic prejudices of the time, driven largely by the fractiousness between old-guard Protestant Republicans and Irish Catholic immigrants who attached themselves to the Democratic Party, often resulting in contentious elections, shootings, and sometimes death.
Still, I don’t want to leave anyone with the wrong impression: this is first and foremost a mystery story dripping suspense as we follow the investigation into Hazel’s death, from the discovery of the body through the inquest and final ruling. We follow the clues as they emerge, leading us down one rabbit hole after another — letters from secret admirers, a mysterious illness, sightings (both confirmed and unconfirmed) of Hazel over the last two days of her life (sometimes alone, sometimes in the company of men), the appearance of two mystery men near the crime scene on the night of her death, etc. We present an almost minute-by-minute account of the events on Taborton mountain on the night of her death.
FB: Were there any memorable “characters” surrounding Hazel Drew, people reminiscent of the eccentric cast in Twin Peaks?
DB: Yes, many. I already mentioned Clemens. Hazel’s crotchety aunt Minnie Taylor barked at newspapermen and refused to assist investigators; everyone agrees she went to her grave with secrets relevant to the murder of Hazel Drew. William Taylor, Hazel’s uncle, was another strange character, whose extremely peculiar actions following word of his niece’s possible death made him an early suspect; his behavior became only more suspicious as the investigation lingered on. Frank Smith, a teenage farmhand, was said by all of his neighbors to be “dull- witted”; he was known to have a crush on Hazel and was spotted sprinting breathlessly to the local drugstore at ten o’clock on the night of the murder, pounding on the door, then dashing off when he discovered it was closed. Rudy Gundrum, a Taborton charcoal burner who used to sit his grandchildren on his lap and let them pull the trigger of his shotgun, is the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of the story; just by stopping to give Frank Smith a ride on the night of the murder he found himself embroiled in one of the most famous murders in Sand Lake lore. I could go one forever.
FB: When we think about some of the themes in season 3 linked to Homeric poetry, such as the return voyage in The Odyssey – the fact that Hazel used to live in Troy is striking. Do you think this might have influenced Mark Frost when he co-wrote the script?
DB: That is a tough question to answer because I’m not Mark Frost and I didn’t pose that exact question to him while working on Conversations with Mark Frost. I know that he knows The Odyssey, obviously, and that it was on his mind at least some of the time he was working on The Return. But I have no reason to believe Hazel’s life in Troy had any bearing on season three whatsoever. Moreover, Mark Frost’s attachment to Troy far transcends Hazel Drew. His grandfather lived and worked there, as a professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, one of the foremost engineering schools in the US. I might also mention here that Lawson does make a surprise appearance in our book, since, as it turns out, he does have a connection to Hazel, which Mark himself did not know until we informed him.
FB: To conclude this interview à la first season of Twin Peaks: do you know who killed Hazel Drew?
DB: We believe we do.
Hazel Drew’s tombstone
(this interview was first published in the Twin Peaks special issue of the French film magazine La Septième Obsession; if you read French — and even if you don’t — it’s still possible to buy this beautiful issue at the following link)
For the past two years, I have been driving a Renault Zoé, a small French electric car which I love. I really care about the environment and I’ve never felt the need to own a big car. Besides, I never tried to make a fashion statement with the cars I drive, or underline my masculinity with them. I just need my cars to take me from point A to point B while listening to good music on the radio. Electric cars are awesome for this, because they’re so quiet.
This said, it is clear that cars are part of the mythology of the country in which one lives. In France, we have a set of iconic cars that have left a mark in our shared psyche (the 2CV, the Citroën DS, etc.), for better or for worse. The same applies of course to the USA – probably to a greater extent even, because of the central role cars play in this nation (if only because of the size of the country, gigantic by European standards). The reason why there are so many road movies in the United-States is directly linked to this reality. Americans did not wait for Jack Kerouac’s On the Road (published in 1957, the year after the young Sarah Palmer got infected by the Frogmoth) to travel around their country on four wheels.
Interesting piece of trivia: Kerouac being a French-Canadian, did you know that the first version of On the Road was actually written in French?
Anyway: from the Ford Model T of the 1920s to the latest Ford or General Motors products, the history of cars is also, to a certain extent, a history of the USA. They are an intrinsic part of the American Dream (but who is the dreamer?). To paraphrase a line from Fire Walk with Me, the chrome reflects the image of the USA.
Twin Peaks being so closely connected to everything mythological, it would be surprising if it did not tap into this rich mythology. A hint that season 3 payed close attention to this question was the presence of a copy of Paul Ingrassia’s Engines of Change (2012) on Ruth Davenport’s bookshelves. Several cars discussed in that book can be seen during the various parts of The Return which, if you think about it, is really the story of two road trips: a road trip West for Mr. C, from South Dakota to Twin Peaks; and a road trip East followed by a second northwest long chunk for Cooper/Richard, from Las Vegas to Odessa, and then from Odessa to Twin Peaks.
Before going further, let’s note the importance of gas stations throughout Twin Peaks. There is no denying that their presence reflects something central to the series.
I’m not going to discuss all the cars used during the 18 parts of the season (if you want to see them all, you can follow this link), but I would like to focus on a few interesting choices. I will especially zoom in on the various cars driven by Cooper’s multiple avatars.
First, note that the second car driven by Mr. C, the one he picks up in part 2 after we first see him in his 2015 Mercedes-Benz S-Klasse Coupé in part 1, happens to be the same model as the one Cooper/Richard is seen driving in part 18, after his “sex magick” experiment with Diane in a motel: a 2003 Lincoln Town Car.
This similarity might be intended to stress how Cooper Richard, the version of Cooper seen in part 18 after Cooper and Diane have “crossed over”, integrates elements from Mr. C’s personality. It is clear that Cooper Richard is colder than the version of Cooper we used to know, more mature perhaps. By this point in Twin Peaks, Cooper has integrated the diverse portions of his personality in order to form a coherent whole. This might be why he is then seen driving the same car as Mr. C who, after all, could not handle it properly: it does not take him long to crash at the wheel of this car in part 2.
But the plot thickens when one remembers that it’s a Lincoln Town Car in part 4 that picks up Gordon, Tammy, and Albert in South Dakota, on their way to Yankton Prison where Mr. C is held after his crash. Moreover, Tammy also gets car sick in the car, which directly echoes Mr. C’s recent accident.
The reason why Mr. C and Cooper Richard drive the same car might therefore be that it’s the car most often used by FBI agents. This would not be surprising given that the Lincoln Motor Company has provided official state limousines for Presidents of the United States. This fact is of importance in Twin Peaks because of the 1963 assassination of President J.F. Kennedy during a motorcade in Dallas, at the back of a 1961 Lincoln Continental. Was it the link to Abraham Lincoln that somehow predestined Kennedy to be shot like this? One might wonder. Dougie Cooper, on the contrary, was lucky enough to avoid being shot in part 3, perhaps because he was not sitting in a Lincoln but in a Jeep Wrangler driven by Jade.
The recurring presence of Lincoln during The Return is of course no accident. It’s his portrait that appears on the lucky penny found by the young Sarah Palmer in part 8, just before his doppelgänger appears to “get a light”.
Forever connected with the Civil War, the name Lincoln might have been used by Lynch and Frost as a way to underline the split personalities of Cooper, whose “house is divided against itself” to quote Lincoln’s 1858 famous speech: Cooper, Dougie, Mr. C, Richard…One may even find a visual link between Cooper and Lincoln in comparing the way the first sits in the Red Room and the second in his Washington Memorial.
As for the 2000 Ford Taurus driven by Dougie Jones in Rancho Rosa, it’s worth reading what Paul Ingrassia has to say about it in the above-mentioned book: “The 1986 Ford Taurus revolutionised American automotive styling with its sleek, curvy lines. But it’s hard to point to an impact the car had beyond that”. This fits rather well with the fact that Dougie was a Tulpa, a thought-form with not much substance, no lasting impact.
Now, why would Cooper and Diane drive in a 1963 Ford 300 in part 18? These cars, it appears, were often used by the police. This might connect the choice with the use of the Lincoln Town Car, Cooper wanting a police car for his transdimensional trip. I believe this was also meant to blend in once on the other side, a jump not only in space but also in time, in order to conceive a new version of Laura (Carrie) in the new universe with “sex magick”. As a reminder, Laura was born in July 1971; she was therefore conceived at the end of 1970, a time when a 1963 car would not have looked out of place. I have noted elsewhere the possible links between Twin Peaks and the Back to the Future franchise. In this sense, it is interesting to read what Paul Ingrassia wrote about the Pontiac GTO, which applies rather well to Twin Peaks: “the DMC-12 (seen in Back to the Future) was for the movies… the Pontiac GTO allowed real people to feel as though they were traveling back in time”.
Much more could be written about the multiple iconic cars seen throughout The Return. Each choice was clearly tailored to a situation and/or a character, nothing is random. It’s once again a tribute to the attention to detail exhibited by Lynch and his team to see how precisely all these elements fit within the whole of the season.
Everyone knows these famous words, uttered by Dorothy Gale to the Scarecrow in L. Frank Baum’s 1900 fantasy novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, as well as in Victor Fleming’s 1939 cinematic adaptation of the book. David Lynch’s love for this universe is evident throughout his filmography, especially in Wild at Heart (1990). Links are also evident in Twin Peaks: The Return, a season that revolves around the notion of homecoming, so central to the Oz saga. It has also been noted that the name of the main opponent in the third season, Judy, might very well be a reference to actress Judy Garland, the star of The Wizard of Oz.
But I believe that the connections between the two fictional realms run even deeper, to the level of the structure of the narrative itself. The Return is composed of 18 parts and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is divided into 23 chapters. As is also the case with several other works of literature (The Odyssey, Ulysses, The Bhagavad Gita,), I have reached the conclusion that Mark Frost and David Lynch have built their story using this preexisting construction as a scaffolding for their own creation. I still have some work ahead of me, but I think I have unearthed clear links between 12 chapters of the book and their corresponding parts of the series. This leaves another 6 about which I’m still unsure, but I hope to decrypt them in the coming weeks with repeated viewings.
In Chapter 1, a cyclone in Kansas where “the same gray colour” is “to be seen everywhere” sends Dorothy’s house a great distance through the air, towards the Land of Oz. By the end of the chapter, still in the air after many hours of flight, she falls asleep. Part 1 of The Return also begins in a black and white environment, in the Fireman’s Palace, which Cooper is about to leave — “you are far away” — to begin his quest in his own version of the Land of Oz, Twin Peaks. It appears that Cooper is Dorothy’s equivalent in this world, at least in the context of season 3, walking on his own path of individuation the way she travels the yellow brick road. This connection between Cooper and Dorothy leads one to wonder: is there also a link between the FBI agent and Judy, Dorothy’s doppelgänger in the real world?
The Council with the Munchkins (Chapter 2) leads Dorothy to meet the Good Witch of the North, from whom she learns about The Great Wizard of Oz and his City of Emeralds, who might be her only chance to get back to her home in Kansas. Before she leaves on her long journey down the yellow brick road to meet him, the witch gives Dorothy a gentle kiss on the forehead: “no one will dare injure a person who has been kissed by the Witch of the North”, she tells her. Then, “the Witch gave Dorothy a friendly nod, whirled around on her left heel three times, and straightaway disappeared”. Similarly, in part 2, Laura meets Cooper in the Red Room, gives him a kiss and vanishes up in the air, in a motion reminiscent of her literary counterpart. Besides, Laura being from the town of Twin Peaks, in the Pacific Northwest, it makes sense to see her play the Witch of the North.
Chapter 3 narrates how Dorothy saved the Scarecrow. Before she accomplishes this task, making her first friend of the trek, “she took off her old leather shoes and tried on the silver ones , which fitted her as well as if they had been made for her”. In the film, these shoes are ruby red, but not in the book. In part 3, when he goes through the transcendental electric outlet that takes him to Rancho Rosa, Cooper loses his shoes in the room where he met Naido. Jade later laces his new pair of shoes, borrowed from Dougie Jones, his Las Vegas tulpa.
It is worth noting that the place where Dorothy meets the Scarecrow is none other than a cornfield: “there was a great cornfield beyond the fence, and not faraway she saw a Scarecrow, placed high on a pole to keep the birds from the ripe corn”. This should probably be made in perspective with the important role place by Garmonbozia/creamed corn in Twin Peaks.
Who might be the equivalent of the Scarecrow in The Return? In Chapter 4, he explains that “my life has been so short that I really know nothing whatever”, and a while later an old crow tells him that “if you only had brains in your head you would be as good a man as any of them, and a better man than some of them”. This very much corresponds to Dougie Cooper, the person he has become after having gone through the electric outlet, reduced to the level of a childlike persona. The clothes he wears to go to work are also reminiscent of the costume worn by the Scarecrow in the 1939 film.
The fifth chapter of the book concerns The Rescue of the Tin Woodman, the second friend Dorothy makes during the course of her trip in Oz. If the Scarecrow lacks a brain, the Tin Woodman misses a heart, something he eventually hopes to obtain from the Wizard. The transformation of the Mitchum brothers from the beginning of season 3 to its ending parallels this quest for a heart. In part 5, the seasons’ equivalent to the book’s fifth chapter, they still have not progressed to this level of compassion that will characterise them later on. They are still heartless casino owners, ready to terrify and beat up their staff at the Mustang Casino.
After the Scarecrow and the Tin Man, Dorothy finally meets her third travel companion, the Cowardly Lion in Chapter 6. The Lion explains: “I learned that if I roared very loudly every living thing was frightened and got our of my way”. Who fits better this description in The Return than Janey-E? In part 6, she finds out about Jade and takes care of the money her husband borrowed from local thugs with her idiosyncratic energy, startling everyone around her to attention. In a later episode, the Fusco brothers even compare Dougie to a dog while Janey-E does, according to them, all the biting.
Chapter 7 is entitled The Journey to the Great Oz. The trip is far from being uneventful, as the book’s heroes must jump over a ditch while under the threat of two great beasts called the Kalidahs, “with claws so long and sharp that they could tear” one “in two”. They almost catch Dorothy and the Lion as they are about to jump, but end up being the ones falling into the precipice. In part 7, Cooper and Janey-E, i.e. Dorothy and the Lion are the targets of an attack by Ike the Spike and only narrowly escape death.
Part 8 is often mentioned as the best / most important segment of The Return. Its links to The Wizard of Oz are clear, especially when it comes to the depiction of the young Sarah Palmer. The episode corresponds to The Deadly Poppy Field chapter of the novel, when Dorothy and her friends find “themselves in the midst of a great meadow of poppies. Now it is well known that when there are many of these flowers together their odour is so powerful that anyone who breathes it falls asleep, and if the sleeper is not carried away from the scent of the flowers, he sleeps on and on forever”. Therefore, it is no surprise that the people of New Mexico listening to the Woodsman’s litany on the radio fall prey to a sudden need to sleep, as if they had been crossing the above mentioned field of poppies. When the young Sarah (Judith) Palmer falls unconscious on her bed, she strongly resembles Judy Garland in Victor Fleming’s movie. There is reason to believe that she might be the dreamer mentioned by Monica Belluci in part 14. The end credits actually roll over her body in her bed, her eyes rolling under her eyelids in the REM (Rapid Eye Movements) of sleep typical of dreaming.
Before that, the moment she arrives on her porch is almost identical to the scene when Dorothy enters her house to protect herself from the oncoming cyclone. The Frogmoth flight to her window pane is also evocative of what takes place outside of Dorothy’s window in the film, notably of the Wicked Witch of the West riding her bicycle in the whirlwind with wings of sort on her back.
I am still uncertain about chapter 9 (as well as chapters 11, 13, 14, 15, and 17). I have some ideas concerning the way they connect with their corresponding parts in the third season, but I still need to reflect further before I commit my conclusions to this blog. Chapter 10 on the other hand, The Guardian of the Gate, most likely evokes the multiple moments in part 10 when a character is captured by the camera in the liminal space between a building and its environment, blocking a door with their body.
In The Search for the Wicked Witch (Chapter 12), we learn that “the Wicked Witch of the West had but one eye, yet that was as powerful as a telescope”, as well as about “her dread of water”. One might wonder if Hutch’s telescopic rifle, with which he kills the Yankton prison’s warden, is not a reference to this power of the Witch? Sarah Palmer’s alcoholism can, as far as it is concerned, be understood as a manifestation of her fear of water.
What takes place in part 18 can also be understood according to this idea: when Carrie shrieks at the end of the episode, she suddenly releases the flow of water / electromagnetic power she had repressed for so long in relationship with her house. This brusk return of the repressed functions as a fireman’s hose, her positioning in front of the house being reminiscent of the way firemen extinguish houses on fire. As a result of her shriek, once the dam of repression has finally given way to a tsunami, the electric fire inside the house comes to an end.
Part 16 corresponds to The Magic Art of the Great Humbug, the book’s sixteenth chapter in which the Wizard finally grants Dorothy’s friends their wishes: the Scarecrow gets a brain, the Tin Man a heart, and the Cowardly Lion some courage. In this episode, Dougie Cooper (The Scarecrow) wakes up from his coma, getting his wits back; the Mitchum brothers (the Tin Man) are acknowledged by Cooper as having “hearts of gold”; and Janey-E (the Lion) finds the courage to say goodbye to her husband, the new version of Dale Cooper on his way back to Twin Peaks.
Last but not least, Chapter 18 bears the title: Away to the South. This is indeed what Cooper and Diane do in part 18, on their way to first the location where they cross over to an alternate reality, and then to Odessa (Texas), where Cooper/Richard finally meets Laura/Carrie. Dorothy learns from the Soldier with the Green Whiskers that “the best thing (she) can do is to travel to the Land of the South and ask Glinda to help her” get back to Kansas. Glinda is the Witch of the South, the most powerful of all Witches. She rules over the Quadlings from her castle on the edge of the desert which Dorothy needs to cross in order to get back home. Two options: (G)linda might correspond to the mysterious Linda from part 18, the sex magick ritual sending Richard Cooper to his final destination, on his way back home; or she might be Carrie Page in her deserted house, ready to leave her artificial life so as to return to Twin Peaks. I find the first option more likely, as it also gives an explanation for who Linda might be, but there would also be a nice symmetry if Laura was the Witch of the North and Carrie the Witch of the South.
As mentioned above, I still need to find correspondences for 6 more chapters of the book, but I feel like, two thirds down the way, I now have a better understanding of who is who in the season. I probably need to figure out who the Wizard of Oz is supposed to be in this configuration (the Fireman?), and also to think some more about what ties Cooper/Dorothy to Sarah/Judy, among other things. As always, I’m impressed by the extreme attention to details shown in the writing of the season’s script, everything being minutely woven to create echoes with other works of art. The many layers of The Return still hide many precious stones within. I now hope Dr. Amp’s shovel will help me dig out more gold in the future!
TWIN PEAKS - Unwrapping the Plastic 