Music in Twin Peaks: Listen to the Sounds 9780367423131, 9781032005973, 9780367823481

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MUSIC IN TWIN PEAKS

In this edited volume, contributors explore an essential element of the influential television series Twin Peaks: the role of music and sound. From its debut in 1990 to its return to television in 2017, Twin Peaks has amassed a cult following, and inspired myriad scholarly studies. This collection considers how the music and sound design not only create the ambience of this groundbreaking series, but function in the narrative, encouraging multiple interpretations. With chapters that consider how music shapes the relationship of audiences and fans to the story, the importance of sound design, and the symbolism embedded in the score, this book provides a range of perspectives for scholars of music and film studies, while giving fans new insight into an iconic television show. Reba A.  Wissner is Assistant Professor of Musicology at Columbus State University. Katherine M. Reed is Assistant Professor of Musicology at California State University, Fullerton.

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ROUTLEDGE MUSIC AND SCREEN MEDIA SERIES Series Editor: Neil Lerner

The Routledge Music and Screen Media Series offers edited collections of original essays on music in particular genres of cinema, television, video games and new media. These edited essay collections are written for an interdisciplinary audience of students and scholars of music and film and media studies. The Soundtrack Album Listening to Media Edited by Paul N. Reinsch and Laurel Westrup Music in Action Film Sounds Like Action! Edited by James Buhler and Mark Durrand Music in Twin Peaks Listen to the Sounds Edited by Reba A. Wissner and Katherine M. Reed Women’s Music for the Screen Diverse Narratives in Sound Edited by Felicity Wilcox For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ Routledge-Music-and-Screen-Media-Series/book-series/RMSM

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MUSIC IN TWIN PEAKS Listen to the Sounds

Edited by Reba A. Wissner and Katherine M. Reed

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First published 2021 by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 selection and editorial matter, Reba A. Wissner and Katherine M. Reed; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Reba A. Wissner and Katherine M. Reed to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this title has been requested ISBN: 978-0-367-42313-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-00597-3 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-82348-1 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Newgen Publishing UK

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CONTENTS

Series Foreword by Neil Learner  List of Contributors  Introduction: Twin Peaks: Where There’s Always Music (and Sound) in the Air  Katherine M. Reed and Reba A. Wissner

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PART I

Performance and Audience 

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1 Pitching the Peaks: Media Advertising for the Original Series  James Deaville

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2 Playing with Sound: Fan Engagement with the Soundtrack of Twin Peaks: The Return (2017)  Jessica Getman

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3 Where Music is Always in the Air: Voice and Nostalgia in Twin Peaks  Brooke McCorkle Okazaki

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4 The Bang Bang Bar, Silencio, and Lynch’s Audiences: Meaning and Musical Performance in Twin Peaks: The Return  Katherine M. Reed 5 The Music is Not What It Seems: An Examination of Labor and Capital in the Music of Twin Peaks: The Return Series  Martha Schulenburg 6 ‘Singer’; ‘Girl Singer’; ‘Roadhouse Singer’; ‘Herself’: Julee Cruise in the World of Twin Peaks  David Sweeney

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PART II

Sound Design  7 “The Thread Will Be Torn”: Sound Design as a Measure of Self-​Knowledge in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me  Andrew T. Burt

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8 Sound Design, Music, and The Birth of Evil in Twin Peaks: The Return  Kingsley Marshall and Rupert Loydell

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9 “What is Gordon Cole Listening To?”: The Rhetoric of Subjective Sound in Twin Peaks: The Return  Zeynep Toraman

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10 David Lynch’s Metaphysical Sound Design: The Acousmatic Personification of Judy  Steven Wilson

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PART III

Musical Meanings 

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11 Americana on the Internet: Listening to Twin Peaks  William Weston Bennett

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12 “Like Some Haunting Melody”: The Laura Palmer Theme in the World of Twin Peaks  Andrew S. Kohler

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13 Listen to the Skins: Drumming and Time in Twin Peaks  203 Kai West 14 Chaos and Creation: Music, Redemption, and the Atomic Bomb in Twin Peaks: The Return  Reba A. Wissner

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Index 

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SERIES FOREWORD

While the scholarly conversations about music in film and visual media have been expanding prodigiously since the last quarter of the twentieth century, a need remains for focused, specialized studies of particular films as they relate more broadly to genres. This series includes scholars from across the disciplines of music and film and media studies, of specialists in both the audible as well as the visual, who share the goal of broadening and deepening these scholarly dialogues about music in particular genres of cinema, television, videogames, and new media. Claiming a chronological arc from the birth of cinema in the 1890s to the most recent releases, the Routledge Music and Screen Media series offers collections of original essays written for an interdisciplinary audience of students and scholars of music, film and media studies in general, and interdisciplinary humanists who give strong attention to music. Driving the study of music here are the underlying assumptions that music together with screen media (understood broadly to accommodate rapidly developing new technologies) participates in important ways in the creation of meaning and that including music in an analysis opens up the possibility for interpretations that remain invisible when only using the eye. The series was designed with the goal of providing a thematically unified group of supplemental essays in a single volume that can be assigned in a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses (including courses in film studies, in film music, and other interdisciplinary topics). We look forward to adding future volumes addressing emerging technologies and reflecting the growth of the academic study of screen media. Rather than attempting an

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exhaustive history or unified theory, these studies—​persuasive explications supported by textual and contextual evidence—​ will pose questions of musical style, strategies of rhetoric, and critical cultural analysis as they help us to see, to hear, and ultimately to understand these texts in new ways. Neil Lerner, Series Editor

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CONTRIBUTORS

William Weston Bennett is a PhD student in Music Theory at Harvard

University. His thesis considers “xenophonia” as a principle aesthetic concern of twentieth-​century music in the United States and Europe. In his spare time, he makes music. Andrew T.  Burt works in the English Department at Henderson State

University where he teaches composition and literature courses. His research interests include exploring the intersections of film, television, and literature, specifically the interplay of true-​crime narratives and fictional crime and horror texts. He specializes in Blaxploitation, masculinity studies, and rock and roll studies. He is a writer and blogger, covering topics including film, television, music, and folklore. He has worked with the George and Ira Gershwin Critical Edition from its early days and is now the Alfred and Jane Wolin Managing Editor. James Deaville teaches Music in the School for Studies in Art and Culture

at Carleton University, Ottawa. He edited Music in Television: Channels of Listening (Routledge, 2010) and co-​edited with Christina Baade Music and the Broadcast Experience: Performance, Production, and Audiences (Oxford, 2016). Regarding television music he has published articles in American Music (2019), Journal of Sonic Studies (2012), and Echo (2005), and chapters in the collections Music in the Post-​9/​11 World (2007), Music, Politics, and Violence (2012), and The Oxford Handbook of Music and Advertising (2020), which he has co-​edited with Ron Rodman and Siu-​Lan Tan.

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Jessica Getman is Assistant Professor of Musicology/​Ethnomusicology at

California State University, San Bernardino, and a film musicologist focusing on music in television and science fiction media. Research interests also include popular music, amateur music, critical editing, historically informed performance practice, and twentieth-​century American music. Andrew S. Kohler holds a PhD in musicology from the University of Michigan,

from which he subsequently earned a Master of Science in Information with a focus on library and archival work. He completed his dissertation, “ ‘Grey C’, Acceptable”: Carl Orff’s Professional and Artistic Responses to the Third Reich, in 2015. He has been an instructor of music history, theory, appreciation, and bibliography at six institutions. He is currently a senior editorial assistant at the George and Ira Gershwin Critical Edition, where he is the project manager for Wayne D. Shirley’s edition of Porgy and Bess. His other activities include composition, choral singing, and conducting. Rupert Loydell is Senior Lecturer in the School of Writing and Journalism

at Falmouth University, the editor of Stride magazine, and contributing editor to International Times. He is a widely published poet whose most recent poetry books are Dear Mary (Shearsman, 2017) and A Confusion of Marys (Shearsman, 2020). He has edited anthologies for Salt, Shearsman and KFS, written for academic journals such as Punk & Post-​Punk (of which he is on the editorial board), New Writing, Revenant, The Journal of Visual Art Practice, Text, Axon, Musicology Research, Short Fiction in Theory and Practice, and contributed co-​written chapters to Brian Eno. Oblique Music (Bloomsbury, 2016) and Critical Essays on Twin Peaks: The Return (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). Kingsley Marshall is Head of Film & Television based at Falmouth University.

His research is orientated around film and television production practices, and the representation of history and technology. As a film practitioner, he focuses on the relationship between sound design and music composition for film, and the production of short and micro-​budget feature films. As a partner of the Sound/​Image CinemaLab he worked as executive producer on “Wilderness” (Director: Justin John Doherty, 2017) and “Mr Whippy” (Director:  Rachna Suri, 2019), produced “Backwoods” (Director:  Ryan Mackfall, 2019)  and composed the score for “Hard, Cracked the Wind” (2019), a film project directed by Mark Jenkin (“Bait,” 2019). Brooke McCorkle Okazaki is an Assistant Professor of Music at Carleton

College in Northfield, Minnesota. She specializes in opera of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, film music, and the music of modern Japan. In

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addition to her essays on film sound, she is the co-​author of Japan’s Green Monsters: Environmental Commentary in Kaijū Cinema (2018) and the author of Shōnen Knife’s Happy Hour: Food, Gender, and Rock-​n-​Roll (2020). In the 2019–​2020 academic year, she received a Japan Foundation Fellowship to complete her monograph Searching for Wagner in Japan. Katherine M.  Reed is an assistant professor of musicology at California

State University, Fullerton. Her research interests include musical semiotics, the use of pre-​existing music in film, and British popular music, particularly David Bowie’s works of the 1970s. Her recent research has appeared in Popular Music and Society, Music and the Moving Image, Musicology Now, and the Society for American Music’s Digital Lectures series. She is at work on her current book project, Hooked to the Silver Screen: David Bowie and the Moving Image. Martha Schulenburg is a graduate fellow pursuing her PhD at the Graduate

Center of the City University of New  York, working on her dissertation concerning the figure of the vamp in 1920s popular song and cinema. She studied bassoon performance and French at Towson University in Baltimore, MD. She earned her Master’s degree in musicology at the Peabody Conservatory of the Johns Hopkins University, all while enjoying an active career as a bassoonist in the Baltimore–​Washington area. She currently teaches courses in music appreciation at the City College of New York and is an assistant editor at RILM. David Sweeney is a lecturer in the Glasgow School of Art’s Design History

and Theory Department, specializing in popular culture. Recent and forthcoming publications include book chapters and journal articles on the use of music in Twin Peaks; digital comic books and narrative suspense; the folk horror elements of the Marvel UK comic series The Knights of Pendragon; and the Canadian urban fiction of horror writer Gemma Files. His books on the novels of Michael Marshall Smith and the Netflix Originals series The OA will be published in 2021 by Subterranean Press and Auteur, respectively. Zeynep Toraman is a composer and scholar from Istanbul, Turkey. In 2015, she

completed her Bachelors’ degree in music and computer science at Columbia University, New York City, NY, where she studied composition with G. F. Haas and George Lewis. Later, she continued her studies under the direction of Philippe Leroux in Montreal, Canada. In September 2017, she joined the doctoral program in composition at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, where she studies with Chaya Czernowin and Hans Tutschku. Her practice-​ based research explores the ways in which texts can interact with each other

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within the larger framework of musical compositions, thinking of library as an archive, and enfolding autobiography, poetry, fiction and history within themselves. Kai West is a doctoral student in musicology at the University of Michigan,

with a focus on American popular music and secondary specialties in film music and opera studies. His current research project examines intersections of technology and identity in the history and musical life of the electric guitar. He has also worked extensively on the music of George and Ira Gershwin, serving as an editorial assistant for critical editions at the U-​M Gershwin Initiative. He has had conference presentations accepted at the American Musicological Society, Society for American Music, and the US branch of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music. Steven Wilson’s research explores new hermeneutics for understanding

radical music, such as that of Diamanda Galás, John Zorn, and Merzbow. He received his PhD in Musicology from the University of Illinois Urbana-​ Champaign, where he also taught. His article “Diamanda Galás:  Écriture Féminine, Abjection, and Feminine Jouissance” was published in Perspectives of New Music, and he has presented research at conferences including the American Musicological Society and the Society for Ethnomusicology. His other research interests include film music, noise, aesthetic theory, psychoanalysis, and hermeneutics. He is currently an independent scholar and academic administrator. Reba A. Wissner is on the music history faculty of Columbus State University.

She received her MFA and PhD in musicology from Brandeis University and her BA in Music and Italian from Hunter College of the City University of New York. She is the author of several articles on seventeenth-​century Venetian opera, Italian immigrant theater in New York City, and music in the 1950s and 1960s television, and has presented her research at conferences throughout the United States and Europe. She is the recipient of numerous awards and grants including a Theodore C.  Sorensen Fellowship from the John F.  Kennedy Library and a James and Sylvia Thayer Short-​Term Research fellowship from the University of California, Los Angeles. She is the author of three books, A Dimension of Sound:  Music in The Twilight Zone (Pendragon Press, 2013), We Will Control All That You Hear:  The Outer Limits and the Aural Imagination (Pendragon Press, 2016), and Music and The Atomic Bomb on American Television, 1950–​1969 (Peter Lang, 2020).

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INTRODUCTION: TWIN PEAKS Where There’s Always Music (and Sound) in the Air Katherine M. Reed and Reba A. Wissner

On December 18, 2015, the Showtime network released its first teaser trailer for a long-​awaited series: the revival of genre-​defying 1990s hit show Twin Peaks.1 The trailer showed strikingly little of the show, its actors, or its eventual plot. Featuring a voiceover from actor Michael Horse (who portrays Deputy Hawk in the series), the trailer focused on place as an important character within the cosmology of Twin Peaks. Visually, the short spot re-​ introduced Snoqualmie Falls, Washington, a setting from the original series. What made this trailer so enticing, though, was the evocative nature of its music and sound design. Beginning with whooshing winds, the spot transitions into Horse’s voiceover, underneath which sustained synths begin to move. With the reveal of the “Welcome to Twin Peaks” sign, those synths take shape:  they reintroduce Angelo Badalamenti’s theme for the show, familiar despite lying dormant for some 25  years. One last aural surprise awaits, as the sound of crackling electricity (and the image of Gordon Cole [David Lynch himself]) breaks in to interrupt the flow of the theme. With this brief introduction, Showtime ensured that Twin Peaks fans would find plenty to sustain them as they waited for a return to Twin Peaks. As fans took apart the teaser trailer and listened to its sounds, it became clear that the aural world of Twin Peaks would retain its mysterious importance. In 2015, as in 1990, the sound of Twin Peaks announced its singularity in the televisual landscape.

Twin Peaks Background When it first premiered on April 8, 1990, David Lynch and Mark Frost’s Twin Peaks shook up network television. Ostensibly a murder mystery, the show

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defied expectations at every turn: its central mystery was not resolved until the second season, its upstanding FBI agent put faith in mysticism over strict logic, its murderer was not what he seemed. In its visual and aural style, too, the series broke from 1990 television expectations. Working within the genre norms of the procedural, Twin Peaks nonetheless indulged in dreamlike visuals, Lynch’s signature filmic style, and a sound world unlike any other on a major network. Angelo Badalamenti’s music and the nuanced sound design for the series’ original run (as well as its recent return) not only create its ambiance but also contribute to new ways of understanding the show. This collection investigates the various ways in which Twin Peaks’ music and sound encourage multiple interpretations of its world, relationships, and narrative. Twin Peaks was the brainchild of director Lynch and writer/​producer Frost. Picked up by ABC in 1989, the series followed the success of Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986) and paired director and star Kyle MacLachlan once again. With the launch of its first season on April 8, 1990, Twin Peaks captured the imagination of American television audiences. The pilot drew the viewer into the insular town of Twin Peaks, Washington, where homecoming queen Laura Palmer has been found dead, wrapped in plastic. The first season explores the murder and the town’s seedy underbelly, introducing such characters as Special Agent Dale Cooper (MacLachlan), who is sent by the FBI to investigate; Harry S. Truman (Michael Ontkean), Twin Peaks’ sheriff; Sarah and Leland Palmer (Grace Zabriskie and Ray Wise), Laura’s grieving parents; Donna Hayward (Lara Flynn Boyle), Laura’s best friend; and Bobby Briggs (Dana Ashbrook), Laura’s boyfriend. From the circle closest to Laura, the mystery expands to encompass the entire town and its business concerns, drugs deals, beauty contests, and love affairs. The show, the prequel film, and its recent revival have all been the focus of much scholarly activity. In 1990, Twin Peaks was notable not only for its auteurist visual and aural style, but also for the online engagement of its fan base. As such, the show has long proven to be an important case study in the fandom field, as seen in the work of Henry Jenkins.2 In film studies and, to a lesser extent, musicology, the show has also sustained much interest. The 14 essays in this collection enter into this conversation, illustrating the various ways in which Twin Peaks’ music and sound encourage multiple interpretations in the original series, Fire Walk With Me, and The Return.

Important Collaborators Lynch considers himself more than just the director of his films; he considers himself a sound man.3 But it is not only the use of sound and music: it is also how he uses them. As Murray Smith has suggested, “What makes Lynch’s approach so distinctive is the degree to which all elements of sound—​score

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and dialogue included—​are subordinated to an integrated sound design, in contrast to the relative autonomy retained by music, dialogue and effects in occasional sound design.”4 This combination creates a type of drama the likes of which only Lynch and his collaborators could create. This drama is brought to life by the score for the first two seasons, composed by Angelo Badalamenti. Badalamenti originally collaborated with Lynch on Blue Velvet, where he was brought in as a vocal coach for Isabella Rossellini. While Lynch has long been interested in sound, his interest in music was not always there. He has mentioned that Badalamenti got him fascinated with music, but: Before that, I loved sound. I loved abstract sound and I loved sound for pictures and film. And I love to experiment with sound so it sort of fed in. You know, cinema inspires so many different mediums and it was kind of a natural thing but sort of a thing that was quite, as you say, quiet. But going from sound to more abstract sound going into music in an experimental way was the thing.5 Blue Velvet represented a new era for Lynch:  his close collaboration with Badalamenti, allowing him to envision sound and music differently than before. Here, he played around with volume levels and dubbing while also focusing on diegetic music even more than before, making it an integral part of his films. For Lynch, his music and sound design are so intertwined that it is almost impossible to separate them. But sound on the whole is one more layer in the final product and consists of multiple layers in each soundtrack—​Twin Peaks is no exception.6 The use of sound typically functions as a portal between the multiple worlds and timelines he features in not just all three seasons but also Fire Walk With Me. Lynch often involves his sound collaborators early in the production—​sometimes even during pre-​production—​and this affords them an extended period of time with which to work on the sound.7 Other important collaborators would come to define the sound of the series. With Dean Hurley, co-​sound designer of The Return, Lynch does not think about sound representationally but rather he works quickly to manufacture sounds that do not exist in their sound library, something which Lynch actively maintains in his studio.8 Hurley relies on the information in the script when providing the sound.9 His collaboration style is similar to Badalamenti’s, creating sound based on descriptions that Lynch provides to him. One example of this is room tone (see Chapters  2 and 10 in this collection), which features prominently across Twin Peaks: The Return. The room tone found throughout most of the series comes from one event: the sound of the air duct in the motel room in which they were filming. Hurley described it as: “Very faint but it sounded like this harmonic, almost choral sound. You could hear only the faintest suggestion of it, but I  thought it

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sounded very interesting. I comb filtered it to dial up the specific frequencies that would exaggerate the sound that the tone was harmonizing at,” stating that it was a “music-​esque room tone that was incredibly rich in mood.”10 Hurley constantly manipulated that one tone throughout the work; in another scene he “automated the comb filter parameters to have them start rubbing against each other to create more of an unsettling disharmony” (italics in original).11 One of the sound design words that Lynch has coined is firewood, a word that describes the sonic building blocks that he uses in his films (see Chapter 13).12 While Badalamenti is known for the scores of Lynch’s films, he also plays a role in the sound design by creating what Lynch calls firewood. Badalamenti describes firewood thusly, “We experimented with some extended techniques and tried creating new sounds with the orchestra on Lost Highway. I scored out some long slow, dark string tracks that David would sometimes playback at half speed. We used to call that raw material ‘firewood.’ ”13 Thus, Badalamenti helped Lynch to use music as sound effects. As a result, in at least this respect, Badalamenti does have a responsibility for the sound design outside of the musical score. Lynch uses firewood often to create a sense of suspense and anxiety, frequently functioning to provide information about characters and events that are invisible.14 Such firewood is created by taking what Hurley calls buzzwords that Lynch gives him, which are very similar to the descriptions of abstract sounds, and creating the sound through the manipulation of a pre-​existing sound.15 The recording of firewood lies at the intersection between music and sound effects, often with the line deliberately blurred. It is constructed in a way that they can be easily combined and manipulated, resulting in the abstract sound effects we find in the three seasons of the series and Fire Walk With Me. We can get a sense of Lynch’s approach to sound design on a smaller scale in one of his recently released short films. In late 2018, Lynch shocked fans by releasing a short film, Ant Head, and premiering it at his annual Festival of Destruction. The music for the film derives from Lynch’s collaboration with Angelo Badalamenti, Thought Gang, a 25-​year-​old endeavor. The film, although recently premiered, is not new, and Lynch ascribes no specific date to it. Rather, he filmed it sometime over a quarter of a century ago when Lynch was working on Julee Cruise’s album, The Voice of Love (1993). At the time, he had an ant infestation in his home and he decided to build a tiny head of about the size of a quarter out of raw chicken and cheese which he then covered in mortician’s wax. He then allowed the ants to devour it while he filmed it; this is not unlike the ants scampering over the severed ear in Blue Velvet. This film would not only become Ant Head but the image would also find its way onto the cover of Cruise’s album.16 The image also looks remarkably like The Evolution of The Arm, which appears in The Return, which is probably not coincidental.

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It is no mystery that one of the most beloved and memorable aspects of Lynch’s films and television projects—​aside from their uncanniness—​is the appearance of famous artists on screen, Julee Cruise being the most notable in Twin Peaks. Through her regular performances in the Roadhouse during the series’ original run, Cruise’s voice and face became synonymous with the sound of Twin Peaks, to the point that John Richardson reads Cruise as Laura Palmer’s “surrogate” voice.17 These appearances are only part of Lynch and Cruise’s shared history, which includes musical collaboration and previous film work. Apart from Cruise, other musicians entered the world of the series, albeit without their singing voices. In Fire Walk With Me, Chris Isaak appears as Special Agent Chester Desmond. Despite the lack of Isaak’s music in the film, Lynch is still invoking a familiar star image in using Isaak: the two had worked together before, with Isaak’s music appearing in both Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart. “Wicked Game,” arguably Isaak’s best-​ known song, features in the latter, and Lynch himself directed the song’s video. This history plays into the complicated relationship between lived reality and the cinematic world of the film. Similarly, later in Fire Walk With Me, David Bowie appears in a single scene as the mysterious Phillip Jeffries. Much like Isaak, Bowie would continue a professional relationship with Lynch, appearing on the Lost Highway (1997) soundtrack. Exploiting these relationships with Cruise, Isaak, Bowie, and Rebekah del Rio (discussed below), Lynch further blurs the boundary between reality and filmic fantasy through his use of well-​known artists and their music.

Lynch and Music Lynch’s interest in sound, its manipulation, and its relationship to image has extended beyond his involvement in the newly composed scores and carefully crafted sound design for his film and television work: that interest has also informed his reuse of pre-​existing music and his roles in music production. As Lynch himself states, he is “in the world of music to a certain degree”18—​a bit of an understatement, as he has released three albums as a solo artist, produced 11 albums, and directed music videos and concert films. In his feature films like Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, Mulholland Drive, and Lost Highway, Lynch and his collaborators created nuanced characters and worlds through the use of pre-​existing songs. Sometimes, as was the case with Rebekah del Rio’s contribution to Mulholland Drive, these moments fell into place as random, “happy accidents,” while others were the product of years-​long relationships.19 All, though, seem to come from a lifelong relationship with sound and music.20 Indeed, Annette Davison and others have seen Lynch’s musical reuse as an insertion of himself into the narratives of his films, so idiosyncratic and strong is his authorial stamp on this reuse of music.21

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Lynch’s inclusion of pre-existing music frequently serves multiple purposes. Most importantly, Lynch seems to approach musical reuse as a way to structure filmic worlds and audience’s relationships to those worlds. This music’s familiarity can be both grounding and alienating: the transformation of Roy Orbison’s “Crying” into del Rio’s “Llorando” in Mulholland Drive at once invokes nostalgia and falseness. Similarly, the Elvis-infused soundscape of Wild at Heart can be mapped onto the America created within that film.22 Of course, compilation scores can always create meaning through their invocation of musical style, specific artists, or bygone eras. As Gene Willet has argued, though, these musical moments carry an importance beyond their direct lyrical or musical connotations. They can function as mechanisms to shift narrative registers, moving the viewer from film “reality” to filmic Lacanian fantasy.23 As Lynch’s work deals so frequently in different registers of reality, music is invaluable to the functioning of his work. Such musical reuse also marks the world of Twin Peaks, with its shifts between the lived reality of Twin Peaks, the corrupting influence of BOB, and the dreamlike Black Lodge. The Return, in particular, is structured around musical performances, with Lynch favorites Nine Inch Nails and others playing at the Twin Peaks Roadhouse. Chapters in this volume by Martha Schulenberg, Katherine M. Reed, and David Sweeney address this use of pre-existing music and its implications in the Twin Peaks narrative world. Apart from this attention and sensitivity to music in his films and television works, Lynch himself has also composed and produced music for years. As a solo artist and in collaboration, Lynch has recorded some six albums, not including soundtrack albums for his audio-visual work. With the albums BlueBOB (2001), Crazy Clown Time (2011), and The Big Dream (2013), Lynch expanded his musical world, a world visible elsewhere in his collaborations. Interestingly, it seems that Lynch’s language to describe music is as idiosyncratic as his sound worlds. Badalamenti recalls the composition of the Twin Peaks theme as being inspired by Lynch’s careful description of the mood and world. Others, like Roy Orbison, liken Lynch’s role as producer to “an actor and a director kind of thing,” talking Orbison into the performance he would record.24 Indeed, Cruise describes the process as similarly abstracted from musical specifics, recalling Lynch’s direction of “big chunks of plastic!” to evoke the correct mood from the saxophone players on the recording of “Rockin’ Back Inside My Heart.”25 Within these odd directions, it is clear that Lynch has a close and personal understanding of the effect of music, as well as an individual way of creating that effect. Some long-standing partnerships beyond main collaborators Badalamenti and Cruise mark his output, as is the case with his work with Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails. They first worked together on the Lost Highway soundtrack album. Lynch would then go on to direct Nine Inch Nails music videos, and the band would appear in The Return in 2017, performing a song written

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expressly for the series, tailored by Lynch’s input.26 Many of the voices heard in Twin Peaks share this history. After his first encounter with Rebekah del Rio, for example, Lynch apparently responded with an excitement that would propel their working relationship (“Ding dang, Rebekah del Rio, that was aces!”).27 With her appearance on The Return, del Rio, like the members of Nine Inch Nails, not only lent her voice to the series, but also helped bring Lynch’s musical ideas to life. Her “No Stars” was a co-written effort with the director and John Neff. Each instance shows that Lynch’s musical involvement extends beyond “a certain degree”: it is central to his creative output.

Engagement, Sound, and Meaning This collection is divided into three parts, each of which addresses a different area of study within the sound world of Twin Peaks:  Performance and Audience, Sound Design, and Musical Meanings. Musical performance has long been central to Twin Peaks, as has audience engagement. Part I focuses on fan interactions with the show’s soundtrack and performances. In their chapters, James Deaville, Jessica Getman, Brooke McCorkle Okazaki, Katherine M. Reed, Martha Schulenberg, and David Sweeney discuss the various aspects of performance and audience, including fan engagement and fandom, and the role of performance on the screen. Fan engagement and advertising play an important role in the dissemination of a televisual product. Television commercials, soundtrack production, and fandom contributions all allow for the fans to participate in the world of a television show in ways that they otherwise might not. James Deaville examines the television advertising campaign for the first two seasons of Twin Peaks. He considers the ways in which these commercials’ use of Badalamenti’s score functions in the context of promotional media. Jessica Getman’s chapter elucidates the role of fan products and fan engagement in The Return. She reflects on the ways in which fans consider the sound sources that Lynch and his team attempt to keep concealed. In surveying the role of the compilation soundtrack, Brooke McCorkle Okazaki outlines how Lynch and Badalamenti capitalize on audience nostalgia in assembling the series’ soundtrack. She focuses on returning artists from the first two seasons in The Return, which evokes viewers’ musical memories from the series. Equally as crucial in Twin Peaks is music performance, whether live or recorded. The performances and musical styles over the course of the franchise play central roles in the narrative. One of the most prominent places in the Twin Peaks world is The Roadhouse, also known as the Bang Bang Bar. In The Return, almost every episode ends with a performance in this space. Katherine M. Reed considers the role that The Roadhouse performances play, especially given that in the first two seasons the performers were from the narrative while in The Return, they are from our world. She analyzes how

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8  Katherine M. Reed and Reba A. Wissner

these performances form a bridge between the Twin Peaks world and our own, defying audience expectations. Likewise, Martha Schulenberg reads The Return through the lens of Pierre Bourdieu and Marxism, exploring The Roadhouse performances as a product of social capital. She argues that these performances allow for the performers to fully participate and benefit from social capital. Finally, David Sweeney investigates the dramatic and phonographic contexts of Julee Cruise’s performances within the three seasons. He discusses the ways in which both sonic and visual elements contribute to the series’ supernatural themes and ambience. In Part II, sound design comes to the fore with considerations of the relationship between the show’s sound and its development of plot, character, and narrative. In this part, Andrew T. Burt, Kingsley Marshall and Rupert Loydell, Zeynep Toraman, and Steven Wilson consider how the soundworld of the Twin Peaks universe directly affects the series and how we as audiences experience it. Each of these chapters positions the sound design as a central aspect of the narrative of the series and its prequel film. Lynch’s sound design is distinctive in each of his works. He is fond of creating sounds that cannot be easily identified by the audience as a way to establish the uniqueness of his environments. The chapters in this part reflect on the role of sound design as transformation, identification, and revelation of identity. Andrew T. Burt illustrates how the soundtrack, including sound design, in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, serves to elucidate the characters’ mental and emotional transformation. He concludes that the sound design is crucial for the audience to make these connections. Kingsley Marshall and Rupert Loydell tackle the birth of evil in The Return as a sonic event. They demonstrate that sound and music is important for the construction of place, space, character, and narrative. The final two chapters in this part scrutinize sound perception both in and out of the series. An often confusing and comical aspect of Twin Peaks concerns the character Gordon Cole and his difficulty hearing. Zeynep Toraman places Cole’s hearing aids at the center of an investigation of the character’s point of audition in The Return and how audiences can explain this role in the narrative. Steven Wilson interprets the sonic portrayal of Judy in The Return. He considers Lynch’s prior sonic representations to frame how Judy is acousmatically identified in The Return and how this identification forms a metaphysical revelation of her character. The third and final part, Part III, takes semantic, semiotic, and referential approaches to music appropriated by, and newly composed for, Twin Peaks. The chapters of William Weston Bennett, Andrew S. Kohler, Kai West, and Reba A. Wissner seek to explain how the music serves as a sonic thread to musical experiences past and present in the context of the Twin Peaks world. The essays in this part examine how the music creates meaning, whether it is music composed specifically for the series

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Introduction

9

or pre-existing music. William Weston Bennett considers how Lynch uses what he calls “American generic” musical gestures to establish a sense of sonic Americana and nostalgia in Twin Peaks. He contends that this sound profile creates what he calls a semantic-syntactic tension that establishes a semiotically complex engagement in the world of the series. Similarly, Andrew Kohler examines “Laura Palmer’s Theme” as a revelation and reflection of her identity. He analyzes the theme from a musico-theoretical framework, demonstrating that the conflicting styles of the phrases of her theme represent who she truly is. Performance techniques and avant-garde styles create a particular sonic aesthetic across Twin Peaks. In examining the use of drums in the series, Kai West illuminates the function of percussion as bridging the gap between the diegetic and non-diegetic worlds. He contends that the use of specific drumming patterns reflects the cyclical and dreamlike states present in the series’ narrative. Finally, Reba A. Wissner considers Lynch’s decision to use Krzysztof Penderecki’s Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima and have Badalamenti compose a new theme for The Fireman as sonic representations of the births of both BOB and Laura. This choice suggests that the placement of the former’s purported birth during the Trinity atomic bomb test is a carefully chosen plot aspect with social commentary. She deconstructs Threnody to show how this represents the chaos of BOB’s birth and The Fireman’s Theme to show how it is related to Laura Palmer’s Theme.

Conclusion Taken together, these chapters form a cohesive compilation that illustrates the importance of the sonic world throughout all three seasons of Twin Peaks, its prequel film, and advertising. This collection will allow the reader to consider the ways in which music and sound are carefully crafted in the Twin Peaks universe. As a whole, the collection seeks to rectify an omission in the literature on this much-studied work:  to consider the multivalent importance of the show’s soundtrack as we “listen to the sounds.”

Notes 1 Twin Peaks on SHOWTIME, “Twin Peaks | Now in Production | Showtime Series (2017),” Youtube, December 18, 2015, video, 0:50. Available at:  https:// youtu.be/SfPv57KBpJI (accessed February 7, 2021). 2 See, for example, Henry Jenkins, “ ‘Do You Enjoy Making the Rest of Us Feel Stupid?’:  alt.tv.twinpeaks, the Trickster Author, and Viewer Mastery,” in Full of Secrets:  Critical Approaches to Twin Peaks, ed. David Lavery (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1995), 51–69. 3 Annette Davison, “ ‘Up in Flames’:  Love, Control, and Collaboration in the Soundtrack to Wild at Heart,” in The Cinema of David Lynch:  American

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10  Katherine M. Reed and Reba A. Wissner

Dreams, Nightmare Visions, ed. Erica Sheen and Annette Davison (London and New York: Wallflower Press, 2004), 131. 4 Murray Smith, “Theses on the Philosophy of Hollywood History,” in Contemporary Hollywood Cinema, ed. Steve Neale and Murray Smith (London: Routledge, 1998), 15. 5 Jason Bentley, “Interview with David Lynch,” KCRW Radio, Los Angeles, January 18, 2011. Available at:  www.kcrw.com/​music/​shows/​morning-​beomes-​ eclectic/​david-​lynch/​ (accessed February 3, 2019). 6 Martha P. Nochimson, The Passion of David Lynch: Wild at Heart in Hollywood (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2012), 36. 7 Scott Wilson, “Neuracinema,” in David Lynch in Theory, ed. François-​Xavier Gleyzon (Prague: Univerzita Karlova v Praze, 2010), 73. 8 Colin Joyce, “This is Why the New ‘Twin Peaks’ Sounds as Weird as Shit,” Noisey. com, August 18, 2017. Available at:  https://​noisey.vice.com/​en_​us/​article/​wjjxe9/​ this-​is-​why-​the-​new-​twin-​peaks-​sounds-​weird-​as-​shit/​ (accessed October 9, 2018). 9 Chris O’Falt, “Sound Comes First:  Inside David Lynch’s Bunker, Where He Started Creating the ‘Twin Peaks’ Sound Design Over 7 Years Ago,” IndieWire, May 17, 2018. Available at: www.indiewire.com/​2018/​05/​twin-​peaks-​the-​return-​ sound-​design-​david-​lynch-​hidden-​studio-​process-​dean-​hurley-​1201965234/​ (accessed October 2, 2018). 10 Andersen, “Behind the Weird Wonderful Sound of ‘Twin Peaks: The Return’—​ With Dean Hurley and Ron Eng,” A Sound Effect, October 4, 2017. Available at: www.asoundeffect.com/​twin-​peaks-​sound/​ (accessed February 3, 2019). 11 Andersen, “Behind the Weird Wonderful Sound of ‘Twin Peaks: The Return.’ ” 12 Laura Macfehin, “Music Supervisor Dean Hurley Talks Twin Peaks,” UndertheRadar.com, August 31, 2017. Available at:  www.undertheradar.co.nz/​ interview/​913/​Music-​Supervisor-​Dean-​Hurley-​Talks-​Twin-​Peaks.utr (accessed February 9, 2019). 13 “Angelo Badalamenti on Lost Highway,” in Beyond the Beyond: Music from the Films of David Lynch, ed. J. C. Gabel and Jessica Hundley (Los Angeles, CA: Hat and Beard Press, 2016), 93. 14 Scott Wilson, “Neuracinema,” in David Lynch in Theory, ed. François-​Xavier Gleyzon (Prague: Univerzita Karlova v Praze, 2010), 82. 15 Macfehin, “Music Supervisor Dean Hurley Talks Twin Peaks.” 16 Kory Grow, “David Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti on Their Wild Jazz Experiment,” Rolling Stone, October 31, 2018. Available at:  www.rollingstone. com/​music/​music-​features/​david-​lynch-​angelo-​badalamenti-​talk-​experimental-​ album-​thought-​gang-​749688/​ (accessed February 7, 2021). 17 John Richardson, “Laura and Twin Peaks:  Postmodern Parody and the Musical Construction of the Absent Femme Fatale,” in The Cinema of David Lynch:  American Dreams, Nightmare Visions, ed. Erica Sheen and Annette Davison (London: Wallflower Press, 2004), 88. 18 Richard Barney, “Mulholland Drive, Dreams, and Wrangling with the Hollywood Corral,” in David Lynch: Interviews, ed. Richard Barney (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2009), 244. 19 Barney, “Mulholland Drive,” in David Lynch: Interviews, 244. 20 Peter Lehman, Roy Orbison:  Invention of an Alternative Rock Masculinity (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2003), 111.

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21 Annette Davison, “Love, Control, and Collaboration in the Soundtrack to Wild at Heart,” in The Cinema of David Lynch: American Dreams, Nightmare Visions, ed. Erica Sheen and Annette Davison (London: Wallflower Press, 2004), 120. 22 Mike Miley, “David Lynch at the Crossroads:  Deconstructing Rock, Reconstructing Wild at Heart,” Music and the Moving Image vol. 7, no. 3 (Fall 2014): 41–​60. 23 Gene Willet, “Popular Music as Fantasy in David Lynch,” in Popular Music and the New Auteur:  Visionary Filmmakers After MTV, ed. Arved Ashby (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 87–​108. 24 Lehman, Roy Orbison, 115. 25 Daniel Dylan Wray, “The Discomfort Zone: Exploring the Musical Legacy of David Lynch,” Pitchfork, October 4, 2016. Available at:  https://​pitchfork.com/​ features/​article/​9958-​the-​discomfort-​zone-​exploring-​the-​musical-​legacy-​of-​ david-​lynch/​ (accessed September 10, 2019). 26 Eddie Fu, “David Lynch turned down Nine Inch Nails’ song for Twin Peaks because it wasn’t ‘aggressive and ugly’ enough,” Consequence of Sound, September 18, 2017. Available at:  https://​consequenceofsound.net/​2017/​09/​david-​lynch-​ turned-​down-​nine-​inch-​nails-​song-​for-​twin-​peaks-​because-​it-​wasnt-​aggressive-​ and-​ugly-​enough/​ (accessed December 26, 2019). 27 Martin Hearn, “Rebekah del Rio discusses meeting David Lynch, Mulholland Drive, No Stars, and more!” 25 Years Later, 2018. Available at:  https://​ 25yearslatersite.com/​2018/​11/​06/​rebekah-​del-​rio-​discusses-​meeting-​david-​lynch-​ mulholland-​drive-​no-​stars-​and-​more/​ (accessed December 27, 2019).

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PART I

Performance and Audience

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1 PITCHING THE PEAKS Media Advertising for the Original Series James Deaville

When the first episode of Twin Peaks aired on April 8, 1990 on American television network ABC, viewers may have found their way there via the listings in TV Guide, the previews on April 6 in newspapers like The New York Times and the Washington Post, the full-​page ad in The New York Times of April 8,1 or the audio-​visual promotional campaign of the network. The last named medium had the advantage of allowing potential audience members to see and hear clips from the show, not that such previews would have necessarily assisted in deciphering the show’s narrative other than the premise that it concerned a murder mystery. Indeed, the network seemed intent on selling it as such despite the show’s unconventional approach to television, and that strategy of marketing a genre-​based orthodoxy is underscored by the ads’ musical choices. This chapter2 examines the sounds of the audio-​ visual promotion (promos and previews) for the first season of the show in 1990—​April and May for the original airing and August and September for reruns—​even as the network and producers were attempting to build an audience for Lynch and Frost’s creation. Before undertaking the study, however, it is important to establish the context for screen promotion of Twin Peaks, namely audio-​visual advertising for television in the age when the networks determined the viewing habits and experiences of the American public.

The Paratextuality of Promos in the Network Era “Promo” is the media industry’s designation for audio-​visual advertising for television programs, in distinction to the television trailer or spot for feature

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films. As such the promo serves as a paratext to the text of the TV show, which Jonathan Gray has developed at length.3 In his pioneering text Seuils,4 Gérard Genette first drew our attention to the concept of the paratext, which he defined as the materials that surround or accompany a literary text, such as a dust jacket, title page or a review, which “is at the service of a better reception for the text,”5 Genette recognizes two types of paratexts:  the peritext and the epitext, the former residing within the book (index, illustrations), the latter located outside the text (advertisement, review). Genette himself suggested that the concept could be applied to cultural objects besides books.6 Thus if we consider a film from the perspective of its textuality/​paratextuality, we would encounter both types of paratexts, the epitext in the trailer/​promo or the movie marquee, the peritext in the production companies’ logos and the end credits.7 Although a television program may feature the paratextual elements in different proportions (the end credits are all but non-​existent under a preview for the next show), film and television generate similar paratexts. The epitext of the film trailer has its analogue in the television promo, which serves the same intention of generating appeal and anticipation. However, at one time the film trailer had a potentially larger, national audience, whereas the promo was limited to a particular network, but both can now garner comparable visibility through streaming services. Given the proliferation of points of access, we rely more than ever on the media epitext to help us determine where we will spend our leisure time and money. The trailer or promo is often the first point of contact with the text(uality) of the film or television program, thereby setting our expectations for what is to come (“Coming Attractions”). It shapes our conception of the text, for better or worse—​as Gray observes, we consume many more paratexts than texts, because if it does not draw us into the text, “all we are left with is the paratext.”8 This is an important statement, for it recognizes the undeniable role that paratexts play for us as consumers, and can lead to the question of value, especially if we only know certain texts through their paratexts. And if we attend to a paratext by which we are led to the book, film, or television show, it becomes part of the text for us, even as we come to identify a title sequence or theme song with a particular serial program. For the consumer/​audience member, the paratext is the beginning of the text and the initiator of a text’s meaning. It should be evident that paratexts primarily serve an advertising function, to entice us into the text and then to immerse us in its experience. The promise of fulfillment through consumption cannot be too complete or extensive, which is why the first trailer for a major cinematic release is short and characteristically called a “teaser.” The dust jacket blurb also illustrates how paratexts are as much about what is left out as what is included, with

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evident gaps—​particularly about the narrative’s denouement—​that can only find resolution through the act of consumption. Those lacunae, however, only become meaningful within the context of genre, which the epitext necessarily communicates. As a result, it cannot be too obscure or else the paratext will frustrate the clarity of genre that should emerge from readers or audiences who engage with it. For audio-​ visual media, this means that the components of narrative, visual editing, and soundtrack should be coordinated in the trailer/​promo to express a sense of genre, and at that, as quickly and efficiently as possible. Indeed, as summarized by Gray, Jason Mittell’s Genre and Television: From Cop Shows to Cartoons in American Culture (2004) argues that “genre is created as much outside of generic texts as within them.”9 Although audio-​visual paratexts possess similarities in the articulation of genre and narrative, television offers more opportunities for their deployment inside and outside of texts. The episodic nature of television in general necessitates the creation of diverse paratexts to assist and inflect the viewer’s re-​entry to the text, providing clues regarding what will happen in the next installment. Thus one of the more important peritextual devices is the introductory “previously on” recap segment, or the historically important “next on”/​“to be continued” tip-​off between multiple-​part episodes of a show. Such paratexts aim to keep viewers within the text by manipulating hopes, expectations, and anticipation, even if the experience is interrupted. Moreover, these types of paratexts become part of the television program’s narrative and aid the public with its interpretation and meaning-​making of the text, whereby they function as (preliminary) guides for our interactions with texts. They provide frameworks for such pragmatic decisions as when, where, and with whom we will consume television texts, and can also direct us away from certain programming through clues to genre, which can be obvious or more elusive, like in the case of Twin Peaks paratexts. Nevertheless, considering the “overwhelming wealth of fascinating paratexts that are available for an exploration of television …,”10 potential viewers have to exercise caution even over the number of paratexts they consume, not to mention texts to which they commit large swaths of time binge-​watching. The promo is essentially televised audio-​visual advertising for television programming, and it has its origins in the 1960s, as the small screen established itself in North American living rooms. The saturation of the audio-​visual media market by streamed television content has made the need for promos more crucial.11 As Jardine et al. (2016) argue, “on-​air television promos are the main marketing activity that television broadcasters use to draw an audience.”12 For example, based on their ethnographic research with audio-​visual promotion firm Red Bee Media in the UK, Paul Grange and Catherine Johnson observe that, at the time of writing, the company

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“produces 5,000 television promos and trailers a year for the BBC and UKTV,”13 a considerable quantity of paratexts, the majority of which the viewer probably does not even notice. Still, broadcasters must remain competitive in the glutted market for viewers, so they heavily rely upon promos, making television programs the largest category of advertising on television.14 In her 2007 study, The Television Will Be Revolutionized, Amanda Lotz estimated that American networks broadcast 30,000 promos annually, which cost them about $4 billion worth of advertising revenues.15 In other words, networks could have sold airtime to commercial interests instead of promoting their own programming through previews. Even a streaming service like Netflix, which does not feature commercials, nonetheless will air a promo or short trailer at the outset of premium programs. Promos are interesting examples of paratexts, because they can worry the boundaries between peri-​and epitextuality in broadcasting when they occur within a commercial break. In those cases, they can refer to the surrounding text, such as an ad for a local news team within their newscast, or they can index some other show from the network. However, unlike film trailers that can appear in various cinemas, the television promo remains rooted in its host network or streaming service, not least because of the competitive environment between providers over content. Generally brief compared with theatrical trailers—​typically thirty seconds or less—​promos for television programs consist of montage-​like footage that cannot provide cohesive narrative information. Instead these paratexts may tease episode details, provide information about show times, prominently feature stars, “and they will sample the world we are being invited to enter.”16 Like other forms of advertising, they are produced to create anticipation and desire for the product, but unlike commercials for products such as cars or housewares, they must leave gaps in our understanding to activate appeal mechanisms.17 To find the balance between revelatory and mystifying ele­ ments is the task of the producer of promos: too much or too little information can be off-​putting for viewers, resulting in their non-​consumption of the show. Music plays a crucial role in capturing interest in a television paratext: it economically informs the public about genre, provides narrative cohesion and serves to draw attention to the content of a particular promo.18 No element of a promo can communicate genre more effectively in short paratexts than music, whether the crooning of a tenor sax for a TV romance, the authoritative brass fanfare for the news, or the sounds of a steelpan for a travel show. This association of sound and genre remains unexplored by media specialists like Mittell and Gray, whose important work nevertheless reflects the ocularcentrism of 20th-​century media criticism. Regarding narrative cohesion in television promos, the following principle applies: the shorter the paratext, the more reliant it becomes on music

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Pitching the Peaks  19

and sound.19 In comparison, the two-​minutes-​and-​twenty-​seconds length of a cinematic trailer allows for both narrative exposition in image and dialogue and thematic development in music. The fifteen-​or even thirty-​second promo for television programming typically affords time only to tease an episode’s content accompanied by one musical idea. For “micro-​promos” for television or film, i.e. TV spots under fifteen seconds in length, music is the only element that can provide narrative meaning in such a compressed timeframe, like the “Now Showing” ads for major theatrical releases. Finally, music and sound can attract home viewers to a promotional paratext for a favorite program by using familiar motifs or timbres from that show. This is especially effective in cases where the audio content is readily identifiable, such as CBS’s use of the end-​titles song “Remembering You” in their promos for All in the Family or NBC’s reliance upon the John Williams news music package “The Mission” for its Nightly News. Theme songs from television shows would seem to be natural vehicles for peritextual hailing and branding if not for the licensing issues that typically arise, so that for example none of the X-​Files promos used its distinctive theme song by Mark Snow and Big Bang Theory promos did not feature the program’s trademark titles music by the Barenaked Ladies. In such cases, networks rely upon other factors like star images and prominent graphics to draw audiences into the text.

ABC, David Lynch, and Twin Peaks Promos In keeping with practices of the time (and of today as well), American television network ABC offered potential viewers a range of promos for Twin Peaks. However, according to an item in Back Stage from April 6, 1990, they were not directed by Lynch himself:  “Tony Krantz, Lynch’s agent at Creative Artists Agency in Beverly Hills, said the director isn’t particularly hot on the idea of directing more commercials. He’s not actively looking to do commercials.”20 And for the second season Fred Petermann directed the promo spots, which focused on individual characters. As a mid-​season addition for 1989–​1990, Twin Peaks did not have the advantage of time to develop a full set of teasing promotional material, nor did Lynch desire to disseminate advance knowledge about the show. Because of Lynch’s reputation as a director of edgy films, ABC network executives were hesitant to enter into any kind of agreement over Twin Peaks. Indicated in the fall of 1989 as a “back-​up series” (a “prime time soap”) for ABC (Midseason …) and in December as “likely to get a March airing,”21 the network nevertheless made a commitment by the end of December to a two-​ hour pilot and seven episodes (for $1 million a piece), but that did not mean it would actually air the program. Robert Iger, head of ABC Entertainment since March of 1989, had successfully fought for Twin Peaks, yet “some executives

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took comfort in thinking it would never get on the air.”22 The series was still being announced as a “show available to the network [ABC]” in February of 1990 (“Night by Night by Network”). By early March, Broadcasting magazine could announce the debut date for Twin Peaks as Sunday, April 8, at 9:00 p.m. in a special two-​hour slot, with its one-​hour episodes to follow in a regular time slot, beginning on Thursday, April 12 at 9:00 p.m.23 With regard to pre-​premiere advertising, critic Greg Quill observed on April 1 that “this is the most closely guarded TV property since pay-​TV’s sci-​fi mystery miniseries, Murder In Space … Only two or three of ABC’s top executives have seen more than the first episode …”24 It should not surprise us then that audio-​visual paratexts for the series only appeared one week before the debut and only drew on footage from the first episode, the two-​hour pilot. By the time of the series debut, all of the episodes had been filmed and edited, including the score by Angelo Badalamenti. Other scholars in this collection study the styles and meanings of Badalamenti’s tracks in light of Twin Peaks narratives—​here I  am interested in how they contribute to the advertising messages of the show’s promotional paratexts. The use of Badalamenti’s score in the audio-​visual advertising not only avoided the licensing issues we have observed in other promos, but also provided the public with a fuller foretaste of Twin Peaks than would have been possible through sound-​alike tracks. The earliest thirty-​second promos for Twin Peaks almost exclusively use the opening motif of “Audrey’s Dance,” but it is extended through looping.25 The angular five-​note melody on vibraphone prevails over a walking acoustic bass, brushes on a snare drum, and finger snaps on the back beats, repeating to accommodate the ad’s length. The meter is triple, the first note an upbeat. The instrumentation, style, and general dark tone suggest noir jazz, as one might have encountered in a detective/​murder mystery film of the 1940s.26 The combined effect of heavy tremolo on the vibraphone, prominent tritone and languorous tempo seems over-​determined, as if the producers desired to manipulate the potential audience to position Twin Peaks squarely within the genre of detective mystery. Because of such associations, we will use the designation “Detective-​Noir motive” to mark its occurrences in paratexts, even though it appears in a variety of contexts in the series. The public entered the text possibly thinking it would be a procedural, at least according to the clues scattered by the visual and audio elements of the promos, although the name of Lynch associated with the project must have assured a heightened level of curiosity. As the public’s first audio-​visual points of contact with the show, the early promos take on special significance in light of paratextual theory. Lynch was already well known to the younger audience the network was targeting, yet ABC released a series of peritexts in the week preceding the April 8 debut

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Pitching the Peaks  21

that could cast a wider net of viewers, not least through the soundtrack that blended traditional genre components in a decidedly current (1980s) sonic world of reverb and synthesized sound. The public could still consume the paratexts earlier in the week and not the text (i.e. the pilot episode on Sunday night), though the curiosity and anticipation generated by the promos and other advertising as well as word-​of-​mouth did generate an audience of 34.6 million viewers.27 The pre-​pilot promos reveal fairly basic editing techniques: there was no real attempt to synch the visual edits or dialogue to the rhythms of the vibraphone/​finger-​snap theme. The glimpses of the show from the pilot are brief and change from one promo to the next, although they all clearly establish that a murder has occurred—​they all begin with Pete Martell finding Laura’s body and telling Sheriff Harry S. Truman on the phone, “She’s dead. Wrapped in plastic,” and end with Bobby being charged with the murder. In between we see and hear Cooper in his car and some of the residents of Twin Peaks (Audrey Horne, Dr. Lawrence Jacoby, Jocelyn Packard, for example); however, we do not gain familiarity with any of the stranger characters like the Log Lady or The One-​Armed Man (Mike). In some of the pre-​pilot promos we read graphics with the superlative words of the press, from special media previews of the pilot—​their sentiments stress the show’s uniqueness, such as “Unprecedented—​This you gotta see,” from The Washington Post.28 All of this shifting paratextuality is unified by the vibraphone/​finger-​snap theme, which is simply cut off at the promo’s end, incomplete (the device may compel the audience to want to hear the continuation in the textuality of Twin Peaks itself). As the season progressed and settled into a viewership of about 17 million Americans, the promos retained the same musical theme, now however for the sake of branding and continuity rather than establishing genre. The music may have remained constant, but the promos’ visual elements and dialogue advanced with the program’s narrative. ABC even added a voiceover to the spot for the penultimate seventh episode of the season, which aired on May 17.29 Here, sheriff-​station secretary and high-​voiced ditz, Lucy Moran, provides a typically scatter-​brained, irreverent voice-​over as follows: Narrator:  Now a Twin Peaks update. Lucy:  It’s the next-​to-​last episode and the plot’s taken quite a twist. Be on the lookout for romance. Leo:  Come on lover boy, Leo’s waiting. Lucy:  And ways to fix James’ wagon, I mean bike. Leo:  Say goodbye James. Lucy:  Goodbye James. Narrator:  Twin Peaks, Thursday Lucy:  Hello, handsome [as Cooper appears].

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This promo plays out on multiple levels, for Lucy adopts an extra-​diegetic position from which she not only comments on the promo’s action—​she ceases narration as the image changes and Leo speaks—​but also on Leo’s dialogue. The one element linking this paratext with the promos (and episodes) that came before is that musical theme, which in light of the promo’s narrative succeeds in maintaining the feel of a murder mystery. The season finale, the much anticipated cliff-​hanger, aired exceptionally on Wednesday (rather than Thursday), May 23 at 10:00 p.m.—​the text generated a paratext the day before, fifteen seconds of teasing clips that visually drop a number of clues for the initiated viewer but no coherent narrative.30 The voiceover narration also does not assist in the creation of meaning: Catherine Martell:  It’s not here. Narrator:  This week you’ll find Twin Peaks in a special place at a special time. Truman:  You’re under arrest for the murder of Laura Palmer. Narrator: Whatever else you find will depend on where you look. The season finale of Twin Peaks, tomorrow at 10:00, 9:00 Central Time. At the word “look,” the camera follows Cooper’s gaze down to the gun pointed at him. Not only does this promo perform the work of continuing the obfuscation, but it hints at the finale’s ending, with a close-​up of the gun that will eventually shoot Cooper. The sheriff’s voice-​over arrest statement (to an unidentified off-​screen character) teasingly suggests the culprit has been found, whereby the mystery has been resolved, yet Truman’s striding movement and the open-​ended continuation of visual and aural narration forecloses on completion. The detective-​noir motive again pervades the whole, but with differences: the opening five notes recur much more rapidly and each time they are extended by an upper neighbor tone. Not only does the melodic variant create a sense of forward motion but also the faux accelerando better accommodates the abbreviated frame. However, the musical foundations of this finale paratext remain the same as in the pre-​pilot promos: the identical five notes over a walking bass in vibraphone with a foregrounded harmonic tritone. That segments of the audience expressed indignation and even anger over the non-​resolution may speak to the affective power of this and other series paratexts in circulation prior to the cliffhanger.31 Nevertheless, a sizeable audience watched summer reruns of the show, extending over seven weeks with the pilot on Sunday, August 5, then weekly on Saturdays at 10:00 p.m. through the finale on September 15 (the next-​to-​last week aired two episodes, beginning at 9:00 p.m.).32 On August 5, ABC aired a fifteen-​second promo

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for the reruns, with the narration: “It’s left its mark, with fourteen Emmy nominations, more than any other show. You’ve heard about it, you’ve read about it, now see it, from the very start. Twin Peaks, tonight: Don’t be left in the dark.”33 The promo features a series of images for some major characters, with points of congruence between the voiceover and the visual vignettes. For example, when he narrates “now see it,” we observe Audrey peering through a peephole, and at the words “from the very start,” we witness the dead Laura’s face on the beach, from the pilot. The promo is a professional, carefully edited audio-​visual paratext, with dissolves linking the images and the visual edits synching to the beat, quite a contrast to the early promos. And the noir-​ish voice, with its seriousness, slowness, and darkness, at once reinforces the detective mystery narrative and ironicizes the visual puns, creating a cognitive dissonance that the music underscores. Thus musically we are still dwelling in the detective-​noir mode, however now the vibraphone is replaced by the alto sax and the jazzy style gives the melody a shape and flow over the walking bass that unites the whole. Badalamenti composed this music in response to Lynch’s desire for “something that’s more rhythmic,” and he gave the director a track that “has a really jazzy and bluesy feel to it.”34 Elsewhere the composer explains that he “just naturally fell into a slow, jazzy, quirky, bluesy kind of music that has a bit of that film noir feel.”35 This cue most prominently accompanies the dance of The Man from Another Place that Cooper sees and hears in his dream of the Red Room, Episode 3 (“Dance of the Dream Man” is the track’s name on the soundtrack album). Much of the literature about this scene stresses the dwarf’s dance,36 yet the music—​the “Dream Man” theme—​also possesses a sensual side that emerges as Laura approaches and kisses Cooper, and whispers in his ear. The music continues and intensifies as Cooper awakens, with its meta-​diegetic implications when he snaps his fingers as he comes to a realization of who killed Laura Palmer. Given this sensual side to the music, it stands to reason that the “Dream Man” theme would recur in the series in connection with Cooper’s encounters with the flirtatious Audrey, among other similar sequences. The promo teases us as well, as a paratextual invitation to (re-​)consume the text of Twin Peaks, targeting those audience members who missed experiencing the season’s must-​see show the first time around. And the spot’s powerful affective pull through the strategic congruence of its audio and visual elements reflects the network’s attempt to capitalize on the buzz and hype surrounding the show in the weeks preceding the new season’s rollout on September 30.

“Previously On” and “Next On” Peritexts In the style of traditional television serials, each episode in the first season of Twin Peaks features “previously on” and “next on” peritexts before and after

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the installment proper. Generally speaking, both are paratexts to the text of the episode, even though they serve different purposes. Thus Jason Mittell stresses memory in the “previously on” segment, while JP Kelly focuses on the proleptic purpose of the “next on” snippet.37 As transitional and transactional zones, “previously on” (recap) and “next on” (preview) paratexts respectively invoke past and future for audiences.38 On the one hand they serve as mechanisms for retelling or “entryway paratexts,”39 on the other as advertising hooks and examples of “pre-​mediation.”40 Gray designates them as “in medias res” paratexts, because unlike promos that are supposed to stand on their own, these peritexts only make sense in connection to the text, like “buoys floating in the overflow of a serial text that direct our passage through that text.”41 Previously on and next on paratexts rely upon consumers’ active engagement with the text, expecting them to actively participate in recalling last week’s episode and eagerly anticipate the next installment—​ they contribute to what Matt Hills has termed “endlessly deferred narratives” and “hyperdiegesis,” in other words, sprawling plots that never seem to end, which Lynch promoted in Twin Peaks until ABC intervened in the second season and demanded a resolution to the Laura Palmer murder mystery.42 The first-​season previously on and next on segments for Twin Peaks display skillful editing techniques, unlike most of the promos.43 It is possible that Lynch and/​or Frost were involved in the production, at least in an advisory capacity, for the next on peritexts carefully avoid any references that could serve as spoilers, with minimal information about the forthcoming episode. As a result, the next on snippets are considerably shorter and less coherent than the previously on recap. Moreover, the previews of the next episode avoid key elements of the supernatural, bizarre and weird, whether the Red Room, Mike (The One-​ Armed Man), or Cooper’s fascination with Tibetan mysticism, among others. As Noel Murray argues in The New  York Times, first-​season Twin Peaks places one foot in the genre of the procedural, which afforded the paratext editors opportunities to highlight footage about the murder mystery rather than those aspects of the narrative that invoke the eerie and uncanny.44 If home viewers were to take the series at face value, as a dark (yet strange) whodunit, consuming the previously on and next on peritexts of the first season would not likely cause them to deviate from that opinion. Nevertheless, the music chosen to accompany each of these episode paratexts complicates their meanings, even as it is individualized and particularized according to the characters and scenarios on screen. The Detective-​Noir motive of the promos figures in the musical mix, again in its capacity to signify Cooper and his work (rather than Bobby and other characters, as it does in the episode texts themselves). Here it represents only one affective style among several mood and situational cues in use, which are

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selected to match the sections of the visual narrative. Moreover, the promotional voiceover is not needed here—​the narrational function is instead given over to moving image, spoken dialogue and non-​diegetic music. Through the guidance of the aural realm—​music, dialogue and sound effects—​the narratives of the previously on segments acquire cohesion and take on new meanings from the rearrangement of material from the originary text. If we were to study closely the opening previously on recap from the second episode of Twin Peaks, for example, we would discover how these paratexts function as transitional zones between texts (episodes) and entryways into texts. This the most extended of the peritexts preceding the episode takes up one minute and twenty-​five seconds, as it leads us through select scenes of the pilot. Visually we encounter fairly sophisticated editing techniques of dissolves and superimpositions for shots of varying lengths, supported by dialogue that establishes basic narrative information and musical themes that are associated with lead characters. However, it is relevant to observe that not every important character or scene from the pilot makes appearances in the recap. Mittell makes this point in reference to a Veronica Mars episode where he argues, “Just as notable is what the recap omits, with no reference to [two] major characters.”45 In our previously on recap of the pilot, we do not see (or hear) for example important femme fatale Audrey, possibly for the sake of the simplicity and undisturbed flow of the narrative (subplots like the Norwegian land development deal and Norma’s affair with Ed are missing as well). The main missing character nevertheless is Laura, who is “absent yet present,” fulfilling a “ghostly function” in the recap.46 The peritext exploits every opportunity to enable its audience to experience her, spectacularly as a corpse on the shore and the autopsy table, or as a living being on home video, in people’s memories and in a musical theme. The recap opens with the obligatory image of the varied thrush, which immediately cuts to Pete Martell explaining to the sheriff about the discovery of Laura’s body.47 This scene is cut like the promos, with the same dialogue, but now we hear the opening of Laura’s theme instead of the detective-​ noir music, effectively slowing down the forward motion. As we encounter Cooper in his car driving into Twin Peaks, the Laura Palmer music fades out under the emerging “Dream Man” theme, introducing the audience to Cooper as the noir detective, sans his lighter chatter of the promos. The opening dialogue of this previously on recap marks Twin Peaks as a procedural, with the Cooper music recalling and retelling both the pilot episode’s text and the audience’s prior experience of that narrative mode. We will soon discover that next to Laura, he is the main character in the narrative unfolding before us. The crime having been displayed, we now—​ fifteen seconds into the paratext—​discover the essential details about the detective sent to uncover

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the criminal. In this short-​form re-​mediation of the pilot, the editors take only seconds to reveal Cooper’s identity through the words of the detective, Sheriff Truman and Dr. Jacoby, even as the “Dream Man” music becomes here the Detective-​ Noir motive to accompany the procedural section. Cooper’s voice then takes over the narrative, leading the initiated and uninitiated viewer alike into the depths of the whodunit. At 00:30, Cooper addresses a town gathering, and the acoumatizing film and sound edits enable him to continue speaking to them about the crime while we witness the autopsy he conducted. After he interviews Laura’s boyfriend Bobby about a video of her—​shown on a silent meta-​ diegetic screen—​we encounter Dr.  Jacoby, whose reference to Laura as his patient takes us to her picture and another elided sound edit, now into her theme. This dark, essentially static opening part of her music will dominate the rest of the previously seen recap except for its final section. It stands to reason that her music would accompany Cooper’s attempts to pursue clues: we see the train coach where the murder took place, hear Cooper talking through the discovery of the half-​necklace during which James is seen holding it. The detective continues to carry out his search as he interrogates Donna, and then we return to the public meeting, where he narrates: “Now, there is a chance that the person who committed these crimes is someone from this town, possibly even someone you know.” As Cooper speaks these words, we see the Laura video and then observe a succession of vignette shots that present other suspects we have not seen before. To this point the previously on paratext has worked hard to establish the episode’s—​and show’s—​credentials as a whodunit, through the combined effects of a seamless flow of images and sound and a telescopic editing of narrative revelations. In the act of retelling the pilot’s story in summary form, the video’s editor-​creators fashioned a new narrative in which once-​ disparate scenes are brought into sequence, explanatory dialogue is dubbed over condensed shots, and music becomes the vehicle for characterization. As Mittell notes, such editing involves “key moments that they [i.e. the producers] believe vital to refresh viewers’ memories for upcoming storylines and to enable new viewers to get on board with the series.”48 When Cooper’s voice and the Laura Palmer theme vanish, replaced by Bobby and Mike’s diegetic howling like dogs, the wheels come off the procedural and we enter another mode of storytelling altogether, performed in the domain of sound. Bobby’s diegetic ululation is followed by the very last shot of the pilot, when Mrs. Palmer bolts upright and shrieks as if she has seen something (killer Bob’s image is in the mirror behind her). Both in the pilot and the previously on recap, the howling would jar the domestic viewer out of the subdued tone created by music and dialogue throughout the paratext. Bobby’s shout—​a sonic device associated with

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male (dis-​)empowerment—​sets the stage for Sarah Palmer’s scream, a sound often deployed in film and television for female characters.49 Its position is significant, at what Michel Chion calls a “screaming point,” where the sound “gushes forth from the mouth of a woman …, fall[ing] at an appointed spot, … at the end of an often convoluted trajectory, but calculated to give this point a maximum impact.”50 Lynch decides to elongate and distort the scream through echo and reverb, whereby it becomes Chion’s gravitationally ineluctable, “ineffable black hole,”51 trailing off to a black screen (and the current episode). We may see a gloved hand picking up the locket, but it is through sound that Lynch has teased us at the end of the pilot and recap, to believe beyond the detective-​noir murder mystery, into the realm of another place. If the creative forces behind the show devoted obvious effort to condensing the pilot into a meaningful recap at the beginning of Episode 2, they avoid giving a sense of coherence to its closing preview of the next installment. In the spirit of providing minimal information and obfuscating that which is offered, the producers unveil only fifteen seconds of footage, structured in essence into three fleeting scenes:  the first takes place at the casino and brothel One-​Eyed Jacks, the second shows Bobby and Shelly and the third takes us into the woods between Mike, Bobby, and Leo. There is no narration, and the dialogue is quite limited: “[Benjamin Horne:] Blackie! … [A note in Cooper’s hand:] Jack with One Eye … [Bobby to Shelly:] If he ever does this to you again, I’ll kill him … [Bobby whispered:] He’s got a gun.” This paratext teases the Twin Peaks viewer with glimpses of characters, off-​screen (but identifiable) voices, and mysterious on-​screen references—​it highlights visually striking images that are beguiling at the same time (e.g. the posed workers at the brothel), raising questions about their role in the narrative. So like a good promo, the next on in Episode 2 draws the viewer into the text, but it presupposes a certain familiarity of the audience member with the narrative, if only from this particular installment of the series. There are only two musical ideas mobilized in the next on segment attached to the second episode:  one quick statement of the five-​note idea on vibraphone (here not associated with Cooper or another character) and a low, dark half-​step idea that signifies menace and danger, both in this instance and elsewhere in the series. The combination of moving images, dialogue and music is clearly intended to pique curiosity without creating spoilers, and its fragmentation into the briefest of scenes certainly mitigates against any sense of narrative continuation or direction in the next episode. All we can say is that Cooper is drawn further into the mystery, Benjamin follows his unsavory trajectory, Bobby may protect Shelly from Leo, and Leo will remain a character on the wrong side of the law. In sum, the previously on and next on peritexts serve functions other than the promos, which are aimed at attracting potential viewers to the text. These

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“snippets” (to use Gray’s term) in contrast serve the purpose of retaining existing audience within the text of Twin Peaks, as vehicles for the memory of past episodes and as catalysts for the proleptic anticipation of future narrative pleasures and resolutions. They may retell or reshape the past and lead us down false paths, but as such, they contribute to the enjoyment of complex television.

Conclusions Jonathan Gray convincingly argues for the importance of paratexts in audio-​ visual media—​he argues that “much of the textuality that exists in the world is paratext-​driven.”52 We might take that observation to another level by maintaining that virtually all paratextuality involving moving images and/​ or sound (i.e. including radio) is accompanied and often driven by music. Moreover, as we have noted in the case of audio-​visual paratexts for the first season of Twin Peaks, the choice of musical material, whether a theme, timbre or style, can be decisive in the (re-​)interpretation of specific narrative meanings. Such practices in editing epitext or peritext soundtracks for television programming can serve multiple purposes: they may direct the public’s attention to the show, as advertising, or function as an aesthetic statement by its creators, or accomplish both. Decisive is the public’s position vis-​ à-​ vis the text, whether they are situated outside Twin Peaks, viewing promos as potential audience members, or have already experienced the show, screening recaps and next ons amid (binge) watching in sequence or returning after a hiatus. In the former, the case of Twin Peaks epitexts, the network ABC desired to attract viewers and enhance market share, while for the peritexts they intended to retain audience by fashioning an ongoing immersion in the text (Hills’ “endlessly deferred hyperdiegesis”). Paratext producers in general need to attend to creating a balance for the viewer between teasing and spoiling, between revealing and withholding, between remembering and anticipating. However, Lynch’s predilection for mystery and disorientation mitigated against the tell-​all style of Hollywood previews, with paratexts for Twin Peaks confusing or frustrating viewers through the fragmentary visual presentation of narrative. Instead their coherence is mediated by music and its “ability to provide unity …, [to unify] the variegated impressions of the image into a whole, into a logical succession of thought and action.”53 This occurs in the Twin Peaks paratexts independently of the music’s signification in the text of the series, whereby for example the theme we have designated the “Detective-​ Noir motive” conveys to potential viewers the impression of a whodunit detective mystery, a procedural, rather than a supernatural thriller. Such polysemic use of music typifies the soundtracks of audio-​visual paratexts—​ whether cinematic trailers or television series promos and episode recaps/​

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previews—​ where re-​ contextualized music is the norm and the audience listens outside the diegesis of the text. If promotional paratexts “fill … a text with meaning,”54 we might argue in closing that it is music that fills the paratext itself with meaning, and thus is eminently worthy of study.

Notes 1 Greg Olson, David Lynch:  Beautiful Dark (Lanham, MD:  Scarecrow Press, 2008), 269–​270. 2 For his assistance in the preparation of this chapter I  am grateful to Adrian Matte, Carleton University. 3 Jonathan Gray, Show Sold Separately:  Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts (New  York:  New  York University Press, 2010b); Chris Hackley and Rungpaka Amy Hackley, Advertising and Promotion, 4th Edition (London: Sage Publications, 2018). 4 Gérard Genette, Seuils (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1987). 5 Gérard Genette, Paratexts:  Thresholds of Interpretation, trans. Jane E.  Lewin (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 2. 6 See Nico de Klerk, Showing and Telling:  Film Heritage Institutes and their Performance of Public Accountability (Wilmington, DE: Vernon Press, 2019), 64. 7 de Klerk 2019. 8 Gray 2010b, 26. 9 Gray 2010b, 35. 10 Chiara Bucaria, “Trailers and Promos and Teasers, Oh My! Adapting Television Paratexts across Cultures,” in Media and Translation:  An Interdisciplinary Approach, ed. Dror Abend-​David (New York: Bloomsbury, 2014), 296. 11 Jonathan Gray, “ ‘Coming Up Next’:  Promos in the Future of Television and Television Studies,” Journal of Popular Film & Television 38, no. 2 (2010a): 54. 12 Bryony Jardine et al., “Retaining the Primetime Television Audience,” European Journal of Marketing 50, no. 7/​8 (2016): 1290. 13 Paul Grainge and Catherine Johnson, “ ‘Show Us Your Moves’: Trade Rituals of Television Marketing,” Arts and the Market 5, no. 2 (2015): 126–​127. 14 Kyle Asquith and Alison Hearn, “Promotional Prime Time:  ‘Advertainment,’ Internal Network Promotion, and the Future of Canadian Television,” Canadian Journal of Communication 37, no. 2 (2012): 241–​257. 15 Amanda D. Lotz, The Television Will Be Revolutionized (New York: New York University Press, 2007), 108–​109. 16 Gray 2010a, 56. 17 Lisa Kernan, Coming Attractions:  Reading American Movie Trailers (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2004). 18 James Deaville and Agnes Malkinson, “A Laugh a Second? Music and Sound in Comedy Trailers,” Music, Sound, and the Moving Image 8, no. 2 (2014): 121–​140. 19 Deaville and Malkinson 2014. 20 Arden Dale, “Lynch-​directed ‘Twin Peaks’ Gives Ads Nix,” Back Stage, April 6, 1990, 1. 21 SM, “ABC Gives Commitment to New Series,” Broadcasting 117, no.  26 (December 25, 1989): 21.

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22 Dennis Kneale, “Risk Taker: Which TV Executive Would Be So Bizarre As to Air Twin Peaks?” The Wall Street Journal, April 26, 1990, A1. 23 “ABC’s spring housecleaning,” Broadcasting 118, no. 10 (March 5, 1990): 33. 24 Greg Quill, “Blue Velvet TV,” Toronto Star, April 1, 1990, C1. 25 “Twin Peaks—​Original 1990 Network Promos & Previews,” YouTube, posted May 23, 2017. Available at:  www.youtube.com/​watch?v=xyHCi3O5NMo (accessed January 4, 2020). 26 David Butler, “In A  Lonely Tone:  Music in Film Noir,” in A Companion to Film Noir, ed. Andrew Spicer and Helen Hanson (Somerset, UK: Wiley, 2013), 302–​317. 27 “Ratings Archive—​April 2, 1990.” Available at:  http://​tvaholics.blogspot.com/​ 2009/​06/​ratings-​archive-​april-​2-​1990.html (accessed January 4, 2020). 28 Tom Shales, “The New Heights of ‘Twin Peaks,’ ” Washington Post, September 7, 1989, C1. 29 “Twin Peaks Episode 6 Promo,” YouTube, posted May 3, 2019. Available at: www.youtube.com/​watch?v=-​eCX2noA384 (accessed January 4, 2020). 30 “5/​ 22/​ 1990 ABC Promos ‘Coach,’ ‘Twin Peaks,’ ‘Growing Pains’ + more,” YouTube, posted August 29, 2019. Available at:  www.youtube.com/​watch?v= De6GwhRUjTQ (accessed January 4, 2019). 31 Jen Cheney, “Twin Peaks:  Does History Tell Us Anything About How the Revival Will Be Received?” Vulture, May 16, 2017. Available at:  www.vulture. com/​2017/​05/​twin-​peaks-​a-​look-​back-​at-​how-​it-​was-​received.html; and Willa Paskin, “Diane, Remind Me to Tell You How Twin Peaks Changed TV Forever,” Slate, June 7, 2017. Available at: https://​slate.com/​arts/​2017/​06/​how-​twin-​peaks-​ spawned-​a-​whole-​tv-​genre-​from-​lost-​to-​mr-​robot-​to-​westworld-​that-​wants-​to-​ be-​a-​riddle-​for-​viewers-​to-​solve.html (both accessed January 4, 2020). 32 Episode date information, including rating, share and viewer statistics, can be found at “TV Listings: Past & Present,” TV Tango. Available at: www.tvtango. com/​listings (accessed January 4, 2020). 33 “Twin Peaks Promo—​ Summer 1990,” YouTube, posted January 17, 2008. Available at:  www.youtube.com/​watch?v=2zdLvyPO5pc (accessed January 4, 2020). 34 Devon Ivie, “Angelo Badalamenti Tells the Stories Behind 5 Twin Peaks Songs,” Vulture, May 12, 2017. Available at:  www.vulture.com/​2016/​09/​twin-​peaks-​ songs-​stories-​angelo-​badalamenti.html (accessed January 4, 2020). 35 Brad Dukes, Reflections: An Oral History of Twin Peaks (Nashville, TN: short/​ Tall Press, 2014): 128. 36 Among others, see Dennis Lim, David Lynch:  The Man from Another Place (Boston, MA:  Houghton Mifflin, 2015)  and Franck Boulègue, Twin Peaks: Unwrapping the Plastic (Bristol, UK: Intellect Books, 2017). 37 Jason Mittell, “Previously On:  Prime Time Serials and the Mechanics of Memory,” Just TV, July 3, 2009. Available at:  https://​justtv.wordpress.com/​ 2009/​07/​03/​previously-​on-​prime-​time-​serials-​and-​the-​mechanics-​of-​memory (accessed January 4, 2020); JP Kelly, Time, Technology and Narrative Form in Contemporary US Television Drama: Pause, Rewind, Record (Cham, CH: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). 38 Gérard Genette 1997, 2. 39 Mittell 2009; Gray 2010b, 35.

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40 Richard Grusin, “Premediation,” Criticism 46, no. 1 (2004): 17–​39. 41 Gray 2010b, 43. 42 Matt Hills, Fan Cultures (London: Routledge, 2002): 103–​104. 43 The peritexts for the first season have been assembled in one YouTube video entitled “Twin Peaks Season 1 Next On and Previously On Segments, Commercials, and Bumpers,” posted on February 17, 2012. Available at: www. youtube.com/​watch?v=XBAF23yNkiw (accessed January 4, 2020). 44 Noel Murray, “ ‘Twin Peaks’ Season 1, Episodes 2–​7:  ‘Isn’t It Too Dreamy?’ ” New York Times: Watching, April 24, 2017. Available at: www.nytimes.com/​2017/​ 04/​24/​watching/​twin-​peaks-​recap-​season-​1-​episodes-​2-​7.html (accessed January 4, 2017). 45 Jason Mittell, Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling (New York: New York University Press, 2015), 188. 46 Paul Delaney, “ ‘Rising Again’:  Revision, Trauma, and Frank O’Connor’s ‘Guests of the Nation,’ ” New Hibernia Review 23, no. 3 (2019): 50. 47 Heather Roskelley, “The Varied Thrush and Twin Peaks,” Heather Roskelley Photography, February 15, 2017. Available at:  www.heatherroskelley.com/​blog/​ varied-​thrush-​and-​twin-​peaks (accessed January 4, 2020). 48 Jason Mittell, “Previously On:  Prime Time Serials and the Mechanics of Memory,” in Intermediality and Storytelling, ed. Marina Grishakova and Marie-​ Laure Ryan (New York: De Gruyter, 2010): 90. 49 Michel Chion, The Voice in Cinema, trans. Claudia Gorbman (New  York: Columbia University Press, 1999): 74–​79. 50 Chion 1999, 76–​77. 51 Chion 1999, 76. 52 Gray 2010b, 46. 53 Kathryn Kalinak, Settling the Score:  Music and the Classical Hollywood Film (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), 47. 54 Gray 2010b, 48.

References “ABC’s Spring Housecleaning.” Broadcasting 118, no. 10 (March 5, 1990): 33. Asquith, Kyle, and Alison Hearn. “Promotional Prime Time:  ‘Advertainment,’ Internal Network Promotion, and the Future of Canadian Television.” Canadian Journal of Communication 37, no. 2 (2012): 241–​257. Boulègue, Franck. Twin Peaks:  Unwrapping the Plastic. Bristol, UK:  Intellect Books, 2017. Bucaria, Chiara “Trailers and Promos and Teasers, Oh My! Adapting Television Paratexts Across Vultures.” In Media and Translation:  An Interdisciplinary Approach. Edited by Dror Abend-​David, 293–​314. New York: Bloomsbury, 2014. Butler, David. “In A Lonely Tone: Music in Film Noir.” A Companion to Film Noir. Edited by Andrew Spicer and Helen Hanson, 302–​317. Somerset, UK: Wiley, 2013. Cheney, Jen. “Twin Peaks: Does History Tell Us Anything About How the Revival Will Be Received?” Vulture, May 16, 2017. Available at: www.vulture.com/​2017/​ 05/​twin-​peaks-​a-​look-​back-​at-​how-​it-​was-​received.html. Chion, Michel. The Voice in Cinema. Translated by Claudia Gorbman. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999.

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Dale, Arden. “Lynch-​directed “Twin Peaks” Gives Ads Nix.” Back Stage, April 6, 1990, 1–​2. Deaville, James and Agnes Malkinson. “A Laugh a Second? Music and Sound in Comedy Trailers.” Music, Sound, and the Moving Image 8, no. 2 (October, 2014): 121–​140. de Klerk, Nico. Showing and Telling: Film Heritage Institutes and their Performance of Public Accountability. Wilmington, DE: Vernon Press, 2019. Delaney, Paul. “ ‘Rising Again’: Revision, Trauma, and Frank O’Connor’s ‘Guests of the Nation.’ ” New Hibernia Review 23, no. 3 (2019): 35–​54. Dukes, Brad. Reflections: An Oral History of Twin Peaks. Nashville, TN: short/​Tall Press, 2014. Genette, Gérard. Paratexts:  Thresholds of Interpretation. Translated by Jane E. Lewin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Genette, Gérard. Seuils. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1987. Grainge, Paul, and Catherine Johnson. “ ‘Show Us Your Moves’: Trade Rituals of Television Marketing.” Arts and the Market 5, no. 2 (2015): 126–​138. Gray, Jonathan. “ ‘Coming Up Next’:  Promos in the Future of Television and Television Studies.” Journal of Popular Film & Television 38, no. 2 (2010a): 54–​57. Gray, Jonathan. Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts. New York: New York University Press, 2010b. Grusin, Richard. “Premediation.” Criticism 46, no. 1 (2004): 17–​39. Hackley, Chris and Rungpaka Amy Hackley. Advertising and Promotion, 4th Edition. London: Sage Publications, 2018. Hills, Matt. Fan Cultures. London: Routledge, 2002. Ivie, Devon. “Angelo Badalamenti Tells the Stories Behind 5 Twin Peaks Songs.” Vulture, May 12, 2017. Available at: www.vulture.com/​2016/​09/​twin-​peaks-​songs-​ stories-​angelo-​badalamenti.html. Jardine, Bryony, Jenni Romaniauk, John Daws and Virginia Beal. “Retaining the Primetime Television Audience.” European Journal of Marketing 50, no. 7/​ 8 (2016): 1290–​1307. Jason Mittell. Genre and Television: From Cop Shows to Cartoons in American Culture. New York: Routledge, 2004. Kalinak, Kathryn. Settling the Score:  Music and the Classical Hollywood Film. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992. Kelly, JP. Time, Technology and Narrative Form in Contemporary US Television Drama: Pause, Rewind, Record. Cham, CH: Springer International Publishing, 2017. Kernan, Lisa. Coming Attractions:  Reading American Movie Trailers. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2004. Kneale, Dennis. “Risk Taker: Which TV Executive Would Be So Bizarre As to Air Twin Peaks?” The Wall Street Journal, April 26, 1990, A1. Lim, Dennis. David Lynch: The Man from Another Place. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 2015. Lotz, Amanda D. The Television Will Be Revolutionized. New  York:  New  York University Press, 2007. Mittell, Jason. Complex TV:  The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling. New York: New York University Press, 2015. Mittell, Jason. “Previously On: Prime Time Serials and the Mechanics of Memory.” In Intermediality and Storytelling. Edited by Marina Grishakova and Marie-​ Laure Ryan, 78–​98. New York: De Gruyter, 2010.

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Mittell, Jason. “Previously On: Prime Time Serials and the Mechanics of Memory.” Just TV, July 3, 2009. Available at:  https://​justtv.wordpress.com/​2009/​07/​03/​ previously-​on-​prime-​time-​serials-​and-​the-​mechanics-​of-​memory/​. Murray, Noel. “ ‘Twin Peaks’ Season 1, Episodes 2–​7: ‘Isn’t It Too Dreamy?’ ” The New York Times: Watching, April 24, 2017. Available at: www.nytimes.com/​2017/​ 04/​24/​watching/​twin-​peaks-​recap-​season-​1-​episodes-​2-​7.html. Night by Night by Network, Broadcasting, February 5, 1990, p. 58. Olson, Greg. David Lynch: Beautiful Dark. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2008. Paskin, Willa. “Diane, Remind Me to Tell You How Twin Peaks Changed TV Forever.” Slate, June 7, 2017. Available at:  https://​slate.com/​arts/​2017/​06/​how-​ twin-​peaks-​spawned-​a-​whole-​tv-​genre-​from-​lost-​to-​mr-​robot-​to-​westworld-​that-​ wants-​to-​be-​a-​riddle-​for-​viewers-​to-​solve.html. Quill, Greg. “Blue Velvet TV.” Toronto Star, April 1, 1990, C1. “Ratings Archive—​April 2, 1990.” Available at: http://​tvaholics.blogspot.com/​2009/​ 06/​ratings-​archive-​april-​2-​1990.html. Roskelley, Heather. “The Varied Thrush and Twin Peaks.” Heather Roskelley Photography, February 15, 2017. Available at:  www.heatherroskelley.com/​blog/​ varied-​thrush-​and-​twin-​peaks. Shales, Tom. “The New Heights of ‘Twin Peaks.’ ” Washington Post, September 7, 1989, C1. SM. “ABC Gives Commitment to New Series.” Broadcasting 117, no. 26 (December 25, 1989): 21. “TV Listings: Past & Present.” TV Tango. Available at: www.tvtango.com/​listings.

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VIDEOGRAPHY “5/​22/​1990 ABC Promos ‘Coach,’ ‘Twin Peaks,’ ‘Growing Pains’ + more.” YouTube, posted August 29, 2019. Available at: www.youtube.com/​watch?v=De6GwhRUjTQ. “Twin Peaks Episode 6 Promo.” YouTube, posted May 3, 2019. Available at: www. youtube.com/​watch?v=-​eCX2noA384. “Twin Peaks—​Original 1990 Network Promos & Previews.” YouTube, posted May 23, 2017. Available at: www.youtube.com/​watch?v=xyHCi3O5NMo. “Twin Peaks Promo—​Summer 1990.” YouTube, posted January 17, 2008. Available at: www.youtube.com/​watch?v=2zdLvyPO5pc. “Twin Peaks Season 1 Next On and Previously On Segments, Commercials, and Bumpers.” posted on February 17, 2012. Available at www.youtube.com/​ watch?v=XBAF23yNkiw.

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2 PLAYING WITH SOUND Fan Engagement with the Soundtrack of Twin Peaks: The Return (2017) Jessica Getman

The Internet has served as an assembling space for Twin Peaks fandom since the series’ original run in 1990. Fandom scholar Henry Jenkins identified, in 1995, the special place the Internet held among Twin Peaks fans, as the “net” allowed them to analyze and debate the series’ plot as episodes were broadcast weekly. Internet discussion groups provided a home for fan encyclopedias of narrative events, enigmatic dialogue, key quotes, interviews with the show’s creative staff, newspaper clippings, information on the series’ geographical locations, and digitized sounds from the show.1 Jenkins observed that “Twin Peaks won the computer netters’ admiration for its complexity, its density, its technical precision and virtuosity, its consistency and yet its ability to continually pose problems for interpretation.”2 This fan engagement with Twin Peaks’ puzzles—​the fannish search for answers through collective theorizing—​has followed the series into its return 25 years later. And—​perhaps even more so than in the first series—​creator and director David Lynch poses many of the enigmas of Twin Peaks: The Return through its soundtrack. For Lynch, film is at least half sound.3 In an industry that privileges the image, his emphasis on sound has become as much his calling card as his bizarre visual and narrative choices. Working together with his long-​time sound supervisor Dean Hurley, Lynch created an aural aesthetic for The Return that is as gripping and challenging as its story.4 Lynch drops us into this aesthetic almost immediately through a conversation between Special Agent Dale Cooper and The Fireman. As the two men sit calmly in a silent, grayscale and velveted room, The Fireman—​in the affected speech we have come to associate with the Red Room—​intones:  “Agent Cooper, listen to the sounds.” Cooper turns his head to the right and an old gramophone is

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revealed; it plays a simple but hopelessly distorted scratching noise, looped so that it repeats every few seconds. Cooper listens through several repetitions and then turns back to his companion. The Fireman gives him several other clues by which to navigate the events to come (“Remember:  four-​ thirty, Richard and Linda, two birds with one stone …”), and then Cooper disappears from his seat, ending the scene. These events start The Return with an air of mystery. What does The Fireman’s guidance mean? What is the significance of the sound? The Fireman’s instructions are not for Agent Cooper alone—​Lynch is instructing us, as audience members, to pay attention to these things. We are to keep an eye out for “four-​thirty”—​and we are to listen to the sounds. This is not the only way we’re clued in regarding sound’s centrality in the series—​ Lynch’s entire approach to the soundtrack demands that we listen. Lynch is well known, for instance, for his foregrounding of ambient sound. The ambient soundscapes in The Return range from the wind and wildlife in Twin Peaks, to the overwhelming musical chaos of slot machines in The Silver Mustang casino in Las Vegas, to the room tones Lynch and Dean Hurley have cultivated with care. Lynch marks these soundscapes by turning up the volume, adding noticeable nuance, and layering several sounds at once.5 This attention to ambience leads to one of the most arresting aural moments in the show, which occurs almost immediately after The Fireman’s instruction to “listen to the sounds.” We’re taken into a large city, into a room that holds an empty and ominous glass box. There is no dialogue for several minutes, and the narrative is slow and mundane; the audience focuses instead on experiencing the room itself through sound—​the air conditioning, the lights, the whining of the cameras, the recorded voice announcing that the camera needs a new memory card, and the sounds of the solitary character Sam moving about the room. This scene is not just about introducing us to Sam, though it does do that, or even about introducing us to this room. It introduces us to sound itself; Lynch forces us to follow The Fireman’s instructions. The gain is turned up enough that the soundtrack becomes our focus, and the grain of each noise is brought to the fore. Part of this comes from the detail in the Foley, which captured the grit of the room’s surfaces, the shuffling of Sam’s clothing, and the creaking of the ladder he climbs.6 With all of this excess aural detail, the boundary between the film world and the real world falls away and the room becomes something we don’t just see and hear, but rather something we feel. Lynch forces his audience to prioritize sound, giving it heightened relevance and intention in the entire series. For fans, watching Twin Peaks: The Return through the summer of 2017 was an exhilarating, if baffling, journey. Social media and online fan forums exploded with observations and theories as viewers tried to make sense of Lynch’s new text. Spurred on both by the auteur’s careful attention to sound

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design and his direction to “listen to the sounds,” viewers scoured the audio track for clues. Lynch’s soundtrack simultaneously brims with significance and remains devoid of meaning, playing with expectations and leaving ample room for interaction and interpretation. As Paul Booth explains, fannish play involves not only the appropriation and revision of media texts (historically the primary focus of fan research), but also purposeful—​and profitable—​play between producers and their audiences.7 In the works of David Lynch, this play is naturally encouraged through his distinct creative voice and his refusal to adhere to conventional storytelling methods, in particular (as noted by Jake Pitre), the “requirement to provide answers or closure.”8 It is also quite strongly emphasized through Lynch’s treatment of sounds as objects to be manipulated and transformed. This chapter explores Lynch’s unruly storytelling, the series’ foregrounded soundtrack, and the resulting fan engagement, demonstrating a moment in which a creator and his audience invited each other into a shared space of sonic play.

Lynch and Sound Lynch’s emphasis on sound design in The Return is unsurprising. His aural aesthetic is known for being nostalgic but disturbing, and scholars have illuminated how Lynch’s preferences belie several interrelated aesthetic moves and modes. Lynch, for instance, demonstrates a fascination with crossing borders—​particularly the border between music and sound, but also between the physical and the spiritual, reality and fiction, and memory and the unconscious.9 Related to this are the notions of transgressive space, liminality, and ambiguity; Isabella van Elferen uses the term sfumato to emphasize the blurry in-​between space from which the Gothic uncanniness of the first two seasons of Twin Peaks emerges.10 Lynch is also preoccupied with unveiling the artifice of film, television, and recorded sound. As Mark Mazullo has noted, Lynch consistently foregrounds “the constructed nature of his work, of the many acts of mediation that go into the creation of art.”11 This leads to Lynch’s repeated use of mediation, or the presentation of image and sound through diegetic media, including on-​screen televisions, record players, and telephones.12 This emphasis on mediation, artifice, and crossing borders destabilizes the indexical bond between sound and image. Diegetic sound in film is usually presented as evidence of the image; for instance, the sound of footsteps when a character walks becomes part of the proof that they are walking. Sounds like these serve the image in that they add a veracity and physicality to the people and objects on the screen. In Lynch’s works, however, sound rebels against its indexicality, taking on a special agency and thing-​ ness of its own.13 In the process, signification is undermined. Sound becomes simultaneously over-​ determined—​ or imbued with a sense of profound

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meaning—​and under-​determined—​unclear and ambiguous, and, for all we know, empty. This leads to the rise of a Gothic uncanniness and hauntedness in the soundtrack, as sounds that are mundane, familiar, and even nostalgic to the listener become unfamiliar, causing the listener to question not only what they know about these sounds, but also how they react to them. The soundtrack becomes haunted by a presence we thought we understood, but really do not.14 These ideas not only make sense in relation to Lynch’s aural aesthetic, but also echo the way scholars and critics talk about his visual and narrative style, and especially his treatment of objects. Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, for instance, has outlined several ways in which Lynch defamiliarizes objects in the original seasons of Twin Peaks in order to imbue them with an ominous agency—​the log lady’s log, the ceiling fan, and the fish in the percolator, for instance. Weinstock’s list of the ways in which Lynch makes ordinary objects strange also evokes some of the ways Lynch and Hurley manipulate sound: they displace it (put it where it doesn’t belong); they make it ominous through repetition, looping, and droning; they inspirit it by bestowing on it a sort of sentience (as in the knowledge carried by the gramophone’s sounds); and they fragment, reduce, and augment it.15 They objectify sound by treating it as something to be constructed, transfigured, dismantled, and reformed.

Sound as Object in The Return One of the clearest examples of Lynch objectifying sound in Twin Peaks is the twice-​over reversal of speech in the Red Room; to achieve this, actors recorded their lines backwards and then those recordings were reversed again. This is a ripping of the voice from the character that foregrounds the artificiality of the soundtrack and creates a gap between the person and their words. As van Elferen notes, “Red Room speech shows that there is a third space between narrator and perceiver: the uncanny space of mediation that belongs neither here nor there.”16 In this liminal space, words become objects in and of themselves, manipulated by forces outside the diegesis—​by the director and the sound team—​to become simultaneously more and less than what they originally were. This practice continues in The Return, both in the Red Room and in The Fireman’s home, but it becomes even more pronounced in the Purple Room (Naido’s room), which the show visits in episode 3. This room is the pinnacle of liminality in The Return. Located on a purple sea and somehow also in outer space, it serves as both a residence for Naido and a transitional space for Cooper, and seems to mix the comforts of home with the bare utility and hazard of an electrical substation. In this room, we hear that Naido’s voice has been ripped from her even more violently.

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She cannot form intelligible words, and instead communicates through screeches and gestures. Also notable is the artful glitchiness of the image and sound in this segment—​another clue that whatever has separated the Red Room from the real world is intensified in the Purple Room. The sounds are slightly divorced from the movement on screen (aligned imprecisely) and their reversal is emphasized, with their attacks truncated and sharpened, now turned on their heads to conclude each effect. The sounds also seem to follow the movement of the camera as well as the movement on screen, blurring the fourth wall. In treating Naido’s voice and the sound effects of the room as objects separated from their sources, Lynch makes the Purple Room one of the more uncanny spaces in The Return. This treatment of sound results in alienation—​of the sound from the image and of the audience from the sound. As Mazullo notes, Lynch is as interested in the estrangement of sound as he is in undermining narrative and exploring human psychology.17 Disrupting our relationships with sounds makes us hear them in new ways, question what we thought we knew about them, and consider more deeply what they mean in conjunction with what we see on the screen. Lynch’s instruction to “listen to the sounds” at the beginning of The Return is an invitation to the audience to analyze and decode.

Fannish Play Fans are very good at analyzing and decoding their fannish objects. This is a long-​practiced form of fan labor found in fanzines, online forums, and social media sites. When fan scholars talk about fan labor, they tend to talk about the objects produced by fans—​fan fiction, fanvids, and fan art, as well as the various activities fans get up to at fan conventions: costuming, LARPing, and songwriting, among others. In the tradition of John Fiske and Henry Jenkins, scholars have tended to view fan activity and fannish products as subversive: fans reimagine and remake media so that it better represents their preferred narrative. Other scholars have begun to emphasize fan labor as celebratory. Following the lead of fan writer obsession_​inc, who first posted this idea in 2009, they divide fan engagement with media texts into “transformative” and “affirmational.”18 The fan works described above—​those that transform the original media object into something new and imaginative—​often fall under transformative engagement. Affirmational fan labor is more analytical, focused on the central text and concerned with “nailing down the details.”19 Though fan fiction and fan art based on Twin Peaks does circulate, the fan labor surrounding it (both in its original form and in The Return) tends to be affirmational, likely because the show’s creative team has scattered confusing, unresolved plotlines throughout that lead fans to argue more about the show’s intended meaning than about possible alternate readings or

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stories. As with online fan discussions during the first two seasons of Twin Peaks, fan discussions on sites like reddit and Welcome to Twin Peaks have rehashed details from each episode of The Return, highlighted published interviews with the show’s creative team, and worked through numerous fan theories regarding meaning in the series.20 The Return’s extended open-​endedness, and the fact that the audience is required to determine a majority of meaning on its own, places Lynch’s text squarely in what Roland Barthes identifies as the “writerly” mode; instead of forcing a dominant reading on the audience, The Return leaves so much unresolved that the audience has to produce, or “write,” its own interpretation.21 When Lynch purposefully undermines signification, then dialogue, objects, and sounds are often simultaneously over-​determined and under-​ determined, forcing analysis.22 For fans who are already inclined towards discussion and analysis as a way of practicing their fandom, The Return provides endless opportunity.23 Nostalgia plays an important role in the fan reception of The Return as well. Fannish impulses are inherently nostalgic; Paul Booth and Lincoln Gerahty, among others, have noted that nostalgia is the “driving influence” behind the activities of collecting, critiquing, reproducing, reimagining, and simply becoming a fan in the first place.24 Lynch’s aesthetic is also nostalgic; much of his directorial style depends on the evocation of an idealized and ultimately unreal past to which we can never return. On top of this, The Return is doubly nostalgic because its (older) audience is already harboring a long-​cultivated desire to return to their own memories of this television show, its unresolved narrative, and the ways it affected their lives 25 years earlier when the first two seasons aired. Fan attachment to the series, and their desire to solve mysteries both old and new, to re-​experience beloved characters and see those characters’ stories (hopefully) come to a satisfactory close, drove an increased fannish engagement with The Return. The series was released weekly on Showtime, giving fans plenty of time after each episode to pick apart its narrative turns, its hinted philosophies, and its hidden clues in forums and social media groups. What is the significance of the glass box? What happened to Audrey Horne? What is the tea-​kettle that holds Phillip Jeffries? What was the flying frog that came out of the girl’s mouth in episode 8? And most importantly, will we ever see the return of Agent Dale Cooper? This form of fan play, the group critique and interpretation, was pronounced in fan response to the season’s sound design. Lynch, credited as the primary sound designer for The Return, treats sound as an object to be physically manipulated, indexically destabilized, and given a profound but uncertain significance, ultimately defamiliarizing it and giving it a presence and intention that forces the audience to rethink it. And rethink it the fans have. As Paul Booth has observed, the practices of both producers and fans

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have begun to increasingly overlap with each other, for reasons of interest (as can be seen in the commercial rise of the fanboy producer and fan-​produced sequels and documentaries), and for reasons of economics. But it has also arisen, in part, from the democratization of technology, technical skill, and information. Digital audio workstations are now available for use (in some cases for free) on personal computers. Where Lynch and Hurley use this technology to manipulate and transform sound, fans are now using it to try to reverse the process, sleuthing the origins of critical sound objects in order to uncover hidden meanings. Fans have honed in on some of the most prominent aural objects in the recent season in their search for Twin Peaks truth.

Unraveling the Mystery Sound design often involves manipulating existing sounds to create new sounds, thereby hiding the original sounds within the new; usually only the creator knows what the original sounds were. In some cases, the artist might protect these mysteries for the integrity of the final product. Dean Hurley has refused, for instance, to unveil the source material behind The Return’s deep and gritty electrical sounds—​like those heard in the Purple Room.25 As with the sound of wind in the first two seasons of Twin Peaks, electricity is a recurring narrative, visual, and sonic motif in in The Return. Lynch is fascinated with electricity: I don’t know why all people aren’t fascinated with it. It makes beautiful sounds, and it makes a lot of times some incredible light. It runs many things in our world and it’s beautiful. It’s sometimes dangerous, but it’s magical. It’s such a power and it can make some beautiful images … and sounds.26 Lynch wrote electrical sounds into the script (many fans posit that electricity is a signifier for transformation and transportation), and Hurley responded by creating an electricity sound library. But to reveal the source of the sounds would remove their power. You can get to different sounds through ways that you wouldn’t normally associate with good results. You can react to a sound purely sonically, without reacting to how it was made or what was used to capture it. Maybe a dinosaur growl is just a small dog slowed down. [Knowing] all those things can putrefy your pure experience. Every viewer experiencing Twin Peaks right now is on the other side of that fence—​not being privy to know how things were done. It’s a little bit how a magician never reveals [their] secrets—​knowing something can deflate its magical qualities.27

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The sense of mystery in The Return thus hinges to some degree on fans’ inability to determine the sources of certain key sounds. In other cases, however, Lynch and Hurley have created mysteries meant to be solved, aural effects that they know the audience is capable of unraveling. This is the case in episode 8, with the antagonist Mr. C’s death and resur­rection. After Ray Monroe shoots Mr. C, the Woodsmen arrive and revive him. They dance around the corpse and paw at Mr. C’s body—​ seemingly through his body and into the dirt. As they do, a large, black orb holding the head of Bob (Twin Peaks’ original embodiment of evil) emerges from Mr. C’s torso. Ray runs away screaming, and Mr. C disappears. As the audience listens to these events, they notice the very low, slow, and processed pitches accompanying the scene. Enterprising fans quickly picked up on the melodic content and sped up the scene and its audio. Reddit user WattsD posted the following two days after the episode aired: Hey all, just wanted to share a cool little detail I  noticed just now while watching the new episode. During the scene where DoppleCoop [Mr. C] is shot, I thought I recognized part of that haunting melody playing while the dark spirits are doing … whatever they’re doing … with the corpse. After I finished the episode (holy shit what a wild ride), I  went back, recorded a clip, and sped the sound up about 3x. Sure enough, the music playing is simply a slowed recording of the final moments of the first movement of Beethoven’s famous Moonlight Sonata.28 Lynch’s treatment of the Moonlight Sonata (Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in C-​sharp Minor, No. 14 [op. 27, no. 2]) as an object stretched and hidden in time destabilizes the boundary between music and sound effect, and brings the sound into a transgressive, uncanny space that, even before knowing the source, viewers recognized as significant. Even though Lynch did not list this work in the end credits, it was fairly easy to determine; the creative team must have expected that fans would suss it out.29 Still, knowing the source does not solve the mystery in toto. Why did Lynch choose the Moonlight Sonata? Was it chosen for its mood? Did the piece simply reference the moon under which the death and resurrection took place? What did it have to do with the strange scene unfolding on the screen? Having solved one part of the puzzle only presented fans with more questions. Unlike the soundtrack to Mr. C’s death and resurrection, we may not ever truly know the source (or sources) behind the noise coming from the gramophone at the beginning of Twin Peaks:  The Return. It doesn’t seem like much—​it’s short and unintelligible—​but it again demonstrates several of Lynch’s primary moves when it comes to sound design—​foregrounding sound (this time by verbally pointing it out in the diegesis), mediating sound,

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fragmenting it, manipulating it, and looping it. Due to Lynch’s purposeful emphasis on the sound, it understandably captured the interest of fans and there have been a number of theories regarding its source. One of the most interesting options has come from reddit user SoundIsNotNoise.30 Through some rather persistent sleuthing, they discovered that the rhythm of the noise, when slowed down by about 60%, seems to match the sound of a handle being pulled on a slot machine in the Silver Mustang casino in episode 3. I could tell immediately it [the sound] was sped up by a considerable amount, whatever it was, so I  recorded the sound directly from the episode into my system, slowed it down ~75%, and EQ’d out the low rumble (HPF @ ~150 hz) What awaited was a very mechanical sound, pretty indeterminate; a rhythmic clicking pattern that could have been a bunch of different things. But there was one element in between the clicks that was lower, more distinct, and tantalizingly familiar: a sort of cha-​thunk that I immediately recognized … but I couldn’t quite put my finger on. My first thought was a rotary phone, so I  took some samples from various sources and tried to reverse engineer the processing, but nothing I found quite matched. I decided to do some re-​watching to see if there was something I missed. Since I  had my system configured for direct recording, I  decided to sample my favorite moment so far, from episode 3: “HellOOOO!!” And when I finished the recording, I realized I had what I was looking for. The sound in the phonograph is a slot machine handle. Turns out I slowed down the sound too much. I backed it off by a good 10–​15%, and realized the rhythm/​pace/​cadence of the mystery sound matched the slot machine handle pull from the episode pretty darned close to exact. The ca-​thunk [sic] is the sound the handle makes when you bring it all the way home. As a “sound designer by trade,” SoundIsNotNoise employed many of the same tools to uncover the original sound that Lynch and Hurley would have used to manipulate it. Maybe this theory works; maybe it doesn’t. Perhaps SoundIsNotNoise is correct and the slot machine haunts the soundtrack. A  number of fans have found this theory convincing. Other ideas are that the sound came from the scratching on the final groove of the record (and that it symbolizes the restarting of time in a loop), that the sound originally came from the

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lock and key of Laura Palmer’s diary (since Laura’s murder was the catalyst for the entire Twin Peaks story and her diary was an important plot point), or that it was the scratching of the inside of an egg (representing a type of metaphysical rebirth). Fans have guessed that it could be a Geiger counter, connecting the sound to the atomic blast in episode 8; the sound of electricity, a consistent motif in this series; or simply the accelerated and futzed sound of someone talking.31 But even if one of these theories is true, it doesn’t help the fans understand the purpose and meaning of the sound. We don’t know why a slot machine, a diary, or an atomic blast would be quite so central to the entire season’s narrative—​the narrative is too convoluted and purposefully frustrating. This becomes yet another example of a sound object in The Return both over-​and under-​signifying—​providing a depth of meaning that is somehow, at the same time, meaningless—​encouraging fans to consider what they are hearing carefully, forming interpretations that can never quite get to the truth. Unraveled mysteries remain. Watching Twin Peaks:  The Return as it was released, throwing theories back and forth with other fans, was a celebratory, affirmational practice. Lynch himself made it about the sound design by highlighting sound in the diegesis, foregrounding it in the soundscape, and returning key sonic motives again and again. He privileges sound in The Return, turning dialogue, music, and sound effects into objects that are in turn physically manipulated, estranged, inspirited, hidden away, and forced on the audience. As Weinstock observes about objects in Twin Peaks, defamiliarized objects “combine to create a world marked by the Gothicized insistence of commonplace things: objects in Twin Peaks demand to be noticed and present themselves in ways that chasten fantasies of human mastery.”32 Sound objects do the same in this series: they demand to be noticed but refuse to be fully understood. But this ambiguity is exactly what has spurred fans to seek answers. The fannish play this season of Twin Peaks engendered is heightened by the fact that Lynch and Hurley are playing with the fans. Both the audience and the creators have invited each other into a shared space of sonic play.

Notes 1 Henry Jenkins, “ ‘Do You Enjoy Making the Rest of Us Feel Stupid?’:  alt. tv.twinpeaks, the Trickster Author, and Viewer Mastery,” in Full of Secrets: Critical Approaches to Twin Peaks, ed. David Lavery (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1995), 53–​4. As Jenkins notes, the fans with access to the early Internet tended to be male, college-​educated, and technologically inclined. 2 Jenkins, “ ‘Do You Enjoy Making the Rest of Us Feel Stupid?’,” 55. 3 “Sound is 50 per cent of a film, at least. In some scenes it’s almost 100 per cent.” Larry Sider, Diane Freeman, and Jerry Sider, eds., “David Lynch,” in

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Soundscape: The School of Sound Lectures 1998–​2001 (London: Wallflower Press, 2003), 52. See also Isabella van Elferen, “Dream Timbre:  Notes on Lynchian Sound Design,” in Music, Sound and Filmmakers:  Sonic Style in Cinema, ed. James Eugene Wierzbicki (New York: Routledge, 2012), 179; Nick Mitchell, “The Sound of Twin Peaks Runs Much Deeper than James Hurley’s Vocals,” iNews, August 8, 2017. Available at:  https://​inews.co.uk/​culture/​television/​twin-​peaks-​ episode-​13-​sound-​design-​lynch/​. 4 Jennifer Walden, “Behind the Weird, Wonderful Sound of ‘Twin Peaks:  The Return’—​with Dean Hurley and Ron Eng,” A Sound Effect (blog), October 4, 2017. Available at: www.asoundeffect.com/​twin-​peaks-​sound/​. 5 Hurley has described the room tone they developed from the dailies in the motel room of the final episode as his favorite—​what he calls “Tube Wind Dream” in his recent soundtrack release. Hurley explains, “… there was something in that motel room, a room tone from an air duct that was very faint but it sounded like this harmonic, almost choral sound. … I comb filtered it to dial up the specific frequencies that would exaggerate the sound that the tone was harmonizing at. That one sound ended up creating this room tone that we used in a ton of places because it was this music-​esque room tone that was incredibly rich in mood.” The “Tube Wind Dream” sound was substituted for an underscore in episode 2, after Phyllis visits her husband, Bill Hastings, in jail, and then walks over to talk to their lawyer, George; in episode 8 it was used as the camera flies over water to The Fireman’s residence. It also became the basis of the vortex sound. For Hurley, that room tone ended up being “the single most useful, multi-​purpose sound discovered for the show.” Walden, “Behind the Weird, Wonderful Sound of ‘Twin Peaks: The Return.’ ” 6 Walden, “Behind the Weird, Wonderful Sound of ‘Twin Peaks: The Return.’ ” 7 Paul Booth, Playing Fans:  Negotiating Fandom and Media in the Digital Age (Iowa City, IA: University of Iowa Press, 2015), 1–​2. 8 Jake Pitre, “Fan Reactions to ‘The Leftovers’ and ‘Twin Peaks:  The Return,’ ” Transformative Works and Cultures 26 (March 15, 2018): 13. Available at: https://​ doi.org/​10.3983/​twc.2018.1300. 9 van Elferen, “Dream Timbre: Notes on Lynchian Sound Design,” 176. 10 Isabella van Elferen, “Haunted by a Melody: Ghosts, Transgression, and Music in Twin Peaks,” in Popular Ghosts the Haunted Spaces of Everyday Culture, ed. María del Pilar Blanco and Esther Peeren (New York: Continuum, 2010), 282. 11 Mark Mazullo, “Remembering Pop: David Lynch and the Sound of the ’60s,” American Music 23, no. 4 (2005): 505. 12 Mazullo, “Remembering Pop,” 505–​6. 13 van Elferen, “Haunted by a Melody: Ghosts, Transgression, and Music in Twin Peaks,” 289–​91. 14 Mazullo, “Remembering Pop”; van Elferen, “Haunted by a Melody:  Ghosts, Transgression, and Music in Twin Peaks”; van Elferen, “Dream Timbre: Notes on Lynchian Sound Design.” 15 Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, “Wondrous and Strange:  The Matter of Twin Peaks,” in Return to Twin Peaks:  New Approaches to Materiality, Theory, and Genre on Television, ed. Catherine Spooner and Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 29–​46. 16 van Elferen, “Haunted by a Melody: Ghosts, Transgression, and Music in Twin Peaks,” 289.

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17 Mazullo, “Remembering Pop,” 496. 18 Roberta Pearson, “ ‘Good Old Index’: Or, The Mystery of the Infinite Archive,” in Sherlock and Transmedia Fandom: Essays on the BBC Series, ed. Louisa Ellen Stein and Kristina Busse (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2012), 163; obsession_​inc, “Affirmational Fandom vs. Transformational Fandom,” Dreamwidth. Available at:  https://​obsession-​inc.dreamwidth.org/​82589.html (accessed November 17, 2019). 19 Booth, Playing Fans, 12. 20 “Twin Peaks & David Lynch Discussion,” Welcome to Twin Peaks (blog). Available at:  https://​welcometotwinpeaks.com/​discuss/​ (accessed November 17, 2019); “R/​Twinpeaks,” reddit. Available at:  www.reddit.com/​r/​twinpeaks/​ (accessed November 17, 2019). 21 Roland Barthes, S/​Z, trans. Richard Miller (New  York:  Hill and Wang, 1975), 4–​5. 22 van Elferen, “Dream Timbre: Notes on Lynchian Sound Design.” 23 As Jenkins wrote over 20  years ago:  “The formulation of such theories is the logical response to a mystery, part of the typical reception of any whodunit, yet rarely has the consumption of a mystery been conducted in such a public fashion. The technology of the net allows what might previously have been private meditations to become the basis for social interaction.” Jenkins, “ ‘Do You Enjoy Making the Rest of Us Feel Stupid?’ ” 58. 24 Booth, Playing Fans, 6. 25 Walden, “Behind the Weird, Wonderful Sound of ‘Twin Peaks: The Return.’ ” 26 Pieter Dom, “Why David Lynch Is Fascinated with Electricity and Thinks You Should Be Too,” Welcome to Twin Peaks (blog), August 24, 2017. Available at: https://​welcometotwinpeaks.com/​lynch/​david-​lynch-​electricity/​. 27 Colin Joyce, “This Is Why the New ‘Twin Peaks’ Sounds Weird as Shit,” Vice (blog), August 18, 2017. Available at:  www.vice.com/​en_​us/​article/​wjjxe9/​ this-​is-​why-​the-​new-​twin-​peaks-​sounds-​weird-​as-​shit. 28 WattsD, “[S3E8] Moonlight,” reddit, June 26, 2017. Available at:  www.reddit. com/​r/​twinpeaks/​comments/​6jpn5n/​s3e8_​moonlight/​. 29 Pieter Dom, “To Score the Haunting Woodsmen Scene, David Lynch Severely Slowed Down Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight Sonata’ and Mixed It with Monkey Screeches,” Welcome to Twin Peaks (blog), June 28, 2017. Available at: https://​ welcometotwinpeaks.com/​music/​woodsmen-​beethoven-​moonlight-​sonata/​. 30 SoundIsNotNoise, “[S3E4] I  Believe I  Know What the Sound Heard over the Phonograph Is,” reddit, May 23, 2017. Available at: www.reddit.com/​r/​twinpeaks/​ comments/​6ct9oo/​s3e4_​i_​believe_​i_​know_​what_​the_​sound_​heard_​over/​. 31 Bryant Arnett, “The Sound from the Phonograph,” Welcome to Twin Peaks (blog), April 9, 2017. Available at: https://​welcometotwinpeaks.com/​discuss/​twin-​peaks-​ part-​17-​part-​18/​the-​sound-​from-​the-​phonograph/​; kaleviko, “[ALL] The Sounds that The Fireman Played,” reddit, September 23, 2017. Available at: www.reddit. com/​r/​twinpeaks/​comments/​722xbv/​all_​the_​sounds_​that_​the_​fireman_​played/​; -​ meanwhile, “[All] The Gramophone Clicking Sound in Part 1 of Twin Peaks: The Return is Actually the Key and Lock of Laura Palmer Diary, as Revealed by the Missing Pieces,” reddit, December 8, 2018. Available at: www.reddit.com/​ r/​twinpeaks/​comments/​a4bbcj/​all_​the_​gramophone_​clicking_​sound_​in_​part_​ 1_​of/​; RockXLight, “[S3E4] I Believe I Know What the Sound Heard over the

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Phonograph Is (No, Really),” reddit, September 5, 2017. Available at: www.reddit. com/​r/​twinpeaks/​comments/​6ybfpw/​s3e4_​i_​believe_​i_​know_​what_​the_​sound_​ heard_​over/​; evangelistabjj, “[S3E1] The Sound that Giant Plays to Cooper in EP1 Is the Sound of Electricity,” reddit, August 22, 2017. Available at:  www. reddit.com/​r/​twinpeaks/​comments/​6vg24x/​s3e1_​the_​sound_​that_​giant_​plays_​ to_​cooper_​in_​ep1/​. 32 Weinstock, “Wondrous and Strange,” 43.

Bibliography Arnett, Bryant. “The Sound from the Phonograph.” Welcome to Twin Peaks (blog), April 9, 2017. Available at: https://​welcometotwinpeaks.com/​discuss/​twin-​peaks-​ part-​17-​part-​18/​the-​sound-​from-​the-​phonograph/​. Barthes, Roland. S/​Z. Translated by Richard Miller. New York: Hill and Wang, 1975. Booth, Paul. Playing Fans: Negotiating Fandom and Media in the Digital Age. Iowa City, IA: University of Iowa Press, 2015. Dom, Pieter. “To Score the Haunting Woodsmen Scene, David Lynch Severely Slowed Down Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight Sonata’ and Mixed It with Monkey Screeches.” Welcome to Twin Peaks (blog), June 28, 2017. Available at:  https://​ welcometotwinpeaks.com/​music/​woodsmen-​beethoven-​moonlight-​sonata/​. —​—​—​. “Why David Lynch Is Fascinated with Electricity and Thinks You Should Be Too.” Welcome to Twin Peaks (blog), August 24, 2017. Available at:  https://​ welcometotwinpeaks.com/​lynch/​david-​lynch-​electricity/​. evangelistabjj. “[S3E1] The Sound that Giant Plays to Cooper in EP1 Is the Sound of Electricity.” reddit, August 22, 2017. Available at:  www.reddit.com/​r/​twinpeaks/​ comments/​6vg24x/​s3e1_​the_​sound_​that_​giant_​plays_​to_​cooper_​in_​ep1/​. Jenkins, Henry. “ ‘Do You Enjoy Making the Rest of Us Feel Stupid?’ alt.tv.twinpeaks, the Trickster Author, and Viewer Mastery.” In Full of Secrets: Critical Approaches to Twin Peaks. Edited by David Lavery, 51–​ 69. Detroit, MI:  Wayne State University Press, 1995. Joyce, Colin. “This Is Why the New ‘Twin Peaks’ Sounds Weird as Shit.” Vice (blog), August 18, 2017. Available at: www.vice.com/​en_​us/​article/​wjjxe9/​this-​is-​why-​the-​ new-​twin-​peaks-​sounds-​weird-​as-​shit. kaleviko. “[ALL] The Sounds that The Fireman Played.” reddit, September 23, 2017. Available at:  www.reddit.com/​r/​twinpeaks/​comments/​722xbv/​all_​the_​sounds_​ that_​the_​fireman_​played/​. Mazullo, Mark. “Remembering Pop:  David Lynch and the Sound of the ’60s.” American Music 23, no. 4 (2005): 493–​513. -​meanwhile. “[All] The Gramophone Clicking Sound in Part 1 of Twin Peaks: The Return is Actually the Key and Lock of Laura Palmer Diary, as Revealed by the Missing Pieces.” reddit, December 8, 2018. Available at:  www.reddit.com/​r/​ twinpeaks/​comments/​a4bbcj/​all_​the_​gramophone_​clicking_​sound_​in_​part_​1_​ of/​. Mitchell, Nick. “The Sound of Twin Peaks Runs Much Deeper than James Hurley’s Vocals.” iNews, August 8, 2017. Available at:  https://​inews.co.uk/​culture/​television/​twin-​peaks-​episode-​13-​sound-​design-​lynch/​. obsession_​inc. “Affirmational Fandom vs. Transformational Fandom.” Dreamwidth. Available at: https://​obsession-​inc.dreamwidth.org/​82589.html (accessed November 17, 2019).

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Pearson, Roberta. “ ‘Good Old Index’: Or, The Mystery of the Infinite Archive.” In Sherlock and Transmedia Fandom: Essays on the BBC Series. Edited by Louisa Ellen Stein and Kristina Busse, 150–​64. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2012. Pitre, Jake. “Fan Reactions to ‘The Leftovers’ and ‘Twin Peaks:  The Return.’ ” Transformative Works and Cultures 26 (March 15, 2018). Available at: https://​doi. org/​10.3983/​twc.2018.1300. reddit. “R/​ Twinpeaks.” Available at:  www.reddit.com/​r/​twinpeaks/​ (accessed November 17, 2019). RockXLight. “[S3E4] I Believe I Know What the Sound Heard over the Phonograph Is (No, Really).” reddit, September 5, 2017. Available at:  www.reddit.com/​r/​ twinpeaks/​comments/​6ybfpw/​s3e4_​i_​believe_​i_​know_​what_​the_​sound_​heard_​ over/​. Sider, Larry, Diane Freeman, and Jerry Sider, editors. “David Lynch.” In Soundscape: The School of Sound Lectures 1998–​2001. London: Wallflower Press, 2003. SoundIsNotNoise. “[S3E4] I  Believe I  Know What the Sound Heard over the Phonograph Is.” reddit, May 23, 2017. Available at: www.reddit.com/​r/​twinpeaks/​ comments/​6ct9oo/​s3e4_​i_​believe_​i_​know_​what_​the_​sound_​heard_​over/​. van Elferen, Isabella. “Dream Timbre:  Notes on Lynchian Sound Design.” In Music, Sound and Filmmakers: Sonic Style in Cinema. Edited by James Eugene Wierzbicki, 175–​88. New York: Routledge, 2012. —​—​—​. “Haunted by a Melody: Ghosts, Transgression, and Music in Twin Peaks.” In Popular Ghosts the Haunted Spaces of Everyday Culture. Edited by María del Pilar Blanco and Esther Peeren, 282–​95. New York: Continuum, 2010. Walden, Jennifer. “Behind the Weird, Wonderful Sound of ‘Twin Peaks:  The Return’—​with Dean Hurley and Ron Eng.” A Sound Effect (blog), October 4, 2017. Available at: www.asoundeffect.com/​twin-​peaks-​sound/​. WattsD. “[S3E8] Moonlight.” reddit, June 26, 2017. Available at: www.reddit.com/​r/​ twinpeaks/​comments/​6jpn5n/​s3e8_​moonlight/​. Weinstock, Jeffrey Andrew. “Wondrous and Strange:  The Matter of Twin Peaks.” In Return to Twin Peaks: New Approaches to Materiality, Theory, and Genre on Television. Edited by Catherine Spooner and Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, 29–​46. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Welcome to Twin Peaks. “Twin Peaks & David Lynch Discussion.” Available at: https://​welcometotwinpeaks.com/​discuss/​ (accessed November 17, 2019).

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3 WHERE MUSIC IS ALWAYS IN THE AIR Voice and Nostalgia in Twin Peaks Brooke McCorkle Okazaki

The musical motifs of director/​creator David Lynch and composer Angelo Badalamenti’s Twin Peaks, such as “Laura’s Theme,” “Audrey’s Dance,” and the opening theme float across the franchise, accruing meaning. Like the many pop tunes featured in 2017’s Twin Peaks: The Return, music from the series’ previous incarnations functions like a compilation soundtrack. In addition to references to the show’s narrative past, some music in The Return evokes a sense of nostalgia. Kunio Hara delves into the complicated history of nostalgia, explaining: The word nostalgia itself has a long and complicated history dating back to the late eighteenth century, when a medical student in Switzerland coined the word to describe a fatal form of illness known locally as Heimweh or homesickness by combining two Greek words, nostos (return to the native land) and algos (suffering or grief) … Over the following centuries, the meaning of the word changed gradually to denote a feeling, “a positively toned evocation of the lived past” according to Fred Davis (1979, 18), rather than illness.1 The idea of nostalgia as an illness and a longing for both a space and a past emerges in Twin Peaks via the narrative, the soundtrack, and the actual act of viewing the work.2 As such, nostalgia acquires a veneer akin to the Freudian repetition compulsion.3 As a complement to David Sweeney’s discussion of Julee Cruise’s aural prominence in Twin Peaks in this volume, I  explore the relationship between narrative, nostalgia, and the singing voice in the franchise. A  close analysis of two songs composed by Lynch and Badalamenti—​ “Falling” and “The World Spins”—​ reveals the ways

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musico-​narrative threads are interwoven. While several songs performed by Cruise appear throughout the series, “Falling” and “The World Spins” showcase her voice as an aural marker in Twin Peaks.4 Cruise’s voice hangs between the diegesis and the dream world of the instrumental underscore, never completely aligning itself with either realm. It is the delicate connective tissue between the first two seasons, the film Fire Walk With Me, and The Return.

Song and Voice Songs, because of their fusion of music with human voice, possess a certain semiotic power. In Twin Peaks, songs are afforded a place of privilege. They frequently appear in their entirety, and diegetic performances of songs serve as moments of narrative repose. Michel Chion points out: It is precisely because the song is so different that … in many films it takes the role of a pivot or turntable, a point of contact. The song opens a horizon, a perspective, an escape route for characters mired in their individual story. The song is what often creates a link between individual characters’ destinies and the human collectivity to which they belong.5 Songs, especially when occurring diegetically, dissolve the soundtrack’s boundaries; they blur music, sound effect, and voice into a single aural object. And it is not Laura Palmer’s, nor Dale Cooper’s, nor even Gordon Cole’s blaring voice that generates Twin Peaks’ dreamy atmosphere. It is the music-​voice, the singing voice embedded in Julee Cruise’s larynx and engraved on vinyl records, that weaves together Twin Peaks’ sound world. As Chion puts it, “A song acts like the image of a destiny, since it is the symbol of an arbitrary and eternal union of certain words and certain notes: and this union is redoubled through audio-​visual juxtaposition (the sound film’s ultimate weapon) that unites the song we hear with the fate of a character.”6 In Twin Peaks, the songs intoned by Julee Cruise unite the uncertain fate of the two main characters, Agent Cooper and Laura Palmer.

Recording Though Cruise’s voice is paramount in Twin Peaks, voice in general frequently intersects with recording. Musical playback devices, in particular the record player, are essential and even magical items within Twin Peaks. Recording holds a special place in the sound world of Twin Peaks, particularly older forms of playback.7 The jukebox at the Double R Diner that Audrey Horne dances to in episode 2 plays a jazzy number, not a popular hit

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or a simulation of a hit from the jukebox’s heyday in the 1950s. In episode 5 of the original series, the cabin where Laura was raped always has music in the air, thanks to a record player playing Julee Cruise’s “Into the Night” on endless loop. In the first episode of The Return, The Giant/​The Fireman tells Cooper to “listen to the sounds” scratched out on an old phonograph.8 Records and old turntables permeate all iterations of Twin Peaks. Randolph Jordan observes, “In the digital age, the materiality of the record player is often fetishized as an object of nostalgia, a visual source for music that has become less visible within our new formats.”9 Playing a record is an act of nostalgia. This is doubly true when it comes to Twin Peaks. Anachronistic in the 1990s, the record is a signifier of the past. But it also is a seer. By the time of The Return in 2017, the vinyl industry was a reviving beast, capitalizing on the gimmick of the tangible. The vinyl record is music you can hold, you can touch, you can hug, you can destroy. And the record is destroyed in the very act of listening, just as Laura Palmer is destroyed in our act of watching Twin Peaks; we witness her destruction in Fire Walk With Me and in the murder of her doppelgänger cousin Maddy in the original series. Laura’s destructive trajectory is like the act of playing a record. The record spinning is a metaphor for the replay of events, the continual cycle of violence that no one, not even Dale Cooper, can stop or change. Just as we can flip a record from Side B back to Side A, easily restarting an album’s musical narrative, in The Return Cooper attempts to reset the tragic events of 1989. But repeating is not the same as replaying; in each playback, the recording’s fidelity slowly degrades until the disc becomes detritus. As Andrea Mazzariello puts it: “Playing records is a delicate business that can’t go on forever. Eventually, the needle scratches out the sound; the very means of making music destroys the vessel that carries it.”10 The limited lifespan of the material recording means that eventually the traces of a specific time and place it represents are irretrievably lost. The Return is not just about returning to Twin Peaks and its characters and struggle between dark and light. It is about the eternal return of memory, of trauma, and of desire—​Cooper’s desire to rescue Laura, Laura’s trauma that cannot be forgotten even in alternate realities, and of the audio-​spectator’s own memory and desire to relive the vicarious mystery, drama, and trauma of the series. The Twin Peaks narrative shifts from the superficially heimlich, or home-like, to that of the unheimlich, or the uncanny.11 Yet the uncanny is also a return, particularly the return of a haunting uncertainty. Sigmund Freud explains, “… the uncanny is that species of the frightening that goes back to what was once well known and had long been familiar.”12 The uncanny and the home-like, or familiar, are interrelated on a psychological level. The same holds true for viewers of the show, and especially those fans and scholars who devote themselves to watching it multiple times. In re-​ watching, we engage in an act of consuming the known, yet we are unable to

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reconcile the intellectual uncertainty of the Lynchian world that continues sublimely spinning. Just as fans are compelled to re-​watch Twin Peaks, so too is Laura the character doomed to a life of repetition. Laura is a vinyl record. Her psyche is run down by the weight of her repeated trauma she experiences in the Twin Peaks narrative; or, is it by our repeated watching, our perverse desire to watch her suffering, her decline, to hear her scream? She is destroyed because we gaze at her destruction, unable to turn away. Each time we watch Twin Peaks, we revive Laura only to see her die again.13 In other words, like the revolving record, repeated viewings serve as a metaphor for Twin Peaks’ narrative of trauma that is ever-​repeated and inescapable. Rachel Joseph explains the central role of trauma in Twin Peaks, writing: In Lynch’s vision, the world contains both unbearable tragedy and sublime beauty simultaneously in such a way that they cannot be separated. Such is trauma as well. The repetitions of trauma that occur through the continual doubling contain within them the horror of the event and the fantasy of its disappearance … The unbearable nature of tragedy makes it horrifying to the subject who will do anything to escape its repetition. The stylistic sheen of the series holds trauma at bay, covering it up with humor and theatricality. However, the film slowly strips that sheen away from the narrative, culminating in Leland Palmer’s sexual assault on and murder of his daughter. The series and the film become a series of spaces to hold trauma.14 While Joseph cites the Pacific Northwest and the Black and White Lodges as vessels for trauma, I  suggest that Julee Cruise’s voice functions as an aural container for this trauma—​the reiteration (and reverberation) of Cruise’s voice throughout the series works as a device that is at once familiar and uncanny. Musical performances such as those of “Falling” and “The World Spins” are moments where both the characters and real-​life auditor-​ spectators listen. Music floats between the diegetic Roadhouse performances and the non-​diegetic realm in Twin Peaks. Music represents porous sites where both narrative and soundtrack relationships are as fluid as the bar’s cheap beer.

“Falling” The song “Falling” exemplifies musical porosity in Twin Peaks. Because the tune appears non-​diegetically and wordlessly as the opening credits for the show, it occupies a liminal space in the soundtrack and the narrative. The tune’s combination of a bass mixed with high treble in the style of country

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western music, a 1970s electric piano, and a 1980s synthesizer conjures nostalgia via orchestration and timbre.15 The bass line reverberates F-​C/​D-​F at a laid-​back, andante tempo. The leap of a fifth between ^1 to ^5 captivates tonally trained ears; it is one of the most common progressions in Western music from rock and roll to Bach chorales. It feels optimistic and stable; despite the departure from tonic stability, this musical path is a known entity. Yet, instead of going back to tonic the bass line ascends a whole step to ^6, undermining expectations. The harmony for “Falling” oscillates between F Major and D Minor chords; in the world of music analysis, both are tonic-​functioning (two of the three notes in each of the chords are the same—​F and A), but the D Minor chord with its lowered third, is more melancholy. In other words, the chords are similar but different; F Major and D Minor are musical doppelgängers. Moreover, because they share the same function, the harmonies do not go anywhere; they float in stasis. An arpeggiated figure in the upper line outlines the F Major triad (F-​A-​C) but interpolates the second scale degree, G. The stepwise motion of F-​G-​A hints at leading somewhere, yet it is immediately undone. The melodic line simply re-​cycles.16 As this vocalise melody ascends in pitch, the volume of the accompanying instruments grows; synth strings enter the mix, and the music swells on the line “Are we falling in love?” The word “love” coincides with the melodic contour’s climax, and interestingly, “falling” here is set to a rising pattern—​ that is, it is not set pictorially. It subverts typical text setting in which we would anticipate a descending melody to match the word’s meaning, an expectation realized at the end of the song on the repetition of the word “falling” in conjunction with a vocal descent. In sum, the instrumental version of “Falling” complicates typical musical teleologies by playing with music and text setting. This instrumental version of “Falling,” which serves as the original series’ opening title cue, establishes skewed expectations for the show’s audio-​spectators. The music is restrained and even relaxing. On screen, a Bewick’s Wren materializes into being as the bass line echoes. In a series of slow dissolves and fade-​ins, Lynch shows the Packard Saw Mill, its chimneys smoking and saws spinning, the famous shot of the “Welcome to Twin Peaks” sign with mountains off in the distance as the show’s title card fades in. As actor credits appear, the shot dissolves to a waterfall pouring down a ravine in slow motion. A panning shot of a flowing river follows this; the camera is so close to the water that we do not see the river’s banks that one would expect in such a river shot. Instead, the camera concentrates on the water’s rippling surface and the reflection of trees. The slow dissolves applied throughout the opening title sequence illustrate a technique Lynch frequently employs, especially in The Return. The palimpsest of elements, items, and people that appears for a split second in the dissolve is an allusion

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to Symbolism; the pictures are not what they seem. The dissolve as a technique acts as a metaphor for the music itself. The slow fades and dissolves suggest that items and images can overlap each other, be present without being tangible. In this way, the opening credit images resemble music in a stroke that would make the French Symbolists proud to locate their ephemeral quest for synesthesia operating on network television a century later. But “Falling” is not quite as diaphanous as it initially seems. The pilot episode’s conclusion reveals that the theme song does contain words, and it is Cruise’s voice that sings them in a diegetic performance at the Roadhouse (also known as the Bang Bang Bar). The song faintly echoes in an exterior shot of the bar, while Cooper and Sheriff Truman sit in the cruiser waiting for “J” to appear. As the show cuts to the bar’s interior, Cruise’s performance begins in the middle of the song on the line, “When I saw you smile.” The dark, single-​direction lighting obscures Cruise’s face, leaving her silhouette and the trace of a halo shining on her blond tresses. When the scene cuts to a two-​shot of Ed and Norma holding hands and discussing their love lives, the lyrics “are we falling in love” echo beneath the dialogue in a moment of musical empathy. The scene returns to an exterior shot of the patrol car, but the song remains on the soundtrack, in a weird moment of what Robynn Stilwell calls the fantastical gap between the non-​diegesis and the diegesis.17 While the music is muffled, it is clearly present. Given the volume of the mix in the interior scenes of the Roadhouse, it is unlikely that Cruise’s band is loud enough to be heard inside the parked car. It makes the observant listener wonder if this is instead an extended sound lag or Lynchian play with diegesis (and by extension the “real”). The song fades into the nighttime sounds of croaking frogs and immediately the jazzy non-​diegetic cue rises in the mix.18 This weird moment of aural unrealism indicates that “Falling” lies within Stilwell’s fantastical gap. Cruise’s voice is a point where the show’s world bends between real and the unreal. In other words, Cruise’s voice was always there, its traces present in the opening, though we were not made consciously aware of it until much later in the episode, and as we become more and more engrossed in the story, we forget. The title cue’s synthesizer is her voice’s instrumental doppelgänger. This knowledge lingers in the back of our minds, in the subconscious. As a tune that appears across the Twin Peaks world, both with and without lyrics, “Falling” works as Symbolist gesture in which there are no clear musical or narrative answers, only liberating hybridity.

“Falling” and Fire Walk With Me In Lynch’s 1992 film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, “Falling” also functions as a nostalgic cueing device. In a clear break with the popular series, the film opens not with the show’s title cue but instead with another slinky jazz

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number known only as “The Opening Theme from Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me.” This jazz cue becomes the cinematic alternative to the television series’ theme. It features the characteristic harmonic oscillation between two chords, but instead of a synthesizer voice, the film’s title cue highlights a lyrical muted trumpet melody. This “wrong” opening music parallels the “wrong” opening of the movie. The film’s first 30 minutes center on the investigation into the murder of Teresa Banks (Pamela Gidley) in Deer Meadow, Twin Peaks’ geographical doppelgänger. The town, with its unhelpful police and caustic waitress, feels wrong, as does the music. When the film finally cuts to an establishing shot of the “Welcome to Twin Peaks” sign accompanied by the appropriate main title cue, it is a relief to viewers longing for the comfort of the familiar.19 Yet everything is different in Twin Peaks, too. Laura Palmer lives. She walks to school in the dappled morning sunlight. The dissolve between the establishing shot and shot of Sheryl Lee along with the instrumental version of the “Falling” theme conflates three elements: the town, Laura, and the music. Laura is Twin Peaks, a wholesome facade with troubled interior. Laura is music; she cannot be pinned down to one identity or stereotype—​ she complicates the historical dualism of woman as virgin or whore. She is falling towards her end, just as the other characters both here and posthumously fall in her orbit and in love. Laura is stuck in a dream state between the horrific reality of her experience and the everyday teenage world, just as the “Falling” theme is harmonically stuck. The “Falling” theme’s harmonic wavering conveys Laura’s own position, trapped between horrific reality and everyday teenage life.20 She floats between worlds and her presence and, later, murder, saturates every aspect of the town of Twin Peaks, just as music saturates the show and the film’s soundtrack. And we auditor-​spectators love her for it. Lynch even gives us a rare point-​of-​view tracking shot in this sequence, letting us feel for a glorious moment as if we are the adoring Donna (Moira Kelly) walking at Laura’s side. The “Falling” theme provides continuity over the various scenes depicting Laura and Donna’s path to school and their arrival, but even it is slightly different, with the insertion of synthesizer horn prominently in the mix in synchronicity with the point of view shot. James approaches them on the stairs; Donna falls back from the secret couple. When Laura enters the ladies’ room prior to class, Lynch notably uses a cut instead of a dissolve. This is marked as a different space, foreshadowing Laura’s troubled interior despite the music smoothing over the transition. Laura snorts cocaine in a stall as the “Falling” theme intones the melody matching the lines “Are we falling in love?” We are. As the school bell rings out on what would be the word “love,” it is as if the “real” diegetic world is announcing that Laura’s time is up. The film cuts to

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an exterior shot of the high school. The sign for “Twin Peaks High School” sits in the mid-​ground. The shot works as a framing device complimenting the sequence’s opening shot of the town’s welcome sign. In other words, two literal signs bookend this sequence filled with figurative signs. Here Lynch manipulates elementary cinematic grammar by withholding the establishing shot of the high school sign until the end of the sequence, inviting us to wonder what alternative logic(s) motivates his storytelling; the framing structure of signs resembles the structural logic of music.

“Falling” and The Return In the opening credits for The Return, Lynch deploys the instrumental version of “Falling,” but, like in Fire Walk With Me, he imbues the 2017 incarnation with an element of the uncanny. In this instance, the main title cue prefigures the third season’s combination of familiarity and frightening strangeness. The uncanny atmosphere is apparent even prior to the show proper. The Showtime and Rancho Rosa logos appear, the latter featuring electric pops and sizzles and an image of a large light bulb.21 As the production marquee fades to black, there is a momentary silence. Something low rumbles. An aerial shot of mountain forests emerges on screen, a circular lens flare appearing in the lower left corner of the screen. A ringing metallic sound akin to a Tibetan singing bowl emerges in the mix in synchronization with a close-​up of a translucent image of Laura Palmer’s homecoming queen picture. Laura’s face replaces the original credits’ establishing shot of the “Welcome to Twin Peaks” sign, reiterating Fire Walk With Me’s implication that Laura is a metaphor for the town itself. The “Falling” theme accompanies a series of shots that are familiar but slightly different. For example, The Return’s opening credits feature the Snoqualmie Falls, but the shots are from overhead instead of from a high angle. The 2017 credits diverge most strikingly, though, with a conclusion on Black Lodge imagery, such as the heavy red curtains and zigzag-​ patterned carpet. The decor is similar to the Roadhouse, with its red velvet curtains adorning the stage. In both the Black Lodge and the Roadhouse music lingers in the air. The two appearances of “The World Spins” highlight the connection between the bar and the Black Lodge as revelatory, sound-​ drenched spaces.

“The World Spins” Like “Falling,” the tempo for “The World Spins” is restrained, but its meter is 6/​8 instead of 4/​4. A reverb-​heavy synthesizer arpeggiates an E Major chord while a bass strums an anacrusis leap downward from B to E and Cruise

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intones breathy vocals set syllabically. The reverberation effect makes her words almost unintelligible. Combined with the song’s other components, the overall sense is that the performance space’s air is so thick that even language is filtered through its hazy heaviness. “The World Spins” is one illustrative instance of many in Twin Peaks where timbral atmosphere takes precedence over semantics.22 The song’s limited harmonic material suggests a certain amount of stasis, yet that is not a negative component. Rather, the stasis allows audiences to attend to other musical components, such as timbre and the relationship between the voice and synthesizer. In “The World Spins,” Cruise’s voice floats separately above the synth and bass lines, yet something changes at the chorus. A  glockenspiel effect accompanies Cruise’s vocal line in unison as she croons the chorus “Love, don’t go away, come back this way, come back and stay, forever and ever.” The doubling of her voice with the bells endows the music and lyrics with a feeling of child-​like innocence. The bells evoke the naïve child magic of Papageno’s magic bells in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, the tinkling of the Sugar Plum Fairy’s dance in The Nutcracker, and the timbre of the toy piano.23 In this way, the presence of bells in “The World Spins” hints at a nostalgic longing to return to a childlike, prelapsarian age. However, the occurrence of “The World Spins” in Twin Peaks is associated with a return of a different sort—​that of BOB and ritual murder. In season 2, episode 7, the song frames the murder of Laura’s doppelgänger, Maddy. The result is that the sequence’s visual and aural elements create an ABA1 structure. The sequence opens with Cruise performing at the Roadhouse, her songs replete with emotion and empathizing with the denizens of Twin Peaks. During “Rockin’ Back Inside My Heart,” Donna and James discuss Harold Smith’s death as Sheriff Truman, Agent Cooper, and the Log Lady enter and take a seat at a table in back. Donna and James’ conversation alludes to Maddy’s murder; James relates that Laura’s cousin and doppelgänger plans to return home.24 “Rockin’ Back Inside My Heart” does not receive a full diegetic performance though; instead a slow crossfade accompanied by the sound of rolling thunder leads into the first A section of “The World Spins.” The camera cuts between headshots of Cooper and Cruise before settling into a shot of the entire stage from the back of the bar that aligns with Cooper’s point of view. The sound of metallic ringing overtones and a synthesizer emerge in the soundtrack as the musicians fade away, replaced by The Giant. The spotlight on both him and Cooper indicates the audio-​visual connection between the two characters as The Giant warns, “It is happening again.” The B portion of the sequence, the murder, commences with a slow fade to a record player clicking repeatedly at the end of its disk. During the murder, the camera position at first remains disturbingly frozen. It is as if we are

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sitting there in the room and doing nothing about the horror taking place. The camera’s lens reproduces the skipping record player’s anempathy.25 Lynch provides some distancing from the violence by slowing down the frame rate and distorting the diegetic sound of screams, laughter, and sound effects during the murder. The affective result of this audio-​visual manipulation is that the murder seems to be taking place in a dreamworld. The technique ironically proves most effective, though, when it is suddenly removed from the scene. In Maddy’s final moments, Lynch forces viewers into the diegetic world. The formerly mediated violence becomes disturbingly realistic, with Maddy’s dying sobs acting as a vocal corollary to Cruise’s singing voice. After BOB/​Leland completes the murder, the ringing metallic sound effects and the skipping record player persist, serving as a sound bridge over a cut to a close-​up shot of The Giant on the Roadhouse stage. In the sequence, sound, like violence, reaches beyond its physical space and the murder’s traumatic impact reverberates through the Roadhouse. The A1 section of the sequence begins with a hard cut from Maddy’s bloodied face to a medium shot of The Giant looking intensely out to Cooper from the stage while the sound of the clicking record player lingers in the mix. The Giant fades as “The World Spins” reappears in the soundtrack and Julee Cruise and her band solidify into being once again. The characters at the bar seem to sense that something terrible has happened. Donna weeps, Bobby looks around worriedly, and Cooper looks confused. That the performance continues without acknowledging the murder, or the emotional reactions of some of the bar patrons also suggests that “The World Spins” acquires an anempathetic quality akin to that of the record player. But the song, with its human voice, is not devoid of emotion; indeed the grain of Cruise’s voice and the text together ooze melodrama:  “Love, don’t go away, come back this way, come back and stay, forever and ever.” The music comments on both Laura and Maddy’s deaths, while also smoothing over the edits, and connects different vignettes taking shape at the Roadhouse. The technique is a common one, as Michel Chion identifies: “a song, with its closed duration, enframes and highlights a particularly dramatic moment of a film, such as a murder.”26 Just as “Falling” conveys both the superficial tranquility of Twin Peaks and the characters’ (especially Cooper’s) relationships to Laura, so too does “The World Spins” convey a feeling of love, melancholy, and innocence. Whether this is actually the music empathetic to Laura’s interiority or merely how others perceive her is left up to us, the auditor-​spectators, to decide. By featuring Julee Cruise’s voice and song at the climactic reveal of BOB, Lynch emphasizes the importance of her vocal timbre to the series’ soundscape. Not only is Cruise’s voice part of the dream-​like atmosphere, it is a vehicle for the ultimate revelation of Laura’s murderer. At the episode’s conclusion, Julee Cruise dissolves into a slow panning shot of the red curtains

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though whether these are the curtains of the Roadhouse stage or the Black Lodge is unclear. Visually, the bar and the Lodge then are intertwined just as they are spatially as sites of music and dance. Part  17 of Twin Peaks:  The Return, “The Past Dictates the Future,” reinforces the connection between the Roadhouse and the Black Lodge. In this episode, the appearance of “The World Spins” seems to initially act empathetically to Cooper, who has failed to rescue Laura while simultaneously alluding to the violence of Maddy’s murder. But in The Return, the violent perpetrator is not BOB but Cooper himself—​in trying to change the past and prevent Laura’s death, he rips apart the world. The appearance of Cruise and “The World Spins” at the end of the episode endows the Twin Peaks story with a bittersweet pathos. We see only Cruise, her band’s shadows, and some red drapes; we do not know for certain if this is the Roadhouse or the Black Lodge. The ambiguity muddies any notions viewers may have as to what is “real” in the Twin Peaks timeline. This instance of “The World Spins” includes a different selection of lyrics than that of season 2, episode 7 in the original run. At the credits’ conclusion the song too reaches its end, with the eponymous words “the world spins.” The implication is that we viewers, like Cooper, struggle and ultimately fail, to change things that have already happened. The poignant heartbreak in the moment lies in the recognition that the world, like a record player, keeps spinning.

Spiral Endings In “The Past Dictates the Future,” as Cooper takes Laura’s hand in the forest, she asks “Where are we going?” He replies, “We’re going home.” This exchange encompasses the desire to return not to the actual Palmer house, but to the idea of a place (or time) of safety and belonging. Cooper’s mission to rescue Laura is an act born of nostalgia, an act seeking to return to the past and redeem both her and himself.27 Yet this desire to return is a fatal one. Chion sums up the treachery of nostalgia in audio-​visual terms: To live is to repeat cycles of behavior: amid these behaviors are missed encounters, and music, in its spiraling repetition, holds something we might call the merciless recording of them. Music is signified as the mechanical unfolding of something that is already recorded or written and irremediably linked to a certain fatal event, always already there in the context of the projection of a film, that is, the unwinding of a recorded spiral.28 While Lynch shot The Return digitally instead of on film, the sentiment of that merciless, technological unfolding of what has already happened

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casts a specter over the third season of Twin Peaks. If social network sites are any indication, it seems that many viewers nostalgically embraced The Return, pining for the series of 25 years prior. Some dismay at the season’s conclusion suggests that Lynch proffered and then sabotaged a fulfillment of nostalgic desire. What many forget is that even in art, a true return is impossible. By employing songs and motifs from the original run, Lynch gestured towards the franchise’s past without attempting to recreate it. He and Mark Frost remind viewers that the only return that truly exists is the inescapable one of trauma. Cooper and Laura are forever trapped in that cycle. Thankfully, we viewers are liberated from transparent narratives; we are free to dream.

Notes 1 Kunio Hara, Joe Hisaishi’s Soundtrack for My Neighbor Totoro (New  York: Bloomsbury Press, 2020), 4. Hara pointed out to me that the term “nostalgia” actually dates back to the seventeenth century, not the eighteenth, as was misprinted. 2 Reba Wissner expounded on the role of nostalgia in The Twilight Zone in “No Time Like the Past: Hearing Nostalgia in The Twilight Zone,” Journal of Popular Television 6, no. 1 (2018): 59–​80. 3 See Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, trans. James Stachey (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2015). While this essay does not delve deeply into psychoanalysis, several scholars have analyzed Twin Peaks and other Lynch projects in that context. See for example Todd McGowan, The Impossible David Lynch (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007). 4 Julee Cruise performed several songs for Twin Peaks, as David Sweeney explains. In addition to “Falling” and “The World Spins” she also performs “The Nightingale,” “Rockin’ Back Inside My Heart,” and “Into the Night.” She also appears in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me singing “Questions in a World of Blue.” Prior to Twin Peaks, she sang “Mysteries of Love” for the Blue Velvet soundtrack. In this way, her voice not only harnesses the various incarnations of Twin Peaks together but also alludes to its narrative connection to the earlier Lynch film. 5 Michel Chion, Film, A Sound Art, trans. Claudia Gorbman (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 428. 6 Ibid., 430. 7 For a broader look at Lynch’s use of turntables and records throughout his oeuvre, see Randolph Jordan, “Starting from Scratch:  Turntables, Auditory Representation, and the Structure of the Known Universe in the Films of David Lynch,” Master’s thesis, Concordia University, 2003. 8 Other recording and playback devices, specifically Cooper’s mini-​tape recorder, mark him as a more modern outsider during the initial season of Twin Peaks. Nevertheless, Cooper’s taped messages also mark a desire to make voice tangible. 9 Randolph Jordan, “Three Soundtrack Albums and a Record Player: A Twin Peaks Music Review (Sort of),” Off/​Screen 21, issues 11–​12 (December 2017). Available at: https://​offscreen.com/​view/​three-​soundtrack-​albums-​and-​a-​record​player-​a-​twin-​peaks-​music-​review.

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10 Andrea Mazzariello, One More Revolution (Brooklyn, NY:  The Operating System, 2018), 19. 11 Here I am borrowing the terms from Sigmund Freud. See Sigmund Freud, “The Uncanny,” in The Uncanny, trans. David McLintock (New York: Penguin Books, 2003), 123–​76. Freud points out that while unheimlich typically translates into English as “uncanny” or “eerie” it literally means “unhomely.” In this way, the unheimlich is deeply connected to a memory, real or imagined, of a home, and by extension nostalgia. See Freud, The Uncanny, 123–​4. 12 Freud, The Uncanny, 123. 13 T.W. Galow cites The Return’s “Monica Belluci Dream” sequence as a key moment that implicates the viewers in the meta-​filmic voyeurism of trauma in Twin Peaks. See Timothy William Galow, “From Lost Highway to Twin Peaks: Representations of Trauma and Transformation in Lynch’s Late Works,” in Critical Essays on Twin Peaks:  The Return, ed. Antonio Sanna (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 202–​3. 14 Rachel Joseph, “ ‘I’ll See You in the Trees’: Trauma, Intermediality, and the Pacific Northwest Weird,” in Approaching Twin Peaks: Critical Essays on the Original Series, ed. Eric Hoffman and Dominick Grace (Jefferson, NC:  McFarland Publishing, 2017), 67–​8. 15 Ron Rodman pointed out to me this instrumentation and its relevance to nostalgia. 16 Ron Rodman provides a different reading of the opening gesture of the Twin Peaks theme. He describes the bass line as a twangy musical allusion to the rural setting. The synthesizer arpeggio and subsequent melody alternatively connote romantic melodrama of soap operas. See Ron Rodman, Tuning In: American Narrative Television Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 284–​5. 17 Robynn Stilwell, “The Fantastical Gap Between Diegetic and Nondiegetic,” in Beyond the Soundtrack:  Representing Music in Cinema, ed. Daniel Goldmark, Lawrence Kramer, and Richard Leppert (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2007), 184–​202. 18 This cue appears at time code 1:16:50. This cue, characterized by the drum set using brushes in a jazz style and a bending clarinet whine, resembles other cues like “Freshly Squeezed” and “Bookhouse Boys” that appear on the series’ soundtrack. 19 It is as if “Falling” is somehow related to the Rodgers and Hart song “Where or When” Cooper references prior to the cut to the Twin Peaks establishing shot with Laura. He compares the murder mystery and its recurrence as relevant to the song’s lyrics. 20 In his book on David Lynch, Chion discusses the theme of falling across different Lynch works. In particular he cites Dorothy Vallens’ (Isabella Rossellini) scream of “I’m falling” in Blue Velvet. See Michel Chion, David Lynch, trans. Robert Julian (London: British Film Institute, 1995), 117. 21 This is also the name of the estates where the couple Dougie Jones and Jade have their tryst. Mark Frost reportedly named it after an obscure film he enjoyed. 22 This aesthetic approach favoring sound over semantics is also apparent in the bar scene for Fire Walk With Me that utilizes subtitles while the cue “The Pink Room” drones on.

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23 Bells of course can symbolize a variety of things; in the realm of Western music, bells have been associated with everything from the religious, such as the church ceremonies (Tosca, Boris Gudunov, etc.) to frolicking cows (Mahler, Symphony 6). In Buddhism, bells have historically been used in meditation and ceremonies as well as serving practical functions such as marking the passage of time, calling monks to service, or warning of attacks. 24 The name of Sheryl Lee’s character Maddy Ferguson is also a clear reference to another psychological thriller centered around a doppelgänger:  Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. 25 The uncanny electrical repetition of the record player is also a predecessor for the later repetition of the television excerpt in episode 17 of The Return, during which Sarah Palmer, possessed by Judy, madly stabs Laura’s homecoming photo. For more on the connection between electricity and violence, see Kingsley Marshall and Rupert Loydell, “Listen to the Sounds:  Sound and Storytelling in Twin Peaks: The Return,” in Critical Essays on Twin Peaks: The Return, ed. Antonio Sanna (Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 269–​80. 26 Chion points out that this use of a song during a murder is a very common technique. He relates that La Chienne, Cloak and Dagger, and An American Werewolf in London all accompany murder with a song. Chion, Film, A Sound Art, 429. 27 See David Sweeney, “ ‘I’ll Point You to a Better Time/​A Safer Place to Be’: Music, Nostalgia, and Estrangement in Twin Peaks: The Return,” in Critical Essays on Twin Peaks: The Return, ed. Antonio Sanna (Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 281–​96. 28 Chion, Film, A Sound Art, 435.

Works Cited Chion, Michel. Film:  A Sound Art. Translated by Claudia Gorbman. New  York: Columbia University Press, 2009. —​—​—​. David Lynch. Translated by Robert Julian. London:  British Film Institute, 1995. Davis, Fred. Yearning for Yesterday:  Nostalgia, Art, and Society. New  York:  Free Press, 1979. Freud, Sigmund. Beyond the Pleasure Principle. Translated by James Stachey. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2015. —​—​—​. “The Uncanny.” In The Uncanny. Translated by David McLintock, 123–​76. New York: Penguin Books, 2003. Galow, Timothy William. “From Lost Highway to Twin Peaks:  Representations of Trauma and Transformation in Lynch’s Late Works.” In Critical Essays on Twin Peaks:  The Return. Edited by Antonio Sanna, 201–​ 19. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. Hara, Kunio. Joe Hisaishi’s Soundtrack for My Neighbor Totoro. New  York: Bloomsbury Press, 2020. Jordan, Randolph. “Three Soundtrack Albums and a Record Player:  A Twin Peaks Music Review (Sort of).” Off/​Screen 21, no. 11–​ 12 (December 2017). Available at:  https://​offscreen.com/​view/​threesoundtrack-​albums-​and-​a-​record-​ player-​a-​twin-​peaks-​music-​review.

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—​ —​ —​ . “Starting from Scratch:  Turntables, Auditory Representation, and the Structure of the Known Universe in the Films of David Lynch.” Master’s Thesis, Concordia University, 2003. Joseph, Rachel. “’I’ll See You in the Trees’:  Trauma, Intermediality, and the Pacific Northwest Weird.” In Approaching Twin Peaks:  Critical Essays on the Original Series. Edited by Eric Hoffman and Dominick Grace, 65–​80. Jefferson, NC: McFarland Publishing, 2017. Marshall, Kingsley and Rupert Loydell. “Listen to the Sounds: Sound and Storytelling in Twin Peaks: The Return.” In Critical Essays on Twin Peaks: The Return. Edited by Antonio Sanna, 269–​80. Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. Mazzariello, Andrea. One More Revolution. Brooklyn, NY:  The Operating System, 2018. McGowan, Todd. The Impossible David Lynch. New  York:  Columbia University Press, 2007. Rodman, Ron. Tuning In: American Narrative Television Music. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. Stilwell, Robynn. “The Fantastical Gap Between Diegetic and Nondiegetic.” In Beyond the Soundtrack:  Representing Music in Cinema. Edited by Daniel Goldmark, Lawrence Kramer, and Richard Leppert, 184–​ 202. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2007. Sweeney, David. “ ‘I’ll Point You to a Better Time/​A Safer Place to Be’:  Music, Nostalgia, and Estrangement in Twin Peaks: The Return.” In Critical Essays on Twin Peaks: The Return. Edited by Antonio Sanna, 281–​96. Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. Wissner, Reba. “No Time Like the Past: Hearing Nostalgia in The Twilight Zone.” Journal of Popular Television 6, no. 1 (2018): 59–​80.

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4 THE BANG BANG BAR, SILENCIO, AND LYNCH’S AUDIENCES Meaning and Musical Performance in Twin Peaks: The Return Katherine M. Reed

In the summer of 2017, Twin Peaks: The Return transported viewers back to the fictional world of Twin Peaks, Washington, frustrating and fascinating fans –​and, of course, leading to extensive debates over the new series’ structure, meaning, and every production choice. Though very little of David Lynch and Mark Frost’s The Return followed expectations, one constant did recur:  the Roadhouse performances ending many episodes. Most episodes were marked by a live performance on the stage of the Roadhouse; most of these came from bands who exist in our own world, not just the narrative of the show. These Roadhouse scenes received a fair amount of attention from fans and critics alike:  did these vignettes have secret meanings? Just what was going on at the Twin Peaks Roadhouse? From the Chromatics to Eddie Vedder, the Roadhouse’s call sheet was eclectic. It featured familiar Lynch collaborators like Nine Inch Nails and Rebekah Del Rio, while also tipping its hat to more contemporary dream pop, as with Au Revoir Simone. Notably, Twin Peaks’ own performance history also reappeared in the guise of James Hurley, Audrey Horne, and Julee Cruise. It is not incidental that the diverse Roadhouse performances garnered so much fan attention:  its performances and visual style are intended to directly engage with the audience and the world outside of Twin Peaks. In his other works, Lynch has played with the boundaries between the narrative action on screen and our role as spectator; musical performance tends to be a tool by which he draws the spectator into the plot, implicating us in its action. Here, though, Lynch and Frost open the world of Twin Peaks outward, questioning our nostalgic view of the town and the show and bringing it much closer to our own world. It seems in many ways to directly address the audience’s desire for a return to the experience of the original Twin Peaks

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run, what we might call an “archive desire.” As Jacques Derrida writes, this shows the pull of “a return to the authentic and singular origin, and for a return concerned to account for the desire to return:  for itself.”1 In many ways, the Roadhouse returns ask us to examine precisely this archive desire in ourselves.

The Roadhouse and Lynchian Musical Performance A performance space situated on the edge of the show’s narrative world (geographically and chronologically within the span of each episode), the Roadhouse’s liminality opens it yet more to this sort of reflection. Indeed, Michael Andor Brodeur called the Roadhouse “a place between places,” reflecting on its liminality in an article published even before the completion of The Return.2 Such in-​between spaces and places are hallmarks of Lynchian film, and of Twin Peaks in particular. As Carlotta Susca writes, “in Twin Peaks, otherworldly places are characterized by peculiar colors and film editing.”3 Susca goes on to describe the sound and movement of the Black Lodge and The Return’s convenience store as integral filmmaking decisions that set them apart from the rest of the Twin Peaks world. We might expand on Susca’s formulation, arguing that it is a manipulation of the audience’s engagement with these spaces (via visual and aural cues) that marks them as otherworldly. The same is true of the Roadhouse’s musical performances, though they are neither shot in black and white, nor sped up, nor do they feature the reversed speech typical of the Red Room. Instead, the performances are shot in more conventional ways, typically as presentational rather than participatory moments.4 Using familiar performers and songs (frequently identified by the emcee before their performance), Lynch shoots these sequences differently than the other performances in his oeuvre, turning the Roadhouse into a boundary space shared between the show’s world and our own. It’s notable that the Roadhouse performances were not in the initial screenplay that Lynch shared with sound collaborator Dean Hurley. According to Hurley, their addition was meant to function as a sort of “punctuation” for the series’ episodes, giving a more televisual structure to an opus Lynch (along with many critics) seems to have viewed as an 18-​hour film.5 Hurley does not mention whether all the Roadhouse performances were late additions; one imagines that James Hurley and Audrey Horne were scheduled from the start, given the centrality of their characters and appearances. Regardless, the inclusion of these many performances helps to expand on a thread from the first two seasons:  the liminality of musical performance, particularly in the case of Leland Palmer’s musicality. In that first run, diegetic musical performance tended to serve as a harbinger of the influence of BOB and the Black Lodge. Here in The Return, performance spaces deal not with the

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boundary between normal reality and evil spaces in Twin Peaks, but instead with the space between Twin Peaks and our lived experience. Countless shows have used band performances in synergistic ways before.6 For each of those series, these performances broke from the existing structure of the show. Many appear in settings that are marked as outside the ordinary setting or situations of the series. Almost all highlight a band that was, at the time of airing, popular or up-​and-​coming, and which would be easily marketable to the audience of the show. The Return follows none of these economic trends (opting instead for performers who share Lynch’s outsider status or are recurring collaborators);7 however, I see these particular instances as operating somewhat similarly in visual style. The Roadhouse performances feel so noteworthy in part because they look different, they have a different visual rhythm than do other Lynchian musical moments. Specifically, they are shot more like a concert performance, with much less interaction between music and onscreen audience. In playing on an existing televisual trope from other shows, Lynch and Frost mark these moments as different and separate from the rest of The Return, asking the audience to respond differently. This difference is, in large part, determined by the peculiarities of Lynch’s style and his body of work prior to The Return. Lynch is tapping into a favorite trope which reappears throughout his oeuvre: the performance of a familiar song by characters within the diegesis. This formula is so prevalent in Lynch’s work as to attract much scholarly attention: Gene Willet has discussed Lynch’s use of popular music as a catalyst for the shift into Lacanian fantasy,8 while Mike Miley has pinpointed rock music in Wild at Heart as central to the film’s treatment of music as a “generative force.”9 Indeed, music and its performance permeate Lynch’s work, often taking center stage within the narrative. Typically providing us with an onscreen surrogate through whom to understand the performance, Lynch plays with our connections to his chosen pre-​existing music while giving us a lens through which to make sense of the scene, and to enter more deeply into the narrative world of his work.10 A representative example can be found in Mulholland Drive (2001): we (the film’s audience) watch Rebekah Del Rio’s performance of “Llorando” through the eyes of onscreen audience Betty and Rita. Their reactions help to shape our own, while also giving us a lens through which to interpret the structure of the film, at this pivotal shift between fantasy narrative and reality. Lynch’s careful construction of that particular Mulholland Drive performance helps the audience to understand the convoluted plot of the film through the construction of audience surrogates in Rita and Betty. At pivotal moments in the song’s lyrical content, Lynch directs our attention to the parallels between the song and the relationship between Betty and Rita. Such focus on an audience surrogate to guide interpretation and bring the audience into the performance is

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typical of Lynch’s filmic work and many performances in the first season of Twin Peaks. Though musical performance was always a part of Twin Peaks, particularly through the voice of Julee Cruise, those original series performances functioned a bit differently than do The Return’s. As Kathryn Kalinak has noted of the original Twin Peaks, the series’ music “gains its power by activating powerful conventions embodied in [film and television] models and then both transgressing and reconstructing them.”11 The Return plays with the expectations set by the original series, drawing on twofold connections (to the songs and performers, and to Lynch’s own work) in order to complicate our experience. In a show obsessed with returns (of the Laura Palmer case, our changed cast of characters, and mysteries as yet unsolved), these musical performers frequently represent return, albeit of a different sort. Of the performances at the Roadhouse, I will focus on three particularly notable returns: James Hurley’s reprise of “Just You,” first heard in the show’s second season; Audrey Horne’s return to “Audrey’s Dance”; and Rebekah Del Rio’s “No Stars.” This particular Del Rio song had not been heard in earlier Lynch works, but Del Rio herself has, in the striking centerpiece of Lynch’s 2001 film Mulholland Drive mentioned above. Each of these earlier scenes  –​ James’s and Audrey’s original performances, and Del Rio’s in Mulholland Drive  –​are invoked and changed in The Return. We might see James and Audrey’s performances as intradiegetic callbacks, while Del Rio’s is interdiegetic, connecting two Lynchian worlds. Through close readings of each pair, this chapter explores the changed narrative function of musical performance in The Return. This approach presents one potential problem:  how can this reading make sense for first-​time viewers of the show, who would not have the same memorative mark of earlier performances? Of course, it’s possible to watch Twin Peaks:  The Return without any prior knowledge of Lynch’s works. I  would argue, however, that such a viewing is not Lynch’s ideal. To bastardize Umberto Eco’s concept of the model reader, I propose that Lynch’s series posits an ideal viewer: one with a deep knowledge of the original series, and indeed of Lynch’s films, style, and history of using popular music.12 While others can certainly watch and enjoy the series, the ideal viewer will make the connections Lynch lays out.13 In visual allusions, character interactions, and reused footage, The Return makes itself very difficult to watch without reference to the 1990–​91 episodes. Twin Peaks has long been concerned with the passage of time and this focus continues through Mark Frost’s summation of the story’s history in The Final Dossier.14 Given this, I approach these scenes from the position of a repeat viewer of the show, drawing connections among episodes, though I acknowledge that this is not the sole possible spectator position.

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Music and Spectator Position in Twin Peaks The relationship between the viewer and narrative world of Twin Peaks was central to the show’s appeal from the outset. As John Richardson notes, the cypher of Laura Palmer and the viewer’s carefully controlled relationship to her, through sound and vision, represents part of the allure of the show’s original run. Indeed, “a large part of what made Twin Peaks tick in dramatic and specifically audio-​visual terms was precisely the tantalizing and apparently unbridgeable distance created by Lynch between Laura and the viewing and listening subject.”15 While the character of Laura is not the focus of this chapter, the contrast between this treatment and the evolving treatment of musical performance in The Return points to some of the disjunction commented upon by reviewers and audiences. The Return felt different than did the original series, in part because Lynch and company positioned the audience in new and different ways relative to the narrative. This new audience–​narrative relationship plays on the liminal spaces of Twin Peaks. From the show’s first season, the Roadhouse is shown as a space of transition. Most notably in Julee Cruise’s performances, the real and the supernatural collide here. In “Lonely Souls” (Season 2, Episode 7), for example, Donna and James flirt along with Cruise’s performance of “Rockin’ Back Inside My Heart,” while later in that set, The Giant returns to give a warning. Beyond the instances at the Roadhouse, musical performance permeates the original run of Twin Peaks. Leland Palmer in particular performs repeatedly. These performances are framed for their oddness  –​as, for example, when Leland, at the Great Northern Hotel, sings “Getting to Know You” (“Demons,” Season 2, Episode 6). His voice intrudes upon Ben Horne’s meeting, drawing him and all who hear it to gather round and stare. Much like Leland’s “Mairzy Doats” and “Get Happy,” this performance is shown to have a worrying effect on its audience and to act as a break from Leland’s known character, a break echoed in his physical transformation to stark white hair. From Ben Horne, we see a clear reaction to these musical outbursts: they represent a change in his business partner and a liability for their business dealings. Indeed, Leland’s outbursts are treated as suspect by all around him, whether that musicality takes the form of singing or dancing. One could read these moments as the seemingly inappropriate reactions of a father still reeling from the murder of his daughter, but given the reveal of Leland’s relationship to BOB as well as his friends’ reactions to these musical moments, they seem to have greater significance. We might see them as outbursts of BOB in Leland’s public life. (A yet more direct example comes in “Drive With a Dead Girl” [Season 2, Episode  8], as Leland loads Maddy’s body into the trunk of his car and drives off humming “Surrey With the Fringe on Top.”) These moments highlight the oddness of Leland’s behavior and

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position him as Other in relation to the rest of Twin Peaks. Indeed, musicality in this first run marks liminality or otherness: Julee Cruise exists only in her otherworldly Roadhouse singing; Gersten Hayward’s dinner party piano performance seems to open Leland to BOB’s presence; and Donna, James, and Maddy’s “Just You” does the same for BOB’s appearance moments later in that episode. There’s music in the air, but it rarely marks normal occasions for Twin Peaks residents. Similarly, the Roadhouse operates as gateway in The Return, connecting to our real world through vignettes that force the viewer to approach the performance not by identifying with a character inside the scene, but by grappling with the way that Lynch and the work point directly to the viewer and their consumption of the show. Rather than focusing on liminality between the real and the supernatural within Twin Peaks, the audience is now forced to confront the permeable border between Twin Peaks and our own world, not to mention our role in seeking to return to watch this disturbing narrative unfold.

James Hurley, “Just You” The original “Just You” is sung in the second season of Twin Peaks by James, Donna Hayward, and Maddy Ferguson. Singing in the Hayward living room, the three perform for no audience but each other. The song is presented as a simple (if melodramatic) expression of teenage love, and its musical expression is built to match. “Just You” begins with a simple guitar riff that will serve as the counter-​melody for James’ repetitive vocal line in the first verse. The sound of the song in this first performance is unnatural, with vocal echoes on James’s line and phantom instruments  –​drums and bass which aren’t present on screen. In line with the song’s lyrical content, the scene shows the growing feelings Donna has for James, brought to the fore by James’s love song. As Michel Chion notes, James and Donna are both characters whose legibility as types allows them to “enable identification” for the audience and draw us deeper into their drama.16 Lynch’s careful use of reaction shots, which I chart more fully in Figure 4.1, accomplishes much the same. In films from Blue Velvet to Mulholland Drive, Lynch uses a similar tactic. In each, musical performances operate as moments of deeper immersion for the films’ audiences. We are drawn into the scene through the careful construct of an audience surrogate. That surrogate models a reaction to the performance for us and, through Lynch’s manipulation of shot-​reverse shot conventions, implicates us in that reaction and in the scene itself. Donna’s reaction is documented in just such a way, establishing our identification with her and giving us (the audience) a point of entry into the world of the scene. Lynch shows us James as Donna perceives him and invites us to join in that perception. In this way,

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FIGURE 4.1 

Form and visual choices in “Just You,” Season 2 versus The Return

the original “Just You” performance aligns with Lynch’s filmic approach to musical scenes. In The Return, however, the song operates differently, both evoking and challenging its original presentation. We witness “Just You” through the eyes of an underdeveloped character, Renee (Jessica Szohr), whose backstory is unknown to the audience. She, like Donna before her, watches James’s performance and reacts almost too dramatically. Given the lack of information about the character, though, we are unable to identify with her engagement in the performance as we did with Donna. Rather, we can see her reaction as a reflection of Donna’s, and the performance as a clear and direct echo of the original. This poses an important problem: within the “real world” of Twin Peaks’ narrative, it would be impossible for “Just You” to be recreated so faithfully in sound and vision, and there would be no common audience between the original performance and this Roadhouse one that could recognize these deliberate echoes. Despite the fact that this sequence is not shot in an overtly presentational way (engaging as it does with Renee), we see it as staged for us (the show’s audience) rather than for Renee within the diegesis. The end result is that, rather than being drawn deeper into the insular diegesis of the show, we are forced to confront these performances as existing in our own world, for us, as we can draw these connections and recognize them immediately while the Twin Peaks characters cannot. In this dichotomy, Lynch embraces the idea of the Roadhouse as a liminal space, which seems to transgress the boundaries of Twin Peaks’ narrative as we have come to know it –​a space between the reality of The Return and our own. “Just You” illustrates this liminality perfectly. First, through the sound of the song: The Return uses the same recording from Season Two, as many online commenters immediately noticed. Indeed, actor James Marshall

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himself was surprised at Lynch’s reuse of the recording without any editing.17 Just as Mark Mazullo has described in the original iteration, this recording again makes its remove from live performance felt very clearly.18 In this new performance, there’s yet another remove: the presence of our memory of the original, and this performance’s very direct doubling of it. That doubling is not only musical, but also visual. Accompanying James on stage are two young brunette singers, dressed in cardigans and strikingly reminiscent of Donna and Maddy. More than that, though, Lynch frames this sequence to subvert our expectations, built from our repeated experience of the original. As Figure 4.1 shows, Lynch shoots the opening of the performance similarly:  showing James performing, and his love interest responding. It is in the second verse, though, that The Return forces us to confront the falseness of our nostalgic reading. Lynch gives a wide shot of the entire stage, revealing the Maddy and Donna dopplegängers. We’re confronted with an image of James, aged more than 25 years since the original performance, as we hear his voice from the 1990 recording and see the reflection of his former youthfulness in the female singers. Here Lynch inserts wide shots of the audience, dark and anonymous, further shattering the illusion that we could somehow witness the return of the childlike, intimate original performance. In conjunction with Renee’s incongruously intense crying, we are unable to enter the scene by identifying with her and are instead left to grapple with the distance from which we, and The Return, regard the memory of Twin Peaks. This sequence questions the audience’s very desire for return, by showing us the original, archived performance in the only way it could exist today: fundamentally altered and no longer the innocent teenage expression it once seemed. Lynch’s Return thus questions our archive desire. How can we return to a moment, now unavoidably changed by the passage of time, and what does that desire for return reveal?

“No Stars”: Lynchian Chanteuses Similarly, at the end of The Return’s episode 10, another familiar face appears onstage at Roadhouse: Rebekah Del Rio. Unlike James Hurley, Del Rio is not familiar to Lynch and Frost’s audience from the world of Twin Peaks –​ rather, her entry into the Lynchian cosmology comes from 2001’s Mulholland Drive. Thus, even more than James’s performance, the appearance of Rebekah del Rio links a Lynchian audience directly to our own world, and indeed to the fandom’s own hypothesizing: Her “No Stars” (co-​written by Lynch) seems simultaneously to comment on Laura Palmer’s tragedy and to call back to Del Rio’s startling “Llorando” performance from Mulholland Drive, a connection only available to those able to experience both works. Here in The Return, Lynch does not build identification and clarity within the diegesis as he did in Del Rio’s Mulholland Drive performance, but instead

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expands his show’s world out into our own, much as we saw with “Just You.” Del Rio does not receive the emcee introduction typical of these performances. Instead, we are given a shot of the moon, with carefully constructed Twin Peaks wind sounds dovetailing in the mix as Del Rio’s backing band enters, which takes us to an establishing shot of the Roadhouse.19 Del Rio herself is introduced in a medium shot, slowly pushing in to a closeup. Lynch then shows the entire stage in brief medium shot before returning to a closeup of Del Rio’s expressive face. We’re then given the briefest of shots of the audience –​shown to be anonymous and unrecognizable, as in James’s performance. The remainder of the performance is documented in alternating full stage shots and closeups which frame Del Rio from alternating sides. In stark contrast to the Mulholland Drive sequence, Del Rio’s performance here is documented as it might be in a concert film. Here Del Rio is (as far as we can tell) actually singing rather than lip-​syncing. Where Mulholland Drive invited us to enter the scene by identifying with the reactions of Rita and Betty, The Return shows us a performance in which we (and the camera) are the audience –​an outward-​facing presentational performance, a system open to the broader world rather than a closed one within the film.20 The openness of that system encompasses our memory, too. Here, Del Rio is costumed in a way self-​consciously reflective of both her Mulholland Drive performance, and the mythology of Twin Peaks itself. Her dress and bolero combination echo the Silencio costuming, while the dress’s black and white chevron print, surrounded by the red curtains of the stage, clearly evokes the Black Lodge (see Figure 4.1). These costuming choices haunt the performance, invoking the dark powers present in each of those nebulous narrative spaces. In Club Silencio, the delusions of our main character, Betty/​Diane, begin to break down –​in part because Del Rio’s performance shows their falsity. In the Black Lodge, the characters we know from the reality of Twin Peaks traverse a nightmare labyrinth, where people speak in odd cadences and are not what they seem. Of course, the denizens of the Roadhouse do not have these points of reference; for them a chevron is only a chevron. These winks to the audience of The Return, not the diegetic audience, help to reinforce the Roadhouse as boundary space –​outside the narrative confines of Twin Peaks and so able to comment upon it. It also comments on our own memory and desire for a return, questioning the archive desire of The Return’s audience through manipulation within the text itself.

“Audrey’s Dance”: Performance and Perception This archive desire is most clearly manifested in the conclusion of episode 16. By this point in the series, the “punctuation” function of the Roadhouse performances was well established:  the episode’s action would move to

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the Roadhouse, where a musical performance by an artist familiar to the audience would take us to the final credits. In episode 16, though, that familiar formula was broken in a striking way. We are still treated to a final Roadhouse performance, but here our focus is not on the musicians, but a dancer: Audrey Horne, a lynchpin of the first two seasons, has finally returned to the Roadhouse to perform her eponymous dance. Rather than continue through the credits, though, the dance is jarringly interrupted: Lynch cuts to Audrey in a stark white space. Brightly lit, she appears shocked, seeing only her own face in a small mirror. Audrey and the audience are ripped from their reverie into a harsh, unfamiliar new reality. Though this transition is never explained within The Return, Mark Frost’s The Final Dossier may make reference to her fate, noting that Audrey’s current whereabouts are unknown, though there are “troubling rumors” that, following the breakdown of her marriage, she may have been checked into a “private care facility.”21 If we take The Final Dossier as accurate, The Return’s “Audrey’s Dance” might be read as a moment outside of reality, wherein Audrey relives fragments of her past before being ripped back into her uncomfortable present. Thematically, then, we might see “Audrey’s Dance” as, in some ways, similar to the previously discussed Roadhouse performances. Like both, her display is intended to call back to earlier presentational moments. Unlike these previous performances, Audrey’s moment moves in more oblique ways, connecting the show’s past, the character’s lived reality, and the audiences’ expectations in confounding ways. “Audrey’s Dance” is, perhaps, one of the clearer distillations of Lynch and Frost’s complex negotiations among their text, its history, and its growth outside of their hands that is presented in The Return. Visually, “Audrey’s Dance” is a sort of double callback: in its treatment of the performer and audience, it is linked to the previous Roadhouse performances. In visual style, though, “Audrey’s Dance” calls back to its own history. The musical cue here is, of course, that originally presented in the Double R. Diner in Season 1, Episode 4, which Audrey Horne calls “too dreamy” just before she begins the titular dance. In that original scene as in this one, the audience matters little to the performer. In that original version, other diner patrons are shown as uncomfortable, while the music itself connotes some tension. As Ron Rodman describes it, “the sinister [dissonant] sound of the music foreshadows Killer Bob, the force of evil revealed later in the series. The cue ‘Audrey’s Dance’ decenters the narrative temporarily while at the same time reinforcing it and foreshadowing its outcome.”22 In The Return, any such foreshadowing is blunted, as it is impossible to hear “Audrey’s Dance” without linking to the carefree teen iteration. Beyond that, the most dissonant section of the theme is reached only seconds before the scene’s startling conclusion. “Audrey’s Dance” is so effective and unnerving here because of the way Lynch has set up our expectations for a Roadhouse performance –​over 16

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episodes, as well as the preceding 25 years. The bones of the performance are extremely familiar. Audrey enters the Roadhouse with her husband Charlie and, standing by the bar, is called into the center of the floor by the emcee’s voice. Her performance is documented in just the way that previous episode-​ closing performances had been:  the camera lovingly follows her familiar, languid dance, interspersed with anonymous shots of the swaying audience. Here the camera becomes Audrey’s dance partner, swooping and circling her playful dance. Interestingly, there are no cuts within the musical cue: the opening vamp is extended, compared to the first performance of “Audrey’s Dance,” but otherwise it moves as expected, musically. However, Lynch cuts to different angles on Audrey, each losing some visual but not aural time. These moves foreshadow the breakdown of reality that is about to present itself. Here, even in the rewarding return of a beloved character to her own history, we cannot trust the solidity of the Roadhouse’s reality. In each of the previous episodes, Lynch lingers on the performers for longer than may be strictly necessary: we are shown the entire performance of a song as the credits begin to roll. With Audrey, though, that performance is cut violently short when Roadhouse patron Monique’s husband interrupts her performance with violence, moving her from the dance floor to an empty white space, where she is clearly in distress rather than the blissful state shown in the “Audrey’s Dance” performance. This sharp shift is painful, particularly as it cuts off a moment that could be read as fan service. Having denied the audience an extended scene with Audrey up until this point, Lynch jarringly shatters this potentially nostalgic moment with a fan favorite character. Indeed, the moment itself seems to comment upon Lynch’s approach to performance and The Return more broadly, particularly as regards the fan relationship to the television text. As Rebecca Williams has written, fan engagement with Twin Peaks changed drastically once the original series ended. No longer able to structure fan life around weekly episodes and theorizing, online fan communities switched to what Williams terms “post-​object fandom,” reflecting and expanding on the original works.23 In this post-​object fandom, the desire for a return to Twin Peaks not only grew, but was forced to contain the desires of 25  years of fandom nostalgia. In scenes like The Return’s “Audrey’s Dance,” that desire for return takes center stage.

Conclusion Each Roadhouse performance operates a bit differently, but all play into this opening of the world of Twin Peaks, which felt isolated and out of time in the original run. With teenagers in cardigans and bobby socks, listening to “dreamy,” jazzy clarinets, Twin Peaks conformed more to Lynch’s filmic Americana than to 1990 television reality. As in Blue Velvet and Wild at

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Heart, the original run of Twin Peaks presented characters whose lives seemed like lived nostalgia: flattened to a few cultural touchpoints, with a surface that sometimes revealed the deep chasms below. To judge from some of the public’s response to The Return, some only remembered that flattened surface. Such a reaction could have been foretold (and, was, in satirical pieces like Colin Dray’s).24 The static ideal of Twin Peaks does not survive in The Return. Indeed, it seems purposefully destined not to. We might read in Lynch and Frost’s approach to these Roadhouse returns a sort of “archive desire,” “a return concerned to account for the desire to return: for itself.”25 Throughout The Return, Lynch and Frost shatter our nostalgic, static view of the original Twin Peaks as a hermetically sealed world, but it is in these Roadhouse performances that the passage of time, in Twin Peaks as in the real world, is most clearly communicated, and our nostalgia for the Twin Peaks of our memory is questioned as that relationship between our world and that of Twin Peaks is affirmed.

Notes 1 Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever:  A Freudian Impression, trans. Eric Prenowitz (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 85. 2 Michael Andor Brodeur, “On Twin Peaks, the Roadhouse is More than Just a Haunt,” Boston Globe, July 27, 2017. Available at:  www.bostonglobe.com/​ arts/​ t elevision/ ​ 2 017/ ​ 0 7/ ​ 2 7/ ​ t win- ​ p eaks- ​ roadhouse- ​ m ore- ​ t han- ​ j ust- ​ h aunt/​ PbiHkzVimumvA4TWDQmovM/​story.html (accessed August 7, 2019). 3 Carlotta Susca, “When You See Me Again, It Won’t Be Me: Twin Peaks from the Multichannel Era to the Digital Era,” International Journal of TV Serial Narratives 4, no. 2 (Winter 2018), 109. 4 Thomas Turino, Music as Social Life:  The Politics of Participation (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 59. 5 Daniel Dylan Wray, “The Secrets Behind the Music of ‘Twin Peaks: The Return,’ ” Pitchfork, September 7, 2017. Available at: https://​pitchfork.com/​features/​article/​ the-​secrets-​behind-​the-​music-​of-​twin-​peaks-​the-​return (accessed August 6, 2019). 6 See, for example, the Shins’ performance on Gilmore Girls’ spring break episode (season 4, episode 17, “Girls in Bikinis, Boys Doin’ the Twist”) or the Beach Boys on Full House (season 2, episode 6, “Beach Boy Bingo”). 7 For more on this topic, see Martha Schulenberg’s chapter in this collection. 8 Gene Willet, “Popular Music as Fantasy in David Lynch,” in Popular Music and the New Auteur:  Visionary Filmmakers After MTV, ed. Arved Ashby (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 87–​108. 9 Mike Miley, “David Lynch at the Crossroads: Deconstructing Rock, Reconstructing Wild at Heart,” Music and the Moving Image 7, no. 3 (Fall 2014), 41. 10 For more on this practice in Lynch’s films, see Katherine Reed, “ ‘We Cannot Content Ourselves with Remaining Spectators’: Musical Performance, Audience Interaction, and Nostalgia in the Films of David Lynch,” Music and the Moving Image 9, no. 1 (Spring 2016): 3–​22.

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11 Kathryn Kalinak, “ ‘Disturbing the Guests with This Racket’: Music and Twin Peaks,” in Full of Secrets: Critical Approaches to Twin Peaks, ed. David Lavery (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1995), 83. 12 Umberto Eco, The Role of the Reader (Bloomington, IN:  Indiana University Press, 1979), 9–​10. 13 Twin Peaks fan culture has long been structured around just such theorizing. See, for example, Henry Jenkins, “ ‘Do You Enjoy Making the Rest of Us Feel Stupid?’:  alt.tv.twinpeaks, the Trickster Author, and Viewer Mastery,” in Fans, Gamers, and Bloggers:  Exploring Participatory Culture (New  York:  New  York University Press, 2006), 115–​33. 14 The straightforward passage of time is, of course, complicated in much of Lynch’s work. See, for example, Adam Daniel, “Under the Skin of the World: The Multiversal Spaces of Twin Peaks,” Supernatural Studies vol. 5, no. 2 (2019), 58. 15 John Richardson, “Laura and Twin Peaks:  Postmodern Parody and the Musical Reconstruction of the Absent Femme Fatale,” in The Cinema of David Lynch:  American Dreams, Nightmare Visions, ed. Annette Davison and Erica Sheen (London: Wallflower Press, 2004), 78. 16 Michel Chion, David Lynch, trans. Robert Julian (London: BFI, 2006), 101. 17 Pieter Dom, “How David Lynch, Angelo Badalamenti, and James Marshall Wrote James Hurley’s ‘Just You,’ ” Welcome to Twin Peaks, August 13, 2017. Available at:  https://​welcometotwinpeaks.com/​music/​james-​hurley-​just-​you/​ (accessed October 21, 2017). 18 Mark Mazullo, “Remembering Pop: David Lynch and the Sound of the ’60s,” American Music 23, no. 4 (Winter 2005): 493–​513. 19 This introduction recalls the framing of Julee Cruise’s Roadhouse performances in the original run of the series. 20 Turino, Music as Social Life, 55. 21 Mark Frost, The Final Dossier (New York: Flatiron Books, 2017), 32. 22 Ron Rodman, Tuning In: American Narrative Television Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 285. 23 Rebecca Williams, “Ontological Security, Authorship, and Resurrection: Exploring Twin Peaks’ Social Media Afterlife,” Cinema Journal 55, no. 3 (Spring 2016), 143. 24 Colin Dray, “ ‘Twin Peaks’: Flame Wars, Walk with Me,” Pop Matters, May 9, 2017. Available at: www.popmatters.com/​twin-​peaks-​flame-​wars-​walk-​with-​me-​ 2495392243.html (accessed August 6, 2019). 25 Derrida, Archive Fever, 85.

Works Cited Brodeur, Michael Andor. “On Twin Peaks, the Roadhouse is More Than Just a Haunt.” Boston Globe, July 27, 2017. Available at:  www.bostonglobe.com/​ arts/​ t elevision/​ 2 017/​ 0 7/​ 2 7/​ t win-​ p eaks-​ roadhouse-​ m ore-​ t han-​ j ust-​ h aunt/​ PbiHkzVimumvA4TWDQmovM/​story.html (accessed August 6, 2019). Chion, Michel. David Lynch. Translated by Robert Julian. London: BFI, 2006. Daniel, Adam. “Under the Skin of the World:  The Multiversal Spaces of Twin Peaks.” Supernatural Studies 5, no. 2 (2019), 58. Derrida, Jacques. Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression. Translated by Eric Prenowitz. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1998.

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Dom, Pieter. “How David Lynch, Angelo Badalamenti, and James Marshall Wrote James Hurley’s ‘Just You.’ ” Welcome to Twin Peaks, August 13, 2017. Available at:  https://​welcometotwinpeaks.com/​music/​james-​hurley-​just-​you/​ (accessed October 21, 2017). Dray, Colin. “ ‘Twin Peaks’:  Flame Wars, Walk with Me.” PopMatters, May 9, 2017. Available at:  www.popmatters.com/​twin-​peaks-​flame-​wars-​walk-​with-​me-​ 2495392243.html (accessed August 6, 2019). Eco, Umberto. The Role of the Reader. Bloomington, IN:  Indiana University Press, 1979. Frost, Mark. Twin Peaks: The Final Dossier. New York: Flatiron Books, 2017. Jenkins, Henry. “ ‘Do You Enjoy Making the Rest of Us Feel Stupid?’:  alt. tv.twinpeaks, the Trickster Author, and Viewer Mastery.” In Fans, Gamers, and Bloggers: Exploring Participatory Culture. New  York:  New  York University Press, 2006. Kalinak, Kathryn. “ ‘Disturbing the Guests with This Racket’:  Music and Twin Peaks.” In Full of Secrets: Critical Approaches to Twin Peaks. Edited by David Lavery, 82–​92. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1995. Mazullo, Mark. “Remembering Pop:  David Lynch and the Sound of the ’60s.” American Music 23, no. 4 (Winter 2005): 493–​513. Miley, Mike. “David Lynch at the Crossroads: Deconstructing Rock, Reconstructing Wild at Heart.” Music and the Moving Image 7, no. 3 (Fall 2014): 41–​60. Reed, Katherine. “ ‘We Cannot Content Ourselves with Remaining Spectators’: Musical Performance, Audience Interaction, and Nostalgia in the Films of David Lynch.” Music and the Moving Image 9, no. 1 (Spring 2016): 3–​22. Richardson, John. “Laura and Twin Peaks:  Postmodern Parody and the Musical Reconstruction of the Absent Femme Fatale.” In The Cinema of David Lynch: American Dreams, Nightmare Visions. Edited by Annette Davison and Erica Sheen, 77–​92. London: Wallflower Press, 2004. Rodman, Ron. Tuning In: American Narrative Television Music. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. Susca, Carlotta. “ ‘When You See Me Again, It Won’t Be Me’:  Twin Peaks from the Multichannel Era to the Digital Era.” International Journal of TV Serial Narratives 4, no. 2 (Winter 2018): 103–​10. Turino, Thomas. Music as Social Life:  The Politics of Participation. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2008. Willet, Gene. “Popular Music as Fantasy in David Lynch.” In Popular Music and the New Auteur: Visionary Filmmakers After MTV. Edited by Arved Ashby, 87–​108. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. Williams, Rebecca. “Ontological Security, Authorship, and Resurrection: Exploring Twin Peaks’ Social Media Afterlife.” Cinema Journal 55, no. 3 (Spring 2016): 143–​7. Wray, Daniel Dylan. “The Secrets Behind the Music of ‘Twin Peaks: The Return.’ ” Pitchfork, September 7, 2017. Available at: https://​pitchfork.com/​features/​article/​ the-​secrets-​behind-​the-​music-​of-​twin-​peaks-​the-​return (accessed August 6, 2019).

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5 THE MUSIC IS NOT WHAT IT SEEMS An Examination of Labor and Capital in the Music of Twin Peaks: The Return Series Martha Schulenburg

Introduction Coming back to The Roadhouse in 2017, we find that the familiar haunt of the citizens of Twin Peaks continues to be a venue for musical performances. Now, though, it hosts a greater variety of acts than we saw in the first series. The performers range from global stars to ensembles with niche-​appeal, though they share degrees of stylistic similarities. This expansion of the role of music in The Return corresponds to the aesthetic of David Lynch as a director, as well as the Twin Peaks original run. The appearance of live musicians who appear on the show forces the viewer to engage with their music—​songs are performed in their entirety and as diegetic music. This use of music functions as an exchange of social capital, following Pierre Bourdieu’s work on the forms of capital, between the show and the musicians who exist outside the realm of Twin Peaks, which serves to reinforce the cultural capital of both the show and the musicians. While cameo appearances by musicians on film and television are far from novel, the collaboration between the musicians and Lynch results in a more meaningful exchange of capital; in the more common instances, the appearance of musicians in television or film functions as an exchange of economic capital, where a major celebrity is well-​compensated to appear in a brief segment, or a more obscure act is compensated by the exposure opportunity in exchange for lending indie credibility to the show or film. Central to my argument will be an assertion that the musician’s social capital is comprised of the aggregate of their product’s value in the various sub-​divisions of cultural capital. While it could be argued that creators of televised or film media and musicians are alike regarding their means of

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producing non-​economic capital, Twin Peaks and Lynch are more staunchly within the realm of social capital for their being closely tied with avant-​garde filmmaking and their existence as a cult phenomenon. The role of the musician is more complicated, as in the Western world they are following a tradition that treated them as both producers and products. While this may not be inherently bad, the role becomes problematic when it inhibits artistic or creative growth and objectifies the musicians.1 For The Return, the power of Lynch and co-producer Mark Frost as auteurs has the potential to be overwhelming (rendering the performances as curations); however, such aesthetic domination is avoided through the dedicated segments of the episodes in which musical acts appear, who each sound as a magnification of the aesthetic qualities of Twin Peaks as a whole.

Music and Musicians Under Late Capitalism To read the appearances in Twin Peaks as equitable exchanges, the idea of music and musicians as having capital deserves further exploration. The 20th century saw a rapid and unprecedented change in the commodity status of music, where the role of the musician, already carrying over objectified roles from the 18th and 19th centuries, crossed over into the global, commercial realm. Music, referring exclusively to the sonic phenomenon (as opposed to printed music), took on a particular commodity status with the advent of audio recording technology, something to which it had never been subject before. The ability to capture the ephemeral transformed something that had been for millennia a social engagement into a solitary one. Timothy Taylor’s work on player pianos and the early music industry sums up the effect of music as a commodity separated from the musician: Advertising, how-​to guides, journalism, and other kinds of writings played and continue to play an important role not simply in shaping the meanings of commodities, but also in thrusting goods such as the player piano into the system of consumer capitalism. This process was at first more restricted to sound reproduction technologies, whose commodification and valorization is fairly straightforward compared to meanings that can spring up around musical sounds and styles … After the rise of mechanical and electrical reproduction technologies, the music-​commodity became a commodity in its own right apart from its mechanical means of reproduction, and apart from musical notation.2 Concerning the transformation of music into a commodity during the 19th–​20th centuries, Theodor Adorno offered some speculation as to the effects of recorded and commodified music. He found the industrial

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production of a formerly artisanal work created an objectively different product than the one made via traditional methods. These objects, Adorno contended, “no longer possess their traditional reality” regarding their aesthetic value.3 That is to say, the advent of recorded and marketed music was effectively society’s introduction to a new and different kind of music—​it could be heard in the homes, detached from the sounding bodies that produce it, permitting for the first time the formation of a subjective interpretation of the music by and for the listener, sans social context.4 The listener’s relationship with the music thus becomes a 1:1 ratio, while the performer is essentially negated from the music–​listener interaction.5 As he stated: “What the gramophone listener actually wants to hear is himself, and the artist merely offers him a substitute for the sounding image of his own person, which he would like to safeguard as a possession.”6 This raises a concern over the visibility of the performer—​early critics of recorded music feared that the masking of the performer robs them of their power as visible, laboring bodies.7 Looking at the path recorded music has taken over the past century or so, it would be fair to conclude that these prognostications have mostly come to be, given the development of devices designed for personal listening. This phenomenon is the total objectification of music, where its mechanical or industrial production and mass dissemination have transformed it from a social event into an object to be possessed for its socially and culturally recognized value—​ one can purchase music and listen to it without ever seeing the performers or engaging with it in a non-​solitary context. The objectification of music is expansive, but not unrestricted; instead, social interaction was and is still a primary medium of transmission for copious genres. Jazz, in particular, is noted for both owing much to aural transmission and being particularly resistant to objectification given the improvisatory nature of some of its subgenres. What is gained by the individual from recorded music is their reflection, an identity that they wish to curate for themselves projected onto an anonymous sound. Music as a commodity in this sense is an understandably disturbing thought, but this status is not unprecedented given the history of music and musicians in the West. The possession, as it were, of commodified music endows the owner with that which Bourdieu termed “social capital.”8 His work exploring the various forms of capital and, in the vein of Marx, how they undergird social life, yielded several postulations as to the various forms of capital, going beyond the purely economic or monetary realm. Cultural capital exists as the aggregate symbolic elements (such as aesthetic preferences, behavior, possessions, and learned skills) that indicate prestige, and has three subdivisions:  the embodied, referring to enculturated behaviors (i.e., something such as a regional accent); the objective, being the possession of objects; and the institutional, which we may broadly understand as credentials from association with institutions both concrete and ideological.

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Social capital, then, is defined by Bourdieu as: The aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are linked to possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition … which provides each of its members with the backing of the collectivity-​ owned capital, a “credential” which entitles them to credit, in the various senses of the word.9 These sorts of relationships can exist in exchanges of either the concrete or symbolic, and their existence is made apparent through group identification. Bourdieu also argues that the value of social capital is measured by the expanse of the relevant networks or relationships maintained by the owner. In the case of Twin Peaks and Lynch, social capital can be measured by the extensive collaborations with outside artists. That of the musicians who collaborated with Lynch can be measured by their statuses as non-​ mainstream, Top 40 artists and the aesthetic(s) of their music. These two groups together possess social capital that is inherently similar, comprised of a well-​known reputation for rejecting mainstream aesthetics in favor of experimental art and personal expression. While social capital and institutionalized capital may seem to bear a strong semblance to each other one should keep in mind that social capital does not necessarily indicate or bestow any credentials or promise of a learned ability, while the institutionalized state of capital is best thought of as deriving from academic affiliation—​the earning of recognition for what one has learned. At first glance, it is tempting to read the performances in The Return as an example of objective capital: music in Western society has been almost totally objectified via the mechanization of the (re)production of music as well as the devaluation of the role of the performer, even when granted visual place of pride. However, such an observation fails to account for the performer who chooses to pursue music without fame or stardom as a goal. For them, music still retains its value as a medium of artistic expression, for which it merits various degrees of capital aside from the objective. The musicians who appear in The Return, however, are not treated as objects that play a specific part in the plot, nor are they relegated to the role of glorified background music. Instead, the displaying of the performances in a way that emphasizes the presence of the musicians in the show reintroduces the sounding body to the audience/​viewers. Jacques Attali does concede that the musician who earns wages for his labor is indeed a subject of capitalism (they earn money from those who own the means of production), but it is apparent that they also assume the laborious task of demonstrating contemporary cultural values, even if those values demonstrated via song are not ones they themselves put into

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song as a medium of communication.10 Pop musicians, I would argue, are particularly adept at this, negotiating between the global pop music industry and Western society with its ever-​evolving, pluralistic tastes. Independent or non-​mainstream musicians negotiate between society and the market in a similar way, but in their rejection of working with hit songwriters and audio producers, their social capital may or may not be valuable to media corporations. It is there that the musicians who appear in The Return find themselves.

Collaboration and Exchange in The Return In tandem with these ways of conceptualizing music in contemporary Western society, we may then consider how musicians have been regularly featured on television since the 1950s, making cameo appearances and performing in a television series, or being featured on live performance programs. The television program possesses institutionalized capital in almost all of its manifestations; actors, writers, directors, and every other performer or artisan who is involved with a program brings to it their institutionalized capital: With … a certificate of cultural competence which confers on its holder a conventional, constant, legally guaranteed value with respect to culture, social alchemy produces a form of cultural capital which has a relative autonomy vis-​à-​vis its bearer and even vis-​à-​vis the cultural capital he effectively possesses at a given moment in time.11 Though Bourdieu’s concept of institutionalized capital is discussed primarily as an academic qualification or affiliation, an event or work such as a program or performance lends prestige to those who worked on or were affiliated with it. An actor who has a television program listed on their résumé is valued for their work displayed through the program. Thus, their objective capital is dependent on how much institutionalized capital they accrue. The institutional capital held by a television program is still able to benefit from exchanges with other forms of cultural capital, either gaining capital from more highly valued figures, or conferring capital onto lesser-​ valued figures. One instance of the former includes the Beach Boys appearing in Full House where the more celebrated, or highly valued, figure (the band) lends social capital to the show.12 Alternatively, in instances where less well-​known artists appear as characters within the plot, they are furnished with institutional capital by association with the show, while the program benefits from their appearance in that it will likely widen the program’s fan base to include those who are fans of the group but who would otherwise not be interested in the show. Such was the case with the appearance of the

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Icelandic band Sigur Rós, who portrayed a medieval minstrel group in Game of Thrones.13 In shows comprised of the performance and audience format (such as American Bandstand or Total Request Live), the exchange of capital maintains the paradigm where institutionalized capital on the part of the television program is afforded to the band or singer; the program benefits from association with the lesser-​known artist who carries a rarified form of objective capital. They are valued by the program for being outside of mainstream repertoire and will be credited if the band or singer then proceeds to gain widespread fame. The Return and the artists who perform in it could be read at first as being along the lines of a popular show collaborating with lesser-​known acts to lend the show value and acclaim from fans of staunchly independent artists, which I will henceforth refer to as indie credibility. A manifestation of social capital, indie credibility in the realm of popular music is an indication of how well the band or singer has maintained their individuality as an artist and largely avoided affiliation with major record companies that would heavily market their music. Normally, a collaboration between the musician and the record company will yield more economic capital than would be gained by the independent musician, but their indie credibility is strengthened by rejecting corporate curation and financial gain at the expense of their artistic freedom. Although the original series of Twin Peaks only ran from 1990 to 1991, it had a profound effect on Western popular culture: it has been referenced or spoofed in numerous other shows and films (including The Simpsons and Sesame Street) and has developed a cult following in the decades since its first ending. Suffice to say, the niche appeal of Lynch falls broadly within the range of cinephiles and those with an appreciation of the odd or avant-​garde art. The aesthetic in these groups is very much concerned with independence and authenticity as measured by a lack of association with corporate institutions or mainstream appeal. Concerning the aesthetic quality of Lynch’s work, he is arguably a surrealist in his approach to storytelling (or, lack thereof, sometimes) on camera, which tends to be met with confusion by the average viewer. However, Lynch is celebrated for his unorthodox approaches to narrativity and highly original takes on traditional plot devices. Specific techniques that garnered Lynch renown in his films are carried over into both the original and the 2017 Twin Peaks series—​in Eraserhead, for example, there is very little dialogue and a plot that unfolds in a non-​chronological order, aspects that were at play in The Return. Of the 13 musical performances that take place in the Roadhouse, eight are singers or ensembles that fall well within the category of indie rock, indicating that they are not signed to a major record label. It is no surprise that Lynch and Frost would try to search for independent artists to feature on the show, given the aesthetic of Lynch’s directing:  Lynch has a history of

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fruitful collaborations with musicians in his works, ranging from art music composers (Angelo Badalamenti) and global pop figures (David Bowie and Brian Eno) to independent artists (most of the musicians featured in the new series). In comparison, his films tend to draw upon a select pool of actors, with individuals such as Laura Dern, Sheryl Lee, and Kyle MacLachlan regularly appearing in his films. Instead of vying to enlist whatever actors are popular at any moment, Lynch frequently relies upon actors with whom he has collaborated in the past and who are open to the director’s sometime quite unusual demands. Collaboration in The Return veers away from that normally seen in television programs through the ways in which the musicians are presented in the course of the show. A common format for displaying musicians making cameo appearances in a show or film involves a cut to a new scene, with the music already taking place, simulating the effect of walking into a party late. In The Return, rather than a new scene appearing in the middle of a song, the camera either pans the interior of The Roadhouse or focuses on a few characters having a conversation (a technique Lynch used to showcase in his films, such as Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive). Only then does the music commence, and each song is played starting at the beginning. In each case, the musicians are all shown performing on stage, and in some cases, are introduced by The Roadhouse emcee. Lesser-​known acts selected for The Return are a hodge-​podge of independent artists who had caught the eyes of Lynch and Frost, more established performers who had either collaborated with Lynch or expressed an admiration for his previous works. All of the artists, regardless of their degree of celebrity, benefit equally in relation to each other and the show—​that is, Nine Inch Nails’ performance and its exchange of capital with the show is equal to that of the performance of the Cactus Blossoms or The Veils, whose performances will also be examined. The performance of industrial band Nine Inch Nails in the eighth episode of the series adheres to the aesthetic of the show, barring the latter’s transmission as objective or institutional capital. Instead, the band’s performance of “She’s Gone Away” from their 2016 self-​released EP Not the Actual Events, touches on their reputation for rejecting mainstream marketing in favor of the goal of what Michael Masnick termed “connection with the fans.”14 While Masnick discussed this idea within an evaluation of the band’s fan-​ focused business model, I further read this idea of connection with regards to Nine Inch Nails’ collaboration with Lynch as specifically reaffirming the commitment to original and experimental art production, which exists as their social capital, that originally drew people to becoming fans of both these figures. Compared with Lynch’s embrace of the experimental at the expense of mainstream celebrity (albeit his being codified as such in mainstream film and television), the choice of Nine Inch Nails to perform a song

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from a self-​released record demonstrates a recommitment to the aesthetic and social values of the fans, as well as the non-​mainstream aesthetic on par with the work of Lynch. The attentive listener will notice that the lyrics of “She’s Gone Away” are practically a narration of the point of view of BOB, the main antagonist of the first series. This is far from coincidental, as members Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross have stated in interviews that “She’s Gone Away” was written for The Return after Lynch rejected another song for the show that he deemed not “ugly enough.”15 Though the song was conceived for Lynch, it was included on the EP released about six months prior to NIN’s performance on The Return, evidence that the song fit well enough within the aesthetic of both the band and the album to be included as a work separate from Twin Peaks. The exchange of capital between lesser-​known musicians and The Return maintains the same parity with the more famous acts, a feat achieved through retention of indie credibility and similar nostalgic aesthetics for both parties. The collaboration between Lynch and the retro-​country duo The Cactus Blossoms ties together two groups that, although having never worked together prior to the performance on The Return, share a number of artistic similarities. The reemergence of 1950s and ’60s influenced country music in the past decade is curious, given the Country Music Association’s distaste towards independent artists, and favoring of a homogenized aesthetic; however, alongside the frequent revivals of retro style in the 2010s, this development is not unprecedented. The song performed by The Cactus Blossoms, “Mississippi,” employs many of the sounded characteristics that recall Patsy Cline or Roger Miller—​vocal parts sung in thirds, lead acoustic guitar with accompanying electric guitar and upright bass, and a complex rhythm/​percussion backing. Twin Peaks as a series likewise evokes the idea of small-​town America, particularly a town that has changed very little since the 1970s, at latest:  people driving vintage but derelict cars because they still have them and they still work, waitresses in diners who wear candy-​ colored uniforms with matching hats because they always have, and home décor channeling Nancy Reagan for no reason other than that upper middle class dining and living rooms are supposed to look stuffy. Of course, Lynch’s goal in constructing Twin Peaks as stuck in a stylistic and infrastructural time-​capsule is different than the reason The Cactus Blossoms make music that sounds 50  years senior to the CMA chart-​toppers of today, but they inevitably conjure both a sense of nostalgia for a fantasized, perhaps even fetishized past, while also making the modern more apparent by bringing to light the sense the audience has of the music’s outmodedness. Additionally, the video for “Mississippi” indicates that there was some inspiration from Lynch on The Cactus Blossoms’ work, something members Paige Burkum and Jack Torrey address in interviews given in 2017. In an interview with NPR, the two brothers who comprise the duo note that they

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FIGURE 5.1 

Visual similarities between the music videos from songs sung at the Roadhouse and scenes from Twin Peaks. Above: Laura Palmer’s corpse (Sheryl Lee) in the pilot of Twin Peaks. Below: Jack Torrey of The Cactus Blossoms, in the band’s video for “Mississippi,” featured in the third episode of The Return

picked up on a surrealist vibe from their first album, from which the track “Mississippi” comes, and relate that they joked that “David Lynch should give them a call.”16 The video bears a likeness to the pilot episode of the original Twin Peaks series, showing water moving in lakes and ponds, interspersed with shots of the extremities of the duo (see Figure 5.1). Eventually, the camera zooms out and we see their bodies fully clothed and floating by the shore of a lake. This recalls the discovery of the body of Laura Palmer in the Twin Peaks pilot. The social and institutional capital that The Cactus Blossoms and The Return exchange with each other is rooted in their non-​mainstream aesthetics and stylistic practices. Watching their Twin Peaks performance, one does not sense that the band is being presented in a patronizing way, that time needs to be taken away from the plot to introduce a charming, up-​and-​ coming band. Their music contributes to the mood of the show but does not come across as gimmicky; their performance could easily be taken for a band that exists only within the Twin Peaks universe. The realm of Twin Peaks fits seamlessly within the musical aesthetic of The Cactus Blossoms, such that the informed listener could easily pick up on shared nostalgic sentiments

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and vaguely surrealist imagery. Neither party, in collaboration, has a greater value than the other, and the social and institutionalized cultural capital they carry as independent artists who engage with experimental or vintage styles renders them as equals. The Veils, who perform in Part 15, also share some aesthetic similarities with Twin Peaks, and as with The Cactus Blossoms, we may find evidence in their pre-​existing work, including videos and songs released before The Return. The video for their song “Axolotl,” released in August 2016, features a bedraggled man running through the desert with a jar clutched to his chest. The man is confronted by a group of Americana characters, made up of a rotund sheriff, an elderly couple watching a television in front of a trailer, a high school football player and cheerleader holding him on a chain, and an enraged preacher waving a cross. The man with the jar spills it and he is turned into a silhouetted creature with tentacles who then kills the six townspeople. The video ends with the tentacle monster collapsing into a puddle, from which springs a sapling with feathers in place of leaves. The video for “Axolotl” clearly follows many of the same tropes as those laid out in Twin Peaks, though it would not be accurate to call the video an explicit homage to Lynch. From the video, his influence on filmmaking at large is made apparent. Again, it recalls elements of the series, in this case the presence of generic townspeople (the sheriff’s department figures heavily in Twin Peaks, as do high school students and townsfolk), and the image of the tree-​like being. The Arm in Twin Peaks is a being in the Black Lodge and resembles a bare tree with a membrane that speaks and is lit by a strobe light (see Figure 5.2). The Arm originated as the severed arm of the character Mike, who had been an accomplice of BOB, but repented and amputated his arm that had an incriminating tattoo on it. In the Black Lodge, his arm becomes an independent entity, the treelike Arm, who warns the main protagonist, Dale Cooper, of the danger posed by his shadow-​self. In addition to the Lynchian aspects in the “Axolotl” video, the instrumentation and lyrics of the song underscore the darker aspect of Twin Peaks. Horror is a significant aspect of the show, with the supernatural and the macabre serving as the catalyst for the plot. “Axolotl,” then, heightens this characteristic of the show, as the song makes a good deal of use of distorted and synthetic sounds. The musical distortion is noteworthy for its presence in both the lead guitar and the vocal parts; the effect of a distorted guitar gives the impression of a radio on its last legs, while lo-​fi vocals have a sound that is best described as eerie, yet vintage. The use of synthesized sounds in “Axolotl” serves as something of the opposite of the paratactic sound of The Cactus Blossoms, where instead of revealing the modern by embracing pastiche, The Veils do so by using aspects of the modern, audio technology, to disturb the listener. The lyrics describe images that evoke a sense of dread, with nods to the spiritual (“Who needs the devil/​when you’ve got the Lord,” “Oh-​ho, my

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FIGURE  5.2 

Above: Final Scene from “Axolotl,” by The Veils. Below: The Arm from Twin Peaks

soul/​I’m losing control”). The scene in the Roadhouse taking place as The Veils play cuts between the band’s performance and a group of ruffians physically tossing a young woman out of a booth, who then loses her glasses and proceeds to crawl along the dance floor among the bar’s patrons, searching for her eyewear. The distressing setting in which the performance occurs fits well with the overall feel of “Axolotl.” Again, there is a distinct, though unintentional, similarity between Twin Peaks and the musicians who perform in the show. The exchange of social capital is that of mutual affirmation of the pursuit of artistic expression.

Conclusion The exchange of social capital in these collaborations with musicians occurs within a mutual confirmation of the networks established between Lynch (or Twin Peaks) and the bands, and the affiliation these groups have from association with codified aesthetic movements. While select musicians and the show at certain points carry the potential to outweigh the other in terms of their social capital, this is avoided on all parts by emphasis

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on the physical labor of the musician(s) performing, and an adherence to musical styles that valorize the niche aesthetics of the series. Television, when including musicians at all, typically depends on an exchange of the musician’s objective capital for the program’s institutionalized capital, but the treatment of musicians in The Return quickly abandons that paradigm and exposes the institutional and, more significantly, the social capital inherent in the occupation of being a musician (in any genre). Twin Peaks, in exchange, benefits from a displayed recommitment to independent art and non-​mainstream aesthetics. Despite audio technology’s effect on the role of the performer in the West, it has played a significant and not altogether villainous role in the dissemination of music and musical genres. With the rise of broadcast media, particularly that of television, music’s role as meaningful sound no longer depends on a social context for its transmission, opening it up to both the danger of music becoming purely objective and the possibility for music to reach audiences who would have previously be denied it due to location or social class. In the face of media industries that sustain themselves by turning music into objective and economic capital, it falls within the domain of avant-​garde and experimental artists to buck this trend. Lynch and the musicians with whom he collaborated have demonstrated a successful way in which artists can do just that, in an artistic endeavor that reaffirms the social capital that each group is afforded in the conception and values of their fan bases.

Notes 1 An example of this would be one of the many cases where a performing artist changed their style dramatically, often as a means of breaking away from the image by which they were marketed at the beginning of their career (Miley Cyrus, Taylor Swift, and Gwen Stefani, to name a few). Often this reinvention is met with skepticism by their fans, who originally took a liking to the artist for their genre affiliations. 2 Timothy Taylor, “The Commodification of Music at the Dawn of the Era of ‘Mechanical Music,’ ” Ethnomusicology 51, no. 2 (2007): 301. 3 Theodor Adorno, “The Curves of the Needle,” in Essays on Music, ed. Richard Leppert (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002), 271. 4 Recalling some details mentioned earlier, before audio recordings, music was always heard only in the context of a performance. Even the case of a solitary person singing or playing a song depended on their actively assuming the role of music-​ maker, rather than passive listener. For more on this, see: Mark Katz, Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music, rev. ed. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press), 2010. 5 Considering modern-​day popular music, we may include in this group of music-​ makers the sound engineers who, in effect, assemble the songs that become pop hits. 6 Adorno, “The Curves of the Needle,” 54.

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7 Adorno notoriously asserted that the female voice in a recording becomes debilitated of power, as the singer’s presence was necessary for the listener to receive the full effect of her voice. 8 A brief explication of music-​objects in light of Marx’s concepts of reification and fetishism is due, as it informs much of the literature that I  cite. Marx defined reification as “the definite social relation between men and themselves, which assumes here the fantastic form of a relation between things,” which for the purposes of this topic can be read as the value assigned to a product by a person, and all of the accompanying significance that value indicates. Suffice to say, the transformation of music into a commodity introduces the question of the fascination with the materials of music, which Adorno sees as distilling down to an appreciation for the monetary/​exchange value of the material. Music as a reified and fetishized commodity, specifically in the state of late capitalism, functions as a material for the study of cultural values—​ knowing that music is to a great extent valued as a marker for personal and group identity, it can be examined for information on individuals, groups, and movements. I  would argue that emphasizing this aspect of the music commodity, instead of dwelling on the reduction to a monetary exchange that Adorno laments, is equally worthwhile a pursuit as a study on the economic capital in music. There are already systems upholding the music economy, and looking at the values ascribed to specific music can inform us as to how and why these systems came to be. See Adorno, “On the Fetish Character of Music and the Regression of Listening,” in Essays on Music, ed. Richard Leppert, trans. Susan H. Gillespie (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press), 288–​ 317. Karl Marx, Capital:  A Critique of Political Economy, vol. 1, trans. Ben Fowkes (London: Penguin, 2010), 165. 9 Pierre Bourdieu, “The Forms of Capital,” in Readings in Economic Sociology, ed. Nicole Biggart (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008), 286. 10 Jaques Attali, Noise:  The Political Economy of Music, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1977), 44. 11 Bourdieu, “The Forms of Capital,” 285. 12 “Beach Boy Bingo,” season 2, episode 6. 13 “The Lion and the Rose,” season 4, episode 2. 14 Steven C.  Brown, “Artist Autonomy in a Digital Era:  The Case of Nine Inch Nails,” Empirical Musicology Review 6, no. 4 (2011), 199. Available at: https://​ kb.osu.edu/​dspace/​bitstream/​handle/​1811/​52949/​EMR000124a-​Brown.pdf. 15 Sam Barsanti, “David Lynch Thought Nine Inch Nails’ Original Twin Peaks Song Wasn’t ‘Ugly’Enough,”The A.V. Club, September 17, 2017. Available at: www.avclub. com/​david-​lynch-​thought-​nine-​inch-​nails-​original-​twin-​peaks-​1818493124. 16 Robin Hilton, “The Cactus Blossoms Share New Video for ‘Mississippi,’ Featured on Twin Peaks,” National Public Radio, June 8, 2017. Available at: www.npr.org/​event/​music/​532048462/​the-​cactus-​blossoms-​share-​new-​video-​ for-​mississippi-​featured-​on-​twin-​peaks.

Bibliography Adorno, Theodor W. Essays on Music. Edited by Richard Leppert, translated by Susan H. Gillespie. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002.

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Adorno, Theodor W. “The Curves of the Needle.” In Essays on Music. Edited by Richard Leppert, translated by Susan H. Gillespie. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002, 271. Adorno, Theodor W. “On the Fetish Character of Music and the Regression of Listening.” In Essays on Music. Edited by Richard Leppert, translated by Susan H. Gillespie. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002, 288–​317. Attali, Jaques. Noise: The Political Economy of Music. Translated by Brian Massumi. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1977. Barsanti, Sam. “David Lynch Thought Nine Inch Nails’ Original Twin Peaks Song Wasn’t ‘Ugly’Enough.”The A.V. Club, September 17, 2017. Available at: www.avclub. com/​david-​ lynch-​thought-​nine-​inch-​nails-​original-​twin-​peaks-​1818493124. Bourdieu, Pierre. “The Forms of Capital.” In Readings in Economic Sociology. Edited by Nicole Biggart, 280–​91. Oxford: Blackwell, 2008. Brown, Steven C. “Artist Autonomy in a Digital Era: The Case of Nine Inch Nails.” In Empirical Musicology Review 6, no. 4, 2011, 198–​213. Available at:  https://​ kb.osu.edu/​dspace/​bitstream/​handle/​1811/​52949/​EMR000124a-​Brown.pdf. Hilton, Robin. “The Cactus Blossoms Share New Video for ‘Mississippi,’ Featured on Twin Peaks.” National Public Radio, June 8, 2017. Available at: www. npr.org/ ​ event/ ​ music/ ​ 5 32048462/ ​ t he- ​ c actus- ​ blossoms- ​ s hare- ​ n ew- ​ v ideo- ​ for-​ mississippi-​featured-​on-​twin-​peaks. Katz, Mark. Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music. Revised edition. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2010. Marx, Karl. Capital:  A Critique of Political Economy, vol. 1. Translated by Ben Fowkes. London: Penguin, 2010. Milner, Greg. Perfecting Sound Forever:  An Aural History of Recorded Music. New York: Faber & Faber, 2010. Riemenschneider, Chris. “Minneapolis Twangers the Cactus Blossoms Talk Twin Peaks Ahead of Sunday’s Appearance.” The Minneapolis Star Tribune, May 24, 2017. Available at:  www.startribune.com/​minneapolis-​twangers-​the-​cactus-​ blossoms-​talk-​twin-​peaks-​ahead-​of-​sunday-​s-​appearance/​424069513/​. Taylor, Timothy D. Music and Capitalism:  A History of the Present. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2016. _​_​_​_​_​“The Commodification of Music at the Dawn of the Era of ‘Mechanical Music.’ ” Ethnomusicology 51, no. 2, 2007: 281–​305. The Cactus Blossoms—​ Mississippi (Official Music Video). Available at:  www. youtube.com/​watch?v=bLBtSAoQqkw. The Veils—​“Axolotl” (ft. El-​P) (Official Music Video). Available at:  www.youtube. com/​watch?v=v0IBpUgbTTA. Willet, Gene. “A Musical Tour of the Bizarre: Popular Music as Fantasy in David Lynch.” In Popular Music and the New Auteur: Visionary Filmmakers After MTV. Edited by Arved Ashby. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. Wray, Daniel Dylan. “The Discomfort Zone: Exploring the Musical Legacy of David Lynch.” Pitchfork, October 4, 2016. Available at: https://​pitchfork.com/​features/​ article/​9958-​the-​discomfort-​zone-​exploring-​the-​musical-​legacy-​of-​david-​lynch/​.

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6 ‘SINGER’; ‘GIRL SINGER’; ‘ROADHOUSE SINGER’; ‘HERSELF’ Julee Cruise in the World of Twin Peaks David Sweeney

John Richardson has described Julee Cruise as providing a ‘surrogate voice’1 for the deceased Laura Palmer when she mimes to a recording of ‘Falling’ in the first season pilot of Twin Peaks (1990). Given that possession by ‘inhabiting spirits’ such as BOB and Mike occurs within the world of Twin Peaks, Cruise’s character can similarly be understood as a kind of vessel for a discarnate entity, in her case the spirit of Laura Palmer. Cruise’s character appears to be a conduit for what Richardson calls Laura’s ‘dislocated voice’,2 providing the audience with fragments of information about Laura’s demise, which foreshadow later revelations in the series. Cruise’s character is, then, a kind of medium. This seems an appropriate role for the singer, a Broadway veteran who has described herself as an ‘imitator’ and who discarded her normal, self-​described, ‘belter’ vocal style to facilitate Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti’s ethereal vision for Floating Into the Night (1989), the album on which the three collaborated and which served as a herald for Twin Peaks.3 Evan Eisenberg makes a connection between the recorded voice and mediumship in his study of ‘phonography’, The Recording Angel (1987), describing the act of listening to records as ‘a séance where we get to choose our ghosts’,4 which seems particularly appropriate for Cruise’s work. In the context of the world of Twin Peaks, of which it may be considered a type of field recording, Floating into the Night is layered in its mediumship: the listener hears, via the recording and play-​back media, Cruise in character as the –​to use the names under which she was credited in the original series and its prequel feature film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992) –​‘Singer’, ‘Girl Singer’, and ‘Roadhouse Singer’ who channels Laura’s spirit from the Black Lodge. As I will discuss in this chapter, the construction of not only Cruise’s Twin Peaks character but also her public persona, is similarly layered,

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involving multiple-​authorial voices, and a consistent, performing figure: that of Julee Cruise. In doing so I will compare the construction of Cruise’s character and persona with the similar roles performed by David Bowie, both as rock star and actor. I will address too, the possible influence on the Cruise character/​persona of the subjectivity created by music critics for the vocalist Elizabeth Fraser which represented her as, like Cruise in the series, a vessel for supernatural entities. (Furthermore, Fraser’s rendition of ‘Song to the Siren’ inadvertently led to Cruise’s collaboration with Lynch, as discussed below.) This identity made Cruise something of a popular culture icon, to the extent that she was credited as ‘Herself’ in the penultimate episode of the third season of the series, the ‘limited event series’ Twin Peaks: The Return (2017). However, given the blurring of the lines between reality and fiction involved in the construction of both Cruise’s character and her persona, as was the case with Bowie, and the use of the same credit of ‘Herself’ for Rebekah Del Rio’s appearance in an earlier episode of The Return in which she appears to also serve as a vessel for Laura, I will address the significance of Cruise’s personal credit in terms of both the fictional world of Twin Peaks and of her collaborative relationship with Lynch, including the musical play Industrial Symphony No. 1 (1990) in which Cruise plays the role of ‘The Dreamself of the Heartbroken Woman’.

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Cruise, Bowie, and Warhol As I have written elsewhere,5 in her promotional appearances for Floating into the Night, undertaken before the release of Twin Peaks but also serving as part of the epitext for it, as the series was invariably mentioned to introduce and contextualise her performance, Cruise seemed like an envoy from the world of the series. As such her ‘in-​character’ appearances are comparable to future Fire Walk With Me cast member David Bowie’s 1972 performances of his single ‘Starman’ on British TV in his ‘Ziggy Stardust’ persona (although the lyrics of the song are about, rather than from the perspective of, the extra-​terrestrial rock messiah Ziggy). However, while both ‘Starman’ and its parent album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972) provided, albeit allusively, further information about Bowie’s character, Cruise’s role remained enigmatic as Twin Peaks developed. This sense of Bowie-​as-​Ziggy was deliberately contrived by the singer, who had a background in performance and referred to himself as ‘the actor’ –​a ‘pet conceit’ of his, according to biographers Roy Carr and Charles Shaar Murray6 –​ in the production credits for Ziggy Stardust’s immediate predecessor, Hunky Dory (1971). Hunky Dory contains the song ‘Andy Warhol’ written about the eponymous American pop artist (1928–​87) whose work had influenced Bowie’s own and whom Bowie would later play in the feature film Basquiat (1996). The chorus

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of Bowie’s song includes the lyric ‘Andy Warhol/​Silver screen/​Can’t tell them apart at all’, a reference to Warhol’s blurring of the boundaries between art and life, particularly in his encouragement and promotion of his group of ‘superstars’:  acolytes of the artist who, despite being relatively unknown, acted like celebrities in public. Typically, the superstars took on new names, sometimes provided by Warhol, such as ‘Candy Darling’ and ‘Paul America’, which were reflective of and consistent with the artist’s fascination with American popular culture and its preoccupation with celebrity. Warhol’s desire for a wider distribution of celebrity was encapsulated in the dictum attributed to him ‘In the future everyone will be world-​famous for fifteen minutes’. The influence of the superstars –​several of whom Bowie met before encountering Warhol himself, when they performed in Warhol’s play Pork in London in 1971 –​influenced the behaviour of Bowie and his own entourage (which absorbed some of Pork’s cast). Bowie and his followers, under the encouragement of Bowie’s then manager Tony Defries acted, and spent record company money, as if the singer was already phenomenally successful when in reality Bowie was at best a cult figure.7 Bowie’s eventual, genuine, stardom involved the adoption of the persona of Ziggy Stardust, an extra-​ terrestrial, messianic pop star, with which the musician became so closely identified that he felt it necessary to ‘retire’ the character off at the height of its success in order to develop artistically. Here we see a nesting of identity –​with Bowie playing an exaggerated version of himself as well as playing Ziggy –​which anticipates a similar layering experienced by Cruise both in real life and in the fiction of Twin Peaks. Both Bowie and Cruise give voice to, and embody, fictional characters; significant differences are that (1) Bowie created his character (Ziggy) and (2) Cruise’s Twin Peaks character is also the voice of another, the deceased Laura. And the public persona of each artist is so similar to, as to become indistinguishable from, these characters. Although Bowie’s career involved the creation and performance of a range of other characters, none was as dominant as Ziggy, in part because none seemed quite so otherworldly. Ziggy’s immediate successor, ‘Aladdin Sane’ (from the 1973 album of the same name), came across as merely a development of the character rather than a distinct creation, while the cover image of 1974’s Diamond Dogs and the singer’s promotional appearances for the album’s single ‘Rebel, Rebel’ retained Ziggy’s look even though the album introduced a new character, Halloween Jack. On the subsequent ‘Diamond Dogs’ tour, Bowie replaced the Ziggy image with a more conventional, if still glamorous, stage costume of suit, shirt, and tie and a less flamboyant, although still dyed and coiffed, hairstyle. A significant innovation in the development of live rock music, the ‘Diamond Dogs’ tour drew more on the techniques of theatre and Broadway musical than of conventional rock concerts in order to present the album as the story of Halloween Jack and the dystopian future he inhabits. However, Bowie would tire of what he came to perceive as the

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restrictions of this mode of performance, opting for a more direct musical experience, modelled on the performances by black soul and R&B singers which influenced his next album Young Americans (1975), for which, significantly, no identifiable character was created. Its successor, Station to Station (1976), introduced the persona of The Thin White Duke, referenced in the album’s title track, an aloof European aristocrat, although very little information was provided about this figure beyond some comments by the singer in interviews such as ‘[he’s] a very Aryan fascist type’.8 Bowie would experience widespread criticism for appearing to give a Nazi salute at London’s Victoria Station while promoting Station to Station in another example of his blurring the boundary between persona and self.9 Becoming the Thin White Duke involved only a minimal image change from Bowie’s look at this time, which was itself a continuation of his role as another extra-​terrestrial visitor to Earth, Thomas Jerome Newton, in Nicolas Roeg’s The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976; based on the novel of the same name by Walter Teavis [1963]), which supplied the cover image for both Station to Station and Bowie’s next album, Low (1977). Roeg was inspired to cast not only Bowie, but also the singer’s chauffeur and limousine, after seeing them in a BBC documentary about Bowie’s U.S. tour promoting Diamond Dogs and leading up to Young Americans, Cracked Actor (Alan Yentob, 1975).10 Again, a layering is identifiable here: Roeg’s film is an adaption of both Teavis’s novel and Yentob’s documentary which shows Bowie both on and offstage. Nevertheless, there is a recognisable continuity between the documentary and the feature film, and also with Bowie’s earlier persona of Ziggy, another alien visiting the Earth. Newton becomes a musician –​although not a famous one  –​recording an unsuccessful album as ‘The Visitor’ which is received/​ dismissed as experimental but is in fact intended to be messages to his home planet which he hopes will be received there via FM radio broadcasts; like Ziggy, Newton is ultimately betrayed and undone by those closest to him. That Bowie used stills from the film for the covers of both Station to Station and Low strengthen this sense of continuity between documentary and feature, real life –​albeit, a theatrical one –​and fiction. For the cover to Low’s successor ‘Heroes’, released the same year, and accompanying promotional appearances, Bowie reverted to his natural hair colour and appeared in streetwear of leather jacket and jeans (though in a curious pose inspired by the painting Roquairol [1917] by the German artist Erich Heckel), prompting the British music newspaper NME to title a contemporaneous interview with Bowie by Shaar Murray, ‘Who was that (un)masked man?’.11

Other Surrogates for Laura Although not introduced as being in character, the epitextual context for Cruise’s 1989 performance on The Late Show distinguishes it from typical

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promotional appearances. Like Bowie’s ‘Starman’, ‘Rockin’ Back Inside My Heart’ seems to be an extract from a larger work; of course, singles usually are, as parts of albums, but both Bowie’s and Cruise’s songs seem extracted in the sense more commonly associated with theatrical music, that is, they were removed from a wider context of which they are thematically representative. In rock music, such a context could be either the ‘concept album’ or ‘rock opera’, or both, as in the case of The Who’s Tommy, recorded in 1969 and adapted to film and stage as a musical in 1975 and 1992 respectively, with accompanying soundtrack albums. The narrative arc expressed in the title of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars announces it as a concept album, which is borne out by the lyrical preoccupation with aliens and rock stardom (and the relationship between the two); Floating Into the Night is not so obviously a concept work, although the recurring lyrical themes and motifs  –​lost love, forests, strange men, floating  –​and consistency in musical style, arrangement, and production lend it a sense of unity and wholeness comparable both to classical works and to ‘song-​cycle’ albums such as Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks (1968) or What’s Going On by Marvin Gaye (1971). Written by Lynch, the lyrics of Floating sound like the interior monologue and/​or diary entries of a character and, as mentioned above, Richardson has associated them with the expression of the ‘point of view’12 of the discarnate Laura Palmer in Twin Peaks. As also mentioned above, and indicated in the title of this chapter, Cruise is credited in the series as ‘Girl Singer’ (‘Pilot’) and ‘Singer’ (season 2: episode 7), and as ‘Roadhouse Singer’ in the series-​prequel feature film Fire Walk With Me (1992). However, she is credited as ‘Herself’ for her appearance in the penultimate episode of The Return (Part 17). This change in designation is indicative of the change in Cruise’s stature as a result of her involvement with Lynch but it also seems significant in the context of the series’ narrative. In my previous essay on The Return (2019), I discussed the crediting of actual world figures by name in the series using the ‘possible worlds’ theory of narratologist Lubomir Dolezel and will reprise that approach here. Dolezel argues that ‘historical’ individuals –​as opposed to wholly invented fictional characters –​ can only enter fictional worlds by becoming ‘possible’ versions of their actual world counterparts, ‘shaped in any way the fiction-​maker chooses’.13 As we have seen, however, Cruise was already shaped by, and in collaboration with, Lynch and Badalamenti, taking on the persona of spectral torch singer for Floating, which was continued in Twin Peaks, so there is a kind of double-​shaping at work in Part 17 of The Return. The crediting of Cruise as ‘Herself’ in The Return can be taken as an acknowledgement of an elevation in Cruise’s stature since 1989 (although Cruise herself felt insulted by the reduction of her contribution to The Return relative to the original series14). It can also be seen as both a metafictional and an intertextual act by Lynch and Frost: metafictional in the sense that the billing draws attention to the

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artifice of The Return; intertextual because it refers to the persona of Cruise constructed for Floating and as presented in her promotional appearances for the album (and, by extension, for Twin Peaks). It is useful here to compare Cruise’s appearance in The Return with that of Rebekah Del Rio, who is also billed as ‘Herself’ in Part  10. In the episode, Del Rio performs the song ‘No Stars’, which had previously appeared on her album Love Hurts, Love Heals (2011) and which was co-​written by Lynch. Its romantic, nostalgic lyrics recall those Lynch provided for Floating, and, like them, can be taken as references to events in Laura Palmer’s life, its references to a clandestine rendezvous in ‘that special place/​where it all began’, recalling her secret affair with James Hurley. Furthermore, for her appearance in Part 10, Del Rio wore a dress with the same pattern as the floor of the Black Lodge’s Red Room, further emphasising her relationship to Laura beyond the implied association in the lyrics to ‘No Stars’. This suggests Del Rio can also be taken as a conduit for Laura as well as, or even instead of, Cruise. The same might also be said of Chromatics’ singer Ruth Radelet who wears a platinum wig, apparently in imitation of/​homage to Cruise, for her three appearances –​credited by her name –​with the band in The Return. This includes Part 17, in which the band is the backing group for Cruise’s performance of ‘The World Spins’ from Floating, which is also heard in episode 7 of the second season of the original series (Chromatics’ other appearances are in Parts 2 and 12). Although not written specifically for The Return, the song Chromatics perform in Part  2, ‘Shadow’, is clearly influenced musically by Cruise’s work with Lynch and Badalamenti; furthermore, lyrics such as ‘[a]‌nd now you’re just a stranger’s dream/​I took your picture from the frame/​And though you’re nothing like you seem/​Your shadow fell like last night’s rain’ evoke both the original series and Floating. The video for ‘Shadow’ is a homage both to Lynch –​referencing Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks –​and to, in the band’s words, ‘the legendary Julie Cruise’;15 the influence of Floating on Chromatics is also readily apparent in the band’s contributions to the soundtrack of Ryan Gosling’s Lynch-​indebted feature film Lost River (2014). The presence of both Del Rio, particularly in her Red Room-​patterned dress, and of Radelet (who has more screen time, and is considerably younger, than Cruise), might account for Cruise’s description of her brief appearance in The Return as humiliating:16 both appear to have taken on the role fulfilled by Cruise in the original series. Furthermore, Radelet, with platinum hair, performed with Chromatics at the 2017 Los Angeles premiere of The Return and was photographed with Lynch at the event, at which Cruise was not present. As such, Radelet served a similar function as Cruise had for the original series: as an envoy.

Beyond Twin Peaks As with the Bowie of Cracked Actor and The Man Who Fell to Earth, there is continuity, and intertextuality, with Cruise’s role in Twin Peaks and her

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appearances elsewhere, including her role as ‘The Dreamself of the Broken Hearted Woman’ in the stage play, Industrial Symphony #1 (1990) directed by Lynch, with music composed by him and Badalamenti, including several songs from Floating, sung by Cruise, and mimed by her in the play. As the title of her role implies, Cruise’s character is an aspect of another, the ‘Heartbroken Woman’, as played by regular Lynch collaborator Laura Dern. Cruise’s role then is similar to, but significantly different from, her character in Twin Peaks: in both she gives voice to thoughts and feelings for another character; however, in Twin Peaks she exists as a separate entity from, rather than as an aspect of, that character. The use of miming in the performances of Industrial Symphony #1 is another example of layering relevant to the discussion here: Cruise mimes to recordings of her own voice, from an album released under her own name –​the versions used in the play are those from Floating  –​as a character who is a projection of another who also has no name of her own. Visually and sonically, Cruise resembles her character in Twin Peaks and her repertoire includes two songs also used in the series, ‘Rockin’ Back Inside My Heart’ and ‘The World Spins’, the latter of which she performed in the series twice: first in the seventh episode of season 2; then, with Chromatics, in the penultimate episode (Part 17) of The Return. Another song, ‘Questions in a World of Blue’, is also performed in Fire Walk With Me. Additionally, Industrial Symphony’s soundtrack includes ‘Up in Flames’ from The Voice of Love (1993), Cruise’s successor to Floating, which was produced by Lynch and composed by him and Badalamenti, with the exception of ‘In My Other World’, which was written by Cruise and Louis Tucci. Similar in lyrical content, musical arrangement and production style to its predecessor, and also in its sleeve design, The Voice of Love comes across very much as a companion piece to Floating. As well as ‘Questions…’, instrumental versions of two songs from The Voice of Love were also used by Lynch in Fire Walk With Me: ‘She Would Die For Love’ and the title track, strengthening its connection to, and continuity with, Twin Peaks. Lynch and Badalamenti also produced Cruise’s version of ‘Summer Kisses, Winter Tears’, as previously recorded by Elvis Presley (1960) and intended for use, but ultimately not included, in his film-​vehicle Flaming Star (1960). Cruise’s version was included in a film, Wim Wender’s Until the End of the World (1991) and retains not only the vocal style of her previous collaborations with Lynch and Badalamenti, but also the ethereal production style, indicative of how both had become Cruise’s ‘signature’ sound. Cruise’s version of the song is also thematically consistent both with her recordings with Lynch and Badalamenti and with her contributions to, and appearances in, Twin Peaks: in Cruise’s rendition, and under Lynch and Badalamenti’s production, the composition’s fairly standard torch song lyric becomes elegiac, seeming to mourn not only the passing of a lost love but also that of Elvis himself, as well as the (apparent) innocence of rock & roll’s infancy in the 1950s (which recalls the nostalgia of both Twin Peaks and Blue Velvet).

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Cruise’s miming to her own recordings in Industrial Symphony anticipates Del Rio’s lip-​synching to her version of ‘Llorando’ at Club Silencio in Mulholland Drive (as included on the film’s soundtrack [2001] and Del Rio’s 2003 album All My Life/​Toda mi vida). Mark Fisher has described this scene as both ‘paradoxically entrancing’ and ‘ostensibly demystifying’, comparing it to the surrealist masterpiece La Trahison des images (1929) by Magritte: ‘the Club Silencio performance tells us that what we are witnessing is an illusion, whilst at the same time showing that we will be unable to treat it as such.’17 For Fisher, the scene ‘haunts for reasons other than’ its metafictional demystification of the artifice of cinema: It points to the automatisms at work in our subjectivity: insofar as we cannot help but be drawn into Silencio’s illusions (which are also the illusions of cinema), we are like the very recordings by which we are seduced.18 Subjectivity is of prime thematic importance in Mulholland Drive, particularly in how it refers to the power dynamics involved in the construction and performance of identity, both on and offscreen/​stage. This is also the case with Lynch’s subsequent feature film Inland Empire (2006). Significantly, the central character in both is an actor (played by Naomi Watts and Laura Dern, respectively). Both films also feature layering in their structure of stories-​within-​stories; for Dolezel, fictional acts always involve the construction of fictional worlds, so these films also represent worlds-​within-​worlds. In both cases, it is impossible to definitively identify which of these worlds is (fictionally) ‘real’ and which, if any, is a projection. The films are, to borrow Brian McHale’s description of Vladimir Nabokov’s similarly layered, and equally intractable, novel Pale Fire (1962), texts of ‘absolute epistemological uncertainty’.19 Considered in the context of Cruise’s collaborations with Lynch and Badalamenti, her miming in the fittingly-​named Industrial Symphony draws attention to the power-​dynamics of their relationship in which Cruise has been undeniably, albeit willingly, exploited in the realisation of their artistic vision. In this sense, the actual, or in Dolezel’s terms ‘historical’, Cruise is as much a vessel as her counterpart in the fictional world of Twin Peaks. Lynch’s first collaboration with Cruise, on Blue Velvet (1986), was necessitated by his failure to secure the rights to Elizabeth Fraser’s version of ‘Song to the Siren’, originally recorded by Sixties folk troubadour Tim Buckley (1970), as part of the group This Mortal Coil (1983), which led to the composition of ‘Mysteries of Love’ with Badalamenti as a substitute.20 Lynch would later use This Mortal Coil’s version of the song in Lost Highway (1997), the soundtrack for which also featured contributions from Bowie. We can see another instance of layering here: Cruise’s ‘Mysteries of Love’ is an imitation of Fraser’s version of Buckley’s original, sung in a style

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different to her usual ‘belter’ manner, to suit Lynch’s aesthetic vision. Like the song she sings, Cruise, the self-​described ‘imitator’, was also deployed as a substitute by Lynch and subsequently had her career moulded in Fraser’s sonic image, including not only the spare arrangement of ‘Song to the Siren’ but also the lush sound of her main band, The Cocteau Twins (1979–​97), whose recordings made extensive use of guitars heavily treated with effects such as tremolo, flange, and echo, the latter also a prominent characteristic of Lynch’s productions for Cruise. With The Cocteau Twins, Fraser tended to sing in a polyglot or artificial language –​to create what the music journalist Steve Sutherland called ‘vocal impressions’21 rather than coherent lyrics, recalling the phenomena of glossolalia or ‘speaking in tongues’ which, in a religious context, involves the mystical channelling of a divine language, to which Fraser’s vocal style was often compared. Sutherland went so far as to describe The Cocteau Twins as ‘the voice of god’, which displeased the group;22 however, it should be noted that they did court such comparisons in their use of religious imagery for song titles and promotional videos. Cruise’s fragile, wide-​eyed and pale-​ skinned image also recalls Fraser’s own look and demeanour while in The Cocteau Twins, albeit filtered through that of a spectral 1950s prom queen. Cruise’s imitation of Fraser can be understood, however, as encompassing not only Fraser’s look and sound but also her subjectivity  –​as some kind of vessel for supernatural entities, including the mythical siren of Buckley’s ode  –​as constructed by the epitextual discourse of music criticism. This imitation is the basis for the fabrication –​by Lynch and Frost –​of Cruise’s character in Twin Peaks for which, as we have seen, the singer functioned as a kind of envoy in her promotional appearances for Floating. Where Roeg imported elements of Bowie’s stage persona –​which, as discussed above, he deliberately carried over into everyday public life, inspired by Warhol and his superstars –​into The Man Who Fell to Earth, which Bowie subsequently exported back into his persona of The Thin White Duke, Lynch used the public image of Fraser to shape both a sound and a persona for Cruise. This persona came to define her, and she attempted to jettison it on her later albums, The Art of Being A Girl (2002) and My Secret Life (2011). Neither recording had any involvement from Lynch or Badalamenti, although she did retain the image she had established in her collaborations with them. Fire Walk With Me follows the double life led by Laura Palmer, the ostensible model student and homecoming queen who is also a drug-​abusing sex worker. It is made clear that in both her public and clandestine lives, Laura performs roles that satisfy the expectations, fantasies and desires of others. This duality is indicative of the hidden darkness of Twin Peaks, and of America in general. Duality is evident too in Cruise’s character, which is Laura’s vessel, and in the persona adopted by Cruise, but fabricated by Lynch and Badalamenti. The actual Cruise and her fictional counterpart fulfil similar roles as the channel for other voices. In The Return, this seems also to

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be the case for Radelet and, particularly, Del Rio (as it does, too, for Little Jimmy Scott in Fire Walk With Me). For her performance at the Bang Bang Bar, Del Rio is accompanied by the pop star and DJ, Moby –​whose early hit single ‘Go’ (1991) sampled ‘Laura Palmer’s Theme’ by Badalamenti  –​ as the guitarist in her backing group. Moby is credited not by name, but as ‘Musician’ for the episode, the only musical performer in The Return to be acknowledged in this way. Moby’s functional credit, which recalls those attributed to Cruise in the original series and in Fire Walk With Me, can be read as an indication that in the world of Twin Peaks, Moby has not achieved the fame and success of his actual world counterpart, making a living instead as a journeyman session musician. That Cruise received similar billing in the original series is indicative of her relative obscurity as a singer at the time of its original broadcast compared to her iconic, or ‘legendary’, status today, and also of both her functionality and her subjectivity within the world of Twin Peaks. The purpose of Cruise’s character is to be Laura’s ‘surrogate voice’ and nothing more, which is why no other information is presented about her, not even a proper name. Even the later billing as ‘Herself’, while recognising Cruise’s now legendary status, is an acknowledgement that she received this position largely as the voice of Laura, and for Lynch and Badalamenti. As such she is a medium in a technological sense. Eisenberg has described listening to records as a ‘séance where we get to choose our ghosts’23 and contrasts this experience of music with concert going which is not only live but alive. As with Industrial Symphony, Cruise lip-​synchs to her own voice in her appearances in Twin Peaks, which contrasts with her live performances to promote ‘Rockin’ Back Inside My Heart’. However, both contribute to her persona. Singing the song live on BBC 2’s The Late Show in 1989, Cruise’s slightly out-​of-​tune vocal added to her image of vulnerability and fragility; miming to her perfectly pitched recordings emphasises her/​Laura’s otherness. To deploy Marshall McLuhan’s famous aphorism, the medium is always the message.

Conclusion One commenter to an article reporting Cruise’s dissatisfaction with the paucity of her role in The Return joked that she may be a ‘tulpa’,24 a reference to the presence of such entities in The Return in –​as another example of duality in the series –​the form of doubles of Agent Cooper and his secretary Diane Evans. Cooper’s tulpa –​known as Dougie Jones –​is a different kind of entity than his doppelgänger (‘Evil Coop’) who created both Dougie and Diane’s tulpa. In the world of the series, tulpas are, as Lynch’s character Gordon Cole in Part 16 of The Return explains, ‘conjured duplicates of individuals […] manufactured from a seed and organic material from the template’.

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Cooper’s doppelgänger, on the other hand, is his Jungian shadow self whom he encounters in the Black Lodge and which is subsequently inhabited by BOB (as shown in the finale of the second season). The notion of the tulpa was adapted from the Tibetan Buddhist concept of the sprulpa by members of the European Theosophy movement in the early twentieth century and has come to mean a type of thought-​form or imagined being which takes on a degree of autonomy from its creator. There is an obvious relationship here between the (secularised) tulpa and the invention of fictional characters; there is a connection too with the self-​reinvention of the Warhol superstars and of Bowie, who can be said to have made, and become, their own tulpas. While there is nothing to suggest that the Cruise of Twin Peaks is a tulpa, she is nevertheless the creation of Lynch and Frost, just as her persona for Floating and The Voice of Love is the creation of Lynch and Badalamenti. In both cases, Cruise literally gives voice to others, as her character does for Laura: of Floating Cruise has remarked of the album: ‘I didn’t do it –​ I  played my instrument [her voice] and I  interpreted it.’25 As such, Cruise can be said to be authored, doubly so, in her Twin Peaks appearances in which she performs the Floating persona which plays the roles of Singer, Girl Singer, Roadhouse Singer, and Herself. All of these are, of course, ultimately embodied by the actual Julee Cruise, and ultimately, it is Cruise’s voice which is heard, mediating Laura and also Lynch and Badalamenti. We may never know the background of her character but we can be assured that, even as Cruise is the vessel for others, this ‘imitator’ is always, not ‘Herself’, but herself.

Notes 1 John Richardson, ‘Laura and Twin Peaks: Postmodern Parody and the Musical Reconstruction of the Absent Female’, in The Cinema of David Lynch: American Dreams, Nightmare Visions, ed. Erica Sheen (London: Wallflower Press, 2004), 88. 2 Ibid. 3 Kory Grow, ‘Dream Team: The semi-​mysterious story behind the music of “Twin Peaks” ’, Rolling Stone, [online], 25 July 2014. Available at:  www.rollingstone. com/​music/​music-​news/​dream-​team-​the-​semi-​mysterious-​story-​behind-​the-​ music-​of-​twin-​peaks-​78506/​ (accessed 5 August 2018). 4 Evan Eisenberg, The Recording Angel (2nd edition; New Haven, CT:  Yale University Press, 2005), 46. 5 David Sweeney, ‘ “I’ll point you to a better time/​A safer place to be”:  Music, Nostalgia and Estrangement in Twin Peaks:  The Return’, in Critical Essays on Twin Peaks:  The Return, ed. Antonio Sanna (Basingstoke, UK:  Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 71. 6 Roy Carr and Charles Shaar Murray, Bowie: An Illustrated Record (New York: Avon Books, 1981), 9. 7 Dylan Jones, David Bowie: A Life (New York: Crown Archetype, 2017), 89–​101.

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8 Peter Doggett, The Man Who Sold the World:  David Bowie and the 1970s (London: Vintage, 2012), 241. 9 Ibid., 256–​7. 10 Samuel J.  Umland, The Man Who Fell to Earth:  Novel to Film (Shenley, UK: Arrow Books, 2018), 37. 11 Charles Shaar Murray, ‘David Bowie: Who was that (un)masked man?’, NME, 12 November 1977, in Shots From the Hip, ed. Neil Spencer (London: Penguin Books, 1991), 227–​38. 12 Richardson, ‘Laura and Twin Peaks’, 89. 13 Lubomir Dolezel, Heterocosmica:  Fiction and Possible Worlds (Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins University Press, 1998), 21. 14 Brett Buchanan, ‘Twin Peaks’ Julee Cruise Calls Finale ‘Slap In The Face’ from ‘Emperor’ David Lynch’, Alternative Nation [online], 4 September 2017. Available at: www.alternativenation.net/​twin-​peaks-​julee-​cruise-​calls-​finale-​slap-​ face-​emperor-​david-​lynch/​ (accessed 5 August 2019). 15 Dom, Pieter, ‘Twin Peaks Premiere End Credits Song “Shadow” By Chromatics’, Welcome to Twin Peaks [online], 23 May 2017. Available at: https://​ welcometotwinpeaks.com/​music/​chromatics-​shadow-​twin-​peaks-​end-​credits/​ (accessed 6 August 2019). 16 Buchanan, ‘Julee Cruise’, 2017. 17 Mark Fisher, The Weird and the Eerie (London: Repeater Books, 2016), 55. 18 Ibid., 56. 19 Brian McHale, Postmodernist Fiction (London: Routledge, 2001), 18. 20 Mark Aston, Facing the Other Way:  The Story of 4AD (London:  The Friday Project, 2013), 1–​5. 21 Steve Sutherland, ‘Worlds Apart’, Melody Maker, November 1985. Available at:  https://​cocteautwins.com/​html/​media/​print/​mm_​nov85.html (accessed 5 August 2019). 22 Ibid. 23 Eisenberg, The Recording Angel, p. 36. 24 JinzoCrahs, commenting to the article by Brett Buchanan referenced in n. 16 above. 25 Ashley Naftule, ‘Julee Cruise Is Not To Be Messed With’, Pitchfork [online], 23 August 2018. Available at:  https://​pitchfork.com/​thepitch/​julee-​cruise-​is-​not-​to-​ be-​messed-​with-​interview/​ (accessed 5 August 2019).

Works Cited Aston, Mark. Facing the Other Way:  The Story of 4AD. London:  The Friday Project, 2013. Basquiat. Directed by Julian Schnabel. US: Miramax, 1996. Blue Velvet. Directed by David Lynch. US:  De Laurentis Entertainment Group, 1986. Buchanan, Brett. ‘Twin Peaks’ Julee Cruise Calls Finale “Slap In The Face” from “Emperor” David Lynch’. Alternative Nation [online], 4 September 2017. Available at:  www.alternativenation.net/​twin-​peaks-​julee-​cruise-​calls-​finale-​slap-​ face-​emperor-​david-​lynch/​ (accessed 5 August 2019).

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Carr, Roy and Charles Shaar Murray. Bowie: An Illustrated Record. New York: Avon Books, 1981. Doggett, Peter. The Man Who Sold the World:  David Bowie and the 1970s. London: Vintage, 2012. Dolezel, Lubomir. Heterocosmia: Fiction and Possible Worlds. Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins University Press, 1998. Eisenberg, Evan. The Recording Angel: Music, Records and Culture from Aristotle to Zappa. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2nd edition, 2005. Fisher, Mark. The Weird and The Eerie. London: Repeater Books, 2016. Grow, Kory. ‘Dream Team: The Semi-​Mysterious Story Behind the Music of Twin Peaks’. Rolling Stone [online], 25 July 2014. Available at: www.rollingstone.com/​ music/​music-​news/​dream-​team-​the-​semi-​mysterious-​story-​behind-​the-​music-​of- ​ twin-​peaks-​78506/​ (accessed 22 February, 2019). Industrial Symphony #1. Directed by David Lynch. US: Warner Home Video, 1990. Inland Empire. Directed by David Lynch. US: 518 Media, 2006. Jones, Dylan. Lost Highway. Directed by David Lynch. US: Ciby 2000/​Asymmetrical Productions, 1997. Jones, Dylan. David Bowie: A Life. New York: Crown Archetype, 2017. McHale, Brian. Postmodernist Fiction. London: Routledge, 2001. Mulholland Drive. Directed by David Lynch. US: Universal Pictures, 2001. Naftule, Ashley. ‘Julee Cruise Is Not To Be Messed With’. Pitchfork [online], 23 August 2018. Available at:  https://​pitchfork.com/​thepitch/​julee-​cruise-​is-​not-​to-​ be-​messed-​with-​interview/​ (accessed 5 August 2019). Pieter, Dom. ‘Twin Peaks Premiere End Credits Song “Shadow” By Chromatics’. Welcome to Twin Peaks [online], 23 May 2017. Available at:  https://​welcometo twinpeaks.com/​music/​chromatics-​shadow-​twin-​peaks-​end-​credits/​ (accessed 6 August 2019). Richardson, John. ‘Laura and Twin Peaks:  Postmodern Parody and the Musical Reconstruction of the absent Femme Fatale’. In The Cinema of David Lynch: American Dreams, Nightmare Visions. Edited by Erica Sheen and Andrea Davidson. London: Wallflower Press, 2004. Shaar Murray, Charles. ‘David Bowie: Who was that (un)masked man?’. NME, 12 November 1977. In Shots from the Hip. London: Penguin Books, 1991. Sutherland, Steve. ‘Worlds Apart’. Melody Maker, November 1985. Available at:  https://​cocteautwins.com/​html/​media/​print/​mm_​nov85.html (accessed 5 August 2019). Sweeney, David. ‘ “I’ll point you to a better time/​A safer place to be”:  Music, Nostalgia and Estrangement in Twin Peaks:  The Return’. In Critical Essays on Twin Peaks:  The Return. Edited by Antonio Sanna. London:  Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. Twin Peaks. Created by David Lynch and Mark Frost. TV series. US: ABC, 1990–​91. Twin Peaks:  Fire Walk With Me. Directed by David Lynch. US:  New Line Cinema, 1992. Twin Peaks: The Return. Created by David Lynch and Mark Frost. TV mini-​series. US: Showtime, 2019. Umland, Samuel J. The Man Who Fell to Earth: Novel to Film. Shenley, UK: Arrow Books, 2018.

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PART II

Sound Design

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7 “THE THREAD WILL BE TORN” Sound Design as a Measure of Self-​Knowledge in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me Andrew T. Burt

In Twin Peaks:  Fire Walk With Me (1992), sound reinforces physical and mental transformations and changes in characters’ states of mind, especially Laura Palmer’s (Sheryl Lee), as she comes to personal realizations while navigating the horror that is her life. The film, written by David Lynch and Robert Engels, disturbs notions of time and conceptions of character. Through sound design, the film reinforces this disruption by reutilizing the show’s musical motifs and changing them to strengthen the darkness that surrounds Laura. The film uses understated, jazzier music that differs from the show’s synth-​heavy soundtrack, mainly when it depicts violence or sex. Sometimes the music, lyrics, and dialogue contrast sharply with audience expectations of characterization and setting, although at others, as in “A Real Indication,” the jazzy, percussive vibe complements the film’s bleakness. Furthermore, Angelo Badalamenti’s lyrical delivery complicates matters because his singing seems out of place in the scenes in which it appears. Even when it uses similar jazz pieces, Lynch, Badalamenti, and the other composers rework them to indicate how much darker the world is than in the series, what Lynch refers to as the “loneliness, shame, guilt, confusion and devastation of the victim of incest. It also dealt with the torment of the father –​the war in him.”1 Everything seems changed and warped, and most of the levity and humorous characters are gone. This darker vibe heightens the tension as it unveils the secrets of Laura Palmer’s life and her coming-​ of-​age story. Mental transformation is fundamental to how the characters understand what is happening, and music and sound reinforce and disrupt how viewers perceive the characters’ increased knowledge. Musical change represents Laura’s different personalities, from innocent to worldly, as sound enhances

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her journey. The film’s music lends validity to Laura’s struggles as she tries to navigate her “double life” and find a balance between her different personas, but it also defies audience expectation. Thus, it shows how distorted Laura’s life is and underscores her difficulties because, just like her, “we may be confused about how to respond.”2 In addition, Laura’s emotions and how she presents them through dialogue, screams, and interactions with other characters are paramount to understanding how she changes. Sound design continually accentuates her emotions as she communicates with others and learns about herself. Scholars have debated the extent to which film can indicate knowledge through sound, especially in how it relates to narrative space. Diegetic (inside the story world) and nondiegetic (outside the story world) sound are often indicators of change in knowledge because they rely on and indicate changes in narrative space. Gerard Genette’s three diegetic levels, “extra-​diegetic, diegetic, meta-​diegetic,” go beyond these terms. They reinforce how the film allows Laura to come to realizations about her life, even though some aspects that affect her understanding are not directly part of the narrative.3 Internal and external music as well as sound support the character’s decisions. Theme music and the film’s recurring leitmotifs are at the extradiegetic level, which is external to the narrative and cannot be sensed by the characters; however, it can still add to understanding the situation and serve to connect different levels of the narrative. The diegetic or intradiegetic level is at the character’s level of understanding and experience within the story of the film, which includes any music or sounds the characters hear. The metadiegetic level is a “narrative embedded within another narrative,” so in the film, Laura’s dreams and visions fit into this category, along with any sound design that accompanies them.4 These definitions go further than the basic terminology of diegetic and nondiegetic, allowing more specificity in understanding how the film uses sound design to reinforce meaning and illuminates the confusing narrative. In Lynch, music is integral and not an “intrusive layer of meaning.”5 Claudia Gorbman builds on Genette’s ideas, writing that “Classical narratives emphasize the diegesis over the narration … Modernist forms, on the other hand, problematize the transparency of discourse, [and] point out that it’s the narration that constructs the diegesis.”6 So “ease in crossing narrational borders puts music in a position to free the image from strict realism”7 and provide a “psychic payoff ” for the audience.8 In this case, the “mood of any music on the soundtrack be it diegetic or nondiegetic music, will be felt in association with diegetic events.”9 Thus, “Music in film mediates [emphasis in original]. Its nonverbal and nondenotative status allows it to cross all varieties of ‘borders’:  between levels of narration (diegetic/​ nondiegetic), between narrating agencies (objective/​subjective narrators), between viewing time and psychological time, between points in diegetic

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space and time (as narrative transition).”10 Consequently, viewers can identify with Laura as music and sound changes across these different borders and experience a similar payoff that is separated from the narrative’s realism. Furthermore, Robynn J.  Stilwell stresses these boundaries between the diegetic and nondiegetic as the “fantastical gap  –​a transformative space, a superposition, a transition between stable states” that has important narrative and emotional implications for the audience.11 Thus, sound design may work as both a space filler and a narrating voice that leads to knowledge. She contends that filmmakers draw the audience to a character through the gap “along multiple axes, including empathy/​anempathy, objectivity/​subjectivity, and aural perspective (there/​here).”12 In this sense, she argues that the metadiegetic is a “kind of represented subjectivity … situated in a character who forms a particularly strong point of identification/​location for the audience [thus] the character becomes the bridging mechanism between the audience and the diegesis as we enter into his or her subjectivity.”13 Stilwell introduces these concepts to show how permeable the borders between diegetic and nondiegetic and objectivity and subjectivity are. In Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, the audience can glean insight about Laura and live vicariously through her actions because, as Ben Winters argues, they are not necessarily looking for veracity, but instead are prepared to “participate in a game of make-​believe.”14 Whether they know it or not, they are in search of Gorbman’s “psychic payoff.”15 In Twin Peaks:  Fire Walk With Me, the music is indispensable to understanding the narrative as the sound design continually reinforces character’s perceptions and actions, even if it is nondiegetic and they are not privy to it. Sound and music can represent the character’s emotions, and even when it seems out of place, it still engages viewers to make determinations about character growth and narrative development. Winters sums this up by pointing to film music’s fluidity: “extra-​diegetic can easily become intra-​diegetic without necessarily becoming audible to the characters.”16 Music matters because it occupies narrative space and functions as a voice or guide to help viewers and characters make sense of the text. Genette’s categories are useful in showing how music and sound have an impact beyond merely interpolating how viewers differentiate reality from the filmic world. Stilwell’s conception of the “fantastical gap” reinforces how these boundaries are integral to viewer understanding because audiences are enmeshed in trying to understand what is happening to characters with which they identify. To be sure, sound design orders the world for both viewers and characters, providing both ways to understand. The film’s sound design is critical in determining tonal shifts and creating unease, but also in providing viewer understanding for the shifting natures of characters’ moods and self-​awareness. As John Richardson shows, the film’s sound design often draws attention to itself through diegetic sound

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and performance, particularly in the case of the performance at the Roadhouse –​the “lip-​synching is imprecise; the instrumentation we see does not match the instrumentation we hear: sound is obviously manipulated and even distorted.”17 The film’s sound design commonly blends the divisions between the extradiegetic, diegetic, and metadiegetic levels as characters gain understanding through an uneasy mesh of sound and music. The diegetic music that the characters listen to often flouts viewer expectation, while the diegetic sound is often forceful and shocking. For example, Julee Cruise’s performance of “Questions in a World of Blue” augments Laura’s sadness, while the “Pink Room’s” dirgy music complicates the orgy scene. When Leland Palmer (Ray Wise) and Laura are in the car as it develops engine trouble and Mike/​Phillip Girard (Al Strobel) confronts them, a cacophony of car horns, barking, and Mike’s cryptic utterances physically reinforce Leland’s mental deterioration and Laura’s realizations. Each cryptic message holds meanings that gain importance because the film presents them with overbearing sound design. The intermeshing of diegetic and nondiegetic points to the importance of how sound design can complicate audience and character expectations. Eventually, he tells them, “The thread will be torn, Mr. Palmer.” Then, he tells Laura: “It’s him. It’s your father.” Laura is trying to understand what he has done to her, and, perhaps, determining the thread that holds them together. The diegetic clamor underscores this realization even as Leland starts to think that Laura might be on to him. As Leland remembers his experiences with Teresa Banks (Pamela Gidley), it shows how close he is to snapping and emphasizes his development into a killer. Laura questions him, and her surety turns to fear as she realizes that he is BOB (Frank Silva). The film’s jazzy theme is introduced differently than the show and emphasizes the film’s adult content, while keeping viewers guessing. Instead of bucolic images of Twin Peaks, juxtaposed against industry, the film opts for blue static, which the camera reveals to be a television screen. The darker, adult music reinforces the “mood and shifts between the senses to display sadness.”18 It is bass-​heavy and reminiscent of late-​night jazz, despite its uses of synthesized guitar. Michel Chion claims the original theme “opens in a fairly deep register, resounding like a whispered secret, and suggests the word of mouth transmission of high-​school girl’s gossip.”19 The film’s theme also feels like a secret, but one which is ripe with deepening knowledge. Laura is no longer a high school girl telling secrets but is becoming a woman who struggles to share her knowledge. The track uses similar instruments and techniques to the show, especially walking basslines and ride cymbals, but the muted trumpet lead, à la Chet Baker, takes it up a notch, giving it a late night and breezy feel. As Clare Nina Norelli acknowledges, in relation to how the song incorporates the “ ‘Doom’ motif from ‘Laura Palmer’s Theme,’ ” [it increases] “the feeling of impending disaster” before a muted

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trumpet plays, its “dulled tone sounds resigned, pained, as if it is a stand-​in for the voice of the tortured Laura Palmer herself.”20 The theme ends with a promise of violence as the camera pans away, and the television explodes as an object smashes through it and a woman screams. This shift from music to violent sound sets the tone for what is to come through the contrast of extradiegetic and diegetic sound. The busy sound design augments the narrative’s complexity and the difficulty the characters have in developing understanding as different worlds collide, and the film stretches toward its inevitable conclusion. Various tracks expand on the opening theme’s cool jazz to create a late-​ night vibe, mainly “Don’t Do Anything (I Wouldn’t Do)” and “The Pine Float,” juxtaposing the darkness of the film’s music with Lynch’s penchant for unexpected musical choices. These musical choices harken back to older genres even as they create something new. Norelli writes, “Badalamenti’s jazz is no longer cool jazz, it’s doom jazz [emphasis in original].”21 Furthermore, the viewer recognizes that Laura’s journey is going to be more difficult than imagined. The jazz vibe reinforces the adult themes, but it also complicates the narrative. Even though jazz heightens the darkness of the narrative, it also generally reflects upper-​class situations. In the film, jazz music does not precisely match the expected scenarios, magnifying Laura and Leland’s shame. The music that plays in their scenes reifies the disconnection between their sordid actions, their community, and their upper-​class lives. The sound design magnifies Laura’s differences from the average prom queen. She and the other popular girls do not listen to expected popular music, but instead attempt a sophisticated world view through how they perform for others and the music they choose, such as “Audrey’s Theme.” By avoiding incidental music that promotes levity and using familiar motifs sparingly, the film’s music generally addresses the concepts of self-​ awareness and the changes one must make in adulthood. Thus, the sound design, by offering a limited palette, prioritizes Laura’s changing state of mind as she reaches an understanding about who she is, what she has done, and what she will do. Saige Walton writes that Lynch not only “delays Laura’s appearance … [but also the] signature music of Twin Peaks for more than half an hour.”22 Thus, music marks a transition between the FBI’s quest and the introduction of a living, breathing Laura. Her appearance also indicates that mysteries will start being solved or understood. Furthermore, musical decisions underscore how other characters react to Laura as she makes these determinations and begins to understand what is happening to her. Both diegetic and extradiegetic music provides cues to Laura’s identity as she becomes the focal point for the first time, and the film reveals her strength amidst the wreckage of her life. Laura becomes the protagonist, shifting from an unknowable figure to a knowable one, who does not rely upon the decisions or experiences of the show’s male characters. The circumstances surrounding

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her mysterious death, instead of the investigation into her death, become a priority. Now Laura has a voice, but just like some of the film’s diegetic choices, her voice is confusing, and she must make hard decisions. In the film’s early scenes, an uneasy feeling is tangible because the editing disrupts the linearity of the storyline, complicating how the characters and viewers understand the film’s world. The film’s sound design reinforces this confusion. For example, the music and sound, coupled with tight editing, add uneasiness to the ominous scenes in Gordon Cole’s (David Lynch) office and the room above the convenience store where the beings from the Red Room assemble. The office scene focuses on Phillip Jeffries’ (David Bowie) appearance and disappearance. The scene’s synth music hints at the film’s theme, yet it is less open-​ended rhythmically; squalling and dissonant, it is the sound of doors closing, building toward a conclusion that resembles air being sucked from the room and representing an ending of knowledge. Lynch’s sound design and mise en scène privilege the subjective nature of knowledge by showing how difficult it is for characters to understand the connections between Twin Peaks’ realms and their place within them, but as Martha P.  Nochimson argues, “Jeffries’s visit establishes an important link between film and dreams that endures when logic cannot.”23 The dreamlike, unsettling convenience store scene, which fractures the boundary between diegetic and metadiegetic, impedes on Cole’s office. It contains backwards discussion and strange imagery as characters, like BOB and The Man From Another Place (Michael J. Anderson), gather in the room as the “Theme” mixed with static plays, which points to the indeterminacy of the film’s borders. Additionally, the barriers between worlds are fuzzy as BOB and The Man leave through the red room’s curtain, and Jeffries screams. The scene highlights these thresholds as it cuts between shots of Jeffries talking and the overwhelming blue static beneath which he disappears. Music plays a significant role in how the film introduces viewers to these situations and how they come to understand Twin Peaks and its confusing narrative. The places that the film explores present challenges, and the music’s adult nature, and how the film presents it, reinforces these challenges. The absence of outside music, such as licensed songs and popular artists, adds to the insularity of the filmic world and blurs the lines between diegetic levels. One might ask in what universe teenage girls listen to these songs, but the show’s viewers were already unsettled by a musical selection that resembled a twisted 1950s indie sensibility rather than a 1990s mainstream vibe. The film’s soundtrack is very different from what was topping the charts in 1992 as it is composed solely by Angelo Badalamenti or in collaboration with David Slusser with lyrics by Lynch and feels like a reimagining of 1950s music.24 R & B, such as En Vogue’s “Give Him Something He Can Feel,” country like Billy Ray Cyrus’s “Achy Breaky Heart,” and hip hop like House

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of Pain’s “Jump Around” are light years away from the music heard in Twin Peaks’ pool rooms and bars. No scene in the film depicts the incongruity between song choice and scene as directly as in the television show’s season one, episode two, when Audrey Horne (Sherilyn Fenn) dances to “Audrey’s Dance” in the Double R Diner. Kathryn Kalinak wonders about the jukebox’s programming because of its odd selections ranging from “jazzy, synthesized bebop [to] twangy country western songs that play out without ever reaching lyrics.”25 The track is closer to cool jazz, like much of the film’s soundtrack, with walking basslines, and brushed drums. The song also recycles leitmotifs from “Laura Palmer’s Theme” and jazzes them up, a process used to a more significant advantage in Fire Walk With Me. The song’s finger snaps add percussion that diegetically allows the characters to participate by matching their movements to music in a process known as “mickey-​mousing.”26 Kalinak attests that Lynch plays with diegetic music, particularly in scenes like this, because sometimes the music appears to be nondiegetic before he reveals it to be part of the characters’ world.27 Yet again, sound design is distorting perceptions of the diegesis as it skirts among Genette’s three diegetic levels and considers Stilwell’s “fantastical gap.” “A Real Indication,” credited to the Thought Gang, addresses how the sound design reinforces character’s decisions while fitting into an uncertain historical time frame. Lyrically, the song adds an extradiegetic element, anticipating Laura’s psychological growth and the hurdles she faces, despite its seemingly nonsensical lyrics. The track shows how multifaceted Twin Peaks teenagers are as they apparently inhabit an alternate time zone where the 1950s jut against the present in uncomfortable and surprising ways. The lyrics erupt vocally, like Tom Waits’ “Bone Machine” or Nick Cave’s “The Mercy Seat,” reflecting traditional folk singing reimagined for a new era. Musically, the song includes synthesized guitar that sounds like a human voice with light snare washes and repeated bassy figures. Badalamenti sounds like a beat poetry singer telling a story over this backdrop, and at the end of lines, he screams that he has a “real indication of a laugh coming on.”28 Effects answer the guitar parts, and sirens chaotically echo his screams, calling attention to how screams are integral to communication in the narrative. He laughs and snarls as the music seems to build toward a resolution that never comes. This lack of an ending is indicative of the nature of the “Twin Peaks” narrative as even though Laura finds some closure, she is still trapped in the “Red Lodge.” “A Real Indication” is about a flâneur who walks through a town, which is apt since characters walking with the fire is one of the film’s main concepts. As he travels the city streets, he attempts to keep from smiling, “like the night my girl went away/​gone off in a world filled with stuff.”29 This scenario seemingly corresponds to Laura Palmer’s search. As Chion argues, the

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“idea of the film is indeed to walk with Laura to the very end, something none of the characters can do, to the end of her night.”30 The lyrics add a metadiegetic level, recalling the town’s strange events, primarily as they refer to wires and electricity: “Lights start changing/​and there’s wires in the air.” The narrator explains the “asphalt, man/​is all around me” as he travels through or even transforms in the chaotic world. Everything seems different as he notices his surroundings and attempts to communicate with the world around him through raucous laughter. His struggles mirror Laura’s as she smiles throughout the movie despite the awful things happening to her. Just like the narrator, she attempts to communicate through various means, including her diary, changing personas to get her messages across. The sound design uses everyday diegetic sounds in ominous ways that also lead to understanding, particularly as Laura begins to recognize the connection between BOB and her father. For example, the ceiling fan in the Palmer’s house indicates her growing awareness. It plays a pivotal role in her realization that BOB might possess her father. Laura stares at the droning ceiling fan as a voice, possibly BOB’s, threateningly whispers, “I want to taste with your mouth.” The ceiling fan signals Leland’s abuse and BOB’s appearance; its sound and movement demarcate BOB’s entrance into the regular world. Nochimson writes that the fan is “BOB’s signal that her world is imploding; the shadow side of the father’s authority traps the very flow of air in a mechanism.”31 Before BOB enters her room through the window, the camera shows Leland turn on the fan, and its whirring signals Laura that he is present. She moans in her sleep as BOB creeps into her bed and assaults her. Laura asks him:  “who are you?” She eventually opens her eyes, sees Leland, and screams when she realizes what is happening. Screaming is a form of communication for Laura, and she often expresses a full range of emotions as she screams. Even in scenes where Laura is not heard, her screams are impactful and control narrative space, like when she finds BOB in her bedroom. Greil Marcus believes that Laura behaves like a silent picture performer as she looks at Leland, “her eyes widening, her mouth opening, not moving, a person now composed entirely of a silent scream that for one and a half minutes does not stop.”32 Another instance where she conveys knowledge through her screams is when she meets with Harold Smith (Lenny Von Dohlen) after BOB tears the page out of her diary. Once he denies the existence of Bob, she explains that BOB has been molesting her:  “BOB is real. He’s been ‘having’ me since I  was 12  … He wants to be me … or he will kill me.” As if Laura’s distressed dialogue is not enough, she cycles through emotions, becoming increasingly agitated. She grabs his lapels and whispers, “Fire. Walk. With. Me” before screaming, amidst extradiegetic buzzing, cycling, ambient noise, before she explodes into sobbing, school girl Laura.

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Cycling through emotions is one of the ways Laura handles difficult situations, communicates with others, and deals with her friends. She wants to protect them, but when she is high or drunk, she can only defend herself, yet she still feels compassion. The film makes her kindness explicit when she talks to Donna Hayward (Moira Kelly) in her living room; their cryptic conversation, set to the flickering fire in the background and slight instrumentation, shows how Laura navigates these relationships. Sometimes what the film intimates through dialogue is more important than what is said. Laura’s expressions are enough as she struggles between violence and calm. Donna’s responses point to her naiveté, yet Laura seems to be growing in awareness as she responds. Donna asks, “Do you think that if you were falling in space … that you would slow down after a while, or go faster and faster?” Laura’s response is telling, given what she has been through and what is to come: “Faster and faster. And for a long time, you wouldn’t feel anything. And then you’d burst into fire. Forever. And the angels wouldn’t help you. Because they’ve all gone away.” Laura moves from confident to wistful in an instant as she realizes that she must rely on her own resources. Throughout the film, Laura switches between emotional states and personas as she navigates between relationships, but with Donna, she tends to be more open and forthcoming as she considers her friend. In these scenes, including the falling in space conversation, the music is minimalistic and diegetic ambient sounds do little to interfere with their conversation, which further privileges the closeness of their relationship. With James Hurley (James Marshall), she is also forthcoming, yet she still treats him like a child and distances herself from him. The film creates this distance through a juxtaposition of extradiegetic music and diegetic dialogue. She opens up to James through tenderness, despite being cryptic. In the forest scene, after James and Laura ride on his Harley, the sound design takes on a sinister tone as it lends credence to a problematic situation. As a noticeably high Laura cycles through emotions, “Laura Palmer’s Theme” plays, its separate parts mirroring her struggle as it changes keys. In this scene, James and Laura start realizing how doomed their love is with noticeably dramatic, yet increasingly cryptic dialogue. Her responses are filled with self-​realization because she knows she is hurting James:  “Even Donna doesn’t know me. Your Laura disappeared. It’s just me now.” The shuffling of key musical passages fully immerses viewers in Laura’s torment and her realization that her different lives have merged, metaphorically and literally as she heads toward the Black Lodge. The film draws the audience into the darkness with Laura; however, this darkness will bring understanding. The music swells when Laura finally leaves James as if it was created just for that purpose. Several other scenes involving Donna are vital in showing how Laura learns to understand her situation and gain control. In the Roadhouse, she watches the Blue Lady’s (Julee Cruise) performance of “Questions in a World of

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Blue,” and she can no longer control her great sadness. Greil Marcus makes a valid, yet arguable, point about Cruise, calling her a “ruined Laura Palmer … with all the physical details wrong.”33 Marcus’s argument recalls the frequent discussion of Lynch’s use of doppelgängers but extends it by showing how Cruise’s appearance foreshadows Laura’s death. As he claims, “she performs as someone who herself has no future, but who holds out the possibility of a future, of redemption, to whoever might really hear her.”34 Her message hits Laura hard because it is familiar to her, and the Blue Lady becomes Laura’s guide and a portent of her future. Donna has followed her friend, and when she sees Laura crying, emotion also overcomes her. This moment of understanding leads her to follow Laura into dangerous places like the “Pink Room.” Lyrically, “Questions in a World of Blue” is cryptic and sparse, speaking to Laura’s sadness, the hopelessness of her situation, and her attempts to find solace. The song’s metadiegetic questions revolve around the difficulties of a broken relationship. The speaker wonders why their lover left them, “when all the world seemed to sing,” asking whose fault it was that they broke up when everything was going so well: “Why, why did you go?/​Was it me? Was it you?”35 The couple is left with questions and empty hearts. Mirroring Laura’s life, the light and happiness leaves their lives as the narrator asks, “When did the day/​with all of its light turn to night?”36 Musically, the song is minimalistic, mostly consisting of synth and softly brushed drums, although the band in the scene is a full ensemble with guitars. Bare minimalism instills the song with room to contain all the pain and sadness that Laura needs to begin healing. Marcus writes that Laura cannot be heard crying on the soundtrack; “she is shattering, and there seems to be nobody else in the room to hear the lovely song.”37 Songs like this fill that gap just as the film fills in the Laura Palmer story, adding to our knowledge of her horrific life and the promises that it holds; “what she should never have been, performing that absent self, a Laura Palmer that she can only see in someone else.”38 The “Pink Room” relays danger in its juxtaposition of normalcy, indicated by loud music and inability to distinguish conversation, with the tone of the dialogue, the unpredictable music, and the lengths Laura goes through to protect or undermine Donna. The transition between the Roadhouse and the “Pink Room” also reinforces how Laura changes between her different personas as the film’s sound design mirrors these changes through diegetic and extradiegetic sound. The red strobe light and smoky room, coupled with the propulsive music, disorient the viewer and exacerbate Laura’s confusion. Walton points out that much is out of synch with the music, including the dancing couples and the “image and sound [that] also move in and out of synch with one another,” which reinforces this disorientation.39 The diegetic music is so loud that subtitles are necessary to understand the characters.

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What they say is cryptic and echoes Laura’s earlier conversations with Donna as she tries to protect and control her friend. According to John Thorne, Laura’s “bad” persona is a risk for her absolution because she has “only hurt herself when she has been ‘bad.’ If she were to purposefully and seriously hurt someone else, however, her good side would be irretrievably lost.”40 The film’s sequence of events proves this as the Roadhouse shifts to the “Pink Room,” and Laura visibly struggles with her different personas. Laura is multifaceted, and the dynamic range of music that accompanies her effectively shows how dynamic she has become in the film as she gains knowledge. Laura’s death is not without questions, but the film presents the idea that she may have found peace, despite the unceasing violence and uneasy sound design that accompanies her brutal death. In an abandoned train car amidst flickering light, Leland kills her. The music titled “Jacque’s’ Cabin/​ The Train Car” provides a squalling accompaniment to screams and chaos as, yet again, it is hard to determine if the music is diegetic or extradiegetic. This scene privileges the character’s transition to adulthood, and, perhaps, adult knowledge, as freed from her pain and dressed elegantly, she sits in a chair near Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) and cries tears of joy as an angel holds court. “The Voice of Love” dramatically concludes the film, its elegiac feel magnifying the momentous culmination of Laura’s outburst of feeling and discovery that she is free from her pain and the multiple lives she has led. In Fire Walk With Me, sound design is an indicator of how characters change and understand what is happening to them. The narrative poses demands on the characters and the viewers, challenging everyone to make uncomfortable decisions concerning what has happened without the jocularity of the television series that tempered the horror. Darker and more adult music and dialogue help to order this world and reinforce mental and physical changes and discoveries made by the characters, as when Laura grows out of her prom queen persona and other facades and comes to painful realizations about herself. The interplay between the three diegetic levels is paramount to how the film presents knowledge. Lynch’s unorthodox musical decisions reinforce indecision and disruption by placing unusual sounds and music in circumstances that do not match what viewers usually expect. Thus, sound design complicates yet reinforces the uncomfortable idea that Laura and Leland must meet their respective fates, and sound is key to how they come to understand this. Additionally, both diegetic and nondiegetic sound, as well as the uncertainty surrounding how they operate, adds unease within already fraught scenes. Lynch and his co-​conspirators instill their unsettling narrative with horrific and unexpected sounds that magnify the unease, even as they validate why Laura Palmer died and what it means for her and the small-​town community of Twin Peaks.

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Notes 1 David Lynch, quoted in Chris Rodley, ed., Lynch on Lynch (London: Faber & Faber, 1997), 185. 2 Kathryn Kalinak, “ ‘Disturbing the Guests with This Racket’: Music and Twin Peaks,” in Full Secrets:  Critical Approaches to Twin Peaks, ed. David Lavery (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1995), 89. 3 Ben Winters, “The Non-​Diegetic Fallacy:  Film, Music, and Narrative Space,” Music & Letters 91, no. 2 (2010): 225. 4 Gerald Prince, A Dictionary of Narratology (Lincoln, NE:  University of Nebraska Press, 1989), 50. 5 Winters, “The Non-​Diegetic Fallacy,” 227. 6 Claudia Gorbman, Unheard Melodies:  Narrative Film Music (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1987), 3. 7 Gorbman, Unheard Melodies, 4. 8 Gorbman, Unheard Melodies, 5. 9 Gorbman, Unheard Melodies, 23. 10 Gorbman, Unheard Melodies, 30. 11 Robynn J.  Stilwell, “The Fantastical Gap between Diegetic and Nondiegetic,” in Beyond the Soundtrack: Representing Music in Cinema, ed. Daniel Goldmark, Lawrence Kramer, and Richard D.  Leppert (Berkeley, CA:  University of California Press, 2007), 200. 12 Stilwell, “The Fantastical Gap,” 192–​193. 13 Stilwell, “The Fantastical Gap,” 196. 14 Winters, “The Non-​Diegetic Fallacy,” 228. 15 Gorbman, Unheard Melodies, 5. 16 Winters, “The Non-​Diegetic Fallacy,” 237. 17 John Richardson, “Laura and Twin Peaks:  Postmodern Parody and the Musical Reconstruction of the Absent Femme Fatale,” in The Cinema of David Lynch:  American Dreams, Nightmare Visions, ed. Erica Sheen and Annette Davison (London: Wallflower Press, 2004), 86. 18 Saige Walton, “The Electricity of Blue Roses: Shorting the Senses and Sensing Film Mood in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me,” in From Sensation to Synaesthesia in Film and New Media, ed. Rossella Catanese, Francesca Scotto Lavina, and Valentina Valente (Newcastle upon Tyne:  Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019), 155. 19 Michel Chion, David Lynch, trans. Robert Julian (London: BFI, 1995), 116. 20 Clare Nina Norelli, Soundtrack from Twin Peaks (New  York:  Bloomsbury, 2017), 117. 21 Norelli, Soundtrack, 118. 22 Walton, “Electricity of Blue Roses,” 152. 23 Martha P. Nochimson, The Passion of David Lynch: Wild at Heart in Hollywood (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1997), 182. 24 David Lynch and Kristine McKenna, Room to Dream (New  York:  Random House, 2018), 309. 25 Kalinak, “Disturbing the Guests,” 85. 26 Winters, “The Non-​Diegetic Fallacy,” 227. 27 Kalinak, “Disturbing the Guests,” 85.

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28 Thought Gang, “A Real Indication,” track 5 on Twin Peaks:  Fire Walk With Me:  Music from the Motion Picture Soundtrack, Warner Bros. Records, 1992, compact disc. 29 Thought Gang, “A Real Indication.” 30 Chion, David Lynch, 153. 31 Nochimson, The Passion of David Lynch, 176. 32 Greil Marcus, The Shape of Things to Come: Prophecy and the American Voice (London: Faber and Faber, 2006), 180. 33 Marcus, The Shape of Things to Come, 172. 34 Marcus, The Shape of Things to Come, 172. 35 Julee Cruise, “Questions in a World of Blue,” Track 6 on Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me; Music from the Motion Picture Soundtrack, Warner Bros. Records, 1992, compact disc. 36 Cruise, “Questions in a World of Blue.” 37 Marcus, The Shape of Things to Come, 174. 38 Marcus, The Shape of Things to Come, 176. 39 Walton, “Electricity of Blue Roses,” 162. 40 John Thorne, The Essential Wrapped in Plastic: Pathways to Twin Peaks (Dallas, TX: John Thorne, 2016), 281.

Works Cited Chion, Michel. David Lynch. Translated by Robert Julian. London: BFI, 1995. Cruise, Julee. “Questions in a World of Blue.” Track Six on Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me:  Music from the Motion Picture Soundtrack, Warner Bros. Records, 1992, compact disc. Gorbman, Claudia. Unheard Melodies:  Narrative Film Music. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1987. Kalinak, Kathryn. “ ‘Disturbing the Guests with This Racket’:  Music and Twin Peaks.” In Full Secrets:  Critical Approaches to Twin Peaks. Edited by David Lavery, 82–​92. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1995. Lynch, David and Kristine McKenna. Room to Dream. New  York:  Random House, 2018. Marcus, Greil. The Shape of Things to Come:  Prophecy and the American Voice. London: Faber and Faber, 2006. Nochimson, Martha P. The Passion of David Lynch:  Wild at Heart in Hollywood. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1997. Norelli, Clare Nina. Soundtrack from Twin Peaks. New York: Bloomsbury, 2017. Prince, Gerald. A Dictionary of Narratology: Revised Edition. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1989. Richardson, John. “Laura and Twin Peaks:  Postmodern Parody and the Musical Reconstruction of the Absent Femme Fatale.” In The Cinema of David Lynch: American Dreams, Nightmare Visions. Edited by Erica Sheen and Annette Davison, 77–​92. London: Wallflower Press, 2004. Rodley, Chris. Lynch on Lynch, Revised Edition. London: Faber & Faber, 1997. Stilwell, Robynn J., “The Fantastical Gap between Diegetic and Nondiegetic.” In Beyond the Soundtrack:  Representing Music in Cinema. Edited by Daniel

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Goldmark, Lawrence Kramer, and Richard D. Leppert, 184–​ 201. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2007. Thorne, John. The Essential Wrapped in Plastic:  Pathways to Twin Peaks. Dallas, TX: John Thorne, 2016. Thought Gang. “A Real Indication.” Track 5 on Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me: Music from the Motion Picture Soundtrack. Warner Bros. Records, 1992, compact disc. —​—​—​ Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. Directed by David Lynch. Burbank, CA: New Line Cinema, 1992. Walton, Saige. “The Electricity of Blue Roses: Shorting the Senses and Sensing Film Mood in Twin Peaks:  Fire Walk With Me.” In From Sensation to Synaesthesia in Film and New Media. Edited by Rossella Catanese, Francesca Scotto Lavina, and Valentina Valente, 151–​ 166. Newcastle upon Tyne:  Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019. Winters, Ben. “The Non-​Diegetic Fallacy: Film, Music, and Narrative Space.” Music & Letters 91, no. 2 (2010): 225.

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8 SOUND DESIGN, MUSIC, AND THE BIRTH OF EVIL IN TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN Kingsley Marshall and Rupert Loydell

Safe and Sound in Twin Peaks Sound is at least 50% of the picture […] In post, most of the sound is built and it’s usually a process of experimenting. Action and reaction. Trying this or that. I think that in every instance of every sound, there are 760 million sounds that are wrong and there are 34 sounds that are correct. (Lynch, in Bentley: 2017) Throughout the third season of Twin Peaks (or The Return),1 writer, director, and sound designer David Lynch and his collaborators deploy a complex combination of sounds and visuals to depict mysticism, the impossible, and to bring to life the birth and spread of evil in the Twin Peaks universe. Lynch uses intricate sound design, score, source music, and music performed within the diegesis to articulate and distinguish real-​world geography from the supernatural spaces of the season and construct sonically distinct liminal spaces that serve to connect these places within a rhizomic narrative. Rules of sound use established in earlier seasons are consistent throughout this latest season, with Lynch, composer Angelo Badalamenti, and supervising sound editor Dean Hurley providing a collaborative throughline in the universe. The season as a whole couples inter-​and meta-​textual connections in a form which embraces both conventional and experimental film practices. The manipulation of, and complex relationship between, the sonic and the visual lends an otherworldly quality to The Return and allows the latest iteration of the show to further extend established Lynchian worlds.

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In Part 8, evil is manifested through the Trinity atomic bomb test –​this event announced through an on-​screen intertitle as taking place on July 16, 1945 in White Sands, New Mexico. In this moment, writer Mark Frost, director David Lynch, and their collaborators appear to link this very real, very physical, historical first atomic explosion with the birth of evil, or an evil, into the world. As the bomb explodes across the screen, we are led on a visual journey reminiscent of astronaut David Bowman’s trip through the stargate in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001:  A Space Odyssey.2 The explosion is presented as a striking and beautiful visual event and is underscored with Krzysztof Penderecki’s discordant and atonal composition, Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima.3 Within the slow-​motion technicolor explosive mayhem we see the floating spirit of BOB –​the embodiment of evil present in each of the previous seasons of Twin Peaks4 and the feature film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me.5 Later, the episode moves to 1950s America where a soot-​ covered Woodsman commandeers the local KPJK radio station and broadcasts a poem to late-​night listeners, calmly killing the middle-​aged presenter as he does so by slowly cracking his skull like an egg. The power of his repeated two-​line incantation causes recipients of the broadcast to fall to the floor, presumably dead, before the poem ends and the Woodsman disappears into the night. As an indication of the fate of his audience, the youngest listener of the broadcast is shown to succumb to a locust-​like frog-​bug which crawls across the desert into her bedroom, then her mouth –​presumably the fate of all those who hear the Woodsman’s elegy. In The New York Times, Noel Murray suggested that “we just witnessed something like the origin story for the modern saga of good versus evil that ‘Twin Peaks’ has been telling since 1990.”6 David Rothenberg suggests that “[i]‌t is a small step from dream noises to dream places.”7 For the attentive viewer/​listener of The Return, it is sound that reorients and connects these otherwise disparate spaces. Significant to the narrative of the Twin Peaks universe are the many portals or gateways that join the extra-​dimensional spaces of the season and, as with the atomic bomb test, the manner with which rifts in the liminal spaces that separate them occur. Georges Bataille suggests that the “labyrinth is no longer a maze which has a potential or actual solution, but it is a ‘space’ without an entrance, an exit or a center. In this disorientation, the labyrinth is an image of existence.”8 In The Return, these portals represent ruptures in space and time and lead characters to specific locations –​the Black and White Lodges, The Glass Box, Dutchman’s Lodge, or The Fireman’s residence. Where characters move from these extra-​dimensional spaces to the real world, sonic cues commonly indicate their arrival or departure. This is evident across the series but significantly foregrounded with the group of Woodsmen who are apparently brought into our world following the bomb test. Immediately after the Trinity explosion sequence, the Woodsmen

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appear around a convenience store in a flurry of what the close captioning describes as a “warbling static stuttering.” This same sound cue is consistent throughout, announcing the Woodsmen’s presence around the “zone” that surrounds a vortex in a trailer park in Part 11, and preceding a visual reveal of one of their number lurking in the corridors and cells of a police station. Having reduced the amount of non-​diegetic music throughout the season, and with little dialogue in many of the episodes, sound design is required to do much of the narrative heavy lifting. Sound serves to connect disparate dots from earlier episodes and seasons, encouraging the audience to consider how what first appear to be conventional spaces resonate with layers of meaning and intrigue. John Cage suggests “[w]‌herever we are, what we hear is mostly noise. When we ignore it it disturbs us. When we listen to it, we find it fascinating.”9 An example of where characters listen, rather than ignore what they hear around them, is an investigation into mysterious sounds emanating from a room at the Great Northern Hotel. This sequence offers an example of where sound is used to bury characters’ past actions literally in the walls of locations. Variations on a ringing or humming sound, which appears to emanate from the room, are deployed whenever Agent Dale Cooper sees The Fireman, and the same sound is also played in Episode 7 of Season 2 in a scene when Cooper dreams of the Red Room. Both of these locations serve as portals between the real and extra-​dimensional, and the use of the same sound suggests that the Great Northern Hotel also shares this liminal property. Throughout Twin Peaks, Lynch appears to willfully make use of sound as a catalyst for the audience to forge their own connections with the narrative events occurring on screen. As Juan Aliaga observes, this is centered in the “idea of the hideousness of everyday reality […] or, in other words, the idea that all manifestations of horror or of the abyss come from within human beings themselves.”10 He adds, “Lynch does not look for another world, finding more than enough inspiration in the distributing strangeness of our own.”11 The lack of conventional narrative hierarchies and playful misdirection is disruptive. Deviating from the conventional is, in part, how Lynch moved from noun to the Lynchian adjective, after all –​ what David Foster Wallace described as a unique sense of combining of the mundane and macabre.12 As sound designer for The Return, Lynch continues a career-​long avoidance of the familiar. This is made manifest with the use of editing techniques such as jump cuts and glitching, as evident in the sound design of the series as they are in the visuals. Though often sound and image unite to create this combination, where scenes appear mundane at first glance it is sound design that repurposes these otherwise ordinary situations into the extraordinarily macabre. Sound cues motivate the audience to look beyond what is visually depicted and seek out clues to the extra dimensional. If Lynch’s

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past work reveals the hidden arguments, sexualities, addictions, violence, and strangeness of society and familial life, so The Return goes even further, to reveal literally hidden, underground, occult secrets and geographies. The novelist Agustín Fernández Mallo, whose fiction might itself be described as Lynchian, discusses what he calls “complex realism” in similar terms: If reality today is different from the reality of 30 years ago, we can’t keep describing reality in the same way as we did 30 years ago. Today we understand that reality corresponds to a model  –​or even better, the sum of various models  –​which in science are termed ‘complex systems’ […] This complexity is what creates that which we all know –​ The World –​is connected in a system of networks –​and I’m not referring only to the internet but also to thousands of analog networks in which we are all immersed at every instant. Until a short time ago, we knew the world in parts, whereas now we know that those parts are all connected with a very concrete topology. These networks are everything.13 Such networks and complexities in Part 8 of The Return are not only startling and confusing, but also appear to offer a back story and a creation myth for the whole of the Twin Peaks universe. Its audacious and hypnotic visuals, abstract soundtrack, and magical realism extended beyond the personal, combining to present a storyline of how evil made itself manifest –​the first atomic bomb test the catalyst for its arrival on earth. As Bataille suggests, “a man is only a particle inserted in unstable and entangled wholes.”14 Take away the idea of linear storytelling, conclusions, and hierarchies and we are left with narratives of associative, tangential, fantastical, and juxtaposed events and worlds that we, the viewer, must turn into story (or stories) and try to make sense of or accept as surreal disjunctions.

Lynch and the Rhizome Some critics have not received these disjunctions well. Jonathan Foltz suggests that Part 8 of The Return consisted of “mind-​bending abstractions and derelict poetry,” furthering Lynch’s previous “way of elevating peripheral performances to derail our sense of narrative logic.”15 Lynch, however, sees things differently, stating in an interview with Paul Woods that “abstractions are a good thing and they exist all around us anyway. They sometimes can conjure up a thrilling experience within the person.”16 Lynch sets the audience free to connect events and characters as we wish, to exercise our own value judgments, to create our own sense of time and intersecting worlds that Twin Peaks may or may not contain. The

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narrative and characters that populate them are always “[b]‌etween things,” which Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari state, “does not designate a localizable relation going from one thing to the other and back again, but a perpendicular direction, a transversal movement that sweeps one and the other away, a stream without beginning or end that undermines its banks and picks up speed in the middle.”17 Lynch subverts the small-​town soap opera model, claiming in an interview that this “gives access to all the other subterranean lives which are going on in the town, because literally everybody has their own secret –​as I believe they do in life.”18 This view is shared by the video artist Bill Viola, who states that “[u]‌nder the surface of all the works exists a kind of underground river that we don’t see. It’s a continuously moving stream of knowledge, emotion and mystery.”19 Viola goes on to defend both mystery and emptiness as facilitators of movement: “You absolutely must have the unknown to live, if you don’t have the unknown, the place of mystery or the place where words fail, where thinking stops, if you don’t have that place then you can’t go forward. So we need this place of emptiness.”20 The stream and “story” of Twin Peaks share similarities with Matt Bluemink’s definition of the rhizome, which: is constantly growing, adapting, forming new connections with a variety of different multiplicities. It does not stem from one individual entrance i.e. some glorified “Doorway of Knowledge”, it exists precisely as a result of multiple entrances, multiple contributors, and an innumerable number of contributions.21 In The Return, the labyrinth presented by the rhizomic connection between spaces and the form of its visual and sonic representation, is both the destination and journey of Agent Cooper through the season. Michaela Bronstein is resistant to this, suggesting that: Twin Peaks: The Return, in the end, seems to want us to remain uncertain of our own position and role as spectators, trying to figure out in what way we’re supposed to relate to the fabric of its world and the texture of its narrative experience. The emotional cues point in every direction and lead nowhere.22

Dream Places Lynch’s Twin Peaks is visually reminiscent of Edward Hopper’s paintings, though it is often more monochromatic and lacks the gloss finish of oil paint. Beth Venn states that “In many of Hopper’s paintings, one has the vague sense of viewing a film still –​the stop-​action quality of frozen figures in an act

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of very little significance.”23 Unlike the quiet street in Early Sunday Morning24 or the frozen diner scene of Hopper’s Nighthawks,25 in Lynch’s world figures flicker and glitch, images are layered and blurred, time changes as we watch. In Hopper’s work we have a depiction of a specific time and place; Lynch, however, can physically overlay visual images from different times, in addition to having the cinematic tools of flashback and flash-​forward to work with, not to mention ideas of fragmentation, different timelines, and unreliable narrators. Lynch’s use of snapshots and cameos, disconnected dialogue and long silences, which leave the viewer trying to work out how it all fits together, or if indeed it does, resonates with Venn’s description of Hopper’s work. He notes that: Hopper’s art not only has had a profound impact on painting and sculpture, but also influenced –​and was itself influenced by –​photography and film. Hopper participated in and contributed to a process that had long been the domain of photography –​capturing a segment that suggests a larger story. One finds in many Hopper paintings an incomplete narrative.26 Obsessive fans (see Twin Peaks  –​reddit27) work out various conflicting timelines from small clues and asides in various scenes, play different episodes alongside each other to search for synchronicity and mirroring, bring occult and conspiracy theories to bear on the season, and read between the lines of Mark Frost’s two Twin Peaks28 books to find out what is going on. But just as the “uncomfortable spaces of Hopper’s canvases”29 may not make for easy viewing, Lynch’s work seems specifically designed to confuse and puzzle the viewer. In an interview with Kristine McKenna, Lynch states:  “a mystery means there’s a puzzle to be solved. Once you start thinking like that you’re hooked on finding a meaning.”30

Everywhere and Nowhere The mystical poet and artist William Blake stated that:  “Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human Existence.”31 He suggests that humans somehow contain all of these in a kind of balance –​a non-​hierarchical structure, where love nor hate co-​exist and neither are better than one another. “[A]‌ny point of a rhizome can be connected to anything other, and must be,” state Deleuze and Guattari.32 Elsewhere they suggest that a “rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo,”33 an idea suited to the storytelling strands of The Return.

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“The idea of the rhizome,” explains Bluemink, “is a structural metaphor taken from the biological field of botany. It describes an underground mass of continuously growing horizontal stems or roots which extend lateral shoots at certain intervals to and establish connections with other shoots. There is no hierarchical structure to the growth of the rhizome.”34 Remove the idea of linear storytelling, conclusions, and hierarchies  –​some events being more important than others –​and we are left with narratives of associative, tangential, fantastical, and juxtaposed events and worlds that we, the viewers, must turn into story (or stories) and try to make sense of, or accept as surreal disjunctions. Some have questioned the lack of authorial clarity. Todd McGowan, discussing Lynch’s Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me,35 states that “the fantastic dimension […] places an onerous demand on the spectator.” He goes on to say that “one finds the outside within the inside, the infinite within the finite.”36 Jonathan Foltz suggests that Part 8 of The Return is most challenging in the way it seems to undo the story it is telling, moving out of sequence and perversely out of rhythm, indicating a wealth of paths it has no interest in going down, spending long stretches of time in scenes that do not immediately further the plot, and jumping without warning from characters and locales we know to those we don’t.37 Lynch argues that this undoing of narrative is linked to Freud’s notion of the sinister, “the hybrid union of two apparently contradictory elements: firstly, all that which is normal, familiar, well-​loved or –​when it affects the peace and tranquility of domestic life –​related to the family, and secondly, the sudden appearance of a malign element; the presence of evil appearing unexpectedly in an otherwise warm and friendly context.”38 We are free to connect events and characters as we wish, to exercise our own value judgments, to create our own sense of time and intersecting worlds that Twin Peaks may or may not contain. The narrative is necessarily always “[b]‌etween things,”39 which Deleuze and Guattari state: does not designate a localizable relation going from one thing to the other and back again, but a perpendicular direction, a transversal movement that sweeps one and the other away, a stream without beginning or end that undermines its banks and picks up speed in the middle.40 One way or another way? Black Lodge or White Lodge, perhaps the Red Lodge? Past or present, Bad Cooper or Good Cooper, dead or alive, possessed or unpossessed, elsewhere or here? Deleuze and Guattari state, “A

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rhizome may be broken, shattered at a given spot, but it will start up again on one of its old lines, or on new lines.”41 The “story” of Twin Peaks, like the rhizome: is constantly growing, adapting, forming new connections with a variety of different multiplicities. It does not stem from one individual entrance i.e. some glorified “Doorway of Knowledge,” it exists precisely as a result of multiple entrances, multiple contributors, and an innumerable number of contributions.42 Lynch and Frost contribute, as do musicians and actors, as they construct and film Twin Peaks, a world of many entrances (and exits), be they caves, cellars, circles of trees or temporary slippages of time created by music or the alignment of planets and stars. Len Gutkin distinguishes the storytelling of Twin Peaks as distant from more traditional techniques, an allegorical dislocation that has a “singular capacity to evoke (rather than merely propose, like the rest of television) a world of infinite, magical dread.”43 Here, dreams are significant and amplified in importance, rather than a convenient narrative device to avoid ambiguity or sensemaking. The whole of The Return is full of confusion and violence, yet also specific moments of surreal and personal creation. The Woodsman’s incantation is a prophecy announcing the arrival of a new power, in addition to a comment upon the power of radio and the voice upon the filmic world. If the Woodsman’s incantation is an annunciating angel or being who is the conduit to extra-​dimensional spaces, he could be considered as an agent of what Cole describes as Jowday –​the heralder of BOB, launched at the earth following the atomic test. Cooper seems to escape the Lodge he was trapped in at the end of Season 2 through an electric plug via some kind of spaceship; BOB and Laura are launched, post-​atomic bomb test, to the world as some kind of bubble; rooms that do not physically exist act as holding and meeting spaces for spirits and demons. Giants and Woodsmen inhabit worlds which sometimes overlay the human one. Characters may die in one world but find themselves alive in another. Everything is possible, everything is as meaningful or as meaningless as anything else. Bataille argues that “it is time to abandon the world of the civilized and its light.”44 The inventiveness that Lynch and his collaborators demonstrate through their deployment of sound and music in imaginative ways creates a febrile space within which narrative meaning is constructed, with the intent of disturbing traditional meaning-​making on TV –​a form dominated by modes of expositional reliant on explanatory dialogue or flashbacks which inform rather than disrupt the present. Rhizomic storytelling indeed.

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Twin Peaks as Hypertext If we cannot accommodate or cope with a non-​hierarchical reading, we might turn to hypertext theory to try to understand how Lynch constructed, or allows the viewer to construct, The Return. Instead of endless rhizomes (or, in hypertext terms, links) we can discuss elements of Twin Peaks as nodes, characters, events, places, or objects that are linked to other events or objects, each offering the provision of “a conceptual anchor.”45 Charles Nicholas suggests that “More than one type of cluster might prove valuable,” citing “three types of organizational nodes,” that he defines as: structure nodes, which are basic composites of other nodes without traversal restrictions; sequencing nodes, which allow the author to specify a particular node traversal sequence; and exploration nodes, which aggregate a set of nodes for arbitrary traversal, but which restrict entry and exit to a single access point.46 Lynch’s nodes include key characters, events, and places, which control and facilitate how we “traverse” the storylines of The Return. Clearly, the town of Twin Peaks acts as one such node. How does such a small American town contain such a conglomerate of dreams, desire, lust, subterfuge, and evil? Within the town, there are other nodes where traverse is controlled, where characters are affected by the place itself:  there is the owl cave, the hotel, The Roadhouse (seemingly out of time in The Return, a place for visions and pause while music plays), and the room above the convenience store where spirits and demons live. Then there are entrances to the Red Room (itself a node that controls traverse), which offers access to and from the Lodges. These entrances include the fantastical –​spaceships, electrical plugs, vortexes in time, as well as the mundane, such as the cellar beneath the hotel. Power lines travel between these nodes, a literal example of nodes being linked. Agent Cooper is clearly a node:  spiritual and detective knowledge flow through him, is gifted to him in dreams and visions; his associates and most of the town trust him, even when he is absent, as he is for so much of Season 3. Even when present as the doppelgänger Bad Cooper, it is Cooper in one form or another who is the point of focus; a node, for the series. It is Cooper who returns in The Return. Laura Palmer may also be considered a node; after all, her murder is a catalyst for the whole of Twin Peaks. Mark Frost notes that “it wasn’t until we said, ‘a body washes up on the shore’ that we had a starting point.”47 Cooper is trying to undo her death; when he does, it appears time goes awry and our exit point for the whole of Twin Peaks is the wrenching scream that

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ends The Return. No matter what route the viewer has taken through Twin Peaks, the entrance and exit points remain the same: death, horror, and pain.

“We Live Inside a Dream” Perhaps it is a dream, the atomic explosion and ensuing light show, the birth of BOB, the Woodsman’s radio broadcast? Perhaps it is the feverish result of adolescent love, a sexual awakening? Perhaps the episode is mostly about how love exploded within us and infects us, changes us, makes us dream and desire? Perhaps Twin Peaks is about thwarted or fulfilled desire, however twisted, violent, or abusive the results might be? The “complete” or “real” Cooper in the final episode kicks ass in the diner but retains elements of wisdom and love. Some say it is about parallel or alternative times and worlds, with travel between them. Agent Cooper is desperate to undo Laura’s death, willing to sacrifice himself, and perhaps Diane, to save her. Perhaps he should not interfere? Perhaps he is not making sound decisions? Adrift in the lodges, traveling the electric wires and alive as three versions of himself, he communes with the dead and missing, travels through the spirit world, laments lost love, and rescues Diane from the trauma of rape by his doppelgänger. In doing so he loses himself, sets Diane adrift, and inhabits a world where Laura is another person. She is alive but the cozy town of Twin Peaks is gone. There are no easy answers, only the hum of wires, half-​forgotten memories and a bunch of conspiracy theories on the web. The 18 hours of The Return are full of violence, confusion, surrealism, occasional moments of goodness, and comedy, but also the creation and dissemination of evil. Thomas Merton, in an essay about William Blake, suggests that: “it is common among mystics to identify the creation of man with the fall, that is, the creation of man in time and space. In Eden, man was eternal. But he fell from eternity into time, into matter, illusion, chaos and death.”48 Lynch is no mystic in the accepted sense, but his characters are able to fall out of time into different times and they certainly inhabit a world of illusion, chaos, and death, persuasively imagined through a complex synthesis of sound and image.

Notes 1 David Lynch, Twin Peaks: The Return. Showtime, 2017. 2 Stanley Kubrick, 2001: A Space Odyssey. MGM, 1968. 3 Krzysztof Penderecki, Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima. [CD] Warner Classics, 1960, 2012. 4 David Lynch, Twin Peaks  –​Definitive Gold Box Edition. [DVD] Universal, 1991, 2012.

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5 David Lynch, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. [DVD] 2entertain, 1992. 6 Noel Murray, “Twin Peaks Series 3, Episode 8: White Light White Heat,” The New  York Times, June 26, 2017. Available at:  www.nytimes.com/​2017/​06/​26/​ arts/​television/​twin-​peaks-​season-​3-​episode-​8-​recap.html (accessed October 12, 2018). 7 David Rothenberg, Sudden Music (Athens, GA:  University of Georgia Press, 2002), 80. 8 Benjamin Noys, George Bataille: A Critical Introduction (London: Pluto Press, 2000), 14. 9 John Cage, “The Future of Music:  Credo,” in Silence:  Lectures and Writings (Hanover, NH: Wesleyan, 1958), 3. 10 Juan Vicente Aliaga, “Lynch’s Inferno,” in David Lynch, David Lynch (Valencia: Editions Alfons el Magnanim, 1992), 18. 11 Aliaga, “Lynch’s Inferno,” 20. 12 David Foster Wallace, “David Lynch Keeps His Head,” in Premiere, September, 1996, 146–​212. 13 John Trefry, “… Or, ‘On the Novel’  –​An Interview with Agustín Fernández Mallo,” trans. Luke Stegemann. In 3:am magazine, December 14, 2017. Available at: www.3ammagazine.com/​3am/​or-​on-​the-​novel (accessed July 3, 2018). 14 George Bataille, “The Labyrinth (1930),” in Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927–​1939 (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1985), 171–​178. 15 Lynch, Twin Peaks: The Return. 16 Paul A. Woods, Weirdsville (London: Plexus, 1997). 17 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus:  Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (London: Bloomsbury, 1987, 2013), 27. 18 Woods, Weirdsville, 95. 19 Anna Bernardini, ed. “Bill Viola Interviewed,” in Bill Viola:  Reflections (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2012), 63. 20 Bernardini, “Bill Viola Interviewed,” 63. 21 Matt Bluemink, “The Web as Rhizome in Deleuze and Guattari,” in Blue Labyrinths, July 15, 2015. Available at:  https://​bluelabyrinths.com/​2015/​07/​15/​ the-​web-​as-​rhizome-​in-​deleuze-​and-​guattari (accessed February 28, 2019). 22 Michaela Bronstein, “Twin Peaks –​The Return –​The Anxiety of Spectatorship,” Post 45, June 10, 2017. Available at: http://​post45.research.yale.edu/​2017/​10/​twin-​ peaks-​the-​return-​the-​anxiety-​of-​spectatorship/​ (accessed October 24, 2018). 23 Beth Venn, Edward Hopper and the American Imagination (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1995), 4. 24 Edward Hopper, “Early Sunday Morning” (1930), in Edward Hopper and the American Imagination, ed. Beth Venn (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1995), 2. 25 Edward Hopper, “Nighthawks” (1942), in Edward Hopper and the American Imagination, ed. Beth Venn (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1995), 5. 26 Venn, Edward Hopper, 19. 27 Twin Peaks  –​reddit. Available at:  www.reddit.com/​r/​twinpeaks (accessed December 16, 2018 and January 18, 2019). 28 Mark Frost, The Secret History of Twin Peaks (London:  Macmillan, 2016); Mark Frost, Twin Peaks: The Final Dossier (London: Macmillan, 2017). 29 Venn, Edward Hopper, 16.

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30 Kristine McKenna, “An Interview with David Lynch,” in David Lynch, David Lynch (Valencia: Editions Alfons el Magnanim, 1992), 31–​32. 31 William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (c1790). Available at:  www. bartleby.com/​235/​253.html (accessed March 2, 2019). 32 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 4–​5. 33 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 26. 34 Bluemink, “The Web as Rhizome in Deleuze and Guattari.” 35 David Lynch, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. 36 Todd McGowan, The Impossible David Lynch (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 153. 37 Jonathan Foltz, “David Lynch’s Late Style,” Los Angeles Review of Books, November 12, 2017. Available at:  https://​lareviewofbooks.org/​article/​david-​ lynchs-​late-​style (accessed November 13, 2017). 38 Aliaga, “Lynch’s Inferno,” 15. 39 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 27. 40 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 44. 41 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 44. 42 Bluemink, “The Web as Rhizome in Deleuze and Guattari.” 43 Len Gutkin, “Twin Peaks:  The Return  –​Allegorical Dislocation,” In Post 45, 2017. Available at:  http://​post45.research.yale.edu/​2017/​09/​twin-​peaks-​the-​ return-​allegory-​and-​dislocation (accessed April 1, 2019). 44 Bataille, “The Labyrinth,” 178–​182. 45 C. Bradford Barber, “Topic: Hypertext Nodes,” Thesa: Thesaurus of Ideas (2004). Available at:  http://​thid.thesa.com/​thid-​0513-​0671-​th-​1345-​6681 (accessed March 4, 2019). 46 Charles Nicholas, Intelligent Hypertext: Advanced Techniques for the World Wide Web (New York: Springer, 1997, 2008), 100. 47 Woods, Weirdsville, 94. 48 Thomas Merton, “Nature and Art in William Blake: An Essay in Interpretation” (1939), in The Literary Essays of Thomas Merton (New York: New Directions, 1981), 426.

Bibliography Aliaga, Juan Vicente. “Lynch’s Inferno.” In David Lynch, David Lynch, 13–​20. Valencia: Editions Alfons el Magnanim, 1992. Barber, C. Bradford. “Topic: Hypertext Nodes.” Thesa: A Thesaurus of Ideas, 2004. Available at: http://​thid.thesa.com/​thid-​0513-​0671-​th-​1345-​6681 (accessed March 4, 2019). Bataille, George. “The Labyrinth (1930).” In Visions of Excess:  Selected Writings, 1927–​1939, 171–​178. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1985. Bentley, Jason. “David Lynch.” In Morning Becomes Eclectic, KCRW, October 11, 2017. Available at: www.kcrw.com/​music/​shows/​morning-​becomes-​eclectic/​david-​ lynch-​2017-​10-​11 (accessed February 28, 2019). Bernardini, Anna, editor. “Bill Viola Interviewed.” In Bill Viola: Reflections, 63–​65. Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2012. Blake, William. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (c1790). Available at: www.bartleby. com/​235/​253.html (accessed March 2, 2019).

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Bluemink, Matt. “The Web as Rhizome in Deleuze and Guattari.” In Blue Labyrinths, July 15, 2015. Available at:  https://​bluelabyrinths.com/​2015/​07/​15/​the-​web-​as-​ rhizome-​in-​deleuze-​and-​guattari (accessed February 28, 2019). Bronstein, Michaela. “Twin Peaks  –​The Return  –​The Anxiety of Spectatorship.” Post 45, June 10, 2017. Available at: http://​post45.research.yale.edu/​2017/​10/​twin-​ peaks-​the-​return-​the-​anxiety-​of-​spectatorship/​ (accessed October 24, 2018). Cage, John. “The Future of Music: Credo.” In Silence: Lectures and Writings, 3–​6. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan, 1958. Connor, Steven. “Ears Have Walls:  On Hearing Art.” In Sound. Edited by Caleb Kelly, 29–​39. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2005, 2011. Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus:  Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated by Brian Massumi. London: Bloomsbury, 2013. Foltz, Jonathan. “David Lynch’s Late Style.” Los Angeles Review of Books, November 12, 2017. Available at:  https://​lareviewofbooks.org/​article/​david-​lynchs-​late-​style (accessed November 13, 2017). Frost, Mark. The Secret History of Twin Peaks. London: Macmillan, 2016. Frost, Mark. Twin Peaks: The Final Dossier. London: Macmillan, 2017. Gutkin, Len. “Twin Peaks: The Return –​Allegorical Dislocation.” In Post 45, 2017. Available at:  http://​post45.research.yale.edu/​2017/​09/​twin-​peaks-​the-​return-​ allegory-​and-​dislocation (accessed April 1, 2019). Hopper, Edward. “Early Sunday Morning” (1930). In Beth Venn, Edward Hopper and the American Imagination, 2. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1995. Hopper, Edward. Nighthawks (1942). In Beth Venn, Edward Hopper and the American Imagination, 5. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1995. Kubrick, Stanley. 2001: A Space Odyssey. MGM, 1968. Lennon, Allan. “Tulpas  –​When Thought Takes Form.” In The Huffington Post, July 23, 2017. Available at:  www.huffingtonpost.com/​allan-​lennon/​tulpas-​when-​ thought-​takes-​b-​7852742.html (accessed February 28, 2019). Lynch, David. Twin Peaks –​Definitive Gold Box Edition. [DVD] Universal, 1991, 2012. Lynch, David. David Lynch. Valencia: Editions Alfons el Magnanim, 1992. Lynch, David. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. [DVD] 2entertain, 1992. Lynch, David. Twin Peaks: The Return. Showtime, 2017. Marshall, Kingsley and Rupert Loydell. “ ‘Listen to the Sounds’, Sound & Storytelling In Twin Peaks: The Return.” In Critical Essays on Twin Peaks: The Return. Edited by Antonio Sanna, 269–​280. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. McGowan, Todd. The Impossible David Lynch. New  York:  Columbia University Press, 2007. McKenna, Kristine. “An Interview with David Lynch.” In David Lynch, David Lynch, 21–​32. Valencia: Editions Alfons el Magnanim, 1992. Merton, Thomas. “Nature and Art in William Blake:  An Essay in Interpretation” (1939). In The Literary Essays of Thomas Merton, 391–​453. New  York:  New Directions, 1981. Murray, Noel. “Twin Peaks Series 3, Episode 8:  White Light White Heat.” The New York Times, June 26, 2017. Available at: www.nytimes.com/​2017/​06/​26/​arts/​ television/​twin-​peaks-​season-​3-​episode-​8-​recap.html (accessed October 12, 2018). Nicholas, Charles. Intelligent Hypertext:  Advanced Techniques for the World Wide Web. New York: Springer, 1997, 2008. Noys, Benjamin. George Bataille: A Critical Introduction. London: Pluto Press, 2000.

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Penderecki, Krzysztof. Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima. [CD] Warner Classics, 1960, 2012. Rothenberg, David. Sudden Music. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2002. Trefry, John. “… Or, ‘On the Novel’ –​An Interview with Agustín Fernández Mallo.” Translated by Luke Stegemann. In 3:am magazine, December 14, 2017. Available at: www.3ammagazine.com/​3am/​or-​on-​the-​novel (accessed July 3, 2018). Twin Peaks –​reddit. Available at: www.reddit.com/​r/​twinpeaks (accessed December 16, 2018 and January 18, 2019). Venn, Beth. Edward Hopper and the American Imagination. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1995. Wallace, David Foster. “David Lynch Keeps His Head.” Premiere (September 1996), 146–​212. Woods, Paul A. Weirdsville. London: Plexus, 1997.

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9 “WHAT IS GORDON COLE LISTENING TO?” The Rhetoric of Subjective Sound in Twin Peaks: The Return Zeynep Toraman

A multiple is not only what has many parts but also what is folded in many ways. Gilles Deleuze, The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque The physiology of the ear haunts David Lynch and Mark Frost’s Twin Peaks. The visual emphasis placed on the hearing aids worn by FBI bureau chief Gordon Cole, portrayed by Lynch himself, invites a material reading of the show’s soundscape. In the following account, by emphasizing the metaphorical function of the hearing aids worn by Gordon Cole, I argue that the show deploys Gordon’s hearing loss as a specialized strategy to evade normative tropes of sound design. Focusing on Twin Peaks:  The Return, I  will consider the increasing sophistication of the season’s sound design compared to its predecessors by analyzing the ways in which the rhetoric Lynch builds around Gordon’s hearing aids grows more complex as his point of audition becomes more subjective and unfixed. This approach to sound design is one that breaks the boundary between the diegetic and nondiegetic levels of sound, positioning the viewer within the subjective and dynamic hearing not only of Gordon, but also of the show’s other characters. Conventional oral discourse is not the favored mode of communication, and the evasion of the normative functions of speech and sound allows both the characters and the viewer to escape the conventions of logocentrism. The struggle for communication shared among the characters, the zones of deafness they traverse, emerge in the widening metaphorical scope of Gordon’s deafness:  sound becomes the active medium through which the sense of narrative closure is destabilized and through which many possible interpretations can be derived. Finally, drawing on Gilles Deleuze’s concept of the fold, I  argue

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that in lieu of stability, the show introduces multi-​layered points of view (or rather points of audition) which, through their inherent relativity, produce an infinite series of beginnings and re-​beginnings, blurring the duality of actuality and virtuality.1 Before focusing in on The Return, I wish to begin by recalling Gordon’s very  first encounter with the Double R Diner waitress Shelly Johnson in Season 2 Episode 18, titled “On the Wings of Love,” a scene which constitutes the most fully fledged instance of Lynch’s usage of Gordon’s deafness to create a humorous break in the plot of the original show. I wish to emphasize, however, that Lynch’s foregrounding of disability goes beyond its function as a strictly narrative element, and is more broadly used as a structural point around which programs of normativity are gradually subverted: a directional strategy that I will investigate with reference to the critical work undertaken by Lennard J. Davis and Ato Quayson in the literary domain. Upon walking into the Double R, Gordon catches sight of Shelly and becomes instantly infatuated with her. During their flirtatious exchange, Gordon is shocked to find out that he can hear Shelly perfectly without the help of his hearing aids. At first, this side story seems to serve no explicit purpose other than humor, as Shelly’s effect on Gordon’s hearing is not explored further, and the two characters do not meet each other ever again in the series. Nevertheless, this short encounter between Gordon and Shelly not only introduces a degree of playfulness and uncertainty around the nature of Gordon’s hearing loss, but also provides insight on the nature of its figurative status by introducing a subtle complexity in its function. This is further reflected in his use of significantly outdated hearing aids in all three seasons, namely the Acousticon model A-​120 from circa 1948, already suggesting that the hearing aids are more than merely a functional apparatus. Although here this metaphor only functions in the narrative register, I will trace the full implication of its movement into The Return’s overarching sound design. Lynch’s attitudes towards disability, while reflecting certain aesthetic and philosophical occupations, are also concerned with moving the stigma around disability into the social domain by challenging notions of an “ideal of order that is assumed as implicit in the universe.”2 Here I wish to acknowledge the inherent problematics of the metaphorization of disability: the substitution of the abstract for the lived-​experience, and the potential failure in acknowledging the moral implications of such a move. Davis points out that metaphors of disability are often used to represent “limitations on normal morals, ethics, and of course language.”3 By focusing on disability’s metaphorical use to represent the limits of language, I wish to argue that Lynch’s engagement with such literary tropes in the representation of Gordon’s disability exceeds the abstract and figurative registers by way of depicting disability as the dialectic between two forces which Quayson formulates as “a pure process of abstraction and a set of material conditions,”4 thus

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primarily serving to “reverse the hegemony of the normal and to institute alternative ways of thinking about the abnormal.”5 The foregrounding of Gordon’s partial deafness brings together various threads that enunciate the pervasive privileging of alternative modes of communication over normative language. Returning to the aforementioned scene, I  wish to point out that Gordon’s ability to hear Shelley without his hearing aids indicates the emergence of a special communicate path between the two characters, based on the specific connection they share. Another term useful when discussing such interactions is aesthetic nervousness, coined by Quayson to describe the short-​circuiting of the dominant protocols of representation within the literary text in relation to disability.6 The term refers to the tensions that emerge in the context of the interaction between a disabled and a nondisabled character, which then manifests in other levels of the text such as disposition of symbols and motifs, the overall narrative or dramatic perspective, and also in the relationship between the reader and the text. I  argue that aesthetic nervousness is strongly felt in the encounters between disability and the network of metaphysical forces that operate underneath the show’s narrative fabric, and these tensions have a direct impact on the show’s sound design. This chapter explores the complex strategies deployed in The Return’s sound design, which, although do not depict a lived-​in experience of disability, emerge as a result of such relational tensions, and embrace the representation of individual diversity of hearing over ideals of normative physiology. Not reducing Gordon’s partial deafness to a single abstract, figurative or aesthetic trope, engagement with the character’s disability explores hearing at large as a transient, mutable experience in which disembodied sounds and signs are met in an embodied act of interpretation. Literary scholar Steven Connor links the developments in auditory technology to the unity of deficit and surfeit, as he argues that inherent in these technologies is the proposal of a “technically augmented audition that would surpass ordinary embodied hearing.”7 I wish to expand on this notion of surfeit in reference to Quayson, who notes that such interpretations of disability are based on the “implicit assumption that disability is an ‘excessive’ sign that invites interpretation, either metaphysical or other sort.”8 This presents another trope on disability representation that the show engages with in a self-​referential manner: in Twin Peaks, the impulse for metaphysical interpretation does not emerge from representation of disability, but defines the entire topos of the show’s narrative. The overarching proximity of the metaphysical world subverts the presupposed representation of reality. The narrative flexibility around Gordon’s deafness presents the narrative interpretation that he might be using hearing aids also for purposes of “overhearing” related to his FBI-​related work. Building on this narrative, I suggest a connection between Gordon’s deafness and the general idea of overhearing, developed through allusion to trans-​dimensional communication in the show. Drawing

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on Connor’s account and the notion of excess implicit in the technology of hearing aids, I wish to consider Gordon’s non-​normative hearing as a twofold metaphor, a metaphor of embodying while disembodying, of the inner and the outer, of the obstacle and the vehicle.9 While blindness has been conventionally used in literature as a symbol of heightened sensitivity, even clairvoyance, deafness, on the contrary is often a symbol of isolation.10 These associations, Davis observes, are based on Western culture’s privileging of “the oral form of discourse as the essence of language,”11 and they “constitute a system of metaphors supporting the illusion of the ideal body,”12 perpetuating a normative conception of language. This epistemological dialectic is challenged and reversed through the incorporation of prosthetics, and the hearing aids transform Gordon’s condition into one of heightened sensitivity: this reversal, while always pushed to a point of absurdity and turned into a spectacle, ultimately serves to free the narrative from the hegemony of the normative discourse. Despite this previous gnostic aura built around his condition, Gordon appears to have a newly incarnated agency over his hearing in The Return, as he now has the ability to adjust the microphone gain levels on his hearing aids. This newfound level of control provides him with the option to share private moments with others, as he has the power to amplify the volume of his secret conversations and indulge in intimate listening experiences by himself, as demonstrated in the whistling scene in Part 7 of The Return. Lynch’s approach to the sound design in this scene expresses his intention to allow the audience to share an intimate listening experience with Gordon, as he positions the audience inside Gordon’s listening, allowing them to hear the scene from his point of audition. We see a highly focused Gordon in his office at FBI headquarters in Philadelphia, sitting back on the couch whistling a tune to himself, and behind him is the backdrop of a wall-​sized photograph of the massive cloud of an atomic bomb explosion. Here I  wish to come back to Deleuze and expand on my definition of a point of audition, and, in the process, identify Lynch as an anti-​Cartesian, despite the season’s overarching obsession with geographical coordinates and the ongoing scavenger hunt for those of them to certain locations. Many key characters, including not only the two tulpas of Dale Cooper, namely Dougie Jones and Mr. C, but also Gordon, Diane, Major Briggs, and the Twin Peaks Sherriff’s Department are in search of these coordinates of great importance, yet as the plot unfolds the coordinates reveal themselves to be not spatial in the Cartesian sense, but spatio-​temporal: they inhibit different timelines, just as people and objects inhibit different timelines in the world of The Return.13 My labeling of Lynch as an anti-​Cartesian draws on Deleuze’s careful construction in Difference and Repetition of Kant’s critique of Cartesian Cogito: by inserting the third logical value of the determinable in Cartesian Cogito, mediating between the determination (“I think”) and the undetermined

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existence (“I am”), Kant identifies being as a temporal problem: the determination determines the undeterminable as something different than itself, and this undeterminable essence “can be determined only within time as the existence of a phenomenon, of a passive, receptive phenomenal subject appearing within time.”14 Following this line of logic, I argue that depictions of subjective experiences in Lynch’s dream-​worlds deal with the temporal dimension of existence, the split between the subject and consciousness, thus always referring back to the paradox of inner subjectivity. Furthermore, taking Deleuze’s discussion of the multi-​layered nature of points of view as a point of departure, my conceptualizing of a point of audition moves away from an atomistic or a Cartesian point, and instead proposes a model which incorporates different levels of consciousness compressed together, both physical and metaphysical. In other words, a point of audition does not only delineate a perspective, but it presents an encapsulation of the variety of all possible connections within a given system, as Deleuze notes in the opening chapter of The Fold, “The world is an infinite series of curvatures and inflections, and the entire world is enclosed in the soul from one point of view.”15 Thus, the type of subjectivity explored here is not a fixed point on the Cartesian plane of the show’s topography, but a compression of infinite possibilities of perceiving, standing for the essence of subjectivity, a position which is always in the process of becoming. Returning to the whistling scene, I  wish to point out that this scene enfolds many references to aurality and the ambiguities of hearing. The actual volume of Gordon’s whistling seems undeterminable, as the sound design in this scene creates the impression of listening to a very quiet sound that has been largely amplified. There is a strong disassociation between the image of Gordon sitting on the couch in his office, fully concentrated on his whistling, and the sound, which is the highly virtuosic and perfectly in tune melody being whistled. It almost feels as if Gordon cannot be the one who is actually doing the whistling, for the perfectly rendered tune heard would require an extreme virtuosity to produce, thus it sounds as if pre-​recorded, rendered, and superimposed over the image of Gordon whistling. In other words, sound in this scene contradicts Gordon’s extremely performative concentration, thus transforming his image into a humorous spectacle. These dynamics are further complicated by the ambiguity around the tune being whistled, as it is reminiscent of both “Engel” by the German industrial metal band Rammstein and the Amarcord theme by Nino Rota from the 1973 Fellini film, or it could simply be the case that Gordon is improvising birdcall-​esque tunes. If we assume that the tune is in fact “Engel” by Rammstein, then this scene also serves as a reference to Lynch’s 1997 film Lost Highway, in which Rammstein’s song “Rammstein” is used in a climactic, dream-​like and highly eroticized sequence where the protagonist Pete Dayton, finally confronts his own phantasmagoric image, as he encounters the woman who is his object of

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desire with another man.16 The contrast between these two contexts in which Rammstein’s music is used in Lynch’s work further complicates the interpretation of the whistling scene. One of the immediate effects of referencing Lost Highway is the emphasis it places on the subconscious of the subject, thus guiding us to divert our attention to Gordon’s psyche. This move towards the internal becomes more apparent in the labyrinthine formal structure of the Twin Peaks cosmos, which itself is composed of dense layers connected via seemingly elusive pathways.17 The highly stylized image of Gordon’s whistling functions as a wormhole opening into other musical experiences found in Lynch’s work that produce surreal situations, blurring the line between a real performance and an illusion: the Twin Peaks cosmology opens outside, and by way of following this chain of references we arrive at the Club Silencio scene in Lynch’s 2001 film Mulholland Drive where Bondar informs the audience that “No hay banda! There is no band! Il n’est pas de orquestra! This is all … a tape recording! No hay banda! Yet we hear a band,” and then proceeds to introduce “La Llorona de Los Angeles, Rebekah del Rio” who sings Roy Orbison’s “Crying” in Spanish. In the middle of the song Rebekah del Rio collapses, but the song continues, revealing that she had been lip-​synching: in this moment, her in-​sync silence transforms into an out-​of-​sync silence,18 her presence suspended against the still-​ongoing song, and that is all to point out Lynch’s tendency to intertwine sound and silence in his work in many strange ways. Shifting the focus back to The Return, Gordon’s whistling is interrupted by someone knocking on the door, which itself is an off-​screen diegetic sound, and its effect is foreshadowed by the photograph of the explosion on the wall: this interruption causes Gordon’s hearing aids to let out a high-​pitched squeak, a diegetic sound in the realm of Gordon’s subjective hearing. In other words, the knocking causes an inflection in the auditory field by acting in the manner of an input almost too large for the system to process, causing Gordon’s hearing aids to feedback as a result. The direct use of feedback here evokes another labyrinthine structure:  the structure of the ear. The ear, accumulating energy through its enclosed system, functions in the similar sense to Michel Serres’s mazes, conceptualized as structures which maximize feedback by providing a very long path within a short distance.19 Feedback is the quintessential example of materialized chaos, as Gordon’s hearing aids become the screen through which chaos is framed to create something out of nothing.20 When Deleuze and Félix Guattari write in A Thousand Plateaus, “Cosmos itself is a refrain, and the ear also (everything that has been taken for a labyrinth is in fact a refrain),”21 they are in fact speaking to sound’s ability to render itself more specialized and autonomous in its process of deterritorializing. The ear’s labyrinthine structure renders the inaccessible chaos of the universe accessible. The viewer’s knowledge that the squeak, which is in fact

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a feedback loop, is sounding only in Gordon’s ears confirms the suspicion that we have been listening to the entire sequence from his point of audition. The amplified squeak followed by momentary silence informs us of the pain Gordon experiences due to the high volume of the knock. “Noise,” as pointed out by Michel Chion, “can be represented by total silence, which is the negation of total noise.”22 The question is then how to classify this moment of silence, which is at once non-​diegetic –​that which is left in the wake of deterritorializing Gordon’s point of audition as we pass, through the knocking on the door, towards a more generalized one –​and also the diegetic silence of Gordon’s pain. Another sequence where the audience is submerged into Gordon’s point of audition happens in Part 14 of The Return, where he describes his recurring dream about Monica Bellucci to his FBI colleagues Albert Rosenfield and Tammy Preston. Lynch’s strategical sound design in this sequence shifts the audience’s point of audition over the course of the scene from a strong identification with Albert and Tammy’s to Gordon’s subjective hearing. As soon as Gordon announces that he had another Monica Bellucci dream, the “industrial” drone that underpins the soundscape of the scene starts to fade in. The drone first appears as a nondiegetic sound accompanying the strange dream sequence, yet over time its volume starts increasing to a point where it begins to overpower other elements of the scene. It seems as if the harder Gordon concentrates to remember the details of his dream, the louder the drone sound becomes as it establishes itself as an element of his subjective hearing and a reflection of his mental effort. Here I wish to reference Connor once again, and the connection he draws between deafness and such industrial noises via his analysis of the expression “borne in a milne” (i.e., mill) which he takes to evidence that “industrial noise might have been implicated in deafness rather earlier than we might think”:23 the trope of industrial sound serving then as a bridge between nondiegetic and entirely subjective hearing. To comment on functioning of the dialogue between Monica Bellucci and Gordon and his narration of the dream, I turn to Chion’s classification of modes of cinematic speech.24 In this scene Lynch plays with the boundaries between theatrical speech, which refers to dialogue, and textual speech, which refers to narration. The image shifts back and forth between shots of the office, filmed in color, and Gordon’s dream, filmed in black and white, while the drone remains omnipresent in the backdrop throughout the scene, drowning out the dialogue, as Lynch’s way of signaling that the audience is once again positioned in Gordon’s point of audition. The footage depicting Gordon’s dream itself is silent: although we see Bellucci’s mouth moving, we only hear the voiceover of Gordon’s narration of their dialogue. The pacing of this scene is slowed down by the double narration that results from the concurrent use of theatrical and textual speech, since in the shots where we

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see Gordon in the office with Albert and Tammy, we hear his voice speaking over the images of his dream, and we simultaneously, in the metaphorical sense, listen to the same lines delivered by Bellucci in Gordon’s memory of the dream. The slowed down temporality of the dream’s unfolding, combined with the ubiquitous drone sound, enhance the affective weight of Gordon’s dream. Yet, the contrast between Bellucci’s overly dramatic delivery of the line, “But who is the dreamer?” and Gordon’s rather dry, almost humorous, repeating of the same line creates an uncanny contrast between the image of his subconscious that we see on the screen and his retelling of these images. Following Bellucci’s silent direction to look behind him, Gordon remembers and evokes an image that the audience has previously encountered in Lynch’s prequel film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992), of an encounter he had with Cooper and the long-​lost FBI agent Philip Jeffries. In the version of the footage we see in Twin Peaks: The Return, however, the voice of Philip Jefferies is not that of David Bowie, who portrays the character, but a dubbed version by Nathan Frizzel. The subtle difference in vocal timbre between the original footage and the version used in this scene renders this scene less an evoking of a memory but more a dream. Here, humor’s function is completely reversed: the enfolding of the dream world into the real world prioritizes Gordon’s point of audition, thus one does not laugh at Gordon’s isolation from the world, but at the absurdity born from the clash between being immersed in his reality and Albert’s and Tammy’s inability to access of this reality, communicated by their understated and weary reactions and the unnatural silence that dominates their point of audition. The final sequence I wish to focus on is the casino bar sequence in Part 11 of The Return, in which the sound design functions in a similar manner. Quayson notes that “the disabled in literature may trade a series of features with the nondisabled, thus transferring some of their signification to the nondisabled and vice versa.”25 In this scene Lynch draws an analogy between the explicit nature of Gordon’s hearing loss compared to the implicit hearing loss of other characters. Gordon’s hearing aids become a meta-​object which emphasizes the fact that none of the points of auditions in the world of Twin Peaks are fixed, but rather are constantly flexed with minor inflections. The emphasis on Dougie Jones, the near-​catatonic reincarnation of Special Agent Dale Cooper, and his inability to communicate via language is mirrored in the character of Candie, along with Mandie and Sandie, the three “assistants” of the Mitchum brothers. Here I diverge to recall Chion’s description of Twin Peaks as “the first television series where the characters interrupt the action to enjoy the smell of good, fresh air, the aroma of a good cup of coffee or an apple pie …,”26 as Lynch assigns great importance to the incorporation of senses in his work. In the sequence where, after their reconciliation in the previous scene, the Mitchum brothers take Dougie Jones out for champagne in the casino bar to celebrate, Lynch creates a captivating

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moment of pure bliss colored by feelings of nostalgia, a sensory surge that evokes all the senses as a whole. In this scene, Lynch uses the sound design, and especially the function of the bar piano, as the key element in triggering the changes in the mood of the scene, and he uses the image of the piano as a pivot for carrying sounds from the realm of diegetic to the nondiegetic. The opening shot shows Robert “Smokey” Miles playing an upbeat song on the bar piano as “actual,” diegetic music, which then cuts to the Mitchum brothers and Dougie sitting at a booth and having a toast. The pianist continues to play, and along with the song we hear the soundscape of the bar in the background. The combination of these sounds, piano music, glasses clinking, people laughing and chatting away, followed by the sounds of the Mitchum brothers, after taking a sip of their drinks, humming with pleasure, enhances the pleasant atmosphere of the scene. The mood of the scene very quickly shifts from delightful contentment to melancholy, as the pianist rather abruptly starts to play a new song, which is in fact the Angelo Badalamenti song titled “Heartbreaking.” Dougie slowly turns his head to gaze at the piano, and as he turns, the camera pans into his face as if it wants to acknowledge the fact that this is indeed the first meaningful look we see on Dougie’s face since the beginning of The Return. As Chion notes, Lynch’s work often “[…] involves the sensation of the instrument or solo voice as bare, fragile, trembling in the void,”27 and his treatment of sound design in this scene is particularly interesting. It almost feels as if this song has already started even before the previous piece has ended, thus giving the impression the Badalamenti song is superimposed over the visual of the pianist, who has been playing the piano diegetically up until that point. This creates a discontinuity, repositioning a sound that was diegetic until now, as a nondiegetic sound: the song starts to permeate the entire bar, even from the first couple of notes, the reverb seems larger than life and we slowly start to hear the synths in the background, which inform us that what we are listening to at this moment is not simply “piano music.” The bar sounds are muted and the camera focuses on a close up of Dougie’s face: this moment seems to last forever. Lynch uses Dougie’s subjective hearing as a tool for time stretching. The old lady (Linda Porter), whom we first encountered in Part 3, has won a large sum of money in the casino with the inadvertent help of Dougie, thus started calling him “Mr. Jackpots,” appears now in expensive clothes, looking rather elegant. She approaches Dougie, and tells him the story of how her life took a turn for the better with his help, a story that functions as the concretization of the song’s mood. As she walks away from the table, the background sound of the restaurant returns, although this time, these mundane sounds are severely muted compared to the beginning of the scene. The sound design, centered around Dougie’s experience and his nonparticipation in normative discourse, once again emphasizes “that spoken language is in fact an arbitrary form of communication.”28 As Davis

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observes, “The gesture, rooted in the body, acts as a way of interpolating silence into narration, of presenting a seemingly unmediated form of communication.”29 Dougie communicates via a series of gestures, which appear to be informed by a higher degree of consciousness that exceeds normative understanding, again invoking the tropes of heightened sensitivity and intuition. I argue that this is another strategy employed in the show to privilege different modes of understanding and communication. This moment is also interrupted by another shift in the music, as the next shot brings the focus back on the Mitchum brothers. The volume of the noise of the bustling restaurant increases rather abruptly. In retrospect, we realize that since the arrival of the old woman, we have been hearing this scene from the collective point of audition of both Dougie and also the Mitchum brothers, who, just like us, have also lost track of time in this sentimental moment. The fact that we continue to hear the synth, which is linked to Dougie’s internal hearing of the song, but in a much quieter volume, supports my argument that this moment is heard from the collective point of audition, which then carries into the pause before the next action. The piano music in this scene is used for “scansion and punctuation of time and dialogue.”30 The moment lingers for a while, and the first major break happens completely in synch with the music, forming the first point of synchronization,31 as Bradley Mitchum announces the arrival of the cherry pie by saying “Here it is,” his words perfectly synchronized with the tempo change in the song. Suddenly we find ourselves in the aftermath of the moment that has “just passed,” the slowing down of the temporality is reversed, but as the viewer we are still holding on to the sentimental mood in which we were previously immersed. The arrival of Candie and the other women, which is announced by Rodney Mitchum, forms the second point of synchronization, as they appear in perfect timing with the start of the melody in the song. The audio-​visual phrasing of this scene turns the action on screen into an embedded performance, in the metaphorical sense. There is no actual film or performance embedded in the scene, but the points of synchronization give the uncanny feeling that every action in this scene is coordinated, and everyone is in fact performing. Here I  would like to focus on the character of Candie. When Rodney Mitchum asks, “Where have you been, Candie?,” her nonresponsive behavior and vacant stare mirrors Dougie’s struggle to stay present, providing a source of humor while evoking the viewer’s compassion. The parallels between these characters become more obvious as this scene continues, as both struggle to engage with others in a similar fashion. When Candie finally brings herself to answer Rodney’s question, it seems as though she is delivering rehearsed lines:  her words flow as though she is singing, addressing nobody in particular. As Candie adopts an understated theatrical tone, the piano music

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in the background shifts to the domain of what I  label internal diegetic sound: the soundtrack to Candie’s performance, as if she is singing a song that can be heard only by her. Candie’s isolation, characteristic of the labyrinthine condition of The Return’s world, situates her in a point of audition equivalent to that of the type of non-​normative hearing made thematic in the character of Gordon. Candie, Dougie, the originary Agent Dale Cooper, Laura Palmer, Gordon Cole, and others are all in a labyrinth, “lost to each other,” and “indeed lost each also to himself or herself (thus undergoing dissociation and depersonalization)” while remaining physically together.32 The metaphor of deafness, ultimately embodied in the character of Gordon, functions through its evocation of communicative incommensurability through normative modes of communication as a boundary zone between the actual and supernatural narrative registers which make up the fabric of The Return. What sets Gordon apart from the others, facilitated by the machine he wears, is his conscious capacity to “overhear,” and to “tune into,” the thought broadcasts tethering together the disparate dimensions of Twin Peaks as a whole.33 At the very end of the episode Lynch once again breaks the border between the onscreen diegetic and the nondiegetic sound. Badalamenti’s “Heartbreaking” cuts in as the credits start to roll, now clearly positioned as a nondiegetic sound. Still the fact that the song starts so abruptly confirms that everything that came before was also indeed all montage, and that there is no such thing as “real.” This is how Lynch builds, in Chion’s words, “the boundary between the here and now, visible as such, and a world that lies outside a space and time.”34 The looping of the music references a new beginning, but only a cyclical one, creating yet another timeline to be populated with new nightmarish scenarios: Deleuze points out “For space and time are not limits but abstract coordinates of all series, that are themselves in extension: the minute, the second, the tenth of a second.”35 Liberating the ear from its conventional duty by shifting its status from an organ of perception to an organ of transference, Lynch presents a radical expansion of aural subjectivity in audio-​visual media by way of creating an invisible network of signals that can picked up by the ear prosthesis alone. The non-​normative hearing of Gordon Cole functions as a non-​Cartesian pivot point that draws the audience into an aural topology that binds detached subjectivities. Thus sound is positioned at the very edge of materiality: disembodied yet never fully ceasing to exist, it infinitely diminishes in volume through its everlasting decaying process.36 Inherent in this process is temporality, experienced through the endless unfolding of one scene into one another, producing meaning as it keeps evolving, only to collapse the second the process stops. The labyrinthine universe of The Return comes down like a pack of cards, the moment the show ends. The key element of most

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story plots, Quayson notes, “is the initial destabilization of the character’s social circumstances, followed by their efforts to rectify their loss and return, perhaps chastened, to their former position.”37 I  suggest a reading of the show’s refusal to bring back its beloved characters, such as Agent Cooper and Audrey Thorne, in their original image as a form of protest against such literary tropes of normalization and idealization. The aftereffect is not a sense of enlightenment, but a strong feeling of nostalgia and prolonged contemplation: The Return is nothing but a series of locations folded into one another, dense with routes and paths, and sounds travel freely within this structure, with Gordon Cole’s hearing aids transferring the sub-​perceptive signals of the lost voices of the past by amplifying them through its labyrinthine structure.

Notes 1 Gilles Deleuze, The Fold:  Leibniz and the Baroque, trans. Tom Conley (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1992), 24–​25. 2 Ato Quayson, Aesthetic Nervousness: Disability and the Crisis of Representation (New York: NY: Columbia University Press, 2007), 17. 3 Lennard J.  Davis, Enforcing Normalcy:  Disability, Deafness and the Body (London, New York: Verso, 1995), 45. 4 Ato Quayson, 24. 5 Davis, 49. 6 Quayson, 13. 7 Steven Connor, “Auricles, Oracles, Otoacoustica:  On Overhearing. Earpieces: Listening, Diagnosing, Writing.” Lecture, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK, December 17, 2016. 8 Quayson, 14. 9 Connor, “Auricles, Oracles, Otoacoustica.” 10 Connor, “Auricles, Oracles, Otoacoustica.” 11 Davis, 102. 12 Davis, 103. 13 The season ends with a split in the timeline of Laura Palmer’s plot:  Cooper’s produces two alternative realities, one in which Laura is murdered, and the other in which she survives. 14 Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 85–​86. 15 Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, 24. 16 See Slavoj Žižek’s reading of Lost Highway in The Art of the Ridiculous Sublime: On David Lynch’s Lost Highway (Seattle, WA: Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities, 2000). 17 In the same sense that Deleuze points out that the monad, in other words the word Leibniz ascribes to the soul or the subject itself, is itself a metaphysical point (Deleuze, The Fold, 23).

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18 Here I am borrowing the terms in-​sync silence and out-​of-​sync silence from Jalal Toufic. See Distracted (Berkeley, CA: Tuumba Press, 2003). 19 Michel Serres, The Five Sense: Philosophy of Mingled Bodies (I), trans. Margaret Sankey and Peter Cowley (London: Continuum, 2008), 143. 20 Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, 77. 21 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 347. 22 Michel Chion, Film, A Sound Art, trans. Claudia Gorbman (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 205. 23 Connor, “Auricles, Oracles, Otoacoustica.” 24 Chion, Film, A Sound Art, 207. 25 Quayson, 27. 26 Michel Chion, David Lynch, trans. Robert Julian (London: British Film Institute, 1995), 111. 27 Chion, David Lynch, 41. 28 Davis, 118. 29 Davis, 123. 30 Chion, Film, A Sound Art, 269. 31 Chion, Film, A Sound Art, 268. 32 Jalal Toufic, What Was I Thinking? (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2017), 110. 33 Toufic, What Was I Thinking? 110. 34 Chion, Film, A Sound Art, 260. 35 Deleuze, The Fold, 77. 36 Recalling Friedrich Kitter’s republishing of Salomo Friedlaender’s “Goethe Speaks Into the Phonograph” (1916) in its entirety in his Gramophone, Film, Typewriter (1999). 37 Quayson, 20.

Bibliography Chion, Michel. David Lynch. Translated by Robert Julian. London:  British Film Institute: 1995. —​—​—​. Film, A Sound Art. Translated by Claudia Gorbman. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009. Connor, Steven. “Auricles, Oracles, Otoacoustica:  On Overhearing.” Lecture, Earpieces: Listening, Diagnosing, Writing. Lecture at University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK, December 17, 2016. Davis, Lennard J. Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness and the Body. London, New York: Verso, 1995. Deleuze, Gilles. The Fold:  Leibniz and the Baroque. Translated by Tom Conley. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1992. —​—​—​. Difference and Repetition. Translated by Paul Patton. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus. Translated by Brian Massumi. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1987. Quayson, Ato. Aesthetic Nervousness:  Disability and the Crisis of Representation. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007.

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Serres, Michel. The Five Sense:  Philosophy of Mingled Bodies (I). Translated by Margaret Sankey and Peter Cowley. London: Continuum, 2008. Toufic, Jalal. Distracted. Berkeley, CA: Tuumba Press, 2003. Toufic, Jalal. What Was I Thinking? Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2017. Žižek, Slavoj. The Art of the Ridiculous Sublime: On David Lynch’s Lost Highway. Seattle, WA: Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities, 2000.

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10 DAVID LYNCH’S METAPHYSICAL SOUND DESIGN The Acousmatic Personification of Judy Steven Wilson

Ever since Phillip Jeffries materialized in the Philadelphia FBI office in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992) and spoke the inscrutable line, “I’m not going to talk about Judy; in fact, we’re not going to talk about Judy at all, we’re going to keep her out of it,” there has been rampant speculation as to who exactly this “Judy” is. While David Lynch often includes tangential episodes featuring bizarre and often comical behavior—​Wild at Heart (1990) is filled with non-​sequiturs like the Crispin Glover sequence—​but it is difficult to dismiss Jeffries’ dialogue as extraneous because of the dramatic power of the scene and because of the presence of central characters like Gordon Cole, Dale Cooper, and Albert Rosenfield. Nevertheless, Judy was never explained in the film proper, and the extended sequence included in the “Missing Pieces” DVD special feature did little to answer questions. Viewers would have to wait until the penultimate part of Twin Peaks: The Return for Lynch’s Gordon Cole to deliver the only clear exposition on Judy—​an entity, it turns out, whose existence and influence has been at the center of the dark mystery of the Twin Peaks universe. Mentioned only in oblique terms until Part 17 and never rendered visible to the spectator, what can we make of a character so apparently central to the story? Lacking extensive narrative or visual exposition, I propose that the spectator can learn a surprising amount about Judy through the sonic dimension of The Return. Much like his visuals, Lynch’s sound design often functions symbolically, and while it is easy to discern a connection between, say, electricity sounds and inter-​dimensional travel, the sonic world of The Return is rich with symbolism that is much subtler. A close reading of the sound design in The Return reveals a set of sound cues and associations that render Judy’s presence, influence, and

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deeds perceptible to the attentive spectator. Thus, Judy is represented as what Michel Chion has called an acousmêtre—​a type of filmic character that derives a special kind of power from being heard, but not seen.1 The acousmatic voice appears to have an unlimited power because there is no visual point of origin or delimitation. As a transcendent, supernatural being, Judy is given an abstract voice instead of a verbalizing voice, but the effect remains the same once the spectator becomes aware of the sonic patterns that expose her presence. This chapter will explain how one can perceive Judy throughout The Return, offer some clues as to her nature, and provide a model for the benefits of a close reading of the sonic realm of Lynch’s oeuvre.

The Power of the Unseen Since Eraserhead (1977), Lynch has blurred the boundary between music, sound, and noise to the extent that it is often difficult to determine the division between diegetic sound, dramatically enhanced diegetic sound, source music, and underscoring. Between Angelo Badalamenti’s original scoring and the copious borrowed music within his post-​Dune films, music is ever-​ present in Lynch’s work. Lost Highway (1997) marks a turning point in Lynch’s style, both in terms of the amount of abstraction and magical realism in his narratives and in terms of his use of sound cues that affect the mood of scenes in a subtler, almost subliminal, manner. He reaches the apotheosis of this style in The Return, which stands in stark contrast to the iconic underscoring backing almost every scene of the first two seasons of Twin Peaks. Starting with Lost Highway, Lynch also begins incorporating a secondary order antagonist who possesses apparent panoptic abilities. Dick Laurant/​ Mr. Eddie is the primary antagonist to Fred Madison and Pete Dayton, and he receives much more narrative coverage, but the Mystery Man is far more threatening as he appears to be a panoptic entity who can transcend the laws of physics. The Cowboy and Mr. Roque fulfill a similar function in Mulholland Drive (2001), albeit with less development. The Phantom in Inland Empire (2006) is remarkably similar to Judy insofar as he is rarely seen, his motives—​beyond creating pain and death—​are ambiguous, and he can possess different characters to make them commit evil acts on his behalf. These characters are threatening because they possess a power that extends beyond the natural limits of their personhood; however, because they are visualized, the tension they create is more tangible when compared to Judy’s narrative impact. As an “extreme negative force,” Judy is introduced as a being with a relatively diffuse existence and sphere of influence, and her character seems to follow the logic of Mike and the Black Lodge—​ transcendent phenomena in a different plane of existence that can appear in

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the material world, probably without the aid of the portals that restrict the mortal characters. Of the tactics used to convey metaphysical phenomena, Lynch often uses a technique that Andrea Truppin calls “parallel sound” to great effect because it allows one to sense multiple, simultaneous planes of existence without a confusing attempt at suggesting multidimensional representation while limited to only three dimensions.2 For example, the use of the “Interior” cue is an effective way to alert the spectator to the overlapping presence of Mike monitoring Dougie/​Cooper from the Black Lodge as he guides him across space and time toward his resolution.3 This metaphysical sound design extends further to the realm of characters. As John Richardson argues, Laura Palmer’s presence permeates the first two seasons of Twin Peaks thanks in large part to the aural reminder of her musical theme.4 In the first two seasons, her haunting theme saturates the series in a melancholic haze, and similarly, Judy’s sonic representation in The Return imbues much of the narrative with her threatening presence. In both cases, the sonic specter of a central character fills the diegesis with a metaphysical presence that would be impossible if their sonics were tied only to their corporealization. Judy’s menacing pall is enhanced because she is what Chion refers to as a complete acousmêtre, or one who has never been visualized. He writes, Even an insignificant acousmatic voice becomes invested with magical powers as soon as it is involved, however slightly, in the image. The powers are usually malevolent, occasionally tutelary. Being involved in the image means that the voice doesn’t merely speak as an observer (as commentary), but that it bears with the image a relationship of possible inclusion, a relationship of power and possession capable of functioning in both directions.5 Chion cites Psycho (1960) and The Testament of Dr.  Mabuse (1933) as examples where the film hinges upon the “epiphany of the acousmêtre.”6 Just as Lila Crane and Sam Loomis endeavor to discover Mrs. Bates, the FBI agents, the Twin Peaks Sheriff’s Department, and Mr. C all want to find Judy, even if they do not fully understand who or what they are chasing. The acousmêtre typically loses its apparently magical powers in the process of dis-​acousmatization because, like the man behind the curtain in The Wizard of Oz, the acousmêtre is often revealed to be a rather unremarkable figure whose only real power was remaining hidden. The Return never reaches this hinge point because even when Gordon Cole describes Judy in Part  17, she never undergoes dis-​acousmatization, and thus Judy’s specter lives on past the end of Part 18.

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The concept of the acousmatic voice has ramifications for Judy’s sonic construction in The Return beyond its function as a cinematic device, and it will be useful to understand the power of acousmatic sound more fully. In resurrecting the adjective, “acousmatic,” Pierre Schaeffer brought the concept that he oxymoronically referred to as an “old neologism” into contemporary sonic discourse.7 Citing the Larousse dictionary, he supplies the definition:  “a noise that is heard without the causes from which it comes being seen”; however, the import attached to the voice emanating from a concealed or ambiguous location is much older.8 Within the context of acousmatic sound, Schaeffer, Mladen Dolar, and Brian Kane each discuss the myth of Pythagoras lecturing to his akousmatikoi from behind a veil, thereby instilling his voice with a sense of authority, omnipotence, and omnipresence.9 For Dolar, the acousmatic voice has a “surplus-​meaning” that imbues it with “aura and authority.”10 Although the concept of the acousmêtre was created to address a cinematic phenomenon, one finds precedent in the way that numerous deities—​ including the God of the Old Testament—​appear so frequently as acousmatic voices that Dolar speculates that perhaps “the hidden voice structurally produces ‘divine effects.’ ”11 Slavoj Žižek, by way of Lacan, describes the particular situation of the musical voice according to Lacan’s neologism, jouis-​ sense, or “enjoyment-​in-​meaning”—​“that moment at which the singing voice ‘runs amok’, cuts loose from its anchoring in meaning and accelerates into a consuming self-​enjoyment.”12 In Lacanian terms, the singing voice contains linguistic units beholden to the law of the Symbolic order—​the limitations on the subject’s jouissance that force its speech into a strict mode of symbolic exchange governed by the signifier—​but it also contains an excessive remainder, a trace of the Real that has not been subordinated by the Symbolic. Just as Dolar points out the history of deities manifesting as an acousmatic voice, Žižek uses the Book of Exodus to describe the power of this sonic excess in the musical voice. He describes the occasion when God delivers the Ten Commandments to Moses on Mount Sinai. While Moses is allowed to hear the voice of God, the Israelites wait in reverent fear at the base of the mountain, hearing only the deafening roar of the shofar.13 This, then, is a dramatic example of the acousmatic voice bifurcated into its Symbolic and Real dimensions, with the traumatic, abstracted affect of the shofar vivifying God’s presence at a level of pre-​Symbolic phenomena.14 But what of a nonverbal voice—​the sort that I argue Judy possesses? In line with Žižek’s and Dolar’s conceptualizations, one could describe Judy’s voice as pure excess—​jouissance unrestrained by the Symbolic. This reflects her lack of Symbolic tether that allows her apparent access to unrestrained mayhem beyond any structural system including language, morality, and even the corporeal world.

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A Taxonomy of Sound in Twin Peaks: The Return The sound world in The Return is rich in meaning, with a spectrum extending from abstraction to explicit referentiality. In constructing this taxonomy of sound, I analyzed each of the 18 parts noting every sound and music cue that wasn’t obviously objectively rendered external diegetic sound. For each sound cue, I noted the location, characters involved, and narrative significance, so far as it was discernable. Dean Hurley’s Anthology Resource Vol. 1 provided titles for certain recurring sound cues and helped differentiate between what at first listen seemed to be manifold varieties of ominous rumbling.15 I provided descriptive titles as functional placeholders for cues not included in Hurley’s collection. The first level of distinction involves subjective and objective diegetic sound. Much of the sonic world in The Return occurs in what Robynn Stilwell describes as “the fantastical gap between diegetic and nondiegetic” music.16 Although strict diegetic/​nondiegetic separation is rare, Lynch deliberately exploits this fantastical gap to mirror how his narratives obscure the real and the fantastic. In The Return, this happens less with musical cues and more with ambient sound that exists on a continuum ranging from what Chion describes as “heard space” (e.g., the sound of wind when a character is outside) to subjectively enhanced diegetic sound.17 Lynch frequently uses dramatic and source underscoring to enhance the dramatic import of scenes, or to add additional meaning to what is perceptible through visuals or narrative exposition. Underscoring usually refers to conventional music, but Lynch’s work requires a broader understanding that includes drones and aestheticized ambient sound. There are three types at work here:  dramatic ambient sound, conventional underscoring, and motivic sound. Dramatic ambient sound involves subtly enhancing the heard space of the characters to reflect their subjectivity. For example, instead of the objective sound of wind or room tone, Lynch might add subtle bass tones and heavy reverb, which reflects a subjective feeling of anxiety and mystery. The spectrum of wind sounds themselves constitute a significant device for entrapping the spectator in the fantastical gap. Conventional, nondiegetic underscoring is rare in The Return. Among the nearly 330 separate musical cues within The Return, underscoring tailored to specific moments happens only 30 times, the Roadhouse performances notwithstanding. The blissful conclusion of Ed and Norma’s storyline (P15 /​05:33) is conventionally underscored; however, even within Lynch’s underscoring, the spectator is often cast in the fantastical gap, like the scene where the Mitchum brothers form an impromptu conga line ostensibly dancing either to nothing or to the glitchy electronic music that the spectator hears (P13 /​01:44).

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Motivic sound constructs associations with characters, places, objects, and concepts. For example, the cue “Interior” is consistently associated with the Black Lodge and Mike’s apparition when directing Dougie/​Cooper in  the material world. The motives do not develop like a Wagnerian leitmotif, but they do help explain things the narrative does not specify. Consider the ethereal ringing sound (P3 /​24:42) that occurs any time a being in the material world transmutes into a golden orb of abstract essence. By establishing this connection, we can interpret BOB’s destruction in Part 17 as the final destruction of his being. Even though we do not see him turn into a golden orb that lands on the green chair in the Black Lodge, the presence of the ethereal ring (P17 /​28:24) suggests that his being has disappeared definitively. Although these motives are not always as easily discernable as are the examples described above, some of the cues function in a similar way, which allows the attentive listener to comprehend meaning above what is rendered explicit through narrative or visualization, examples of which will follow.

Judy Turning to the mysterious Judy, let us first review what can be gleaned from the narrative. In Part  17, Cole reveals that Major Briggs discovered “an extreme negative force called in olden times ‘Jiāo Dài,’ ” and that he, along with Briggs and Cooper, had devised a plan to find this force. Although Mark Frost’s Twin Peaks:  The Final Dossier specifies the situation and/​or fate of certain characters, it offers little on Judy beyond explaining her first appearance as “Joudy” in Sumerian mythology.18 As with Lynch’s work since Lost Highway, much is left unsaid and some interpretation and logical deduction is warranted. Judy seems to be a more fundamental essence of maleficence than the other spiritual beings. The Woodsmen are clearly aligned with evil, but they are more like henchmen dutifully reviving BOB’s host when he is mortally wounded, intervening when individuals get too close to discovering Judy’s existence (often through decapitation), facilitating the inter-​ dimensional travel of those who use portals to the dark realms, and enabling an essence of evil to enter a young Sarah Palmer. Where Mr. C must search for portals to access the hidden realms, the Woodsmen can move freely, appearing wherever they are needed, which places them in a higher spiritual position. Judy is clearly a more fundamental essence of evil than BOB, and she is likely his creator, his animating force, or at the very least, his protector. BOB’s logic dictates that his host remains unaware of his possession, and following this same reasoning, it is unlikely that BOB is aware of Judy’s involvement in his own existence. Although BOB was often dormant in Leland Palmer, Mr. C is given to BOB almost entirely. He appears to know what BOB knows, judging by his ability to exploit superhuman strength, his understanding of

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the Black Lodge, and his high level of criminal intelligence, but even Mr. C must ask the question: “Who is Judy? Does Judy want something from me?” (P15 /​19:50). Finally, this brings us to The Experiment—​an entity that receives no narrative exposition because nobody but The Fireman seems to know of its existence. It seems unlikely that The Experiment is an embodiment of Judy both because it is named in the credits as “The Experiment” and because its appearance is strongly linked to the Trinity Test (itself a kind of experiment), thus associating it with the dawn of an existential threat to humanity. Cole’s description of Judy, along with the connection that Frost makes to the Joudy of Sumerian mythology, suggests that Judy is an ancient being that predates the atomic age. These propositions relate Judy to other entities of supernatural evil, but what is her relation to mortal beings, events, and places within the material world? Narrative exposition does not answer these questions definitively, but sound offers solutions to these puzzles. By analyzing the sound cues, patterns emerge suggesting her influence over certain characters and her presence in certain places. Below, I  will make the case that nine sound cues establish Judy’s presence as an acousmêtre, while three additional cues appear occasionally associated with Judy. Taken together, they constitute her metaphysical involvement throughout the narrative of The Return. This evidence suggests that while Judy is not corporealized, she is nevertheless present. Of the sounds given names on Hurley’s Anthology Resource Vol. 1, the cues associated with Judy include “Black Smoke,” “Low Sustained Mystery,” “Night Electricity Theme,” and “Slow Speed Prison.” For this analysis, “Black Smoke” is the most revealing because while the other three sounds function in a straightforward sense (i.e., they directly accompany the evil action that they underscore), we will see that “Black Smoke” evinces Judy’s presence in less obvious places. There are also five recurring cues that I have titled descriptively in lieu of any official designation. “Danger Sound” refers to a high-​pitched synthesized string cluster that is used during the most intensely violent scenes in the show. It is introduced when The Experiment slaughters Sam and Tracy (P1 /​34:08), but it is heard more clearly when Cooper is flying through space (P3 /​01:40). “Rumble” is a variety of drone reminiscent of distant, reverberant thunder with added bass frequencies. It is used in a variety of situations where Judy’s influence is present including Becky’s attempted murder of Steven (P11 /​07:58) and Mr. C’s drive toward the Convenience Store (P15 /​10:55). “Stabbing Sound” is heard exactly twice in The Return. In the first instance, the sound accompanies The Experiment stabbing Sam and Tracy (P1 /​34:08), and in the second instance, it immediately precedes Sarah Palmer murdering the trucker at the Elk’s Point #9 bar (P14 /​47:28). This cue creates a clear connection between The Experiment and Sarah Palmer and likely

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represents Judy activating a murderous impulse. “Scratching Sound” is the famously inscrutable noise that The Fireman introduces in the first scene of The Return (P1 /​04:14), and it seems to be a marker of Judy’s presence and intervention. “Heavy Reverb Wind” is a particular variety of the ever-​present wind modified with deep reverberation and a very subtle low-​frequency drone. This cue is used 36 times in the series, often as an establishing sound or to accompany Mr. C and other Black Lodge activity. The only sound cue used more frequently is “Electricity,” which appears 62 times. A clear example of “Heavy Reverb Wind” is found when Cooper drops into the exterior of the mansion room on the Purple Sea (P3 /​02:20). It can be somewhat difficult to differentiate “Heavy Reverb Wind” from the objective diegetic sound of wind, but two things help it stand apart: it has a particularly deep resonance and it is often used in scenes where nothing in the diegesis indicates that strong wind would be present (e.g., when characters are inside, when there is no visual evidence of heavy wind). Finally, some sounds are not exclusively associated with explicitly evil characters, places, or events. For instance, “Tube Wind Dream” has a distinctive band-​pass filter sound that makes it easy to recognize. A  clear example is found when Cooper drifts into the glass box just before The Experiment materializes (P2 /​45:45). It appears 26 times, and although it occasionally accompanies evil events, it also functions as a marker of recognition, such as when James Hurley first notices Naido in the holding cell of the Sheriff Station (P13 /​35:58). Various portions of “Eastern Europe Symphonic Mood No. 1” also appear 13 times, but again, it is used inconsistently for various dramatic moments, such as when the battered Miriam Sullivan crawls out of the woods (P11 /​02:30). A  sound cue that I  titled “Distant Factory” is used twice, both times for situations involving gun violence including foreshadowing of Ike’s attempted murder of Cooper/​Dougie (P7 /​40:24) and foreshadowing of Steven Burnett’s suicide (P15 /​24:44). While it technically accompanies something negative, there is no clear connection to Judy.

What Sound Reveals Sound reveals three things about Judy:  which characters she controls or influences, her ability to transport beings across multiple dimensions for her own malicious purposes, and places in the material world where her influence is particularly strong. The argument below is predicated on the following assumptions: Judy is a metaphysical force of evil; she can inhabit or influence multiple hosts simultaneously; following the logic of BOB’s power, the hosts are not aware of her presence within themselves; her influence makes her hosts predominantly, or totally, corrupt to the point that

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they become psychopathic; and her presence is felt in certain places and can affect characters in these locations. One of the primary sonic revelations pertains to character motivation. As an “extreme negative force,” Judy has a relationship to the villains of the series, but to whom specifically? The multifarious antagonists in The Return range from Mr. C’s thoroughgoing maliciousness to Anthony Sinclair and his rather pedestrian crime of insurance fraud. There is also a group of characters that belongs to a general class of typical villains including Ike, Hutch and Chantal, Anthony Sinclair, Steven Burnett, and Duncan Todd. They are either professional criminals who otherwise appear normal or they are people who have dabbled in crime, but who also demonstrate a sense of conscience absent from the other antagonists. These villains do not have any consistent sonic associations beyond their own subplots. For instance, Ike’s murders are underscored rather ironically with the track “I Am” by Blunted Beatz, but this track does not suggest a connection beyond the hitman subplot. Hutch and Chantal’s killings are usually carried out unceremoniously against objective diegetic sound, and while they are a part of Mr. C’s criminal enterprise, the lack of sonic associations with Judy lets us know that they are a different class of villain. However, when we consider the aforementioned sound cues that are strongly associated with Judy, we find another class of characters who are intrinsically evil, including The Experiment, Mr. C (and BOB), Richard Horne, the Woodsmen, and probably Sarah Palmer and Diane’s Tulpa. Overall, these characters are wholly psychopathic with no apparent concept of empathy or remorse. Richard Horne, for example, does not possess the same supernatural abilities that Mr. C has, but he displays the same thoroughgoing antipathy: even when he runs over a child, his distress probably relates more to his fear of self-​preservation than any sense of guilt. Some of these characters merely exist within the same universe with no explicit narrative connection, but Judy’s acousmatic voice unites them sonically and lets the spectator know who she has possessed or influenced. It is obvious from the outset that characters like Mr. C and The Experiment belong to the intrinsically evil class of characters, but others like Richard Horne and Phyllis Hastings are more ambiguous when they are first introduced; in these cases, sound reveals what the narrative initially withholds. When Richard Horne is introduced in Part 5, it is clear that he is a malefactor. At the level of explicit narrative, one must wait until Part 16 to understand that Richard is the product of a rape that Mr. C perpetrates on Audrey Horne, thereby revealing that he carries the essence of evil within him. However, sound communicates Richard’s connection to transcendent evil as early as Part  6. The use of “Low Sustained Mystery” (P6 /​25:12) during the drug deal with Red indicates that this is not a mere criminal transaction. More significantly, the use of “Black Smoke” (P6 /​31:25) in the

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buildup toward Richard’s hit-​and-​run accident makes a strong connection to Judy, for this cue is used very sparingly for only the most horrific events in The Return. “Black Smoke” appears again when he drives away after attempting to murder Miriam Sullivan (P10 /​04:22). Fittingly, Richard’s reunion with his father (and his subsequent demise) will again use the “Black Smoke” cue, thereby affirming the linkage that has been set up in the previous parts. Sound evinces Judy’s influence over Richard well in advance of any narrative revelation. “Black Smoke” also offers early clues as to Phyllis Hastings’ allegiance to Mr. C. As with the initial ambiguity of Richard Horne, it is not immediately obvious if Phyllis is simply a bitter wife or something more sinister. When she confronts her husband as he sits in the Buckhorn jail, the “Black Smoke” cue (P2 /​04:00) lets us know that there is more going on than potential murder and infidelity. Eventually we discover that Bill Hastings has been involved with Major Briggs’s plan to find Judy, and thus Bill is framed for murder. Phyllis’s involvement is affirmed later when she returns home, finds Mr. C, and is promptly murdered, again underscored by “Black Smoke” (P2 /​06:20). Phyllis’s character is not developed enough to make a definitive determination, but she appears to be a somewhat unwitting instrument of Judy’s will. Mr. C’s comment, “you follow human nature almost perfectly,” implies that she has been manipulated. The narrative implies Mr. C has used her, but sound ties her actions to Judy’s broader scheme. Thus, it appears that Judy’s powers of influence extend beyond intrinsically evil characters. The discovery and use of inter-​ dimensional portals is significant in The Return, and the logic typically involves finding one and using it as an intentional act. There are, however, interesting exceptions that are difficult to explain until one considers the use of sound, which reveals that Judy possesses the power to transport people through the various dimensions by her will. For example, at the beginning of The Return, we find Cooper still trapped in the Black Lodge, but he soon falls through the floor and begins an inter-​dimensional journey first to the glass box and then to the Purple Sea. There is no explanation of who is sending Cooper from place to place, nor is there any indication of motive. The use of sound indicates that Judy likely instigated Cooper’s journey; she directs him out of the Black Lodge toward his entrapment in Dougie Jones. Within the logic of the Twin Peaks universe, it is possible that Mr. C created Dougie (for unexplained reasons), but it is harder to accept that he is responsible for Cooper’s entrapment within Dougie. Because Mr. C has spent so much time looking for coordinates that will allow him to travel to these alternate dimensions, it seems clear that he does not possess the ability to send someone trapped in the Black Lodge into the body of an artificially created doppelgänger. Thus, one can assume Judy’s involvement from the logic of the narrative and through the use of a shared sound cue.

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The “Danger Sound” cue that first appears as The Experiment kills Sam, and Tracy establishes a clear association with evil. It subsequently accompanies Cooper as he flies through space, first toward the glass box (P2 /​ 47:30) and then to the Purple Sea (P3 /​01:40). The sound appears again in the Mansion Room as Naido directs a disoriented Cooper away from the loud banging (P3 /​07:54). While Lynch never reveals the source of this threatening banging, sound suggests a force of evil, possibly even Judy herself. One can further deduce that Judy’s motive is self-​preservation by entrapping the threat of the hero that could both expose and potentially destroy her. In addition to “Danger Sound,” we also hear “Rumble” as Cooper sinks into the glass box in New York City (P2 /​45:30). Another unanswered question involves the disappearance of Laura Palmer at the end of Part 17 when Cooper attempts to forestall her fate in the train car. The “Scratching Sound” first heard at The Fireman’s House (P1 /​04:14) immediately precedes her disappearance. This sound’s significance is evident because it is the first part of the first scene of The Return, and because the dialogue that follows pertains to the alternate reality in which Cooper will find himself by the end of the series. The sound is accompanied by the “Heavy Reverb Wind” cue—​ which often accompanies Black Lodge activity—​and following the sound, The Fireman declares, “it is in our house now.” To what is The Fireman is referring? I propose that The Fireman has revealed Judy’s acousmatic presence to Cooper so he can recognize it when he goes back in time. Through this sonic association, one can then understand the presence of “Scratching Sound” as Judy’s intervention in Cooper’s plot to save Laura. Just as Judy plunges Cooper into the Dougie Jones trap, her acousmatic voice also diverts Laura into an alternate reality. Laura is revealed to be an antithesis to the evil of BOB, but Judy thwarts this potential by exiling her to an alternate reality where, absent her loving mother, she is given wholly to her most self-​destructive impulses. The Twin Peaks universe places significant importance on various locations of spiritual and social activity, and in the absence of the ever-​ present underscoring that accompanied the original two seasons, each place is rendered with its own dramatic-​ambient sonic signature. From the natural sound of wind used as an establishing sound for the Sherriff Station to the use of “Heavy Reverb Wind” for establishing shots of the mysterious woods at night, sound creates a vivid sense of aural space; however, beyond establishing sounds, there are also instances where a character’s presence changes or pervades the ambient underscoring. Through sound, one can hear that Judy’s influence is especially strong in certain places in the material world, and through proximity, she can influence those who are not professional criminals or intrinsically evil. Phyllis is an adulteress, but her involvement in evil acts beyond this may be the result of her proximity to a portal used by the Woodsmen in Buckhorn.

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The Fat Trout Trailer Park may also be a place where Judy’s presence is especially potent. The “Danger Sound” cue is used twice during Becky’s confrontation with Steven in Part 11. For the most part, Becky seems to be an only somewhat delinquent girl and a victim of domestic violence. In comparison to her representation in the rest of The Return, grabbing a gun, stealing her mother’s car (with her mother still clinging to the hood), and attempting to murder her boyfriend seems wholly out of character; however, the presence of the “Danger Sound” cue (P11 /​07:02 and P11 /​10:16) suggests that her uncharacteristic and reckless decision to murder Steven is due to Judy’s influence. Because Becky is so far removed from any of the plotlines involving the search for BOB or Judy, it seems more logical that she is a victim of proximity. In this case, sound is our best clue for understanding this event. Just as the narrative does not explicitly render Phyllis’s involvement in Judy’s scheme, Ruth’s enmeshment within Judy’s sphere of influence is only obvious if one considers sound. Again, “Black Smoke” creates a clear connection to Judy long before we learn that her fate was more than a bizarre murder—​it was a deliberate assassination of an individual who came too close to learning of Judy’s presence and location. This further suggests that either the Woodsmen or Judy herself may have carried out this murder, as opposed to Mr. C, who only appears to be the murderer because he is the most explicitly visible antagonist.

Conclusion Although Lynch repeatedly avows the importance of sound in cinema, the majority of literature on Lynch has concentrated mostly on narrative analysis and visual symbolism. This chapter illustrates how sonic symbolism contains clues and connecting threads hidden from the more readily discernable verbal and visual registers of perception. Even if one is not prepared to make the hermeneutic leap of understanding Judy as an acousmêtre, the way that sound illuminates obscure connections between characters, places, actions, and events is undeniable. I hope that this close reading of the sonic world of The Return will encourage others to conduct similar analyses of Lynch’s other work. While sound does not have the same level of explicit tangibility that one finds in more obvious symbols like the blue box in Mulholland Drive or the video camera in Lost Highway, there is meaning to be found within the sonic abstraction waiting to be discovered.

Notes 1 Michel Chion, The Voice in Cinema, trans. Claudia Gorbman (New  York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 17–​30. 2 Andrea Truppin, “And Then There Was Sound: The Films of Andrei Tarkovsky,” in Sound Theory Sound Practice, ed. Rick Altman (London: Routledge, 1992), 243.

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3 Cf. The scene where Mike directs Dougie toward winning slot machines (E03 /​ 46:31). 4 John Richardson, “Laura and Twin Peaks:  Postmodern Parody and the Musical Reconstruction of the Absent Femme Fatale,” in The Cinema of David Lynch:  American Dreams, Nightmare Visions, ed. Erica Sheen and Annette Davison (New York: Wallflower Press, 2004), 77–​92. 5 Chion, The Voice in Cinema, 23. 6 Ibid. 7 Pierre Schaeffer, Treatise on Musical Objects: An Essay Across Disciplines, trans. Christine North and John Dack (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2017), 63. 8 Ibid., 64. 9 For an exhaustive exploration of the myth of the Pythagorean veil vis-​à-​vis acousmatic sound, see Brian Kane, Sound Unseen: Acousmatic Sound in Theory and Practice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 45–​72. 10 Mladen Dolar, A Voice and Nothing More (Cambridge, MA:  The MIT Press, 2006), 62. 11 Ibid., 62. 12 Slavoj Žižek, The Indivisible Remainder: Essays on Schelling and Related Matters (London: Verso, 1996), 147. 13 Exod. 19 and 20. 14 Žižek, The Indivisible Remainder, 153–​154. 15 Dean Hurley, Anthology Resource Vol. 1, Sacred Bones Records SBR188, 2017, digital download. Available at: https://​deanhurley.bandcamp.com/​album/​ anthology-​resource-​vol-​1. 16 Robynn Stilwell, “The Fantastical Gap Between Diegetic and Nondiegetic,” in Beyond the Soundtrack:  Representing Music in Cinema, ed. Daniel Goldmark, Lawrence Kramer, and Richard Leppert (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2007), 184–​202. 17 Chion, The Voice in Cinema, 47. 18 Mark Frost, Twin Peaks: The Final Dossier (New York: Flatiron Books, 2017), 121–​122.

Works Cited Chion, Michel. The Voice in Cinema. Translated by Claudia Gorbman. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. Dolar, Mladen. A Voice and Nothing More. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2006. Frost, Mark. Twin Peaks: The Final Dossier. New York: Flatiron Books, 2017. Kane, Brian. Sound Unseen: Acousmatic Sound in Theory and Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Richardson, John. “Laura and Twin Peaks:  Postmodern Parody and the Musical Reconstruction of the Absent Femme Fatale.” In The Cinema of David Lynch: American Dreams, Nightmare Visions. Edited by Erica Sheen and Annette Davison. New York: Wallflower Press, 2004. Schaeffer, Pierre. Treatise on Musical Objects: An Essay Across Disciplines. Translated by Christine North and John Dack. Berkeley, CA:  University of California Press, 2017.

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Stilwell, Robynn. “The Fantastical Gap Between Diegetic and Nondiegetic.” In Beyond the Soundtrack:  Representing Music in Cinema. Edited by Daniel Goldmark, Lawrence Kramer, and Richard Leppert. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2007. Truppin, Andrea. “And Then There Was Sound: The Films of Andrei Tarkovsky.” In Sound Theory Sound Practice. Edited by Rick Altman. London: Routledge, 1992. Žižek, Slavoj. The Indivisible Remainder:  Essays on Schelling and Related Matters. London: Verso, 1996.

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PART III

Musical Meanings

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11 AMERICANA ON THE INTERNET Listening to Twin Peaks William Weston Bennett

The insightful if largely unremarkable documentary “Secrets from Another Place: Creating Twin Peaks” was most widely distributed as box-​set ballast in the “Gold” box set of that groundbreaking show.1 Modest as the medium of the DVD extra might be, a particular clip has enjoyed a curious afterlife on the internet: an interview with Angelo Badalamenti, in which the composer narrates the process by which he and director David Lynch sketched out the musical ideas that would come to soundtrack the show. The transcript reads as follows: I’d say: “Well, what do you see David? What is … just … talk to me.” And David would say, “Ok Angelo. We’re in a dark woods, now. And, there’s a soft wind blowing through some sycamore trees. And, there’s a moon out. And, there’s some animal sounds in the background. And, you can hear the hoot of an owl. And, you’re in the dark woods. Just, just get me into that beautiful darkness, with the soft wind.” And I started playing. And David would say … “Angelo, that’s great. I love that. That’s a good mood. But can you play it slower?” And I would say, “Slower, David? Ok.” He says, “That’s it. That’s a good tempo. Just keep it going like that. Just keep that going for a while.” And in David’s mind, you can just see that he was visualizing the description that he envisioned. And he would say: “Ok, Angelo, now we’ve got to make a change, because, from behind a tree in the back of the woods, there’s this very lonely girl. Her name is Laura Palmer. And it’s very sad, so let’s get something that matches her.” And I just segued into this … And he’d say, “Well that’s it. It’s very beautiful. I can see her! And she’s walking towards the camera, and she’s coming closer,

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just keep building it! Just keep building it! And she’s getting close! Now reach some kind of climax!” And I  would go … And he would say, “Oh, that’s it! Oh, that’s so beautiful! Angelo! Oh, that’s tearing my heart out! I love that, just keep that going! Now, she’s starting to leave … so fall down … keep falling … keep falling … now go back into the dark woods. That’s it. Keep going. Just keep it going. Very quiet and mysterious.” David got up, he gave me big hug, he said, “Angelo—​ that’s Twin Peaks.” And I said, “Ok, David. I’ll go home, and I’ll work on it.” And he said, “Angelo, don’t do a thing, and don’t change a single note—​I see Twin Peaks.” And that’s how it was done. Badalamenti is describing the process through which Laura Palmer’s Theme—​a central musical idea in Twin Peaks, and one to which Andrew Kohler’s chapter of this volume is dedicated—​was translated from images described by Lynch into sounds realized at the piano in real time. His account puts a pleasantly puzzling spin on familiar questions about the coincident perception of sound and image; for our purposes, whether or not it’s a wholly true one matters less than the idealized process of collaboration it engagingly captures. His language is telling:  strings of conjunctions imply frictionless causality, a creative process unbounded by categories of media or genre and unaffected by aesthetic disagreement, verbal imprecision, or other potential hindrances—​excepting a small tweak to tempo. We hear this expressed most simply in Lynch’s assertion—​or at least, a ventriloquized Lynch’s assertion—​that the improvised theme needed no changes, not even “a single note,” and even engendered synesthesia: “I see Twin Peaks.” The tale as told therefore intimates that audio-​visual alchemy has taken place. Lynch describes a scene with such accuracy that Badalamenti can render it spontaneously in sound, and this sound has such evocative power that this process could just as well work in reverse. Apparently, in an ideal soundtrack, one can imagine the images to sound the sound, or sound the sound to imagine the images. Video clips such as the above can offer a shock to academic sensibilities. Here, for instance, Badalamenti articulates a parallel means of imagining media relations that doesn’t quite align with conventional critical interpretations. Despite outward resemblances, this is unlike the theorization of the “audio-​visual contract” as elaborated by Michel Chion, in which a psychological tilt towards gestalt interpretations typically leads us to assume the correspondence of sound and image when both are experienced simultaneously. By that author’s tacit admission, so-​called “synchresis” fares better for sound-​qua-​sound than it does for pit music; the ambient effects ingeniously rendered in the post-​production practice of Foley exemplify this sort of sight-​to-​sound soldering, whereas music is more uncooperative.2 It pushes too against tabulations of the sort influentially offered by

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Raymond Spottiswoode, where the relationship of film music to film image can be categorized according to whether it serves as an imitation, commentary, evocation, contrast, or in a rhythmically dynamic fashion.3 For starters, such theorizations seem much more at home with questions of reception rather than creation, concerned more with esthesis than poiesis; arguably the only major contribution to film music studies for which the inverse is true is Adorno and Eisler’s Composing for the Films, a prescriptive amble through one author’s aesthetic proselytizing and the other’s humdrum technical tips.4 (Chion’s assessment that it offered a “particular approach” is an especially fine example of academic understatement.)5 Badalamenti’s claim is different:  he isn’t implying that his music sufficiently followed Lynch’s fuzzy thematic cues—​“darkness,” “softness,” and so on—​so complementary resonances between the two sensory fields could be glued in the cutting room. Nor is he setting it up as the sonic seasoning of a visual dish, corresponding to one of Spottiswoode’s categories, that is, animated by the audience at the point of observation. Rather, he quite casually insinuates that there must be something “in” the music that corresponds to the images Lynch describes, and vice versa, despite the utterly unalike modes of their sensory apperception; it is this that makes synesthetic alchemy possible. Accordingly, we’re hearing an embrace of that ancient aesthetic schism, the distinction between content and form—​the “what” considered apart from the “how.”6 Here’s a claim to identity, then: both “Laura Palmer’s Theme” and Lynch’s visions are Twin Peaks. And who would know better than Lynch himself ? It’s a suitably strange ontological claim, for sure, and one that scholarly cynicism might encourage us to dismiss outright as a romantic fable. Perhaps the responsible thing to do, in such cases, is read the interaction as a fluffed-​ up bit of thespianism in which the director’s effusions—​“that’s Twin Peaks,” “I see Twin Peaks,” and so on—​are just an elaboration of the sentiment “that sounds like it would complement the television show I am making.” But let’s be irresponsible and resist that reading—​we have good reason to do so. For starters, the storied internet afterlife this clip has enjoyed, mentioned at the outset of this chapter, indicates that it articulates something of vernacular philosophical value. It has been shared and viewed numerous times on social media, typically linking to fan-​made uploads on YouTube; if one of these suffers a “strike” from the copyright holder, a handful of fans rush to repost a “mirror” of the same clip, as if it contained some esoteric knowledge they refuse to let a litigious authority restrain.7 It also featured prominently as an introduction to a DJ mix by alt-​electronica luminary Nicholas Jaar in 2012, which circulated in similarly viral fashion and won the accolade for the BBC’s “Essential Mix of the Year.”8 With all appreciation apparently sincere, we could wager that Badalamenti’s account of the compositional process articulates an everyday aesthetic of audio-​visual congruence that is widely shared—​or at least one which is epistemologically irresistible.9

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In other words, what he is saying must ring crystal clear, despite its plastic sheen, as it unfolds and narrativizes an aesthetic dictum many of us assume to be true, or sounds true when we hear it: some soundtracks really are just perfect, and, correspondingly, capture—​as photographic film does to light—​ the themes, mood, and ideas of the visuals they accompany perfectly.10 Again, this isn’t about complementary sounds: “Laura Palmer’s Theme” is Twin Peaks. The intellectually estranging quality of this interview clip is something of a philosophical provocation. How do we think about distinctions between sensory categories, especially in the age of digital media, and can we analyze film music as if it were a mirror image of the film itself ? “Laura Palmer’s Theme” is Twin Peaks: perhaps this isn’t really so implausible. After all, casual crossings over philosophically burdened fissures such as “form” and “content” are commonplace in visual media. Why else would Magritte need to remind us that ceci n’est pas une pipe? Occasions in which one leaps over sensory fences, however, are rarely discussed, perhaps due to a feeling that any inquiry of that sort will invariably invite epistemic silliness. Confusing oil on canvas with a wooden instrument for smoking tobacco is a common folly, but few scholars would contend that a sound and an image might be symbolically—​or sensibly—​interchangeable. And yet, the enthusiasm with which Badalamenti’s account is greeted in the internet ecosphere asks us to attend to the possibility; indeed, it reminds us that rigidly bulwarked categories of media might be historically, culturally, and contextually local. For many of the viewer–​listeners online, the recognition of something resembling an aesthetic truism in the interview clip is almost certainly guided by the fact they would have experienced those images and sounds together when viewing Twin Peaks. The chains of translation that Badalamenti describes, therefore—​imagined image becomes spoken sound, which becomes musical sound, which becomes further imaged images, and so on—​is much more phenomenologically proximate to those prior experiences than a hypothetical alternative that entailed numerous drafts, debates, toil, and exasperation. Put simply, it collapses the temporality of the creative process into the comparative immediacy of the experiential one. All of which inches us towards a terrifically po-​mo conclusion: the veracity of what is being said might depend less on what you are hearing than what you have heard. Of course, that we’re even discussing sound as a phenomenologically bracketed category, distinct from sight by definition, speaks to the particular set of material and technological relations that allow for such a thing to be possible.11 Before the age of acoustic recording, hearing a sound without simultaneously seeing its source, or at least being able to identify it fairly soon after the fact, was a special kind of acoustic experience: the “acousmatic.”

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Pierre Schaeffer, a pioneer of musique concrète, famously used the term to describe the sounds-​without-​source, recorded and edited on tape, that he used as compositional material, having resurrected it from ostensibly Pythagorean origins: the fabled Greek philosopher’s students were said to have been divided between the esoterikoi, those who sit in the inner circle with the teacher, and those who had to listen from behind a screen so as to aid concentration, the akousmatikoi.12 That this resurrection was necessitated by the adoption of magnetic tape as a musical medium tells us something about our contemporary situation:  in the age of sound reproduction—​and even more so in the age of digitally mediated music—​acousmatic listening has become the norm, a diagnosis influentially made by Carolyn Abbate in the early 1990s.13 Such a thing was impossible to imagine before the advent of Edison’s invention. Take Karl Marx, for whom the experience of music was inextricably tied to the immediate presence of a laboring musician; indeed, singing is mentioned first among the “commodities … that leave no tangible result existing apart from the persons themselves who perform them,” pipping doctors and lawyers at the post. He writes: The service a singer renders to me satisfies my aesthetic need; but what I enjoy exists only in an activity inseparable from the singer himself, and as soon as his labor, the singing, is at an end, my enjoyment too is at an end.14 This model of musical experience, bookended by the actions of a laboring body, seems very distant from the ease of audio streaming and other modern modes of listening. So too does it express how recently a mono-​medium experience came to constitute “music” in the long history of the human sensorium.15 Correspondingly, in one of those brilliant about-​faces that academic discourse can stunt, multisensory and material modes of analysis have again begun to dominate scholarly discussion about sound in the decades following Abbate’s observation, asking, for instance, how the humidity of the Bayreuth Festspielhaus would have informed the composition and reception of Wagner’s Ring, or how the visual conventions of Western staff notation would have guided the ideas of the influential nineteenth-​century music theorist Arthur von Oettingen—​and all this despite us so often sitting as acousmatikoi behind a computer or smartphone screen still.16 A second scholarly stream complements this embrace of multisensory engagement: the new generation of media theory scholars inspired by the late Friedrich Kittler, who broadly argue—​as that author did—​that “media determine our situation.”17 Media, in such a formulation, materialize the sorts of abstract governing structures which have served as explanatory agents when we attempt to historicize knowledge or investigate how the conditions for the production of such knowledge arose. Given that these are at once culturally

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transcendent, historically fluid, and only apparent through philosophical parallax, many might hear particularly loud reverberations of Foucault’s “archives” and “epistemes” here.18 In practice, this means that the digital particularities of much modern media acquire a specific resonance, especially as far as questions of form go: if all things can be expressed as 1s and 0s, what sense can be made of generic or categorical distinctions—​or, to what sense should they be directed? This strict ontology characterizes the work of Wolfgang Ernst in particular, whose position is neatly expressed in apothegms like the following: “for the media archeologist, the only message [of media] is the signal: no semantics.”19 This opposition to interpretation upends conventional hierarchies of sensory engagement: one might even say that it pushes Sontag’s famous appeal to transparence—​“in place of a hermeneutics of art we need an erotics of art”—​to a point of bodily abandonment altogether, a posthuman threshold.20 As it turns out, my computer has no choice but to support an aesthetic theory that folds sensory binaries and material forms into one another: that “Laura Palmer’s Theme” and Twin Peaks are fundamentally the same thing would be no surprise to an apparatus that registers encoded sound, video, text, color, and image as nothing but bits and bytes. Ernst’s imperative to forgo semantic considerations altogether quite deliberately erects analytical impasses for the humanist, and for that reason his media theory will be designated a rhetorical rabbit hole for now. However, if we take the situation determined by the digital age to be one that invites philosophical speculation about sensory slippages in general, we might ask why we should attend to Badalamenti’s tale at all, why we should attend to that particular example rather than any other that is also mediated digitally, or how we should determine which combinations of bits and bytes is most worthy of analytical attention altogether. Perhaps, in the internet age, anything can be anything else; but this also means that anything can be used as a springboard for further thought. To return to Twin Peaks, note how John P. McCarthy, writing in a review of late ’90s volume Full of Secrets: Critical Approaches to Twin Peaks, considers the relative value of chapters according to what they share with the show itself: The best essays in the book […] confront the series on its own level by playing games and celebrating games in a way that makes us want to play them, i.e., go back and watch the show. They read “Twin Peaks” with the almost same ludic intensity exhibited by its creators, which has the advantage of accounting for many different viewers’ experience and not just that of the academic theoretician.21 It’s an appealing observation. At one register or another, critical analyses of film, music, television, or all three are taking media objects as “things

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to think with,” to misappropriate a phrase from Sherry Turkle.22 We ask what is particular about them, and wonder what ideas they might generate or inspire, whether at the level of sensory immediacy, a posteriori reflection, or somewhere in-​between, both, or neither—​otherwise this chapter might be about “art” as a category rather than any specific instance of it. Such engagements show that whatever scholarly circus one wants to stage around a media object, the tentpole is necessarily erected on that ground; what McCarthy would dub “the best” of these are those that are most honest about this architecture. Therefore, the suggestion that work on Twin Peaks should explore methodological terrain that corresponds to the particularities of that show is alluring precisely on the grounds that it articulates this grounding, warding off anxieties over intellectual overstepping all the while. So, what kind of philosophical thought does Twin Peaks specifically animate and encourage, to laypersons and literati alike? If reception is anything to go by, the overarching theme of Twin Peaks might be described as something like hybridity, with several scholars pointing out its multivalent, genre-​bending aesthetic. For John Alexander, Twin Peaks is not just superior television with the production values of film. It succeeds because it encompasses all television: soap opera, melodrama, murder mystery, situation comedy, high school romance—​ Twin Peaks is the unabridged collection of television clichés.23 Another critic has a similar observation: The combination of different genres in Twin Peaks—​ many rarely seen in each other’s company—​has been extensively discussed:  soap opera, sitcom, detective story, horror movie, 1950s-​style juvenile delinquent film, TV commercial (“damn fine coffee”), and film noir, among others.24 Others consider more thematic instances. For one scholar, Twin Peaks “avoids the romantic reduction of narrative to fixed poles of good and evil, [interrogating] modes of closure with an ironic glance at the way duplicity of cultural narratives with an ironic glance at the way the duplicity of cultural narratives establishes positions and identities.” For another, “Twin Peaks’ plot is a curiously hybrid and androgynous combination of masculine linear detective story and feminine cyclical soap-​opera joined in an interrelationship of self-​parody.” A third, that “the overarching theme of Twin Peaks as well as Blue Velvet [is] the pain that goes on beneath the smiling surface of small-​town middle-​class existence.” Now here’s a bit of weirdness:  I came across the three quotes above in unusually dense succession, quoted in exactly that order and at greater length as a string of epigraphs to a chapter

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on Twin Peaks by Ralfdieter Füller.25 Of course, there’s an underlying logic—​ the authors all describe Twin Peaks as complicating a thematic duality—​and Füller’s chapter, while broadly surveying Twin Peaks in a general sense, puts these dualities front and center: indeed, the chapter itself is called “Doppeltes Vergnügen,” Double Pleasure. That doublings and multiples dominate the critical analysis of Twin Peaks is especially befitting a series in which such things constitute major plot points: young Laura Palmer is murdered, but a near-​identical cousin, Maddy, soon arrives on the scene; there is the White Lodge and its inverse, the Black Lodge; Laura’s father Leland turns out to be the human vessel for “Bob,” and so on. And of course, Badalamenti offered up some doubles of his own: doesn’t an assertion, that the sound and visuals of Twin Peaks are expressions of the same thing, just mediated through different sorts of vibration, seem fitting for a series so full of doppelgängers, duplicates, and dreamy logic? Here’s a question: if sound is doubling vision—​or perhaps the distinction is passé altogether—​then of what use are conventionally circumscribed critical categories? If Lynch’s Twin Peaks and Badalamenti’s Twin Peaks are essentially the same thing, then we might as well analyze the latter as though it were no different to the former; something which should prove easier than the inverse given that, unlike Badalamenti, Lynch’s work has sustained a considerable critical dialogue. Indeed, it is one that evidences a remarkable consistency of theses with regards to what it means for a work to be “Lynchian.” Typifying such sentiments, the novelist David Foster Wallace offered a definition: “a particular kind of irony where the very macabre and the very mundane combine in such a way as to reveal the former’s perpetual containment within the latter”—​ although, “like postmodern or pornographic … is ultimately definable only ostensively, i.e., we know it when we see it.”26 This is a striking formulation, and one that invites few dissenters: in a narrative sense alone, we find explorations of such containment in Lynch’s exploration of the “dark side” of idealized and indelibly American locales, be those archetypical small towns (Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks) or Hollywood (Mulholland Drive, Inland Empire). Indeed, if the volume of scholarly debate and critical consensus is any barometer, one could say that the relative value of Lynch movies is ordered hierarchically by how “Lynchian” they are in exactly this capacity, just as the Twin Peaks essays McCarthy considers to be the best are those that are most Twin-​Peaksy. Films that don’t seem to share the “Lynchian” topology, such as Dune and The Straight Story, are often discussed in largely negative terms—​or, at the very least, snubbed as arguably good films, but not good David Lynch films. Elsewhere, variations on Wallace’s observation abound. For Chris Rodley, the interplay of macabre and mundane is coined “uncanny.”27 Michel Chion

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uses this one too.28 For Erica Sheen and Annette Davison, the corresponding term is “nightmarish.”29 In the introductory remarks to a conference program—​an interdisciplinary affair held in Berlin in 2012—​the chosen term was “Americana”: One of Lynch’s most characteristic motifs is “Americana”, an in-​depth socio-​psychological analysis of the American way of life, which he pursued long after his underground period. […] A typical “Lynchean” [sic.] feature film would be to present the shiny surface of the American dream—​for example the 1950s, its consumerism, the apparent tranquility of the white garden fences of suburbia—​only to reveal its dark abysses through an uncanny visual language.30 Despite being unattributed—​ and the source itself is unconventionally unglamorous—​“Americana” is in many ways the most revealing synonym for the Lynchian aesthetic. It touches on something that Wallace observed, albeit a little uncharitably:  “I’ve noted since 1986 (when Blue Velvet was released) that a good sixty-​five percent of the people in metropolitan bus terminals between the hours of midnight and six A.M.  tend to qualify as Lynchian figures.”31 In other words, Lynch’s “Americana” is at times such a perfect facsimile of its subject that there appears to be very little directorial gloss. A bus terminal in the early hours, after Blue Velvet, is like the aisles of a grocery store after Warhol; the “mundane” element of the Americana dynamic is, fittingly, frequently rendered mundanely. To return to Twin Peaks specifically, all this talk of surfaces thinly veneering abysses and the macabre being contained within the mundane recalls the density of Ralfdieter Füller’s opening salvo, those three quotes also opting to consider the Lynchian dynamic spatially:  there are ideas occupying “poles,” “surfaces” again, and linearity juxtaposed with circularity along gendered lines.32 Evidently, while there are richly layered ways of imagining how various narrative or conceptual elements are configured, spatial and geometric metaphors guide a significant number of these. More particularly, we might say that Twin Peaks is an exploration of stylistic polyvalence, but one that adopts those broader styles so as explore what is fundamentally the Lynchian duality described by Wallace—​Americana again, or some terminological variation thereof.33 But wait—​“Laura Palmer’s Theme” is Twin Peaks too. This would indicate that sound too can have something resembling surfaces and abysses, poles, circles, lines; but how might our ears be able to access such things? Let’s listen to the theme. The deep, tremolo baritone guitar sounds like it’s right out of Tommy James & The Shondells’ “Crimson and Clover.” But it’s much more melancholic. The Fender Rhodes accompanying the

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guitar arpeggiates smoothly, but that second chord has a 9th suspended in it, voiced right next to the minor third, a semitone apart, clashing and beating just slightly. Already this feels like some sort of tension: not only is it a literal harmonic tension—​a dissonance—​but it also points to a rupture between conventional timbres and an ever-​so-​slightly skewed means of exploring them. Already, we could venture that this is something like “Americana,” a dynamic of containment between surfaces and substances in which one is mundane and the other macabre. And it continues as we listen to “Audrey’s Dance.” What is this? It sounds jazzy, for sure. Brushes on a snare head, vibraphone melody that hangs patiently on a flattened fifth. But it doesn’t really sound like jazz. It doesn’t actually sound like, say, anything Miles Davis ever put out, or anyone else for that matter. How is this engaging the idea of jazz as a genre? What’s with all the sustained dissonance, the horns that sound more like they’re coming from a car than from a band? Again, at the level of textural immediacy, of affect, this sounds jazzy, but at the level of musical detail, it is not jazz. This is how genre works, after all: as one scholar notes, borrowing a rhetorical formulation from Althusser, the whole point of genres is that they make “obviousnesses obviousnesses.”34 Jazz, like Lynchian, like postmodernism, like pornography, is definable only ostensively: we know it when we hear it. And now “The Nightingale,” a ballad. It’s like a Ronettes 45 played at 33 and a 1/​3, very loudly in a cathedral down the road. Julee Cruise’s voice is suitably ethereal, practically whispering. It reminds me of the scene in the show where she appears as herself, singing in the local bar. She has an unusual audience:  as Chris Rodley observes, “all the bikers in this town seem to hang out at the Roadhouse, listening to a very angelic Julee Cruise singing beautifully melancholic songs—​as opposed to biting the heads off chickens!”35 Whatever, another one: “The Bookhouse Boys.” The reverb on this saxophone bears no relationship whatsoever to a natural acoustic space. And the drums are back, but the drummer is doing their own thing; no rhythmic alignment whatsoever. In fact, the sax and drums probably weren’t even recorded at the same time—​it’s superimposition as a studio trick, a double exposure. More finger clicks, moody blues bar guitar, a meandering walking bassline … To reiterate outright the philosophical splinter: complicating any analysis of Badalamenti’s music that takes the reception to Lynch’s thematic ideas as a theoretical scaffold will, of course, be the degree to which critical ideas can be fruitfully translated from sight to sound. However, the fundamental topologies mentioned in the reception of Lynch’s work do seem to characterize Badalamenti’s music too—​especially when one approaches an analysis assuming this could be the case. Much of what was said about Lynch’s Twin Peaks, with all its heterogeneousness and strange containments, applies

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just as well to Badalamenti’s. The soundtrack encompasses a wide variety of seemingly disparate genres, but each of them index established American tropes; so too does Badalamenti “twist” these genres so as to outline a tension entirely befitting “Americana.” But this twisting is not on the level of formal immediacy:  again, these generic conventions are often perfect facsimiles, only appearing to contain something macabre when one listens closely. The sorts of algorithmic processes that determine genre for streaming services such as Spotify would not be able to notice; even a highly developed software process that tries to find patterns in the 1s and 0s wouldn’t be able to distinguish surface from substance if that surface is sound. To conclude, let’s listen to a last cut from the soundtrack: “Laura Palmer’s Theme,” or, as we established at the outset, Twin Peaks itself. A low pedal note repeating slow quarter notes. A Minor 6th hangs heavy above, but pulls down to the fifth, as expected, on the second beat. A distant flute accompanies the beating Rhodes bass. The chords build, segueing into the relative major for a brief, triumphant respite. More ninths in the accompaniment; one, just shy of three minutes in, even sounds like it might’ve been a mistake. On this whistle-​stop listening tour of just a selection of Twin Peaks cuts, I  can’t help but think that “Laura Palmer’s Theme,” of all the examples, seems to exhibit the least “Lynchian” features. It is the least “Americana”: all the others seem to index and reference (and upset) generic convention. Again, the mundane element of the Lynchian tension is rendered mundanely enough to let us—​or a genre-​detection algorithm—​know what we’re hearing. “Laura Palmer’s Theme” might be beautiful, but it’s not especially Lynchian. This is, of course, something of a contradiction of Lynch’s own thoughts and feelings on the theme: it is, we are led to believe, perfect; it is Twin Peaks. In keeping with the doppelgängers, here’s a second account of the opening fable, Lynch’s own: Angelo was building [Laura Palmer’s Theme], and it was so beautiful to me, I’m starting to cry! Angelo looks at me and says, “What are you, crazy?” And I  said, Angelo, that’s so beautiful! I  can’t tell you how beautiful that is! And he’s looking kind of confused. Several times after that Angelo has said, “You know David, I trust you, but I have never thought that that is as beautiful as you seem to think it is.” It was the one piece that just never got to him. He didn’t think it was so hot.36 This is by no means a refutation of the tale as told by Badalamenti. If anything, it certainly indicates that he was by no means exaggerating Lynch’s impassioned response. However, it also opens up a new way of considering “Laura Palmer’s Theme”—​as the one piece its own composer just never “got.” This opens an analytical avenue more in line with the earlier observations

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about its generally un-​Americana quality, as though there is a parallel aesthetic stream in which Lynch and Badalamenti are at odds. Such an avenue asks us to attend to the relationship between composers and directors, in particularly long-​standing ones such as Badalamenti and Lynch, and ones associated with an auteur mindset. Analyzing Badalamenti’s “Americana,” rather than Lynch’s, could upset conventionally held hierarchies about whose voice matters more. The question of whether such an insight has any aesthetic value might not be entirely easy to answer. This essay was spurred on by an interview clip I found interesting; a sequence of 1s and 0s I found thought-​provoking, but that does not, at any strict ontological level, have any greater or lesser value than any other sequence of 1s and 0s. While considering the interplay of homologous conceptual dynamics to determine the quality of “fit” of sight to sound might seem arbitrary, or even an unhelpful and uncritical search for an outmoded type of aesthetic “unity,” the sorts of inversions of conventional critical perspectives it can engender seem provocative—​and playful—​ enough to warrant further exploration. What if the music David Lynch likes best in Twin Peaks is actually the least Lynchian music of all? Wouldn’t that be—​Lynchian? And in a series so famous for backwards speaking, it seems appropriate that Twin Peaks could serve as an invitation to invert the way we talk about listening, vision, music, and media.

Notes 1 Secrets from Another Place: Creating Twin Peaks, DVD, directed by Charles de Lauzirika (Los Angeles, CA: CBS DVD, 2007). 2 Michel Chion, Audio-​Vision: Sound on Screen, ed. and trans. Claudia Gorbman (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994). I say “tacit” as, when discussing sound effects, Chion describes synchresis as “the spontaneous and irresistible weld produced between a particular auditory phenomenon and visual phenomenon when they occur at the same time … [that] results independently of any rational logic” (p. 63). A “forced marriage” experiment, by contrast, reveals that some forms of music “resist” the visuals whereas others “yield” (p. 189). 3 Raymond Spottiswoode, A Grammar of the Film: An Analysis of Film Technique (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1962) pp. 192–​193. 4 See Martin Hufner, “ ‘Composing for the Films’ (1947): Adorno, Eisler and the Sociology of Music,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 18, no. 4 (1998): 535. 5 Michel Chion, Le son au Cinéma (Paris: Cahiers du Cinema, 1992) p. 214. 6 “What” and “how” are the English translations of the divide described in De Elecutione, attributed to Demetrius, that elaborated upon the Sophist aesthetic tradition. See Władysław Tartarkiewicz, History of Aesthetics (New  York: Continuum, 2005), 219–​220. 7 These numerous “copyright strikes” make the citation of a link problematic: any linked video might be taken down at any moment. The “mirror” versions are

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readily searchable on the site. For more on the social media engagements Twin Peaks inspires, see Rebecca Williams, “Ontological Security, Authorship, and Resurrection: Exploring Twin Peaks’ Social Media Afterlife,” Cinema Journal 55, no. 3 (Spring, 2016): 143–​147. 8 Nicholas Jaar, BBC Essential Mix, 05/​19/​2012. Broadcast on BBC Radio One. 9 For more on “vernacular philosophy,” particularly as it intersects with questions concerning technology, media, and the soundtrack, see Carolyn Abbate, “Sound Object Lessons,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 69, no.  3 (2016): 793–​830. 10 A case could be made that the YouTube phenomenon of editing and recomposition of well-​known television and film media to insert/​remove canned laughter, change soundtracks, and alter genre supports this axiom too: there needs to be a clearly delineated understanding of the “correct” accompaniment for popular media for the upset to work. See William Cheng, “Taking Back the Laugh:  Comedic Alibis, Funny Fails,” Critical Inquiry 43, no.  2 (2017): 528–​549. 11 Jonathan Sterne describes the way sight and sound are contrasted as an “audio-​ visual litany,” a set of stock presumptions about each sense that are frequently and uncritically repeated: hearing is spherical, vision is directional; hearing is immersive, sound offers a perspective, and so on. As might be expected, he notes that such presumptions are “rhetorically powerful, but not very accurate.” See Jonathan Sterne, The Audible Past:  Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003) p. 15; id., “The Theology of Sound: A Critique of Orality,” Canadian Journal of Communication 36, no. 2 (Summer 2011): 212. 12 See Brian Kane, Sound Unseen:  Acousmatic Sound in Theory and Practice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). 13 See Carolyn Abbate, Unsung Voices:  Opera and Musical Narrative in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 13–​16. 14 Karl Marx, Addenda from Theories of Surplus Value. Originally published in German as Theorien über den Mehrwert, ed. Karl Kautsky, 1905–​1910. This edition trans. G.A. Bonner and Emile Burns. Reproduced in Volume 32 of the Marx–​ Engels Collected Works, 1861–​63:  Economic Manuscripts (London:  Lawrence and Wishart, 1989), 1327. 15 Christopher Small famously argued for the noun “music” to be replaced by a verb, so as to reiterate the necessity of human action to the whole shebang. See Christopher Small, Musicking:  The Meanings of Performing and Listening (Hanover and London: Wesleyan University Press/​University of New England Press, 1998). 16 Gundula Kreuzer, “ ‘Wagner-​Dampf’: Steam in ‘Der Ring des Nibelungen’ and Operatic Production,” The Opera Quarterly 27, no.  2 (Spring–​Summer 2011); Suzannah Clark, “Seduced by Notation:  Oettingen’s Topology of the Major-​ Minor System,” in Music Theory and Natural Order from the Renaissance to the Early Twentieth Century, ed. Suzannah Clark and Alex Rehding (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). 17 Friedrich Kittler, Gramophone, Film, Typewriter, trans. Geoffrey Winthrop-​ Young and Michael Wutz (Stanford, CA: Stanford University, 1999), xxxix. 18 See Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archeology of the Human Sciences (New York: Pantheon Books, 1970); The Archeology of Knowledge, trans. A.M. Sheridan Smith (New York: Pantheon Books, 1972).

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19 Wolfgang Ernst, “Between Real Time and Memory on Demand: Reflections on/​ of Television,” South Atlantic Quarterly 101, no. 3 (Summer 2002): 628. Italics in original. 20 Susan Sontag, “Against Interpretation,” in Against Interpretation and Other Essays (New York: Dell Publishing, 1966) p. 10. 21 John P. McCarthy, “Review: Full of Secrets: Critical Approaches to Twin Peaks by David Lavery,” Film Quarterly 51, no. 1 (1997): 49. 22 Sherry Turkle, ed., Evocative Objects:  Things We Think With (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2007). 23 John Alexander, The Films of David Lynch (London: Letts & Co., 1993), 149. 24 Lacey, Stephen. ”Just Plain Odd: Some Thoughts on Performance Styles in Twin Peaks,” Cinema Journal 55, no. 3 (Spring, 2016): 126–​131. 25 Ralfdieter Füller, Fiktion und Antifiktion:  Die Filme David Lynchs und der Kulterprozeß im Amerika der 1980er und 90er Jahre (Wissenschaft Verlag Trier, 2001), 142. 26 David Foster Wallace. “David Lynch keeps his head,” in A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again:  Essays and Arguments (Boston, MA:  Little, Brown and Company, 1997), 146 27 Christopher Rodley and David Lynch, Lynch on Lynch (London:  Faber and Faber, 1997), 12. 28 Michel Chion, “Cinematic and Diegetic Real in David Lynch’s Inland Empire,” presentation at “David Lynch: The Art of The Real.” 29 Erica Sheen and Anette Davison, “Introduction: American Dreams, Nightmare Visions,” in The Films of David Lynch:  American Dreams, Nightmare Visions (London & New York: Wallflower Press, 2004). 30 Program from “David Lynch:  The Art of the Real,” a 2012 conference with proceedings available to view online at: http://​lynchconference.hbk-​bs.de. 31 Wallace, A Supposedly Fun Thing, 147. 32 Circularity and linearity as gendered ideals of orgasm were also a central metaphor in Susan McClary, “Getting Down Off the Beanstalk,” in Feminine Endings:  Music, Gender, and Sexuality (Minneapolis, MN:  University of Minnesota Press, 2002), 112–​131. 33 In an intriguing integration of these elements, Stefan Höltgen, in a book on “Aesthetic Doubling,” in Lynch, considers Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me to exemplify genre doubling specifically. See Stefan Höltgen, Spiegelbilder: Strategien der ästhetischen Verdopplung in den Filmen von David Lynch (Hamburg: Verlag Dr. Kovač, 2001). 34 Geoff Mann, “Why Does Country Music Sound White?” Ethnic and Racial Studies 31, no. 1 (2008): 84. 35 Rodley, Lynch on Lynch, 170. 36 Rodley, Lynch on Lynch, 170–​171.

Works Cited Abbate, Carolyn. Unsung Voices:  Opera and Musical Narrative in the Nineteenth Century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991. —​—​—​. “Sound Object Lessons.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 69, no. 3 (Fall 2016): 793–​830.

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Alexander, John. The Films of David Lynch. London: Letts & Co., 1993. Cheng, William. “Taking Back the Laugh:  Comedic Alibis, Funny Fails.” Critical Inquiry 43, no. 2 (2017): 528–​549. Chion, Michel. Le son au Cinéma. Paris: Cahiers du Cinema, 1992. —​—​—​. Audio-​Vision: Sound on Screen. Edited and translated by Claudia Gorbman. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. —​—​—​. “Cinematic and Diegetic Real in David Lynch’s Inland Empire,” presentation at “David Lynch: The Art of The Real.” Berlin, 2012. Clark, Suzannah. “Seduced by Notation:  Oettingen’s Topology of the Major-​ Minor System.” In Music Theory and Natural Order from the Renaissance to the Early Twentieth Century. Edited by Suzannah Clark and Alexander Rehding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Ernst, Wolfgang. “Between Real Time and Memory on Demand: Reflections on/​of Television,” South Atlantic Quarterly 101, no. 3 (Summer 2002). Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things:  An Archeology of the Human Sciences. New York: Pantheon Books, 1970. —​—​—​. The Archeology of Knowledge. Translated by A.M. Sheridan Smith. New York: Pantheon Books, 1972. Füller, Ralfdieter. Fiktion und Antifiktion: Die Filme David Lynchs und der Kulterprozeß im Amerika der 1980er und 90er Jahre. Trier, Germany: Wissenschaft Verlag, 2001. Höltgen, Stefan. Spiegelbilder: Strategien der ästhetischen Verdopplung in den Filmen von David Lynch. Hamburg: Verlag Dr. Kovač, 2001. Hufner, Martin. “ ‘Composing for the Films’ (1947): Adorno, Eisler and the Sociology of Music,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 18, no. 4 (1998). Kane, Brian. Sound Unseen: Acousmatic Sound in Theory and Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Kittler, Friedrich. Gramophone, Film, Typewriter. Translated by Geoffrey Winthrop-​ Young and Michael Wutz. Stanford, CA: Stanford University, 1999. Kreuzer, Gundula. “ ‘Wagner-​Dampf’:  Steam in ‘Der Ring des Nibelungen’ and Operatic Production.” The Opera Quarterly 27, no. 2 (Spring–​Summer 2011). Lacey, Stephen. “Just Plain Odd:  Some Thoughts on Performance Styles in Twin Peaks.” Cinema Journal 55, no. 3 (Spring, 2016). Mann, Geoff. “Why Does Country Music Sound White?” Ethnic and Racial Studies 31, no. 1 (2008). Marx, Karl, and Frederick Engels.  Marx & Engels Collected Works Volume 32: Marx:  1861–​1863.  Translated by G.A. Bonner and Emile Burns. London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1989. McCarthy, John P. “Review: Full of Secrets: Critical Approaches to Twin Peaks by David Lavery.” Film Quarterly 51, no. 1 (Autumn 1997). McClary, Susan. Feminine Endings:  Music, Gender, and Sexuality. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2002. Rodley, Chris, editor. Lynch on Lynch. London: Faber and Faber, 1997. Sheen, Erica, and Anette Davison, editors. The Films of David Lynch:  American Dreams, Nightmare Visions. London & New York: Wallflower Press, 2004. Small, Christopher. Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening. Hanover and London: Wesleyan University Press/​University of New England Press, 1998. Sontag, Susan. “Against Interpretation.” In Against Interpretation and Other Essays. New York: Dell Publishing, 1966.

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Spottiswoode, Raymond. A Grammar of the Film:  An Analysis of Film Technique. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1962. Sterne, Jonathan. The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003. —​—​—​. “The Theology of Sound:  A Critique of Orality.” Canadian Journal of Communication 36, no. 2 (Summer 2011). Tartarkiewicz, Władysław. History of Aesthetics. New York: Continuum, 2005. Turkle, Sherry, editor. Evocative Objects:  Things We Think With. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2007. Wallace, David Foster. A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again:  Essays and Arguments. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1997. Williams, Rebecca. “Ontological Security, Authorship, and Resurrection: Exploring Twin Peaks’ Social Media Afterlife.” Cinema Journal 55, no. 3 (Spring, 2016).

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12 “LIKE SOME HAUNTING MELODY” The Laura Palmer Theme in the World of Twin Peaks Andrew S. Kohler

“He Loves Falling”: Laura Palmer’s Music “Angelo, this is what I’m gonna shoot. That’s the music of Twin Peaks. You’ve captured it.” In 2017, Angelo Badalamenti recounted this as what David Lynch said to him after the two had worked out, before anything had been filmed, what the composer called the show’s “most important instrumental”:  the Laura Palmer Theme.1 Also in 2017, Sheryl Lee, who played Laura Palmer, said: “I couldn’t have been given a better gift or tool for the development of a character as [Angelo’s] music. […] [E]‌ven today, if I’m somewhere and all of the sudden I hear just the first five seconds, I’m instantly—​I feel that character. I—​it just—​it’s potent music, and it worked very, very well for me to use as a way in.”2 Michel Chion has written that Badalamenti’s music, especially the Laura Palmer Theme, serves as the “unifying element” for Lynch’s “strange and composite” show (i.e., the original two seasons, 1990–​1991).3 This theme defines the entire world of the series, as the community’s neuroses and longings are projected onto the young woman whose murder sets the events in motion. The theme’s haunting opening, soaring ascent, and ultimate failure to achieve transcendence encapsulate the heart of Twin Peaks. The Laura Palmer Theme opens the pilot (1.1,4 2:49) with a looped four-​ measure phrase in C Minor (Figure 12.1). The theme’s ominous atmosphere, and its tonal center, are fortified by the piano’s tolling C15 on the second downbeat. The melody essentially creates a sustained C Minor harmony, with A♭ and B♭ as embellishments. In isolation, the opening sonority appears to be a first-​ inversion A♭ Major triad, but the A♭ is soon revealed to be an upper neighbor.6 That the

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FIGURE  12.1 

Laura Palmer Theme, opening. All transcription and engraving in this chapter is by the author.

182

FIGURE 12.2A AND 12.2B  Left,

Mozart, String Quartet, K. 465, I, mm. 1–2 (New York: Dover Publications, 1970, p. 186); right, Haydn, Die Schöpfung, No. 1, mm. 1–2 (New York: Dover Publications, 1990, p. 1).

series begins with a non-​chord tone creates the sense of starting in medias res, suggesting that we find ourselves in an eternal cycle without beginning or end. This first sound is the same as the first full harmonies in two slow introductions of the classical repertoire, both of which famously create a sense of instability and unease: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s String Quartet No. 19 in C Major, K. 465 (1785) and Franz Joseph Haydn’s depiction of chaos in Die Schöpfung (“The Creation,” 1796–​1798) (Figures  12.2a and 12.2b, respectively).7

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FIGURE 12.3 

Laura Palmer Theme, transition to ascent

FIGURE  12.4 

Samuel Barber, String Quartet, Opus 11, opening of second movement (New York: G. Schirmer, Inc., 1939, p. 11)

When it is finally time for the Laura Palmer Theme to move to its next section, a brief transition breaks the pitch ceiling (Figure 12.3). The series’ first statement of the ensuing ascent, following an extensive prolongation of the brooding opening, begins with the suggestion to roll over Laura’s body to uncover her identity (1.1, 7:29).8 Matthew BaileyShea has provided a model analysis of a work that shares salient musical features with Badalamenti’s theme, Samuel Barber’s String Quartet, Opus 11 (1936). In the Molto adagio movement (best known as the string orchestra arrangement, Adagio for Strings), the “melody struggles to ascend […] with labored, physical effort” and “ascending steps that continually fall backward, requiring repetitive upward motion” (Figure 12.4).9 This description is applicable to the two-​octave rise in the Laura Palmer Theme (Figure 12.5): in both works, ascent is a labored process, for which success is uncertain. Badalamenti’s melody emerges on piano from the texture of the synthesized strings10 and the harmony changes to the major mode, with the slow pace of the harmonic progression contributing to the sense of being weighted down. The shifts are striking: first by chromatic mediant, then by enharmonic common tone to F Minor,11 returning to the minor mode from which the ascent had suggested an escape. The F Minor chord is emphasized by the preceding dotted rhythm and the melody’s only upward leap in this section, resulting in a poignant added ninth

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FIGURE 12.5 

Laura Palmer Theme, ascent

FIGURE  12.6 

Richard Strauss, Also sprach Zarathustra, reduction (New  York: Dover Publications, 1979, p. 64, mm. 16–​17)

(emphasized by a full chord rather than an octave in the piano’s right hand). The ambiguous melodic line variously suggests two expressive scales, Lydian and octatonic. The last chord is a half-​diminished seventh, a dramatic enhancement found at similar structural points in such works as Richard Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra (“Thus spoke Zarathustra”), Opus 30 (1896; Figure 12.6). The melody achieves its summit (Figure 12.7) with a two-​measure phrase that is repeated:

FIGURE 12.7 

Laura Palmer Theme, climax

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“Like Some Haunting Melody”  185

The climax is especially evocative of the struggle to ascend. The first melodic gesture is repeated, and upon the repetition the long-​awaited C Major harmony changes to its relative A Minor (emphasized by a full chord in the piano’s right hand) with a poignant added ninth in the accompaniment. In addition, the climax does not occur on the highest note; rather, the highest pitch achieved quickly resolves downward (compare Figure  12.4). Similar gestures occur at several emphatic points in the music of Carl Orff, as in the first versions of De temporum fine comoedia (“Play on the end of times,” 1971, Figure  12.8). In the final version of Die Bernauerin (“The Lady Bernauer,” 1946), a soprano solo, singing a cappella and placed high in the theater, represents the spirit of the murdered heroine, with a climax eerily similar to that of the Laura Palmer Theme (Figure 12.9). Regardless of whether Badalamenti was familiar with Orff’s less famous works, both composers arrived at the same musical gesture in their respective homages to young women who chose to become martyrs.12 Returning to BaileyShea’s analysis of Barber’s String Quartet, the slow movement’s famous climax “offer[s]‌a glimpse of some transcendent and

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FIGURE  12.8 

Carl Orff, De temporum fine comoedia (Mainz:  B. Schott’s Söhne, ED 5407, 1974), p.  184 (square 65, m.  15), contralto solo line. Translation of Latin text: “and the highest goal.”

FIGURE 12.9 

Carl Orff, Die Bernauerin: Ein bairisches Stück, Studienpartitur (Mainz: Schott, ED 6856, 1946/​1974), p. 179 (Square 15)

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FIGURE 12.10 

Laura Palmer Theme, falling portion

distant reality,” yet it is “nothing but a mirage, a vision of the impossible.”13 The Laura Palmer Theme’s climax is similarly short-​lived. Badalamenti recounted that Lynch instructed him to “come down [from it] ever so slowly,” since “he loves falling.”14 Although the diatonic descent (Figure 12.10) ends with C in the melody, it is not over a tonic harmony, and the accompaniment abruptly stops, preventing any sense of closure. The music returns to the brooding opening, and the cycle begins anew. The only way for this section to end with any sense of stability is for it to come to rest on a G in the top voice, which never occurs on a downbeat, reinforcing the sense of an eternal, unresolved cycle.15

“Endless Ellipsis”: The Refusal of Closure That the Laura Palmer Theme has an ambiguous opening and no clear ending is in keeping with the overall ethos of Twin Peaks. Despite the known likelihood of cancelation, the second season concludes with what David Lavery called a “closureless final scene.”16 In 1990, before the first season had even aired, Lynch expressed his contempt for the idea of closure, and he later felt pushed to reveal the identity of Laura’s murderer.17 In Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992), Lynch addressed nothing that the series left unresolved.18 Christy Desmet’s observation in 1995 of “Lynch’s reluctance to conclude his plot”19 continues to hold true after Twin Peaks: The Return (2017), in which only the arc for Norma Jennings (Peggy Lipton) and Ed Hurley (Everett McGill) is granted a happy ending (Part 15, 1:39). The generally depressing resolutions for the second season’s several other loose threads are, at best, hinted at in The Return, instead to be found in Mark Frost’s novels, published in 2016 and 2017,20 the narrators of which are not entirely reliable.21 Agent Tammy Preston (played by Chrysta Bell in The Return), in whose voice the latter novel is written, speaks for many readers and viewers when she writes of her unfulfilled “longing for narrative closure,” and encapsulates much of the series in writing that “we take our leave” of one thread “with an endless ellipsis rather than a period.”22

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The cyclic nature of the theme and its refusal to achieve closure are reinforced by the fact that several of its pivotal statements go through the climax not once but twice, as occurs on the original soundtrack album.23 In the first episode, the scene changes from Laura’s dead face to Sarah Palmer (Grace Zabriskie) at approximately the fourth measure of the climax (1.1, 8:06), the falling portion segueing back to the brooding opening (8:28) to underscore Sarah’s realization that something is horribly wrong.24 While the music stops within a minute as the scene changes, the brooding opening begins again as Sarah calls her husband Leland (Ray Wise) (13:04), picking up where we left off in the cycle and proceeding through another ascent, climax, fall, and return to the opening as the parents learn of their daughter’s death.25 The sequence in 2.9 with Leland Palmer’s realization of his possession by BOB (Frank Silva), confession, and death features two full cycles without interruption or interpolation. The first climax emphasizes the classic line of anagnorisis, “What have I done?” (41:21),26 while the second (42:56) occurs as he has a vision of Laura, whereupon he dies.27 Leland’s death scene not only resolves (to Lynch’s chagrin) the question of who killed Laura Palmer, but also serves as her apotheosis. Laura chose to die rather than let evil forces possess her, which we learn to the accompaniment of her theme (2.9, 9:36 and 40:35). As Desmet has written, she takes on the “role as intercessor for her father at his death,”28 thereby elevated from the abject dead girl wrapped in plastic to a sublime, redeeming figure, forgiving the unspeakable. In Part 2 (19:09) of The Return, she removes her face to reveal a bright light within. Two cues further beatify the character, both of which use ethereal synthesized strings and have similarities to the Laura Palmer Theme. These occur at the end of Fire Walk With Me (2:09:21) as Laura sits in the Red Room with Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) and the Angel (Lorna MacMillan; Figure 12.11, “The Voice of Love”), and in The Return, Part 8 (34:37), when it is revealed that Laura was created in a cloud of golden particles by The Fireman (Carel Struycken) in response to the emergence of BOB (Figure 12.12, “The Fireman”). Despite Laura’s ultimate redemptive quality, by no means is she a pure, sentimental heroine. Lynch described her, with “her contradictions,” as “radiant on the surface but dying inside.”29 As Desmet has described, Laura’s character embodies elements of both ends of the so-​called “virgin–​whore” dichotomy,30 a term whose oppressive language bespeaks a patriarchal view of women’s sexuality. Laura, in the words of Chion, is “at first, everything wonderful and idealised, then everything dissolute and disreputable.”31 John Richardson has noted that Laura has elements of the femme fatale,32 but her resistance to BOB and her saintly attributes set her apart from the other femme fatale characters of Twin Peaks.33 Laura engages in what Desmet has called an “uncanny refusal to be classified either as saint or as sinner,”34 just as her theme endlessly cycles through multiple moods and states of being.

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FIGURE 12.11 

“The Voice of Love,” opening (Fire Walk With Me, 2:09:21)

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“Like Some Haunting Melody”  189

“The Fireman,” (The Return, Part 8, 34:37)

newgenrtpdf

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FIGURE 12.12 

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“Filled with Secrets”: Pervasion and Projection Richardson has written that “[a]‌rguably all of the music in Twin Peaks is related in some way to the character of Laura Palmer,” and that the music that “saturate[s]” the soundtrack is “closely related thematically.”35 Josie Packard (Joan Chen) says that one of the last things Laura said to her is caught in her head “like some haunting melody” (1.2, 26:20), and the soundtrack suggests that this is the case for the whole community. The Laura Palmer Theme itself is heard in many contexts and with various scorings. Its opening section often occurs in isolation from the other parts, a generally ominous signifier that is more easily (though not necessarily) detached from Laura than the other portions of the theme.36 Instances of the ascent and climax that are entirely independent of the opening, however, are infrequent: the beauty of Laura’s existence is most often inseparable from the darkness.37 Two of the soundtrack’s other most salient cues—​ the Twin Peaks Theme (the music of the opening credits) and “Audrey’s Dance”—​share material with the Laura Palmer Theme. The former is heard also with lyrics by Lynch (sung by Julee Cruise in 1.1, 1:15:15) and as underscoring in scenes of emotional intensity.38 The song version, appropriately titled “Falling,” and one of the underscoring cues feature a phrase not present in the opening titles with E falling to D and then ascending to G, similar to the Laura Palmer Theme’s climax (Figure 12.13).39 The two themes also share falling tetrachords and lengthy, arduous ascents (Figures 12.14 and 12.15).40 In 2.15 (2:26), the ascent of the Twin Peaks Theme is followed by the opening of the Laura Palmer Theme, dovetailing the two cues.41 “Audrey’s Dance”—​ famously occurring diegetically in 1.3 (28:00) and often used as underscoring42—​features the opening section of the Laura Palmer Theme enriched by 016 trichords on vibraphone (Figure  12.16). The first time Audrey (Sherilyn Fenn) dances to this music (1.2, 34:05), it also incorporates the ascent of the Laura Palmer Theme, strengthening the connection between the two characters. Audrey is further connected to Laura through the use of the Laura Palmer Theme when Cooper discovers her in his bed in 1.6 (45:17), ending the episode. Here only the ascent plays in a solo clarinet, unusually separated from the brooding opening and stopping on the first note of the climax. Rather

FIGURE 12.13 

Phrase from “Falling” (1.1, 1:15:18)

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FIGURE 12.14 

Opening portion of Twin Peaks Theme (opening title sequence in 1.1 and 2.1, without repetition and with varied bass line in subsequent episodes of the first two seasons; used in full in title sequence for The Return)

than creating the sense of having stopped at the summit, the effect is one of unfulfilled longing. As Kalinak has noted, the ensuing scene that begins the following episode (1.7, 1:41) does not exploit Audrey’s “siren” characteristics, but rather presents her as a desperate and naïve young woman, to whom Cooper behaves nobly.43 Similarly to Laura, Audrey’s vulnerability subverts her femme fatale aspects, as do her business ambitions and social conscience in later episodes. When she embarks on her undercover operation at OneEyed Jack’s (beginning in 1.7, 38:27), she is temporarily in danger of starting down the same path as Laura, even narrowly escaping a sexual encounter with her own father.44 Audrey and Laura are both enigmatic figures. The Man from Another Place (Michael J. Anderson) says Laura is “filled with secrets” (1.3, 44:53), and her first appearance is as a corpse. We first get to know her largely through the accounts of others, which are likely to be colored by various personal biases and projections.45 The first three occurrences of the ascent and climax in the series accompany reactions to Laura’s death (1.1, 7:32, 14:19, and 26:34). Later instances of the theme accompany various men’s love or infatuation for her,46 notably James Hurley’s (James Marshall) flashback (1.2, 13:30), which could be as much fantasy as memory. The theme also plays as Dr. Jacoby (Russ Tamblyn) leads Bobby Briggs (Dana Ashbrook) through a twisted psychoanalytic interpretation of Laura’s character (1.6, 24:37), and as the reverend (Royce D. Applegate) delivers an idealized eulogy at her graveside (1.4, 27:28), which Bobby shatters by denouncing the community for its hypocrisy (1.4, 28:42). While Kalinak found several uses of the Laura Palmer Theme to be incongruous, Richardson has demonstrated that they are usually logical.47 When the theme accompanies the love between Donna (Lara Flynn Boyle) and James, it usually occurs when they are discussing Laura.48 Even when a portion of the ascent on piano plays absent any mention of Laura, or absent the initial brooding section (1.2, 43:23), the music is a reminder that she brought the

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FIGURE 12.15 

Ascent in Twin Peaks Theme (opening title sequence in 1.1 and 2.1, 0:13; without first repetition in subsequent episodes; used in full in title sequence for The Return)

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FIGURE  12.16 

Portion of “Audrey’s Dance,” melody (played on vibraphone/​

synthesizer)

young couple together, and that her fate always hangs over them like the unresolved first note of the climax on which (as with Audrey in 1.6) the cue ends. When the theme accompanies Donna’s narration for Harold Smith (Lenny Von Dohlen) in 2.5 (33:18), it highlights that she is taking on Laura’s role. When the ascent accompanies Josie collapsing with the same truncated solo clarinet version as for Audrey in 1.6, it foreshadows Josie’s demise, as she lies on the floor like a corpse while Harry Truman (Michael Ontkean) kisses her with the same infatuation other men display for Laura (2.10, 42:51). A spectral synthesized version of the theme underscores Leland’s hearings after his arrest (2.4, 37:35 and 2.5, 8:56), eerily tying him into Laura’s tragedy, in which he, possessed by BOB, is both perpetrator and victim. In Fire Walk With Me (e.g., 57:59 and 1:53:32) and its companion The Missing Pieces (e.g., 43:09 and 44:22),49 the Laura Palmer Theme is used sparingly, highlighting significant moments of both tragedy and redemption in the character’s arc. After Laura realizes that she is the victim of incest, the warped images of her surroundings, representing her distraught frame of mind, are accompanied by high strings and piano, at one point with a detectable trace of her theme’s ascent (Fire Walk With Me, 1:48:55). The theme is heard remarkably little in The Return, helping to establish that series as a separate entity from the first two seasons. The ascent and climax portions occur only twice, first when Bobby cries upon seeing Laura’s picture in Part 4 (26:10) and then at a dramatic pinnacle when Cooper saves Laura in Part 17 (48:42), the latter being the only full cycle of the theme, replete with double climax.50

“It Was Kind of Weird”: Twin Peaks and the Ambiguity of Parody As Kalinak has noted, the Laura Palmer Theme is not what one expects to underscore the discovery of a corpse.51 What she described is distinct from various anempathetic uses of music in the franchise,52 such as Leland’s

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unstable and pathetic dance with Laura’s photograph (1.3, 37:40) to Jerry Gray and Carl Sigman’s “Pennsylvania 6-​5000” (1940), or in The Return with The Platters’ rendition (1956) of “My Prayer”53 and Ernö Rapée and Lew Pollack’s “Charmaine” (1926).54 More frequently, the soundtrack of Twin Peaks has a different function. The series often treads a fine line between sincerely effusive expression and self-​aware, postmodern parody of the soap opera genre.55 Sometimes intensely dramatic and significant moments become outlandish, as when Laura screams “I love you, James!” before running to her doom in Fire Walk With Me (1:58:19). Despite the earnestness of both Lynch and Badalamenti in creating the Laura Palmer Theme, the creative team of Twin Peaks evidently was aware that its effusiveness could be tied to soap opera. The first two seasons feature a fictional television show, watched by various characters, called Invitation to Love, with music reminiscent of that of Twin Peaks itself, on one occasion (1.5, 3:13) clearly echoing the climax of the Laura Palmer Theme (Figure 12.17).56 The opening credits of Invitation to Love (1.4, 11:12) identify an actress named Selina Swift (Erika Anderson) as playing “Emerald and Jade,” just as Sheryl Lee plays both Laura and her cousin, Maddy Ferguson. Maddy enters for the first time (1.4, 11:53) shortly after these credits, at which point Jade and Emerald’s father (Peter Michael Goetz) has just addressed a note to his daughters, paralleling Leland’s paternal relationship with the double-​cast characters. As Jade shouts into her father’s room, the source of the sound is ambiguous, as the Palmers’ television screen is not in the shot and the timbre of Jade’s cries resembles that of Sarah Palmer’s.57 The Laura Palmer Theme’s potential soap opera quality is exploited in James’s flashback in 1.2. The theme’s climax (13:30) occurs at the beginning of a prolonged dissolve effect, and the whole flashback is in soft-​focus, an unusual effect for the series. James’s song “Just You and I” (2.2, 38:25,

FIGURE 12.17 

Theme music from Invitation to Love in 1.5 (3:12)

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reprised in The Return, Part  13, 53:18) is difficult to imagine as anything other than parody, with its vapid lyrics, 1950s-​style harmonies, uncannily crooning falsetto, and back-​up singers. Yet when an instrumental version underscores James’s emotional scenes,58 a certain degree of earnestness is bestowed upon it. Music is a means through which the lines of parody are blurred. The absurdity of soap opera takes on a bizarre dimension in Twin Peaks, sometimes treading into the territory of the grotesque, using Esti Sheinberg’s definition as a combination of humor and horror.59 At Laura’s burial, the second ascent of her theme (in a double-​climax statement) begins (1.4, 30:00) with Leland breaking down and throwing himself upon his daughter’s casket, which bounces up and down uncontrollably with loud creaking noises, the first of which could be a scream.60 In light of the subsequent revelation that BOB inhabited Leland to rape Laura—​a fact “glossed over” by the series, as noted by Desmet,61 but harrowingly depicted in Fire Walk With Me (1:44:34)—​the imagery is repulsive and horrific. Yet the spectacle is followed by Shelly Johnson (Mädchen Amick) ridiculing Leland with two unnamed men, who laugh heartily, at the Double R Diner. Did the show intend to compel its viewers to laugh during a funeral and then hold up Shelly’s ugly mockery as a mirror? Similarly callous laughter from Albert Rosenfield (Miguel Ferrer) undermines a simpler scene of pathos with Ed Hurley outside his wife Nadine’s (Wendy Robie) hospital room (2.1, 53:58), during which he recounts his tragic backstory, including his responsibility in the loss of Nadine’s left eye. In 2017, Everett McGill described the scene as “beautifully written,” but noted that with Albert “making fun” of Ed, “it was kind of weird. […] [T]‌he story was really powerful, so […] when you watch it, you bounce back and forth between something really touching, and something kind of absurd.”62 Given that this scene has no displays of soap opera excess (nor any underscoring), Albert’s reaction is especially jarring and distasteful. Yet while Shelly and Albert’s behavior is mean-​spirited, Grace Zabriskie observed that laughter at intense emotion may not always be so. In 2014, she recalled a screening of the pilot during which there was some laughter in the audience during Sarah’s reaction to Laura’s death (1.1, 15:17). Yet Zabriskie took no offense: “Oh, but that’s, I think, the nature of all of this material. […] [I]‌t can go just that step too far, so that regardless of how completely caught up in it you are, you might still sense that moment when it goes over, and it is funny, suddenly.” She saw no contradiction here with the absolute sincerity of her performance.63 Twin Peaks thus has at least two identifiable categories of strange humor:  those tied with genuine emotion and those that Chion has called “tonal disruption[s]‌.”64 Yet Badalamenti’s recollections suggest that Lynch embraced the emotional excesses without irony.65 Despite its postmodern

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distancing effects,66 Twin Peaks still makes a strong case for the seriousness of unabashed sentimentality. Chion also has remarked that Lynch’s work focuses on the contortions of weeping faces in a manner rarely found in cinema,67 and it is only fitting that Badalamenti’s music should be so in tune with the aesthetic of sincere excess. Despite his praise for the music as a “stroke of genius” in the series, however, Chion dismissed the importance of assessing whether it “has what is called intrinsic value.”68 This qualifier may evince a certain discomfort with the music’s characteristics, serving as an apologia for the sake of the unyieldingly highbrow. Leaving aside arbitrary and problematic criteria for “greatness” and “value,” Badalamenti’s music is indeed extraordinary in its ability to evoke heightened emotion. The creative team of Twin Peaks used it to great effect in building the alternately heartrending, whimsical, horrific, and absurd landscape of the franchise, with all its uncanny aspects and postmodern ambiguity. The contradictions of the Laura Palmer Theme reflect those of the character herself. Its use over the series is protean, reflecting on the entire community and commenting just as much upon those whom Laura’s existence impacted as upon the young woman herself. Like Laura’s blue-​ lipped face emerging from the plastic wrapping, this theme is one of the most enduring hallmarks of Twin Peaks, its mysteries haunting viewers and compelling us to keep returning over the decades to this powerful and enigmatic world.

Notes 1 Interview with Angelo Badalamenti (New Jersey, 2017), on David Lynch (dir. and writer) and Robert Engels (writer), Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, The Criterion Collection 898, Cat. no. CC2808D, 2017, DVD, disc 2 (respectively, 4:48 and 2:53). Throughout this chapter, timestamps specify the beginning of the cited portion; Fire Walk With Me timestamps from disc 1 of Criterion edition. Both the original series of Twin Peaks (1990–​1991) and Twin Peaks:  The Return (2017) as of this writing are available on various streaming services (both are on Amazon Prime and the former is on Netflix); both may be purchased on Twin Peaks: The Television Collection (Paramount, 2019, DVD, 17 discs). 2 Interview with Sheryl Lee (Los Angeles, 2017), Fire Walk With Me, disc 2 (8:19). 3 Michel Chion, David Lynch, 2nd edition, trans. Robert Julian (London:  British Film Institute, 2006), 110. See also Clare Nina Norelli, Soundtrack from Twin Peaks (New York: Bloomsbury, 2017), 52 and 69. 4 In this chapter, episodes are designated by season and then episode number within the season, beginning with 1.1 for the pilot episode and with 2.1 for the second season. 5 This chapter uses scientific pitch notation, in which middle C is designated as C4. 6 See also Norelli, Soundtrack from Twin Peaks, 71–​72. 7 Mozart’s quartet is, in fact, dedicated to Haydn, and so Die Schöpfung is likely paying tribute to it.

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8 The first four measures are looped for about three minutes in total, with a break in underscoring from 4:36 to 6:10. 9 Matthew BaileyShea, “Agency and the Adagio: Mimetic Engagement in Barber’s Op. 11 Quartet,” GAMUT 5, no. 1 (2012): 11–​12. 10 See also commentary in Kathryn Kalinak, “ ‘Disturbing the Guests with This Racket’: Music and Twin Peaks,” in Full of Secrets: Critical Approaches to Twin Peaks, ed. David Lavery (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1995), 88. 11 Common-​tone harmonic shifts are a Romantic-​era device, e.g. Franz Schubert’s String Quintet in C Major, D.  956/​Opus post. 163 (1828), with the stormy F Minor episode in the middle of the E Major slow movement (study score, ed. Egon Voss (Munich: G. Henle Verlag, 2006), p. 23/​m. 29ff). 12 For the author’s analysis of Die Bernauerin, see Andrew S.  Kohler, “The Corruption of the Homeland:  Carl Orff’s Repudiation of Friedrich Hebbel in Die Bernauerin,” in Protest Music of the Twentieth Century, ed. Roberto Illiano (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), 143–​175. 13 BaileyShea, “Agency and the Adagio,” 26. 14 Badalamenti interview, Fire Walk With Me, disc 2 (4:18); see also Chion, David Lynch, 111. 15 See also Kalinak, “Music and Twin Peaks,” 90. 16 David Lavery, “Introduction: The Semiotics of Cobbler: Twin Peaks’ Interpretive Community,” in Full of Secrets:  Critical Approaches to Twin Peaks, ed. David Lavery (Detroit, MI: Wayne State Press, 1995), 3. 17 Steve Weinstein, “Is TV Ready for David Lynch? The Director of ‘Blue Velvet’ and ‘Eraserhead’ brings his unique vision to the prime-​time soap opera ‘Twin Peaks,’ ” Los Angeles Times, February 18, 1990. Available at: www.latimes.com/​ archives/​la-​xpm-​1990-​02-​18-​ca-​1500-​story.html (accessed 5 February 2021). See also Lynch’s statements that he did not want to resolve the mystery, and that “There is no ending. It’s part of a continuing story” in Troy Patterson and Jeff Jensen, “10th Anniversary Theme No. 5: Cults: Our Town,” Entertainment Weekly, Issue 540 (Spring 2000): 92–102. For an extensive video essay delving into Lynch’s intense disdain for closure, abhorrence of “consumable violence,” and resentment that he was pushed to resolve the murder of Laura Palmer, see Twin Perfect (YouTube creator), “Twin Peaks ACTUALLY EXPLAINED (No, Really)” (accessed February 5, 2021). Available at: Youtube.com/ watch?v=7AYnF5hOhuM (uploaded October 20, 2019 on channel Twin Perfect). 18 See also Chris Rodley, ed., Lynch on Lynch (London: Faber and Faber, 1997), 156. 19 Christy Desmet, “The Canonization of Laura Palmer,” in Full of Secrets: Critical Approaches to Twin Peaks, ed. David Lavery (Detroit, MI:  Wayne State Press, 1995), 93 (quotation) and 97. 20 See Mark Frost, Twin Peaks: The Final Dossier (New York: Flatiron Books, 2017), 4–​ 7 (Leo), 19–​ 34 (Haywards and Hornes), 70–​ 71 (Annie), 87–​ 89 (James), and 99–​100 (Harry’s absence from The Return); Mark Frost, The Secret History of Twin Peaks (New York: Flatiron Books, 2016), 223–​225 (the bank explosion). 21 Tammy incorrectly states that Shelley’s story has ended happily (Frost, The Final Dossier, 15); she is rightly skeptical of other characters’ accounts (ibid., 43 and 62); her findings about Audrey are inconclusive (ibid., 32); and she is rightly suspicious about Ben’s (Richard Beymer) injury at the Haywards’ home, yet unable to determine the truth (ibid., 22), which ironically is known to many readers from 2.22 (11:40).

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22 Frost, The Final Dossier, 31 (first quotation) and 71 (second and third quotations, referencing Annie Blackburn, played by Heather Graham). 23 Angelo Badalamenti, Music of Twin Peaks, Warner Records Inc., 1990, track 2. See also 1.1 (1:20:26, with some truncations), 1.4 (26:09), Fire Walk With Me (1:55:21), and The Return, Part 17 (48:42). 24 In this initial statement, the second measure of the falling portion is repeated, presumably for timing with the action on screen. 25 In contrast, Leland identifies Laura’s body (1.1, 18:51) without underscoring, emphasizing the comfortless sterility of the morgue. 26 See also Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler, Sweeney Todd:  The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (New York: Revelation Music Publishing Corp. & Rilting Music, 1981), No. 29, m. 12 (p. 355). 27 The final return to the opening section is truncated, ending this harrowing sequence with only a ghostly trace of the horror from which it emerged. The theme also plays in 2.10 (2:54, the version with what sounds like low alto flute) as Cooper recounts these events to Sarah. See also Norelli, The Soundtrack of Twin Peaks, 76–​77. 28 Desmet, “The Canonization of Laura Palmer,” 97. 29 Rodley, ed., Lynch on Lynch, 184. See also Kalinak, “Music and Twin Peaks,” 90, regarding the “odd mix of love and tragedy” in the Laura Palmer Theme. 30 Desmet, “The Canonization of Laura Palmer,” 93–​108. Regarding the dichotomy, see Susan McClary, Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality (Minnesota, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1991), 54 and 56–​57. 31 Chion, David Lynch, 112. 32 John Richardson, “Laura and Twin Peaks: Postmodern Parody and the Musical Reconstruction of the Absent Femme Fatale,” in The Cinema of David Lynch: American Dreams, Nightmare Visions, ed. Erica Sheen and Annette Davison (London Wallflower Press, 2004), 80–​82. 33 Regarding saintly characteristics, see Desmet, “The Canonization of Laura Palmer,” 95–​ 99. The femme fatale characters include Josie Packard, Evelyn Marsh (Annette McCarthy), Blackie O’Reilly (Victoria Catlin), Lana Budding (Robyn Lively—​see Frost, The Final Dossier, 75–​77), Vivian Smith (Jane Greer—​ see ibid., 44–​53), Emerald in Invitation to Love (see 1.5, 3:18), and even a phase for Donna (2.1, 40:17). See also Chion, David Lynch, 102 (an inexplicable claim that Josie’s “femme fatale dimension is not put to use”) and 107 (Evelyn). 34 Desmet, “The Canonization of Laura Palmer,” 93. 35 Richardson, “Laura and Twin Peaks,” 82 (first quotation) and 83 (second and third quotations). Note that the closing credits of the first two seasons begin midway through the theme’s ascent (excepting in 1.3, 2.1, 2.7, and 2.11, all of which have alternate music; in 2.22, the musical cue is the same, but the usual image of Laura Palmer’s picture is changed). 36 E.g., 1.1 (48:36, 1:09:10, and 1:31:56), 1.2 (6:45, 27:25, and 28:32), 1.3 (5:20), 1.4 (10:45), 1.6 (5:36), 1.7 (44:23), 1.8 (30:48), 2.1 (1:12:40), 2.2 (26:10 and 37:05), 2.3 (13:33), 2.4 (11:09), 2.6 (7:49 and 16:35), 2.11 (37:37), 2.13 (18:01), 2.14 (38:16), 2.15 (29:40), 2.17 (12:27), 2.18 (16:13), 2.19 (42:56), 2.20 (36:59), 2.21 (28:09), 2.22 (11:40), and Fire Walk With Me (1:34:35). The opening titles of Fire Walk With Me (00:36) begin with a saxophone solo over the same A♭ to G descent as the Laura Palmer Theme.

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37 Exceptions include 1.2 (16:25; see also Desmet, “The Canonization of Laura Palmer,” 96) and 2.13 (39:52, a truncated statement of the ascent in an ominous context). 38 E.g., 1.2 (17:31), 1.6 (13:14), 1.8 (24:21 and 33:53), 2.1 (58:10), 2.3 (10:24), 2.12 (33:22), 2.14 (40:45), and 2.15 (28:59); it also occurs with sentimental rescoring for guitar and harp in 1.8 (18:44), 2.11 (29:49 and 46:32), and 2.14 (39:25). See also Norelli, Soundtrack of Twin Peaks, 86. 39 The connection is enhanced in the soundtrack album for both the instrumental cue and song, in which the phrase goes up to F the first time and up to G the second (Badalamenti, Music of Twin Peaks, track 1, 0:28 and track 11, 0:40). 40 See also Richardson, “Laura and Twin Peaks,” 85. 41 The cues are sufficiently similar as to be mixed up in the underscoring for Badalamenti’s 2017 interview (Fire Walk With Me, disc 2, 3:57). 42 E.g., 1.1 (17:30, 1:12:00, and 1:27:32), 1.2 (14:30), 1.4 (12:44), 1.5 (21:23 and 38:17), 1.7 (44:55), 2.2 (33:01, here diegetic), 2.3 (19:43), 2.5 (6:40 and 42:27), 2.8 (17:28), 2.14 (13:20), 2.17 (17:15), and 2.18 (14:20). The opening of “Audrey’s Dance” is overlaid with the brooding opening section of the Laura Palmer Theme in 1.3 (12:49), strengthening their connection. In 1.2 (43:38), there is a transition between “Audrey’s Dance” and the Laura Palmer Theme in which the continuity of the shared melodic line is maintained between the two, cementing their relationship. Regarding similarities between cues, see also Norelli, Soundtrack from Twin Peaks, 53 and 56. 43 Kalinak, “Music and Twin Peaks,” 90; see also ibid., 85 (regarding Audrey’s eroticized behavior). 44 See 1.8 (43:31) and 2.1 (12:30), the latter initially with the opening section of the Laura Palmer Theme. See also Desmet, “The Canonization of Laura Palmer,” 97. 45 See Desmet, “The Canonization of Laura Palmer,” 97. 46 E.g., 1.2 (44:00), 1.4 (45:40), 1.8 (4:29), 2.4 (3:47), and 2.7 (14:25, notable for having the ascent, played on piano, emerge from the brooding opening, which returns before the climax finishes). See also Richardson, “Laura and Twin Peaks,” 79. 47 Kalinak, “Music and Twin Peaks,” 89–​ 90; Richardson, “Laura and Twin Peaks,” 86. 48 E.g., 1.1 (1:20:53), 1.5 (42:05), and 1.6 (15:58). For other instances in which the theme accompanies discussions of Laura, see 2.1 (46:23 and 1:05:17), 2.3 (4:49, 38:31, 42:27, and 45:09, the first of which tantalizingly ends ca. 7:52 on the climactic note with a suggestion of possible romance between Donna and Harold, and the last of which leads up to the discovery of Laura’s diary), 2.4 (16:21), and 2.13 (39:52). See also 2.8 (3:32 and 45:35), linking Maddy’s murder to Laura’s. 49 The Missing Pieces is included on Fire Walk With Me (Criterion), disc 2.  It comprises scenes not included in the theatrical release of the film. The instance at 43:09 links the theme’s ascent to the angels who will rescue Laura, and the brooding opening returns when she receives a phone call from Leland, whom she knows by then to be a danger. 50 In Part  4, the theme emphasizes not only Bobby’s emotion, but perhaps also the nostalgia of loyal Twin Peaks viewers. See also Part 16 (29:37), in which the familiar music of the opening titles underscores Cooper finally recovering his identity. My thanks to Jessica Getman for her insights. For the opening brooding portion alone of the Laura Palmer Theme in The Return (beginning in each

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case with footage of the mountain woods through mist, recalling 1.1, 48:46), see Part 7 (30:01), Part 9 (49:27), and Part 12 (13:43). Perhaps in part to avoid excess even by Twin Peaks standards, the extended clip from Fire Walk With Me (1:53:32) in The Return, Part 17 (43:57) has the Laura Palmer underscoring removed in the relevant portion; the theme begins shortly before the point when Cooper intervenes to change the timeline (48:42). 51 Kalinak, “Music and Twin Peaks,” 90. 52 See also Richardson, “Laura and Twin Peaks,” 86. 53 “My Prayer” was composed by Georges Boulanger in 1926; the lyrics by Jimmy Kennedy were added in 1939. It plays in The Return over gruesome murders by the Woodsman (Robert Broski; Part 8, 49:08) and the uncomfortable sex scene between Cooper and Diane (Laura Dern; Part  18, 19:37 and 20:53). See also the use of BluntedBeatz’s “I Am (Old School Hip Hop Beat)” underscoring a slasher-​film murder (Part 6, 48:02). 54 This music plays diegetically in Miloš Forman’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Warner Brothers (37463), 2002 (Fantasy Films, 1975), based upon Ken Kesey’s novel (New  York:  Viking Press, 1962)) in the oppressive hospital ward (24:54 and 2:02:09), vexing the protagonist (Jack Nicholson; 28:19). In The Return, “Charmaine” (identified by the closed captions as “saccharine orchestral music”) plays in the home of Sylvia Horne (Jan D’Arcy) as a mutilated teddy bear turned robot loops “Hello Johnny, how are you today?,” during which her grandson Richard Horne (Eamon Farren) assaults and robs her, calls her “cocksucking bitch” and “cunt,” and threatens to “cornhole” her disabled and injured son (Eric Rondell; Part 10, 24:39). 55 See Rodley, ed., Lynch on Lynch, 155; Jimmy L. Reeves, et al., “Postmodernism and Television: Speaking of Twin Peaks,” in Full of Secrets: Critical Approaches to Twin Peaks, ed. David Lavery (Detroit, MI:  Wayne State University Press, 1995), 175; Marc Dolan, “The Peaks and Valleys of Serial Creativity:  What Happened to/​on Twin Peaks,” in Full of Secrets, 32 and 46, n. 3; Lavery, “Twin Peaks’ Interpretive Community,” 16–​17, n. 1. 56 Here, the Invitation to Love clip is preceded by the first section of the Laura Palmer Theme in its original form (1.5, 1:30), which even faintly bleeds into the soap opera’s music. See also 1.4 (11:18) and 2.13 (9:06). 57 Compare Sarah’s voice in 1.1 (8:15), 2.7 (30:11), and 2.8 (3:22). See also 1.5 (3:37), when Emerald remarks that another character could never tell her apart from her sister, and 1.8 (39:00), when a shooting is seen on Invitation to Love after Leo Johnson (Eric Da Re) has been shot. See also Twin Perfect, “Twin Peaks ACTUALLY EXPLAINED,” 59:14. 58 E.g., 2.3 (17:57 and 41:38), 2.6 (6:16), and 2.18 (25:03); see also Norelli, Soundtrack from Twin Peaks, 67. 59 Esti Sheinberg, Irony, Satire, Parody and the Grotesque in the Music of Shostakovich: A Theory of Musical Incongruities (Burlington, VT:  Ashgate, 2000), 207ff. See also law enforcement removing the giant pawn that encases the corpse of Rusty Tomasky (Ted Raimi) in 2.20 (1:31), and the glasses flying through the air after the bank explosion in 2.22 (28:30). 60 There is no return to the opening music after the theme’s falling portion, perhaps because the tragicomedy is too extreme to return to the beginning as usual. 61 Desmet, “The Canonization of Laura Palmer,” 101.

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62 “Twin Peaks Interview—​Documentary 2017 Part  3” (originally Entertainment Weekly’s “Twin Peaks Reunion:  Cast Reveals Their Favorite Episodes,” ca. March, 2017), (accessed November 24, 2019). Available at:  www.youtube. com/​watch?v=ZI2zRNPGeB4 (uploaded March 26, 2017 on channel regimantasgirdzius), 8:06. 63 “Between Two Worlds,” actors’ discussion with David Lynch, Ray Wise, Grace Zabriskie, and Sheryl Lee (Los Angeles, 2014), Fire Walk With Me, disc 2 (2:56). Lynch suggested it was laughter from discomfort (3:53), likely too simple an explanation here. 64 Chion, David Lynch, 111. For examples, see Johnny Horne’s (Robert Bauer) “Amen” at Laura’s funeral (1.4, 28:22) and the actions of Ben and Andy (Harry Goaz) during Leland’s hearing in 2.5 (respectively, 9:12 and 9:34). See also Kalinak, “Music and Twin Peaks,” 89; Richardson, “Laura and Twin Peaks,” 86; Reeves et al., “Postmodernism and Television,” 178–​179. 65 See quotation at n. 1 supra. 66 See Richardson, “Laura and Twin Peaks,” 78–​79. Regarding postmodernism generally, see Reeves et al., “Postmodernism and Television,” especially 175. 67 See Chion, David Lynch, 108–​109. For examples, see 1.1 (23:11 and 26:45), 1.2 (45:20), 1.4 (12:30), 1.6 (26:49), 2.7 (45:19), 2.9 (26:33), and 2.14 (40:29); Fire Walk With Me (57:33); and The Return, Parts 4 (26:10) and 9 (47:35). Crying is a character trait of Andy, e.g., 1.1 (6:54 and 48:45), 2.1 (1:07:29), 2.14 (40:17), and 2.20 (3:27). Lynch himself has acknowledged his fascination with crying (Rodley, ed., Lynch on Lynch, 167). See also Norelli, Soundtrack of Twin Peaks, 75. 68 Chion, David Lynch, 110.

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13 LISTEN TO THE SKINS Drumming and Time in Twin Peaks Kai West

What is the nature of time in Twin Peaks?1 Following The Giant who tells Special Agent Cooper “three things” to aid his investigation (2.1), we begin with three clues.2 The first comes from Michel Chion, who in his study of David Lynch notes that the director “has a kind of incapacity … to make use of the standard, average duration which cinema invented … Time either drags on and seems frozen or it races by.”3 In an influential essay on the show’s music, Kathryn Kalinak provides our second clue. She points out that many cues have an unresolved quality, which forms “a kind of a musical loop, repeating the same motif over and over without coming to rest either melodically or harmonically.”4 The final clue resides in a comment from Clare Nina Norelli about jazz drummer Grady Tate’s playing in the original series: “Tate’s kit spits, sizzles, and dances on the show’s soundtrack, injecting scenes with, paradoxically, both a sense of urgency and a laid-​back tranquility.”5 To summarize these clues: time in Twin Peaks is dichotomous, either seeming static or zipping by; much of the music has the quality of an endless loop; and the drums appear to synthesize the dichotomy, simultaneously creating momentum and stillness. Simply put, time moves in strange ways in the world of Twin Peaks, and drumming plays a critical role. From the opening title sequence of the 1990 pilot to the enigmatic reprise of “Audrey’s Dance” in Part 16 of The Return (2017), the drum kit provides an integral component of the Twin Peaks sound world. In addition to its presence in much of the pre-​existing music used throughout the series, drumming features prominently in Angelo Badalamenti’s iconic compositions, which established the mystery’s surreal, dreamy atmosphere. The sounds of sweeping brush sticks and sizzling ride cymbals, coming out of mid-​century jazz traditions, helped to fashion a temporally dislocated

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soundscape, which co-​ creator Mark Frost described as feeling “outside [the] real time and real place” of the show’s 1990s setting.6 Notably, Twin Peaks also employed solo jazz drum tracks as recurring cues, an innovative scoring technique that has had a lasting impact on film and television music.7 Apart from Norelli’s recent examination of the original soundtrack, however, no musical studies discuss the significance of drumming throughout the different iterations of the series. Furthermore, listening through the lens of a single instrument, such as the drum kit, can reveal much about the multilayered sensory and narrative work of music in television’s production of meaning. Tracing jazz drumming across Twin Peaks (1990–​91), Twin Peaks:  Fire Walk With Me (1992), and Twin Peaks: The Return (2017), I argue that it forms a musical thread that connects all three iterations, providing a distinctive temporal framework for Badalamenti’s scoring and David Lynch’s idiosyncratic direction. This framework has a direct impact on shot pacing and diegetic logic, as well as atmosphere and tone, yet it also figures within more complex constructions of time that emerge when we read Twin Peaks as a whole. Like the rhythmic hum of the Palmer house ceiling fan or a phonograph needle scratching on a spinning record, the drums thus take on deeper meaning, entering a paradoxical space where music, sound, and image blur together and time runs in circles.

Grady’s Grooves Few would dispute that music has a decisive impact on our temporal perception of film. For Chion, music is “first and foremost a machine for manipulating time and space, which it helps to expand, contract, freeze, and thaw at will.”8 Drumming calls attention to such manipulations through its emphasis on rhythmic structure and the repetition of pulse, unobscured by melody and harmony. When considering temporality in Twin Peaks, then, an obvious connection leads to the drum kit. Namely, that much of the original music draws upon jazz, and jazz parlance commonly refers to the rhythm section as “the time.” As generators and keepers of time, jazz drummers shape the time-​feel, which encompasses the temporal, spatial, and sensory dimensions of rhythm and meter: in other words, the groove. The drummer responsible for the time in much of Twin Peaks’ jazz-​ inspired music was Grady Tate (1932–​2017), whose playing features across all three iterations of the series. Highly respected in jazz circles, Tate emerged out of a lineage of influential drummers spanning from Warren “Baby” Dodds, “Papa” Jo Jones, and Sidney “Big Sid” Catlett to “Philly” Jo Jones and Max Roach.9 He came to prominence in the early 1960s as a member of the Quincy Jones Orchestra, soon becoming an in-​demand, versatile session player.10 After working with Badalamenti and Lynch on sessions for

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Julee Cruise’s album Floating into the Night (1989), he was hired for much of the original series and Fire Walk With Me. Although Tate didn’t contribute any new tracks to The Return, being in his eighties at the time of its making, Lynch and Badalamenti did deploy his original solo cues at several points in the new series. They even included one, retitled “Grady Groove,” on the soundtrack release, a sign of the value they placed on his musical contributions. Tate’s drumming plays an essential role in Badalamenti’s jazz compositions. Pointing to the series’ extensive use of cool jazz, a subgenre that emerged in the 1950s in response to bebop, Clare Nina Norelli suggests that “it was Tate who was responsible for much of Twin Peaks’ mood of cool.”11 I  would add that his deep foundation in the jazz tradition and his many recordings cut during the 1960s make him one of the strongest musical links between the 1990s show/​film and the mid-​century period their soundtracks and tone evoke. Moreover, Tate’s expert technique and expressive phrasing on Badalamenti’s compositions transformed into memorable solo cues through Lynch and Badalamenti’s “firewood” technique, a process wherein they recorded instruments individually so that parts could be isolated and reconfigured to suit the demands of a given scene.12 The Twin Peaks Archive, a comprehensive body of firewood recordings released on Lynch’s website, showcases Tate’s playing on five solo tracks used throughout the original series. Some are isolated parts from other ensemble cues, while several appear to have been recorded as solos. These Archive cues reveal much about what makes Tate’s playing so valuable, illustrating the nuances of his technique, time-​feel, and drum kit timbres. He uses a common jazz setup of kick drum, snare drum, two or three tom-​toms, high-​ hats, and two ride cymbals of different size and resonance. The rides—​large suspended cymbals that often function in modern jazz playing as the primary timekeeper—​are particularly significant to the overall sound. Tate employs sizzles on one cymbal, idiophonic rattles commonly used on jazz rides, which produce a characteristic hiss when the cymbal vibrates, also extending its sustain. Tate’s brushed rides provide one of the key timbres in the drum sounds of Twin Peaks. In fact, they are among the first musical sounds we hear in the show, accompanying the electric piano and iconic baritone guitar line in the opening theme, also used for The Return. The most crucial element in Tate’s Twin Peaks drum sound comes from the wire brush sticks he uses in nearly every cue. A staple of jazz drumming, wire brushes consist of a fanned group of metal wires attached to a rubber handle, often retractable by a metal ring at the tail end. Brushes allow for more intimate timbres and a lighter, more flexible touch not possible with wooden sticks, and an idiosyncratic technique has developed around them. This pertains particularly to the snare drum. Laying the left-​hand brush on the drumhead, the player moves it in a sweeping circular or side-​to-​side

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motion, which produces the swishing sound heard on many jazz ballads. Drummers then use the right hand both to play swung rhythm patterns on the snare (as it would on a ride or hi-​hat) or add expressive offbeats and fills that punctuate the rhythm. This distinctive brush technique, heard throughout all three iterations of Twin Peaks, represents one of the mystery’s defining musical sounds. “Solo Percussion 1” from the Archive showcases Grady Tate’s masterful brush-​stick technique and nuanced time-​feel, and serves to highlight the temporal significance of Twin Peaks drumming. In addition to its many solo appearances in the original run, the cue also functions alongside Badalamenti’s walking bassline as the rhythmic accompaniment for the jazz pieces “Audrey’s Dance,” “Freshly Squeezed,” and “Dance of the Dream Man,” which accompany some of the show’s most memorably surreal scenes. Close listening of the cue reveals the subtle manipulations of time and timbre that make Tate’s brushwork so effective. His left hand produces the distinctive sweeping sound, performing semicircular rotations each lasting the duration of the tempo’s quarter-​note pulse of 108 bpm (see Figure 13.1). Within this hypnotic sweep, minute rhythmic gestures within each brush movement add multidimensional, almost multitemporal layers to the sound. Constantly in motion, the left-​hand brush creates a repetitive drone, while whole-​or half-​circles on the beat pulse remain audible, sounding nearly concentric within the overall drone. Furthermore, the circular sweep has a loop-​like, mechanized quality that blurs the line between music and noise,

FIGURE 13.1 

Illustration Approximating the Brush Technique in “Solo Percussion 1.” Reproduced by Permission from Cameron (2003, 22)

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akin to the ambient hum soundscapes that Lynch uses frequently in surreal and unsettling scenes. Through this combination of technique, timbre, and time-​feel, Tate’s playing generates a feeling of simultaneous suspension and motion, a paradox of frozen momentum directly aligned with the distorted pacing that epitomizes Twin Peaks’ surrealness.

Comedic Cop Time: Contextual Modes of Drumming If Tate’s cues instill a sense of time that is both suspended and moving, they have a substantial impact on the temporality and tone of the scenes that make use of them. Broadly speaking, the solo drum tracks in the first two seasons function as what K.J. Donnelly terms “music blocks,” a set of cues that are repeatedly re-​used to establish and underpin different aspects of a show.13 A single cue used in different contexts can also accomplish multiple narrative goals to varying effect. This echoes Kalinak’s observation that leitmotifs in Twin Peaks tend to move freely between characters and narrative situations, rather than remain fixed and denotative.14 The show’s highly stylized cues, she argues, establish certain characters and moods early in the series, but are then redeployed to incongruous others, unsettling narrative logic and disrupting classical film-​scoring conventions. For Kalinak, this creates a sense of postmodern distance by drawing spectators’ attention not to diegesis but rather the apparatus that produces it. The drum cues, however, follow somewhat different tactics. Although they do migrate freely between characters and situations, instilling an acute sense of parodic self-​awareness (more on this below), the solo drums quickly become linked to two interrelated contextual modes from which they rarely stray: as reflexive markers of the series’ distinctive humor, what I  call the comedic mode, and as signifiers of law enforcement at work, or the policework mode. In the original series and Fire Walk With Me, solo drums indicate specific kinds of scenes, thus functioning as situational leitmotifs. Complicating Kalinak’s nuanced thesis, these cues ultimately serve to anchor meaning rather than disrupt it, yet also generate postmodern distance through a language of comedic allusion.

Ba-​dum-​tss! Throughout Twin Peaks, solo drum cues tend to emerge in scenes deploying the series’ odd sense of humor and comedic timing. Recurring associations between the drums, quirky characters, and absurdist comedic moments create a kind of inside joke between show and audience, a subtle nod of familiarity, albeit with the bizarre. A solo drum cue will often connote that something strangely funny is happening or about to happen. Beyond connotation, the drums play an acute role in the deformed pacing of Lynchian comedy. Tate’s

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drumming creates a kind of temporalized droning loop, a musical spinning of plates over which comedic scenes unfold. In such sequences, the paradoxical frozen momentum becomes a key element in the incongruities, tensions, and contradictions upon which comedy depends. Likewise, the looped, mechanical quality of the drum cues aligns with the uncanny nature of comedic repetition, which Lynch exploits time and again throughout Twin Peaks. Such an instance occurs in the episode “Zen, or the Skill to Catch a Killer” (1.3), which opens with Ben Horne and his family eating in silence around an enormous dining table at the Great Northern Hotel, which he owns. Suddenly the door bursts open and in walks Jerry (Ben’s brother), just returned from a trip to France. From a suitcase he produces an armful of baguette sandwiches filled with brie and butter. He hands one to Ben, who abandons his dinner and proceeds to take bite after ravenous bite, conversing excitedly with Jerry through a mouth so full that his words are barely discernable. With each mouthful, each comedic repetition, the scene grows more uncanny, driven by the repetitive brush patterns. The picturesque (albeit strained) silence of the Horne family dinner gives way to eccentric absurdness, a parodic subversion of suburban morality. Drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of the “carnivalesque” and its gleeful inversion of social norms, Martin Fradley and John A. Riley argue that this kind of subversion is characteristic of Lynch’s comedic politics.15 Drumming, moreover, seems to enable this parodic mode. Just as Jerry enters the room, “Solo Percussion 1” begins, signaling the abrupt tonal and temporal shift, then accompanying the entirety of the Horne brothers’ bizarre sandwich feast, which lasts longer than we expect. Close examination of the synchronization, however, reveals that the cymbal hit that opens the cue comes noticeably earlier than Jerry’s entrance, in effect activating the comedic mode. Hence, drums don’t simply accompany the Lynchian absurd; they establish its temporal conditions. On the surface, there is nothing overtly funny about the drum kit cues, so why single them out for comedy scenes? Is there some kind of preexisting relationship at work? In an influential essay on film music and humor, Miguel Mera proposes that certain instruments, such as the tuba, have developed a natural association with comedy.16 In the case of the drums, this brings to mind the familiar comedic trope of the “ba-​dum-​tss” rimshot/​cymbal hit, a traditional “stinger” used to punctate jokes. Although comedy stingers never actually sound in the show, an oblique reference begins to take shape. Adapting John Richardson’s compelling theory of Twin Peaks as a postmodern parody of film noir, we might view the solo drum cues as a related kind of postmodern comedic allusion.17 Just as the series playfully references older film genres, while maintaining distance from them, the drum cues allude to a musical-​comedic trope of the past, dating back to vaudeville comedians using drummers to punctate jokes. Aligning with the show’s distorted comic timing, in which humorous sequences progress with exaggerated slowness,

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the drums as a joke signifier are parodically stretched from a rimshot hit to a seemingly infinite loop. This elongation from punctuating device to endless loop has a valuable function, establishing a forward sense of flow within oddly paced comedic scenes whose timing defies punctuation. Concurrently, while providing an undercurrent of momentum over which these “jokes” play out, Tate’s cues contribute to the sense of frozenness in such scenes, manipulating time in service of Twin Peaks’ temporal politics of the absurd.

“Give me a donut” The other principal context for solo jazz drums involves scenes portraying the FBI and Twin Peaks sheriffs at work. In film and television history, jazz scoring has long been associated with law enforcement through its use on police procedurals and crime films of the 1950s and 60s, many of which grew out of the archetypal detective of film noir.18 In drawing on such scoring for Twin Peaks, Badalamenti helped the creators evoke and reference the hard-​ boiled detective shows such as Peter Gunn (1958–​61) and M Squad (1957–​60), contributing to the series’ sense of “out-​of-​time-​ness,” and its postmodern politics of distance. The decision to strip the arrangements down to solo drums, however, was both innovative and highly effective in marking the law enforcement characters at work. With varying tempi and time-​feels, Tate’s solo cues establish the pace of a given police scene and telegraph the rhythm of characters’ actions. We first hear jazz drums indexed to policework in the pilot episode, as Special Agent Cooper drives into Twin Peaks. A version of “Dance of the Dream Man”—​later heard in the famous Red Room scene (1.3)—​the cue has other instruments besides drums, namely Badalamenti’s synthesized walking bass and finger snaps, and Al Regni’s saxophone. Nevertheless, Tate’s brushstroke shuffle (“Solo Percussion 1” in ensemble context) and the iconic finger snaps establish the track’s time-​feel and sound space in an 8-​measure introduction that features little pitch material. The pulsing drums remain prominent in the mix throughout the cue, for their register doesn’t interfere with that of Cooper’s voice as does the alto saxophone. As the scene unfolds, giving us our first taste of Cooper’s quirky, optimistic, yet hyper-​focused character, the sweeping brush patterns and hi-​hat clicks create an evocative temporal backdrop for his inquisitive and analytical mind. The effect is again that of mechanical sound, of spinning cogs or clockwork telegraphing the investigative process. A  later scene in the pilot, in which Cooper and Sheriff Truman examine Laura’s belongings, employs “Solo Percussion 1” as underscoring, further reinforcing jazz drumming as a primary musical index for policework, whether within an ensemble or solo context. If drumming establishes the temporal conditions for both comedic sequences and policework, what happens when they occur simultaneously?

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Many of the carnivalesque scenes throughout the series involve law enforcement, and the two modes often work in synthesis, in effect producing a kind of comedic cop time. Season One introduces this early on when Cooper arrives at the sheriff station, encounters in succession Andy, Lucy, and Sherriff Truman all with mouths stuffed full of donuts, and proclaims, “Hey, three for three!” (1.2). Yet again, “Solo Percussion 1” underscores the sequence, propelling the comic “rule of three” with its own rhythmic repetitions. This mixture of the two modes perhaps relates to Lynch’s predilection to mock authority figures such as the police, as Fradley and Riley suggest in their study of The Return’s comedic politics.19 At the same time, however, law enforcement characters serve as some of the mystery’s main protagonists and proponents of goodness, and there may be more to their drum-​driven antics than mockery. Although they often find themselves in farcical situations, and prone to absurd behaviors, many such scenes also involve some element of policework that furthers their investigations. As much as a deformed social politics, comedy in Twin Peaks can also be a liberating device through which the foolishness of good enables discovery and progress in the attempt to fight evil. Case in point occurs in the opening episode of Season Two, as Cooper and company search the criminal Leo Johnson’s house for a clue foretold by The Giant. In a superb moment of slapstick, deputy Andy Brennan steps on a loose porch floorboard, which flies up and smacks him in the face. As the poor, concussed Andy waddles about, bleeding from the lip and grinning dazedly, drums emerge yet again to accompany his exaggerated, grotesquely comedic dance. This time, it is “Solo Percussion 3,” a slightly faster cue (116 bpm) in which Tate generates momentum by playing on the front of the beat and making frequent interjections on the cymbals. Yet amid this drum-​ accompanied charade of policework, Sheriff Truman and Cooper discover the clue they were looking for beneath the humorously positioned floorboard. An absurd sequence that appears to satirize law enforcement by making Andy into a fool instead flips the script of comedic contradiction: his well-​ intended foolish behavior leads to a positive outcome that drives the plot forward just as Grady Tate’s drumming drives the scene’s temporal unfolding. The drum kit’s work in generating comedic cop time sustains into Fire Walk With Me in tangible ways. Jazz drumming serves as one of the strongest musical connections to the original show in a film that otherwise departs brutally from it. Focusing on the violence of incest and its devastating effects on Laura Palmer, Fire Walk With Me largely abandons the comedic vein that characterized much of the show. The film’s music also differs somewhat, featuring new Badalamenti jazz compositions that match this darker focus.20 Nonetheless, Tate’s brushes permeate the film’s “prologue” section, centering on the FBI investigation of Teresa Banks’ murder, notably the only part that strikes a comedic tone, and for that matter, features law enforcement.

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Comprising agents Chester Desmond and Sam Stanley’s exploration of Deer Meadow, the prologue marks law enforcement and evokes film noir detectives through a musical backdrop of jazz comparable to the show, yet darkened with ominous drones and backwards sounds—​a kind of “doom jazz,” as Norelli effectively terms it.21 The prologue section unfolds at a highly unusual pace and with an absurd dream logic that goes beyond that of the original series. Take, for example, the remarkable scene in which Deputy Director Cole (Lynch) gives Agent Desmond his assignment using coded language and gestures, while a strange woman in a red dress adorned with a blue rose performs an interpretive dance through which Desmond receives additional information about the case. In this absurdity we find the few comedic moments of an extremely harrowing film, and with them come the drums. As with the show, drumming helps establish the prologue’s odd temporality, generating the paradoxical frozen momentum that here equates with a kind of dreamtime. The “Blue Rose” scene and much of the prologue is set to Badalamenti’s “Deer Meadow Shuffle,” an ensemble cue (guitar, keyboard, bass, and drums) in which Tate’s brushed snare patterns feature prominently in the mix. For this cue Tate focuses entirely on the snare, playing a quick oval sweep in the left hand while the right hand provides a traditional dotted-​eighth swing rhythm. He repeats this pattern without variation for the track’s entirety (over five minutes in its complete version on the Archive), making it one of the most overt examples of a rhythmic loop in the entire series. The loop in fact reveals much about the Fire Walk With Me prologue itself. While this section depicts a murder investigation preceding that of Laura Palmer’s in the timeline, it feels like a repetition: a distorted rehashing of Agent Cooper’s similar journey into Twin Peaks in 1990. We encounter a body wrapped in plastic, a drive into town accompanied by jazz, a diner (albeit far less pleasant), and the same killer: Leland/​BOB. Beyond Fire Walk With Me, this concept of repetition allows us to situate comedic cop time within the larger mystery. In addition to its functions in diegetic temporality, the loop-​like quality of the drums corresponds with a sense of endlessness in Twin Peaks, of history repeating itself in cycles. Grady Tate’s brush patterns, which I have compared to a mechanism, bear some resemblance in sound, shape, and movement to two circular mechanical objects in the Palmer household, both of which function as recurring symbols of cyclical abuse and violence in the original series and film. The first is the record player—​a direct musical corollary—​that spins continually when Leland/​BOB kills Laura’s identical cousin Maddy (2.7). The second is the ceiling fan, which Leland/​BOB turns on before raping Laura in Fire Walk With Me, and the disembodied sound of which returns in the train car where he murders her at the film’s end. Read against this horrific context, the repetitive drum patterns of comedic cop time make sense. Repeatedly, good

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police attempt to provide moral justice in a world locked in a cycle of abusive relationships, violence, and suffering (garmonbozia); sometimes they make progress, but the struggle appears endless and they never actually win. In The Return, we see this dark cosmic joke of perpetual repetition continue to unfold, with drums playing an equally significant position.

The Return: Time … and Time Again If the original series and Fire Walk With Me allude to repetitive cycles, the 2017 series confirms the idea of cyclicity outright and places it at the heart of the mystery. Time in The Return unfolds nonlinearly and proves to be highly unstable. Scenes in Part 13 indicate this, when Sarah Palmer watches a brief portion of a boxing match on a running loop, and when Ed Hurley’s reflection in the window of his gas station office moves out of sync with his actual body. In the final episode, Cooper witnesses a vision of time represented as an infinity symbol, which allows him to travel to the night Laura Palmer died and attempt to change the past. History, this scene suggests, is repeating ad infinitum. With its unsettling non-​conclusions, the finale further emphasizes cyclical recurrence as Cooper repeats his attempt to fight the representation of evil (Judy) and never clearly succeeds. Likewise, Laura remains locked in perpetual suffering, evidenced by the reprise of her heart-​wrenching scream that ends the series. Simultaneously, Lynch and his collaborators also play a game of temporal politics with the audience by subverting our expectations of return, our nostalgic desire for things to be as they were in Twin Peaks over 25 years ago. Many commentators have identified The Return’s music as one of the primary modes through which the series both engages and confounds nostalgia.22 The prevailing absence of earlier original music such as Badalamenti’s jazz cues warrants taking special note of the moments in which they do return, feel like they should return but don’t, or return but in an altered state. We encounter this with drumming in several key examples. Comparing them with those in earlier iterations uncovers a complex metacommentary on The Return’s relationship with its predecessors, shedding light on Twin Peaks’ overarching politics of time. The first two examples concern situations in which Grady Tate’s drumming feels like it should be there and isn’t, rather replaced by pre-​existing music from outside of the series. Drums are, in fact, the very first musical sounds we hear in Part 1 (after the theme music), accompanying the first scene of Dale Cooper driving. This scene should be accompanied by jazz, for it is an oblique repetition of Cooper’s introductory scene in Season One, discussed above. However, the man driving is not Cooper, but rather his evil doppelgänger Mr. C, one of The Return’s malevolent forces. Marking this difference, the music that introduces him is not Grady Tate’s jazzy drumming from “Dance of the Dream Man,” but rather a

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straight, rock-​like drum intro from Muddy Magnolias’ “American Woman,” a popular song remixed by David Lynch. This not only distances the present from the past through the change in musical style and tone, but also, through the heavy distortion Lynch adds to the slowed-​down drums, indicates that the present has decayed. Prominent drumming returns in Part  4, this time in a scene invoking the original series’ comedic mode in a way that both invites and evades connections with the past. It involves Dougie Jones—​the identity adopted by the id-​like shell of the good Cooper who returns from the Black Lodge, who slowly grows more and more cogent as the series progresses—​and his rediscovery of one of Twin Peaks’ most beloved objects: coffee. In this farcical scene at the breakfast table, Dougie’s son teaches the infantile Dougie-​ Coop how to eat pancakes. Any fan of the series could see what the scene is building to, and the anticipation grows toward Coop’s reunion with coffee, which culminates with him burning his mouth in painful ecstasy. This merging of food with comedic lust harkens back to Ben Horne’s torrid affair with the sandwich. And, like that scene, drums do accompany this sequence, but not the drums we would expect. Rather, what sounds is Paul Desmond’s well-​known composition “Take 5” from the Dave Brubeck Quartet’s album Time Out (1959). Why play “Take Five” here? Perhaps because drums feature prominently in the song; it was composed as an extended solo for the Quartet’s drummer Eugene Wright. The sound of jazz drumming returns to underscore the comedy of Cooper’s reintroduction to coffee, a triumphant moment for nostalgic fans of the original series. This moment of return, however, is incomplete, marked by musical difference from the original series. Rather than a Grady Tate solo cue, we hear a recording of another drummer that evokes a similar mid-​century sound. And in place of Tate’s 4/​4 brush drones is a skewed vamp in 5/​4, a rhythmically misshapen doppelgänger. The music here reveals a kind of double removal, highlighting both Cooper’s separation from his former self at this point in The Return, and Twin Peaks’ self-​ parodic distancing from its own past. This seems to mirror Cooper’s blurred memory, grasping at something familiar but finding it distorted. In Part 5, however, we get the genuine artifact; one of Grady Tate’s original drum cues reemerges in another scene involving coffee, and it marks a return of comedic cop time. When Dougie-​Coop goes to his job at an insurance company for the first time, he encounters a junior employee bringing coffees for a staff meeting and essentially chases him into the office following the black nectar. To animate this absurd pursuit, Lynch uses “Solo Percussion 4,” the quickest of Tate’s solo cues. Here we see early evidence of Coop’s mind beginning to clear. Having rediscovered coffee, he begins solving crimes and doing good, starting with his discovery of fraudulent dealings at the insurance company. The scene also gives a nod of familiarity to fans through a temporal echo of the original series’ comedic mode,

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anchoring memory with an original drum cue. Yet, the reprise of comedic cop time also tacitly alludes to endless cycles of violence and suffering, for the two always remain interconnected. In the final scene involving drums, occurring in Part 16, the full weight of The Return’s temporal politics comes to bear. To set the stage, Angelo Badalamenti himself once noted that Grady Tate would quip in recording sessions that Twin Peaks’ music had only two speeds: “slow and reverse.”23 Perhaps in homage to Tate’s comment, when we encounter a diegetic representation of a jazz drummer in the episode’s ending sequence, the music does both at the same time. In this scene at the Roadhouse bar, an onstage band of jazz musicians plays the languorous “Audrey’s Dance” while Audrey Horne, a beloved character whose identity has been stripped away in The Return, becomes animated by the music, momentarily returns to her former self, and reprises the dreamy dance she did in Season One (1.3). Until, that is, a fight in the bar startles her and the scene shifts suddenly to a white room with her facing a mirror, terrified and confused as the sound of electricity crackles offscreen. The music before and after that shocking cut is critical. Lynch shows us the offscreen source that has ostensibly produced one of the compositions we most associate with Twin Peaks, the jazz ensemble, by relocating it to the diegesis. However, unlike the often-​analyzed moment during “Audrey’s Dance” in Season One, when the music is revealed to emanate from a diner jukebox, the closing shot of the musicians in Part 16 emphasizes both aural and temporal dislocation:  the musical soundtrack runs backwards. Lynch subjects our concept of linear time, our sense of past and present, and our nostalgia for return to intense manipulation. We become like the drummer made to play in reverse onstage at the episode’s end (Figure 13.2). Nowhere is this more apparent than in the drummer’s left hand, sweeping the brush in an endless backwards loop as we wonder what happened to Audrey and question everything we know and remember about Twin Peaks.

Conclusion “The time” of jazz drumming spins a musical thread that runs throughout the entire puzzle of Twin Peaks. Determining and manipulating the temporal conditions of the interwoven contexts of policework and comedy, the drums highlight the mystery’s unnerving cosmic joke: good struggling against evil, and never succeeding, as history repeats itself in perpetuity. Drumming in The Return further comments on the mystery’s dark philosophy of time. As Amanda DiPaolo notes, The Return fixates on both loss and change, “reminding the viewer that one’s understanding of the past falters as time goes on.”24 This is the overarching theme that the 2017 series introduces to Twin Peaks, with the notion of repetitive historical cycles on the one hand,

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FIGURE 13.2 

The Backwards Drummer (uncredited) in The Return, Part 16

and a conflicted ability to return on the other. In many ways, this paradox aligns with the frozen momentum generated by Grady Tate’s drumming, in which time moves forward in circles, yet remains oddly suspended.

Notes 1 Unless otherwise specified, “Twin Peaks” in this chapter refers to all three televisual/​filmic iterations—​original series, prequel film, and Showtime series—​as a whole. The terms “series” and “mystery” also designate all three. 2 The Giant’s three clues are: “There is a man in a smiling bag,” “the owls are not what they seem,” and “without chemicals, he points.” 3 Michel Chion, David Lynch, 2nd ed., trans. Robert Julian (London: BFI Publishing, 2006), 164. 4 Kathryn Kalinak, “ ‘Disturbing the Guests with This Racket’:  Music and Twin Peaks,” in Full of Secrets:  Critical Approaches to Twin Peaks, ed. David Lavery (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1995), 90. 5 Clare Nina Norelli, Soundtrack from Twin Peaks (New  York:  Bloomsbury Academic, 2017), 93. 6 Quoted in Brad Dukes, Reflections: An Oral History of Twin Peaks (Nashville, TN: short/​Tall Press, 2014), 94. 7 Television examples include the sitcoms Scrubs (2001–​2010) and 30 Rock (2006–​ 2013), which employ short drum solos as scene transition cues. The crime series Fargo (2014–​) features a solo drum track as a specific character’s leitmotif in Seasons One and Three, while NBC’s medical drama New Amsterdam (2018–​)

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uses solo jazz drumming to underscore scenes, much like Twin Peaks. A notable film example is Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Birdman (2014), featuring a soundtrack by Antonio Sánchez composed primarily of drum kit improvisations. 8 Michel Chion, Film, A Sound Art, trans. Claudia Gorbman (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 409. 9 For a stylistic genealogy and lineage of jazz drummers, see Thomas Schultz, “A History of Jazz Drumming,” Percussive Notes 16, no. 3 (1979): 106–​32. 10 Nate Chinen, “Grady Tate, Prodigious Jazz Drummer and Noted Vocalist, Dies at 85,” NPR.org, October 10, 2017. Available at:  www.npr.org/​2017/​ 10/​1 0/​5 56916456/​g rady-​t ate-​p rodigious-​j azz-​d rummer-​a nd-​n oted-​vocalist-​ dies-​at-​85. 11 Norelli, Soundtrack from Twin Peaks, 93. 12 Norelli, Soundtrack from Twin Peaks, 53. 13 K. J. Donnelly, The Spectre of Sound: Music in Film and Television (London: British Film Institute, 2005), 111. 14 Kalinak, “Disturbing the Guests with This Racket,” 87–​89. 15 See Martin Fradley and John A. Riley, “ ‘Dirty Bearded Men in a Room!’: Twin Peaks: The Return and The Politics of Lynchian Comedy,” in The Politics of Twin Peaks, ed. Amanda DiPaolo and Jamie Gillies (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2019), 69–​92. 16 Miguel Mera, “Is Funny Music Funny? Contexts and Case Studies of Film Music Humor,” Journal of Popular Music Studies 14, no. 2 (2002): 102–​5. 17 John Richardson, “Laura and Twin Peaks: Postmodern Parody and the Musical Reconstruction of the Absent Femme Fatale,” in The Cinema of David Lynch: American Dreams, Nightmare Visions, ed. Erica Sheen and Annette Davison (London and New York: Wallflower Press, 2004), 77–​92. 18 On jazz scoring in police television, see Ron Rodman, Tuning In:  American Narrative Television Music (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2010), 228–​ 38. For its connections with film noir, see David Butler, Jazz Noir:  Listening to Music from Phantom Lady to The Last Seduction (Westport, CT:  Praeger Publishers, 2002). 19 Fradley and Riley, “The Politics of Lynchian Comedy,” 73. 20 On musical style in the Fire Walk With Me soundtrack, see Andrew T. Burt’s essay in this volume. 21 Norelli, Soundtrack from Twin Peaks, 118. 22 See Katherine M.  Reed, “ ‘Just You and I’:  Performance, Nostalgia, and Narrative Space in The Return,” MusicologyNow.com, December 14, 2017. Available at:  www.musicologynow.org/​2017/​12/​just-​you-​and-​i-​performance-​ nostalgia.html; David Sweeney, “ ‘I’ll Point You to a Better Time/​A Safer Place to Be’: Music, Nostalgia, and Estrangement in Twin Peaks: The Return,” in Critical Essays on Twin Peaks:  The Return, ed. Antonio Sanna (Cham, CH:  Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 281–​91; and Brooke McCorkle’s essay in this volume. 23 Quoted in Devon Ivie, “Angelo Badalamenti Tells the Stories Behind 5 Twin Peaks Songs,” Vulture.com, May 12, 2017. Available at: www.vulture.com/​2016/​ 09/​twin-​peaks-​songs-​stories-​angelo-​badalamenti.html. 24 Amanda DiPaolo, “Is It Future or Is It Past? The Politics and Use of Nostalgia in Twin Peaks,” in The Politics of Twin Peaks, ed. Amanda DiPaolo and Jamie Gillies (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2019), 36.

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Bibliography Butler, David. Jazz Noir:  Listening to Music from Phantom Lady to The Last Seduction. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2002. Cameron, Clayton. Brushworks: The New Language of Playing Brushes. New York: Carl Fischer, 2003. Chinen, Nate. “Grady Tate, Prodigious Jazz Drummer and Noted Vocalist, Dies at 85.” NPR.org, October 10, 2017. Available at:  www.npr.org/​2017/​10/​10/​ 556916456/​grady-​tate-​prodigious-​jazz-​drummer-​and-​noted-​vocalist-​dies-​at-​85. Chion, Michel. David Lynch, 2nd edition. Translated by Robert Julian. London: BFI Publishing, 2006. —​—​—​. Film, A Sound Art. Translated by Claudia Gorbman. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009. DiPaolo, Amanda. “Is It Future or Is It Past? The Politics and Use of Nostalgia in Twin Peaks.” In The Politics of Twin Peaks. Edited by Amanda DiPaolo and Jamie Gillies, 35–​52. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2019. Donnelly, K.J. The Spectre of Sound: Music in Film and Television. London: British Film Institute, 2005. Dukes, Brad. Reflections: An Oral History of Twin Peaks. Nashville, TN: short/​Tall Press, 2014. Fradley, Martin, and John A. Riley. “ ‘Dirty Bearded Men in a Room!’ Twin Peaks: The Return and The Politics of Lynchian Comedy.” In The Politics of Twin Peaks. Edited by Amanda DiPaolo and Jamie Gillies, 69–​92. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2019. Ivie, Devon. “Angelo Badalamenti Tells the Stories Behind 5 Twin Peaks Songs.” Vulture.com, May 12, 2017. Available at:  www.vulture.com/​2016/​09/​twin-​peaks-​ songs-​stories-​angelo-​badalamenti.html. Kalinak, Kathryn. “ ‘Disturbing the Guests with This Racket’:  Music and Twin Peaks.” In Full of Secrets:  Critical Approaches to Twin Peaks. Edited by David Lavery, 82–​92. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1995. Mera, Miguel. “Is Funny Music Funny? Contexts and Case Studies of Film Music Humor.” Journal of Popular Music Studies 14, no. 2 (2002): 91–​113. Norelli, Clare Nina. Soundtrack from Twin Peaks. New  York:  Bloomsbury Academic, 2017. Reed, Katherine M. “ ‘Just You and I’:  Performance, Nostalgia, Narrative Space in The Return.” MusicologyNow.com, December 14, 2017. Available at:  www. musicologynow.org/​2017/​12/​just-​you-​and-​i-​performance-​nostalgia.html. Richardson, John. “Laura and Twin Peaks:  Postmodern Parody and the Musical Reconstruction of the Absent Femme Fatale.” In The Cinema of David Lynch: American Dreams, Nightmare Visions. Edited by Erica Sheen and Annette Davison, 77–​92. London and New York: Wallflower Press, 2004. Rodman, Ron. Tuning In:  American Narrative Television Music. Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2010. Schultz, Thomas. “A History of Jazz Drumming.” Percussive Notes 16, no. 3 (1979): 106–​32. Sweeney, David. “ ‘I’ll Point You to a Better Time/​A Safer Place to Be’:  Music, Nostalgia, and Estrangement in Twin Peaks: The Return.” In Critical Essays on Twin Peaks: The Return. Edited by Antonio Sanna, 281–​91. Cham, CH: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.

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14 CHAOS AND CREATION Music, Redemption, and the Atomic Bomb in Twin Peaks: The Return Reba A. Wissner

When Part 8 of Twin Peaks: The Return aired on Showtime on June 25, 2017, fans and critics alike referred to it as a game changer. The centerpiece of the episode was an extended scene of the Trinity atomic bomb test in White Sands, New Mexico. This scene, with various bridges after it, morphed into another in which The Fireman creates a golden orb from a mushroom cloud-​ shaped aura that emanates from his head and holds Laura Palmer’s face inside. The orb is then dispatched, it seems, from the heavens. While some viewers were not sure what to make of these images, others read them as a creation narrative, not only of the demonic spirit of BOB, but also of Laura, the latter of whom seems to be a savior archetype. Notably, in this scene, he emanates from a creature known as The Experiment, inside of a black orb. It can also be read as the release of Judy into the world.1 This is the first and only time in the series’ three seasons that we see the creation of the town’s embodiment of evil. This narrative is accompanied by two contrasting pieces of music: to accompany the atomic bomb detonation is Krzysztof Penderecki’s Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima (1960), and The Fireman’s scene is scored with new music by the series’ composer, Angelo Badalamenti. Threnody channels the destruction and chaos caused by the detonation of the atomic bomb at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, especially given Penderecki’s association of the piece with the disasters. The Trinity test scene, according to David Lynch’s sound supervisor Dean Hurley, is an extreme one about the collapsing of time; this mirrors Threnody.2 The atomic bomb has been a symbol for both death and birth, so it is fitting that it is used in the context of the chaos that allowed for BOB’s birth but also as the catalyst for the various murders that he causes in Twin Peaks through the possession of a

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human host. On the other hand, if we listen carefully enough, Badalamenti’s cue, “The Fireman,” is a variation and reversal of “Laura Palmer’s Theme”; instead of the prominent melodic descents we associate with that track, this music is full of rising motives, indicative of Laura’s ascent to a savior-​like significance that redeems her from all of her wrongdoings. In this context, both of these pieces make a strong statement about how the viewer should interpret Lynch and Mark Frost’s message of creation and chaos in The Return. This chapter explores the chaos and creation narratives present in these two scenes as read through their accompanying musical scores. I argue that both scenes—​the detonation of the atomic bomb and the creation of BOB and Laura—​give the audience an aural and visual sense of the dual chaos and creation themes in the episode. The use of Threnody establishes a political and cultural statement about the creation of evil through the bomb, while the music used for Laura’s creation represents her redemption.

The Day the Sun Rose Twice: The Trinity Atomic Bomb There have been various discourses surrounding the symbolism of the atomic bomb.3 From its inception, the atomic bomb has been riddled with pregnancy and birth metaphors.4 The Trinity test occurred on July 16, 1945 and was a part of a larger series of atomic bomb tests that formed the culmination of the Manhattan Project. It is unclear exactly why the test was called Trinity, but it is speculated that the name came from an allusion to John Donne’s Holy Sonnets, to which J.  Robert Oppenheimer was introduced shortly before working on the test.5 President Harry S. Truman was notified of the Trinity test’s success with the announcement that “It’s a boy.”6 But the atomic bomb also has a dichotomous role in popular culture. On the one hand, it represents the power of man to create. On the other, it represents humanity’s power to destroy. As of the Trinity test, the mushroom cloud and the Bomb were equated with complete annihilation yet, at the same time, it was also riddled with birth metaphors, even with some referring to it with procreation metaphors.7 The atomic bomb, and more specifically the Trinity test, play a crucial role not only as a plot device in The Return but also as an explanation for the evil that inhabits the town of Twin Peaks and leads to Laura Palmer’s murder. In fact, the atom in The Return, as embodied in the Trinity test, “is a dichotomous force: it contains within it the potential for creation and destruction, much like the electrical energy that pulsates throughout the series.”8 Part 8 is not the first time that the audience sees a mushroom cloud in The Return. In Part 7, we are taken to Gordon Cole’s (David Lynch) office where behind his desk we see a large photograph of a mushroom cloud, presumably from the Trinity detonation (Figure 14.1). We learn later in The Return that Cole

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FIGURE 14.1 

Albert Rosenfield, Gordon Cole, and the mushroom cloud

was part of the Blue Rose Task Force that the FBI established in conjunction with the military to investigate paranormal cases. It is likely, then, that Cole may have had some knowledge of the role that the Trinity test played in the paranormal activities that he was investigating. David Lynch remarked in an interview after The Return ended that the Bomb was, in fact, a portal.9 Lynch was asked whether he always had Threnody in mind to use for the atomic bomb scene. He continued, “I was going to experiment with Angelo [Badalamenti] but that thing was, in my mind, made to order. I  did chop it up a lot so that I  could get different sections for the visuals, but it was just meant to be.”10 With Lynch, however, nothing is left to chance.

Chaos: Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima and the Birth of BOB BOB, as we have seen in the series, is considered a bringer of death.11 We see that out of the bomb a figure emerges, one that is dubbed in the credits as The Experiment and by the American Girl (Phoebe Augustine) as Mother. After the detonation, which appears to have generated her, she spits out what looks like a series of eggs, one of which bears the face of BOB. This association illustrates that the Bomb birthed The Experiment, which then births, among other bizarre creatures (like the frog moth that will hatch later in

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Part 8), BOB. But BOB’s black and white birth is also preceded by images of brightness associated with the detonation, illustrating the Bomb’s ability to make evil emerge from good.12 As Elizabeth Lowry observes, “If the atomic bomb is the dramatization of the evil of modern war, BOB is a personification of the same.”13 Krzysztof Penderecki did not originally give Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima that title. The work was originally titled 8’37” as an homage to John Cage’s 4’33”. After the premiere, Penderecki felt that the work would be suited to having an association tied to it and realized that the atomic bombing of Hiroshima would be the perfect solution. Lynch also has used Penderecki’s music in the past in some of his films such as Wild at Heart (1990) and Inland Empire (2006). But here, the use of Threnody musically mirrors, both in sound and topic, the subject of the atomic bomb. The piece is also used in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980), which has a connection in its use of the piece and theme: This reveals the hidden backstory of Twin Peaks: The murder of Laura Palmer has its roots in the creation of American evil, the development of atomic weapons. As The Shining’s hotel was built atop the grounds of Indian massacres, the plot of Twin Peaks emerges from a more recent sin of the United States government, the deployment of nuclear weapons.14 The Return, therefore, represents America’s Original Sin, out of which BOB was conceived and Laura Palmer served as savior.15 This, of course, is not Threnody’s first appearance in film or television, nor is it the first time that David Lynch has used Penderecki’s music prior to Twin Peaks but here, he directly channels the association of the music with the visuals itself in order to make a statement and tell the story of one of Twin Peaks’ most iconic characters. In essence, Lynch’s use of Threnody has evocations beyond the obvious; that is, the birth of the atomic bomb as the birth of evil that haunts the town of Twin Peaks. The title of the piece evokes mourning for the dead so perhaps, in this case, Lynch is also using this birth of evil in the Bomb metaphor, and the music to go with it, to describe contemporary society at large. What is especially interesting is the way the Trinity Bomb is used both visually and sonically in The Return. The scene opens with a black and white screen with an overlay telling the viewer where they are and the date, followed by the countdown to zero. We then see the detonation and the white flash of light simultaneous with the first notes of Threnody. Given the extreme sound power of an atomic detonation, it is almost surreal that we cannot hear it explode but only see it while we can hear the countdown; its power is still drowned out by the sound of Penderecki’s non-​diegetic score. The camera

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pans to the magnificence INSIDE of the Bomb (of course, a CGI rendering and not the actual footage from the 1946 test), both the mushroom top and the stem, shifting from its black and white exterior to its colorful interior and, at this point, Penderecki’s music sounds like it could be diegetic.16 This interior shot of the mushroom cloud mirrors the stargate journey in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). This is unsurprising given Lynch’s propensity to play with the diegesis and blur boundaries throughout all of his works, including the series’ first two seasons.17 These colors reflect first-​ hand accounts of the Trinity test, with observers remarking on the purples, reds, yellows, and blues that were visible as the Bomb exploded.18 The varying timbres of Threnody mirror this unique vantage point, from having the player play between the bridge and the tailpiece and striking the soundboard with the nut of the bow, for example, which constantly change throughout the work. With each section of music and timbral change, the image onscreen changes, varying from extreme close-​ups to the top of the mushroom cloud to the pulsing and flying of the fallout dust, visually highlighting the piece’s structure. Like the Bomb’s visual impact, the musical score has a drastic visual impact. Unlike conventional scores, there is no meter but rather the music is collapsed into segments of seconds. This permits what sounds like a free flowing and uncontrolled series of sounds that sonically represent the explosion of the Bomb and the flowering of the mushroom cloud. The use of microtones also gives the work a sense of eeriness and otherworldliness, especially combined with the extended techniques and rapid timbral changes. Further, Threnody plays from beginning to end in this scene, an unusual step for a piece as long as this, but given the power represented in this extended scene, it is warranted and serves to amplify the tension present in the visuals. As Mariusz Kozak writes, “Threnody seems to encourage the listener to become emotionally and sonically absorbed in its sounds—​ it seems to facilitate an engagement with the music’s phenomenal experience.”19 Kozak also identifies the opening timbres of the piece as musical screams.20 In both the original run and The Return, screaming plays a crucial part in the narrative. Between this scene and Laura’s creation, there is a scene with the Woodsmen who are cavorting outside of a convenience store, which Walter Metz speculates may lie either within the vicinity of the test site or inside of it.21 The sound design of this scene channels that of a Geiger counter when it picks up radioactivity, reinforcing Metz’s theory. Miranda Corcoran reads the Woodsmen as creatures who were not created, but rather summoned, by the detonation of the Trinity bomb.22 Like the use of Threnody, the sounds in this scene are typical of Lynch’s Twin Peaks films and series. With the use of each soundscape, Lynch “reinforces and emphasizes the dream-​like nature […] thereby enhancing the abstract imagery. The drones, reversals,

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and inversions of everyday sounds suggest other worlds coming into close contact with our own.”23 In an interview after The Return ended, Lynch was asked whether he always had Threnody in mind to use for the atomic bomb scene. Daniel Wray asked Lynch about his experience of watching how the scene turned out and he replied, It felt real good. The problem is that, in the studio, we played it in the mix really loud, so it would be more like you’d hear it in a theater. Then the heartache comes when you have to dial it back for television, because they have these restrictions as to how loud these things can be and how long they can be loud for; many different rules, it’s really not so great. It’s like when you know what it can be and then you have to suffer that [dilution], and people see it on their computer or even, my god, on their phone—​it’s like a nightmare. There’s so much fucking power in that scene, and in this world people would love to hear what’s there, but the machines [which we watch things through] aren’t there anymore. It’s got to be full range and full loud.24 For Lynch, the aural power of the scene is just as important as the visual power and his scenes are constructed around this principle.

Creation: The Fireman, Senorita Dido, and Laura Palmer Before we see Laura’s birth, a curious thing occurs. Senorita Dido (Joy Nash) is sitting in a room swaying to the music playing from a phonograph. She is interrupted by a clanging from a large object that viewers have seen twice before (in Parts 1 and 2) and will see again (in Parts 16 and 17). The Fireman enters the room to see what is causing the noise. Eventually, we find out that it is an alarm of sorts, meant to indicate trouble on Earth. The Fireman then goes to a theater where we see the emergency: stills of the Trinity test followed by BOB’s birth. The Fireman sees these photos and immediately realizes that he must do something. He begins to float upward and, in this black and white scene, The Fireman begins to emit gold dust from his head out of which the golden orb with Laura’s face appears. The dust particles form a mushroom cloud (Figure  14.2), not only evoking the creation of BOB but also as a counter to it. This orb emanates light through its golden brightness, thereby serving as a light of hope that counters BOB’s darkness.25 BOB’s birth is also similar to Laura’s birth, in which she too emerges from an orb, this time as a golden orb with her famous homecoming picture inside of it, from The Fireman’s head. It is worth noting that alchemy plays a crucial role in the world of Twin Peaks, so it is no coincidence that Laura is birthed in an orb of gold, which is the world’s most perfect metal. This also

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FIGURE 14.2 

The Fireman creates Laura Palmer

may refer back to the original series (season 2, episode 1) in which Harriet Hayward (Jessica Wallenfels) recites a poem about Laura over dinner at the Hayward home in which she notes that she saw Laura glowing. This is the beginning of her redemption. What is most significant about this scene is the music. Angelo Badalamenti titles the cue that plays “The Fireman.” Until Part 14 of The Return, The Fireman was listed in the credits as ???????; so, in Part 8, the title of the cue reveals his identity. In this context, The Fireman refers to the person who makes a train run smoothly, not the one who extinguishes fires or, in the case of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, the person who starts fires. Jeff Johnson has noted that the series’ music “evokes a complexity of emotions, which, more importantly, contain moral subtleties that highlight the general theme of the series: the symbiotic connection between innocence and guilt.”26 Laura’s simultaneous innocence and promiscuity lie at the intersection of her theme and that of The Fireman. The music for “The Fireman” cue is based on “Laura’s Theme” from seasons 1 and 2 of Twin Peaks. “Laura Palmer’s Theme” is only 15 measures long and is comprised of two parts. The first (mm. 1–​7) is based on a static ostinato bass with a descending half step. The second (mm. 8–​15) is based on a tense rising and falling pattern over an ostinato bass based on a sweeping arpeggiated figure that returns back to the first part by the pickup and continues until the end. The piece, which begins in C Minor, ascends in three different keys—​C Major for one measure, E Major, and F Minor, only to arrive in C Major once again. This

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EXAMPLE 1 

“Laura Palmer’s Theme,” mm. 1–​8

EXAMPLE 2 

“Laura Palmer’s Theme,” mm. 21–​29

24

essentially breaks down into a seven-​measure ascent, a four-​measure climax, and a four-​measure descent. Badalamenti himself interprets this as the first section containing a “dark, mysterious, and foreboding element” that included the “minor chord leitmotif ” and the second section’s movement from minor into major as a reflection of Laura’s emotions.27 The instrumentation for “Laura Palmer’s Theme” represents her two identities as homecoming queen and small-​town girl, juxtaposed with that of prostitute and drug addict. The first section is played by the synthesizer, illustrating her secret life, also represented by a dark timbre. The second section is played by piano in the upper register with a light timbre, which overshadows that of the synthesizer until it nearly disappears. This acoustic instrumentation represents her innocence but, more importantly, the yearning and reaching motive signifies her struggle to maintain her innocent façade among the people of Twin Peaks. However, because the synthesizer music—​and the instrument itself—​never really disappears, she can never overcome her darker side. The piano does appear in the first part, but only as a single note punctuation in the bass. It is important to note that throughout the series—​both the original and The Return—​there is a constant polarity between light and dark. Once Laura is created and Senorita Dido kisses the orb and sends her down to Earth, as soon as the machine releases her, the orb turns white rather than remaining gold.

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In “The Fireman,” however, these rising and falling motives from “Laura Palmer’s Theme” are reversed and, in some cases, even truncated. The beginning of the cue uses the descending half step as a prominent motive as part of a series of suspensions over dissonant chords. Badalamenti’s use of suspensions is the juxtaposition of romance and violence, both of which are crucial elements in the original series as well as The Return.28 These suspensions soon decay as The Fireman emits the gold dust. While in “Laura Palmer’s Theme” there are musical moments evocative of yearning, that is no longer the case in “The Fireman.” “The Fireman” not only depicts Laura’s birth but also musically redeems her through the ascension of notes that are impossible in “Laura Palmer’s Theme.” The struggles present in “Laura Palmer’s Theme” are absent in “The Fireman” and she is depicted as innocent and this can be seen in a comparison between Examples 1 and 2 above with Example 3 below. Badalamenti composed and performed both “Laura Palmer’s Theme” and “The Fireman” on his synthesizer so, in essence, they both come from the same place. As Isabella van Elferen notes, “the synthesizer is a schizophrenic creator of phantom voices, doubles, and non-​sounds.”29 Badalamenti believes “that David [Lynch] feels that music is the voice of his concepts.”30 This phantomness finds its way from the original series to the return. There is often a connection between some of the music in The Return with “Laura Palmer’s Theme”; for instance, the first two notes of “Laura Palmer’s

EXAMPLE 3 

“The Fireman,” mm. 1–​28a

 Transcription by Frank Lehman.

a

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Theme” appear in “Heartbreaking,” which elicits an emotional response from Dougie.31

She’s Full of Secrets: Redeeming Laura Palmer Since Part  8 of The Return aired, one of the most hotly debated topics was Laura Palmer’s role and whether or not we can interpret her creation as a form of redemption. Various scholars have written about Laura’s role as a saint who is sacrificed for the greater good. However, she also plays a dichotomous role in town as both saint and scapegoat.32 Christy Desmet refers to the first two seasons of Twin Peaks as the mystery that surrounds the murder of a martyr.33 As we find out in her fictional diary, written by Lynch’s daughter, Jennifer, as well as its overt statements in the series, Laura attempts to redeem herself through good deeds such as volunteering for Meals on Wheels and tutoring Josie Packard in English.34 According to Metz, Part  8 is a retelling of the 1951 film, The Day The Earth Stood Still, in that Laura is sent to keep the universe safe from the results of Earth’s atomic experiments, resulting in destruction and evil, in this case, BOB.35 But Laura’s redemption occurs even before Part 8. In Fire Walk With Me, after Laura is killed and appears in the Red Room, we see an angel above her as Laura cries. Combined with Luigi Cherubini’s “Agnus Dei” from his Requiem in C Minor, this scene represents the crying Laura as a fallen angel who has been redeemed.36 This musical choice was not accidental:  Like the Lamb of God, Laura Palmer was created to take away the sins of the world and was meant to grant the world peace through her sacrifice. The music for this movement constantly descends, indicative of Laura’s falling in space, where the angels would not help her because “they have all gone away.” Further, BOB’s “wanting to be” Laura in Fire Walk With Me parallels the temptation of Christ, after which angels tended to him. Ultimately, we must remember Margaret Lanterman’s words from Part 10: “Laura is the One.” Despite the darkness in the town of Twin Peaks, Laura is the only character who was redeemed.37 This is likely because of her role as the Lamb of God. Musically, we can see this redemption in the metamorphosis of her theme into “The Fireman.” Or is it the other way around? Was the music of “The Fireman” meant to represent Laura’s ascension but her theme, which occurred after her creation (and therefore hypothetically after “The Fireman”) a derivative that sonically represents her attempts at living up to her savior role but failing? This is a plausible reading, but one for which we will never reach a definitive conclusion. Elizabeth Lowry contends that we can understand Laura’s scene in Fire Walk With Me in which she converses

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with Donna about falling as having experienced it through Senorita Dido propelling her down to Earth.38 But, as in every Lynch work, his sincerity about redemption is ultimately unclear.39

Conclusion There is significance to the dark orb in which BOB was created, as there is in Laura’s golden orb. When Agent Cooper goes to Odessa, Texas to find Laura—​in the guise of Carrie Page—​on her mantle is a black orb with golden specks, representing the good–​evil hybrid that resulted from Part 8 (Figure 14.3). This orb is to the right of a white horse, another important symbol, but this time from both the first two seasons and the film Fire Walk With Me. Once again, Fire Walk With Me foreshadows Laura’s creation and redemption, and we can see that by looking more carefully, we may have been able to see the signs of Laura’s role on Earth all along. However, what we know about the birth of Laura Palmer is turned on its head in Twin Peaks: The Final Dossier, in which it is revealed that Laura never died, but rather mysteriously disappeared. Further, it is important to note here the relationship between the town of Twin Peaks and the Bomb, as illustrated in both The Secret History of Twin Peaks and Twin Peaks: The Final Dossier. The Secret History of Twin Peaks reveals that veteran

FIGURE 14.3 

The orb on the mantle

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FIGURE 14.4 

The frog moth

newspaper reporter Douglas Milford, during his young adulthood, worked for the military and was part of the Manhattan Project, which was crucial for the Trinity test.40 The Final Dossier, however, reveals that Sarah Palmer’s father was also part of the Manhattan Project and that Sarah’s family lived near Alamogordo, New Mexico at the time of the Trinity test.41 This is significant given that The Final Dossier also clarifies that that the frog moth that came from The Experiment that came from the Bomb went into Sarah (Figure 14.4).42 Thus, at the same time that Laura Palmer was created as a force to combat evil, her mother was inhabited by it. However we see it, the Trinity test had implications for the town of Twin Peaks and the world at large, that we could only glean from listening.

Notes 1 Thomas Britt, “ ‘Between Two Mysteries’:  Intermediacy in Twin Peaks:  The Return,” in Critical Essays on Twin Peaks:  The Return, ed. Antonio Sanna (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 112. 2 “Q&A with David Lynch’s Music Collaborator Dean Hurley—​Part 2: Being Open Creatively and Knowing When to Walk Away,” Synchblog, July 24, 2017. Available at:  www.synchblog.com/​qa-​with-​david-​lynchs-​music-​collaborator-​dean-​hurley-​ part-​2-​being-​open-​creatively-​and-​knowing-​when-​to-​walk-​away/​. 3 For more information on these discourses, see Robert L. King, “Fatal Metaphors,” The Massachusetts Review 23, no. 4 (1982): 709–​13. 4 Evelyn Fox Keller, Reflections on Gender and Science (New Haven, CT:  Yale University Press, 1985), 189.

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5 Stephen Hilgartner, Richard C. Bell, and Rory O’Connor, Nukespeak: Nuclear Language, Visions, and Mindset (San Francisco, CA: Sierra Club Books, 1982), 30. 6 Carroll Pursell, Technology in Postwar America: A History (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 60. According to this account, if the test were a failure, they would have announced “It’s a girl.” Thus, reading the Bomb in this context here, it is a wonder what we can glean from Laura’s birth from a type of mushroom cloud. 7 Peggy Rosenthal, “The Nuclear Mushroom Cloud as Cultural Image,” American Literary History 3, no. 1 (1991): 68, 73. 8 Miranda Corcoran, “ ‘Gotta Light?’ Intersections of Science and the Supernatural in Twin Peaks,” Supernatural Studies 5, no. 2 (2019): 31. 9 Darren Franich and Jeff Jensen, “Talking to David Lynch about Twin Peaks: The Return,” Entertainment Weekly, September 15, 2017. Available at: http://​ew.com/​ tv/​2017/​09/​15/​david-​lynch-​twin-​peaks-​finale/​. 10 Franich and Jensen, “Talking to David Lynch about Twin Peaks: The Return.” 11 For example, BOB often says he will kill again and that he will “catch you with my death bag.” 12 Corcoran, “ ‘Gotta Light?’ ” 33. 13 Elizabeth Lowry, “Extraterrestrial Intelligences in the Atomic Age:  Exploring the Rhetorical Function of Aliens and the ‘Alien’ in the Twin Peaks Universe,” in Critical Essays on Twin Peaks:  The Return, ed. Antonio Sanna (New  York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 41. 14 Walter Metz, “The Atomic Gambit of Twin Peaks: The Return,” Film Criticism 41, no. 3 (2017). Available at: https://​quod.lib.umich.edu/​f/​fc/​13761232.0041.324?vie w=text;rgn=main/​. 15 Jack Nicholls, “Twin Peaks—​Or How David Lynch Never Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb,” Medium, June 26, 2017. Available at:  https://​ medium.com/​@jacknicholls/​twin-​peaks-​or-​how-​david-​lynch-​never-​learned-​to-​ stop-​worrying-​and-​love-​the-​bomb-​10bbacc83b8e. 16 Zach Budgor, “The Elemental Power of Twin Peaks’ Atomic Montage,” Paste Magazine, June 30, 2017. Available at: www.pastemagazine.com/​articles/​2017/​06/​ the-​elemental-​power-​of-​twin-​peaks-​atomic-​montage.html. 17 Carlotta Susca, “ ‘When You See Me Again, It Won’t Be Me’: Twin Peaks from the Multichannel Era to the Digital Era,” Series 4, no. 2 (2018): 108. 18 Ferenc Morton Szasz, The Day the Sun Rose Twice:  The Story of the Trinity Site Nuclear Explosion, July 16, 1945 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1984), 86–​91. 19 Mariusz Kozak, “Experiencing Structure in Penderecki’s Threnody: Analysis, Ear-​Training, and Understanding,” Music Theory Spectrum 38, no. 2 (2017): 201. 20 Kozak, “Experiencing Structure in Penderecki’s Threnody,” 213. 21 Metz, “The Atomic Gambit of Twin Peaks: The Return.” 22 Corcoran, “ ‘Gotta Light?’ ” 32. 23 Kyle Barrett, “Smashing the Small Screen:  David Lynch, Twin Peaks and Reinventing Television,” in Approaching Twin Peaks: Critical Essays on the Original Series, ed. Eric Hoffman and Dominick Grace (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Co., 2017), 51. 24 Wray, “David Lynch on Bowie and the Music that Inspired the New ‘Twin Peaks.’ ” Pitchfork, September 19, 2017. Available at:  https://​pitchfork.com/​thepitch/​ david-​lynch-​interview-​on-​bowie-​and-​music-​that-​inspired-​the-​new-​twin-​peaks/​.

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25 Courtenay Stallings, “Twin Peaks:  The Return as Subversive Fairy Tale,” Supernatural Studies 5, no. 2 (2019): 107. 26 Jeff Johnson, Pervert in the Pulpit:  Morality in the Works of David Lynch (Jefferson, NC and London: McFarland and Co., 1998), 162. 27 Andreas Halskov interview with Angelo Badalamenti; Andreas Halskov, TV Peaks:  Twin Peaks and Modern Television Drama (Odense:  University of Southern Denmark Press, 2015), 85. 28 Russell Dean Stone, “We Talk to the Man Behind the ‘Twin Peaks’ Soundtracks,” Vice.com, September 25, 2017. Available at:  https://​i-​d.vice.com/​en_​us/​article/​ a3k7w4/​we-​talk-​to-​the-​man-​behind-​the-​twin-​peaks-​soundtracks. 29 Isabella van Elferen, Gothic Music: The Sounds of the Uncanny (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2012), 87. 30 Daniel Schweiger, “The Madman and His Muse,” Film Score Monthly, September, 2001, 26. 31 Pieter Dom, “The Story Behind Angelo Badalamenti’s ‘Heartbreaking’ and the Pianist Playing It in Twin Peaks, Part 11,” Welcome to Twin Peaks, July 26, 2017. Available at: https://​welcometotwinpeaks.com/​music/​angelo-​badalamenti-​ heartbreaking-​the-​pianist/​. 32 Johnson, Pervert in The Pulpit, 158. 33 Christy Desmet, “The Canonization of Laura Palmer,” in Full of Secrets: Critical Approaches to Twin Peaks, ed. David Lavery (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1995), 94. 34 Jennifer Lynch, The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer (New York and London: Gallery Books, 2011). 35 Metz, “The Atomic Gambit of Twin Peaks: The Return.” 36 Reinhold Zwick, “The Problem of Evil in Contemporary Film,” trans. Stephen Uppendahl, In New Image of Religious Film, ed. John R.  May (Franklin, WI: Sheed & Ward, 2000), 82. 37 Tanya Krzywinska, A Skin for Dancing In: Possession, Witchcraft, and Voodoo in Film (Trowbridge, UK: Flicks Books, 2000), 47. 38 Lowry, “Extraterrestrial Intelligences in the Atomic Age,” 49. 39 Kathy Justice Gentile, “Beast’s Triumph Over Beauty in Gothic Film,” in Le Gothic: Influences and Appropriations in Europe and America, ed. Avril Horner and Sue Zlosnik (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 145. 40 Mark Frost, The Secret History of Twin Peaks (New  York:  Flatiron Books, 2016), 78. 41 Mark Frost, Twin Peaks: The Final Dossier (New York: Flatiron Books, 2017), 133. 42 Frost, The Final Dossier, 136.

Works Cited Barrett, Kyle. “Smashing the Small Screen: David Lynch, Twin Peaks and Reinventing Television.” In Approaching Twin Peaks:  Critical Essays on the Original Series. Edited by Eric Hoffman and Dominick Grace, 47–​64. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Co., 2017. Britt, Thomas. “ ‘Between Two Mysteries’: Intermediacy in Twin Peaks: The Return.” In Critical Essays on Twin Peaks: The Return. Edited by Antonio Sanna, 107–​18. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.

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Budgor, Zach. “The Elemental Power of Twin Peaks’ Atomic Montage.” Paste Magazine, June 30, 2017. Available at: www.pastemagazine.com/​articles/​2017/​06/​ the-​elemental-​power-​of-​twin-​peaks-​atomic-​montage.html. Corcoran, Miranda. “ ‘Gotta Light?’ Intersections of Science and the Supernatural in Twin Peaks.” Supernatural Studies 5, no. 2 (2019): 19–​44. Desmet, Christy. “The Canonization of Laura Palmer.” In Full of Secrets: Critical Approaches to Twin Peaks. Edited by David Lavery, 93–​108. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1995. Dom, Pieter. “The Story Behind Angelo Badalamenti’s ‘Heartbreaking’ and the Pianist Playing It in Twin Peaks, Part 11.” Welcome to Twin Peaks, July 26, 2017. https://​welcometotwinpeaks.com/​music/​angelo-​badalamenti-​heartbreaking-​the-​ pianist/​. Franich, Darren and Jeff Jensen. “Talking to David Lynch about Twin Peaks: The Return.” Entertainment Weekly, September 15, 2017. Available at: http://​ew.com/​ tv/​2017/​09/​15/​david-​lynch-​twin-​peaks-​finale/​. Frost, Mark. The Secret History of Twin Peaks. New York: Flatiron Books, 2016. —​—​—​. Twin Peaks: The Final Dossier. New York: Flatiron Books, 2017. Gentile, Kathy Justice. “Beast’s Triumph Over Beauty in Gothic Film.” In Le Gothic:  Influences and Appropriations in Europe and America. Edited by Avril Horner and Sue Zlosnik, 137–​50. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Halskov, Andreas. TV Peaks:  Twin Peaks and Modern Television Drama. Odense: University of Southern Denmark Press, 2015. Hilgartner, Stephen, Richard C. Bell, and Rory O’Connor. Nukespeak:  Nuclear Language, Visions, and Mindset. San Francisco, CA: Sierra Club Books, 1982. Johnson, Jeff. Pervert in the Pulpit: Morality in the Works of David Lynch. Jefferson, NC and London: McFarland and Co., 1998. Keller, Evelyn Fox. Reflections on Gender and Science. New Haven, CT:  Yale University Press, 1985. King, Robert L. “Fatal Metaphors.” The Massachusetts Review 23, no. 4 (1982): 709–​13. Kozak, Mariusz. “Experiencing Structure in Penderecki’s Threnody: Analysis, Ear-​ Training, and Understanding.” Music Theory Spectrum 38, no. 2 (2017): 200–​17. Krzywinska, Tanya. A Skin for Dancing In:  Possession, Witchcraft, and Voodoo in Film. Trowbridge, UK: Flicks Books, 2000. Lowry, Elizabeth. “Extraterrestrial Intelligences in the Atomic Age:  Exploring the Rhetorical Function of Aliens and the ‘Alien’ in the Twin Peaks Universe.” In Critical Essays on Twin Peaks:  The Return. Edited by Antonio Sanna, 37–​51. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. Lynch, Jennifer. The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer. New York and London: Gallery Books, 2011. Metz, Walter. “The Atomic Gambit of Twin Peaks: The Return.” Film Criticism 41, no. 3 (2017). Available at: https://​quod.lib.umich.edu/​f/​fc/​13761232.0041.324?vie w=text;rgn=main/​ Nicholls, Jack. “Twin Peaks—​Or How David Lynch Never Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.” Medium, June 26, 2017. Available at: https://​medium.com/​ @jacknicholls/​twin-​peaks-​or-​how-​david-​lynch-​never-​learned-​to-​stop-​worrying-​ and-​love-​the-​bomb-​10bbacc83b8e. Pursell, Carroll. Technology in Postwar America:  A History. New  York:  Columbia University Press, 2007.

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“Q&A with David Lynch’s Music Collaborator Dean Hurley—​Part 2: Being Open Creatively and Knowing When to Walk Away.” Synchblog, July 24, 2017. Available at:  www.synchblog.com/​qa-​with-​david-​lynchs-​music-​collaborator-​dean-​hurley-​ part-​2-​being-​open-​creatively-​and-​knowing-​when-​to-​walk-​away/​ (accessed August 2, 2017). Rosenthal, Peggy. “The Nuclear Mushroom Cloud as Cultural Image.” American Literary History 3, no. 1 (1991): 63–​92. Schweiger, Daniel. “The Madman and His Muse.” Film Score Monthly, September 2001: 24–​7, 44. Stallings, Courtenay. “Twin Peaks: The Return as Subversive Fairy Tale.” Supernatural Studies 5, no. 2 (2019): 98–​116. Stone, Russell Dean. “We Talk to the Man Behind the ‘Twin Peaks’ Soundtracks.” Vice.com, September 25, 2017. Available at:  https://​i-​d.vice.com/​en_​us/​article/​ a3k7w4/​we-​talk-​to-​the-​man-​behind-​the-​twin-​peaks-​soundtracks. Susca, Carlotta. “ ‘When You See Me Again, It Won’t Be Me’: Twin Peaks from the Multichannel Era to the Digital Era.” Series 4, no. 2 (2018): 103–​10. Szasz, Ferenc Morton. The Day the Sun Rose Twice: The Story of the Trinity Site Nuclear Explosion, July 16, 1945. Albuquerque:  University of New Mexico Press, 1984. van Elferen, Isabella. Gothic Music: The Sounds of the Uncanny. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2012. Wray, Daniel Dylan. “David Lynch on Bowie and the Music that Inspired the New ‘Twin Peaks.’ ” Pitchfork. September 19, 2017. Available at: https://​pitchfork.com/​ thepitch/​david-​lynch-​interview-​on-​bowie-​and-​music-​that-​inspired-​the-​new-​twin-​ peaks/​(accessed September 19, 2017). Zwick, Reinhold. “The Problem of Evil in Contemporary Film.” Translated by Stephen Uppendahl. In New Image of Religious Film. Edited by John R. May, 75–​94. Franklin, WI: Sheed & Ward, 2000.

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INDEX

Note: Page numbers in italics indicate figures. 30 Rock 215n7 2001: A Space Odyssey 122, 222

Augustine, Phoebe 220 Au Revoir Simone 63

Abbate, Carolyn 169 ABC: advertising for Twin Peaks 19–​23, 28; resolution of Twin Peaks 24 acousmatic phenomenon 168–​9; Judy in Twin Peaks: The Return 149–​60 Adorno, Theodor 78–​9, 89nn7–​8, 167 advertising: paratextuality in the network era 15–​19; Twin Peaks 7, 15, 17, 19–​29; see also trailers aesthetic nervousness 137 Alexander, John 171 Aliaga, Juan 123 All in the Family 19 Althusser, Louis 174 Amarcord 139 Americana 173; Twin Peaks 9, 73, 173–​6; Warhol 93 American Bandstand 82 American Werewolf in London, An 61n26 Amick, Mädchen 195 Anderson, Erika 194 Anderson, Michael J. 112, 191 Ant Head 4 Applegate, Royce D. 191 Ashbrook, Dana 2, 191 Attali, Jacques 80

Badalamenti, Angelo: advertising for Twin Peaks 20, 23; Americana 174–​6; Ant Head 4; background to Twin Peaks 2; Blue Velvet 3; chaos and creation in Twin Peaks: The Return 218–​20; Chromatics’ “Shadow” 96; collaboration 3, 4, 6, 83, 150; and Cruise 91, 95–​101; “Deer Meadow Shuffle” 211; doublings in Twin Peaks 172; drumming and time 203–​5, 209–​12, 214; emotional excesses in Twin Peaks 195, 196; “The Fireman” 9, 218–​19, 224, 226; firewood 4; Floating Into the Night 91, 95, 204–​5; “Heartbreaking” 143, 145, 227; Industrial Symphony No. 1 97; “Laura Palmer’s Theme” 100, 165–​8, 170, 175–​6, 181–​96, 225; “Mysteries of Love” 98; nostalgia 7, 48; sound design in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me 107, 112, 113; sound design in Twin Peaks: The Return 121; trailer for Twin Peaks: The Return 1; Twin Peaks theme 6; The Voice of Love 97 BaileyShea, Matthew 183, 185 Baker, Chet 110 Bakhtin, Mikhail 208

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Barber, Samuel, String Quartet, Opus 11 183, 183, 185–​6 Barenaked Ladies, Big Bang Theory theme song 19 Barthes, Roland 39 Basquiat 92 Bataille, Georges 122, 124, 128 Bauer, Robert 201n64 Beach Boys 74n6, 81 Beethoven, Ludwig van, Moonlight Sonata 41 Bell, Chrysta 186 Beymer, Richard 197n21 Big Bang Theory 19 Birdman 216n7 Blake, William 126 Bluemink, Matt 125, 127 Blue Velvet 2; Americana 173; Chromatics’ “Shadow” video 96; collaborators 3, 5; Cruise 59n4, 98–​9; falling theme 60n20; “Lynchian” style 172; Lynch’s interest in music 5; “Mysteries of Love” 59n4, 98–​9; nostalgia 73, 97; performance 68; severed ear 4; theme 171 BluntedBeatz, “I Am (Old School Hip Hop Beat)” 157, 200n53 Booth, Paul 36, 39 Boulanger, Georges, “My Prayer” 200n53 Bourdieu, Pierre 77, 79–​80, 81 Bowie, David 92, 101; Aladdin Sane persona 93; “Andy Warhol” 92–​3; Basquiat 92; collaboration 5, 83; Cracked Actor 94, 96; Diamond Dogs album and tour 93–​4; Heroes 94; Hunky Dory 92–​3; Lost Highway 98; Low 94; The Man Who Fell to Earth 94, 96, 99; “Rebel, Rebel” 93; The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars 92, 95; “Starman” 92, 95; Station to Station 94; Thin White Duke persona 94, 101; Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me 5, 112, 142; Young Americans 94; Ziggy Stardust persona 92, 93, 94 Boyle, Lara Flynn 2, 191 Bradbury, Ray, Fahrenheit 451 224 Brodeur, Michael Andor 64 Bronstein, Michaela 125 Broski, Robert 200n53 Buckley, Tim, “Song to the Siren” 98, 99 Burkum, Paige 84–​5

Cactus Blossoms, The: “Mississippi” 84–​6, 85; Twin Peaks: The Return 83, 84–​6 Cage, John 123; 4’33” 221 Carr, Roy 92 Catlett, Sidney “Big Sid” 204 Catlin, Victoria 198n33 Cave, Nick, “The Mercy Seat” 113 Cherubini, Luigi, “Agnus Dei” 227 Chienne, La 61n26 Chion, Michel: acousmêtre 150, 151; Adorno and Eisler’s Composing for the Films 167; cinematic speech 141; drumming and time 203, 204; emotional excesses in Twin Peaks 195, 196; falling theme 60n20; “heard space” 153; “Heartbreaking” 143, 145; on Josie Packard 198n33; “Just You” 68; on Laura Palmer 187; “Laura Palmer’s Theme” 181; “Lynchian” style 172–​3; noise 141; nostalgia 58; “A Real Indication” 113–​14; scream 27; songs 49, 57, 61n26; synchresis 166, 176n2; Twin Peaks description 142; Twin Peaks theme 110 Chromatics 96, 97; “Shadow” 96; Twin Peaks: The Return 63 Cline, Patsy 84 Cloak and Dagger 61n26 Cocteau Twins, The 99 collaborators 2–​5 compilation soundtrack 7, 48 Connor, Steven 137, 138, 141 conventional underscoring, in Twin Peaks: The Return 153, 159 Corcoran, Miranda 222 country music 84 Cracked Actor 94, 96 Cruise, Julee 63; The Art of Being A Girl 99; Blue Velvet 59n4, 98–​9; collaboration 4, 5, 6; “Falling” 91, 190; Floating Into the Night 91–​2, 95–​7, 99, 101, 204–​5; Industrial Symphony No. 1 92, 97, 98, 100; “In My Other World” 97; The Late Show 94–​5, 100; Lynch’s direction 6; My Secret Life 99; “Mysteries of Love” 59n4, 98–​9; “The Nightingale” 174; “Questions in a World of Blue Velvet” 110, 115–​16; “Rockin’ Back Inside My Heart” 6, 95, 97, 100; “She Would Die For Love” 97; “Summer Kisses,

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Winter Tears” 97; Twin Peaks 5, 8, 91–​3, 95–​8, 100–​1, 48–​51, 53, 55–​8, 59n4, 66–​8, 75n19, 174, 190; Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me 59n4, 91, 95, 97, 99, 100, 110, 115–​16; Twin Peaks: The Return 8, 58, 92, 95–​6, 99–​100; “Up in Flames” 97; The Voice of Love (album) 4, 97, 101; “The Voice of Love” (song) 97; “The World Spins” 96, 97 crying 196, 201n67 Cyrus, Billy Ray, “Achy Breaky Heart” 112 Cyrus, Miley 88n1 D’Arcy, Jan 200n54 Dave Brubeck Quartet: “Take 5” 213; Time Out 213 Davis, Lennard J. 136–​7, 138, 143–​4 Davison, Annette 5, 173 Day the Earth Stood Still, The 227 deafness 135–​42, 145–​6 Defries, Tony 93 Deleuze, Gilles 125–​8, 135, 138–​40, 145, 146n17 Del Rio, Rebekah: All My Life/​ Toda mi vida 98; collaboration 5, 7; “Crying” 140; “Llorando” 6, 65–​6, 70–​1, 98; Love Hurts, Love Heals 96; Mulholland Drive 5, 6, 65–​6, 70–​1, 98, 140; “No Stars” 7, 66, 70–​1, 96; Twin Peaks: The Return 7, 63, 66, 70–​1, 92, 96, 100 Demetrius, De Elecutione 176n6 Dern, Laura 83; Industrial Symphony No. 1 97; Inland Empire 98; Twin Peaks: The Return 200n53 Derrida, Jacques 64 Descartes, René 138–​9 Desmet, Christy 186, 187, 195, 227 Desmond, Paul, “Take 5” 213 DiPaolo, Amanda 214 disability 135–​42, 145–​6 Dodds, Warren “Baby” 204 Dolar, Mladen 152 Dolezel, Lubomir 95, 98 Donne, John, Holy Sonnets 219 Donnelly, K.J. 207 dramatic ambient sound, in Twin Peaks: The Return 153 Dray, Colin 74 drumming 9, 203–​15 Dune 172

Eco, Umberto 66 Edison, Thomas 169 Eisenberg, Evan 91, 100 Eisler, Hanns 167 electricity motif 40, 43 Engels, Robert 107 Eno, Brian 83 En Vogue, “Give Him Something He Can Feel” 112 epitexts 16, 17, 18; advertising for Twin Peaks 28; and Cruise 92, 94–​5, 99 Eraserhead 82, 150 Ernst, Wolfgang 170 evil, in Twin Peaks: The Return 8, 121–​30, 154–​20, 212, 218, 219, 221 falling theme 60n20 fandom 2; guest appearances 81–​2; Nine Inch Nails 83, 84; Twin Peaks 34, 38–​9, 40, 73, 165, 167–​8; Twin Peaks: The Return 7, 34–​43 Fargo 215n7 Farren, Eamon 200n54 feedback 140 Fellini, Federico 139 Fenn, Sherilyn 113, 190, 195 Fire Walk With Me see Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me firewood 4, 205 Fisher, Mark 98 Fiske, John 38 Flaming Star 97 Foltz, Jonathan 124, 127 Forman, Miloš 200n54 Foucault, Michel 170 Fradley, Martin 208, 210 Fraser, Elizabeth 92, 99; “Song to the Siren” 92, 98–​9 Freud, Sigmund 50, 60n11, 127 Friedlaender, Salomo 147n36 Frizzell, Nathan 142 Frost, Mark: acousmatic personification of Judy in Twin Peaks: The Return 154, 155; advertising for Twin Peaks 15, 24; background to Twin Peaks 1, 2; chaos and creation in Twin Peaks: The Return 219; and Cruise 95, 99, 101; drumming 204; evil, in Twin Peaks: The Return 122, 128; hearing aids/​loss 135; musical performance 63, 65, 72, 74; nostalgia 59, 60n21; The Secret History of Twin Peaks 126, 186, 228–​9; social capital 78, 82,

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83; starting point of Twin Peaks 129; Twin Peaks: The Final Dossier 66, 72, 126, 154, 186, 228, 229 Füller, Ralfdieter 172, 173 Full House 74n6, 81 Galow, T.W. 60n13 Game of Thrones 82 Gaye, Marvin, What’s Going On 95 Genette, Gérard 16, 108, 109, 113 Gerahty, Lincoln 39 Gidley, Pamela 54, 110 Gilmore Girls 74n6 Goaz, Harry 201n64 God 152 Goetz, Peter Michael 194 Gorbman, Claudia 108–​9 Gosling, Ryan 96 Graham, Heather 197n22 Grange, Paul 17–​18 Gray, Jerry, “Pennsylvania 6–​5000” 194 Gray, Jonathan 16, 17, 18, 24, 28 Greer, Jane 198n33 Guattari, Félix 125, 126, 127–​8, 140 Gutkin, Len 128 Hara, Kunio 48 Hart, Lorenz, “Where or When” 60n19 Haydn, Franz Joseph, Die Schöpfung 182, 182, 196n7 hearing aids/​loss 135–​42, 145–​6 Heckel, Erich, Roquairol 94 Hills, Matt 24, 28 Hitchcock, Alfred 61n24 Höltgen, Stefan 178n33 Hopper, Edward 125–​6; Early Sunday Morning 126; Nighthawks 126 Horse, Michael 1 House of Pain, “Jump Around” 112–​13 humor 207–​14 Hurley, Dean: acousmatic personification of Judy in Twin Peaks: The Return 153, 155; atomic bomb in Twin Peaks: The Return 218; collaboration 3–​4; fandom for Twin Peaks: The Return 34, 37, 40–​1, 42, 43, 44n5; firewood 4; performance in Twin Peaks: The Return 64; room tone 3–​4; sound design in Twin Peaks: The Return 121 hypertext, Twin Peaks as 129–​39

Iger, Robert 19 Iñárritu, Alejandro G. 216n7 Industrial Symphony No. 1 92, 97 Inland Empire 98; “Lynchian” style 172; Penderecki’s music 221; unseen 150 Internet fandom: Twin Peaks 39, 165, 167–​8; Twin Peaks: The Return 34, 35, 39 Isaak, Chris 5; “Wicked Game” 5 Jaar, Nicholas 167 Jardine, B. 17 jazz: drumming 203–​15; late capitalism 79; Twin Peaks 174; Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me 107, 110, 111, 113 Jenkins, Henry 2, 34, 38, 45n23 Johnson, Catherine 17–​18 Johnson, Jeff 224 Jones, “Papa” Jo 204 Jones, “Philly” Jo 204 Jordan, Randolph 50 Joseph, Rachel 51 Kalinak, Kathryn 66, 113, 191, 193, 203, 207 Kane, Brian 152 Kant, Immanuel 138–​9 Kelly, J.P. 24 Kelly, Moira 54, 115 Kennedy, Jimmy, “My Prayer” 200n53 Kesey, Ken, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest 200n54 Kittler, Friedrich 147n36, 169 Kozak, Mariusz 222 Krantz, Tony 19 Kubrick, Stanley 122, 221, 222 Lacan, Jacques 152 late capitalism, music and musicians under 78–​81 Late Show, The 100 Lavery, David 186 Lee, Sheryl 83; “Laura Palmer’s Theme” 181; Twin Peaks 61n24, 85, 194; Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me 54, 107 Leibniz, Gottfried 146n17 Lipton, Peggy 186 Lively, Robyn 198n33 Lost Highway: collaborators 4, 5, 6; firewood 4; Lynch’s interest in music 5, 6; “Rammstein” 139–​40; “Song to the Siren” 98; unseen and the unsaid 150, 154; video camera symbol 160

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Lost River 96 Lotz, Amanda 18 Lowry, Elizabeth 221, 227–​8 Lynch, David: advertising for Twin Peaks 15, 19–​21, 23, 24, 27, 28; Americana 173–​6; background to Twin Peaks 1, 2; The Big Dream 6; BlueBOB 6; Blue Velvet 2; chaos and creation in Twin Peaks: The Return 219–​23, 226, 228; Chromatics’ “Shadow” 96; closure, refusal of 186–​7; collaborators 2–​5, 6, 83; Crazy Clown Time 6; and Cruise 91–​2, 95–​101; crying, fascination with 196, 201n67; Del Rio’s “No Stars” 96; drumming and time 203–​5, 207–​8, 210–​14; electricity motif 40; emotional excesses in Twin Peaks 195–​6; evil, in Twin Peaks: The Return 121–​30; falling theme 60n20; fandom for Twin Peaks: The Return 34–​43; Floating Into the Night 91, 95, 96, 204–​5; hearing aids/​loss 135–​6, 138–​42, 145; Industrial Symphony No. 1 92, 97; Inland Empire 98; interest in music 5–​7; “Laura Palmer’s Theme” 165–​6, 167, 175–​6, 181, 186; “Lynchian” style 150, 172–​6; metaphysical sound design in Twin Peaks: The Return 149–​51, 153–​4, 159–​60; musical performance 63–​74; nostalgia 7, 48, 51–​5, 57–​9; social capital 77–​8, 80, 82–​8; sound design in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me 107–​8, 111–​13, 116–​17; sound design in Twin Peaks: The Return 121–​30, 135–​6, 138–​43, 145; surrealism 82; trailer for Twin Peaks: The Return 1; Twin Peaks audience laughter 200n63; Twin Peaks Theme 190; The Voice of Love 97; see also specific films and programs Lynch, Jennifer 227 MacLachlan, Kyle 83; background to Twin Peaks 2; Blue Velvet 2; Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me 117, 187 MacMillan, Lorna 187 Magnolias, Muddy, “American Woman” 213 Magritte, René: ceci n’est pas une pipe 168; La Trahison des images 98 Mallo, Agustín Fernández 124

Man Who Fell to Earth, The 94, 99 Marcus, Greil 114, 116 marketing see advertising Marshall, James 69–​70, 115, 191 Marx, Karl 79, 89n8, 169 Masnick, Michael 83 Mazullo, Mark 36, 38, 70 Mazzariello, Andrea 50 McCarthy, Annette 198n33 McCarthy, John P. 170, 171 McGill, Everett 186, 195 McGowan, Todd 127 McHale, Brian 98 McLuhan, Marshall 100 Mera, Miguel 208 Merton, Thomas 130 Metz, Walter 222, 227 mickey-​mousing 113 Miley, Mike 65 Milford, Douglas 229 Miller, Roger 84 Missing Pieces, The 149, 193, 199n49 Mittell, Jason 17, 18, 24, 25, 26 Moby 100; “Go” 100 Morrison, Van, Astral Weeks 95 Moses 152 motivic sound, in Twin Peaks: The Return 153, 154 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus: Die Zauberflöte 56; String Quartet No. 19 in C Major, K. 465 182, 182, 196n7 M Squad 209 Mulholland Drive: blue box symbol 160; “Crying” 140; “Llorando” 6, 65–​6, 70–​1, 98; “Lynchian” style 172; Lynch’s interest in music 5, 6; musical performance 65, 68; subjectivity 98; unseen 150 Murder In Space 20 Murray, Noel 24, 122 Nabokov, Vladimir, Pale Fire 98 Nash, Joy 223 Neff, John 7 Netflix 18 New Amsterdam 215–​16n7 New York Times, The: advertising for Twin Peaks 15; review of Twin Peaks 24; review of Twin Peaks: The Return 122 “next on” peritexts 17; Twin Peaks 23–​4, 27–​9 Nicholas, Charles 129

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Nicholson, Jack 200n54 Nine Inch Nails (NIN): music videos 6; “She’s Gone Away” 83–​4; Twin Peaks: The Return 6–​7, 63, 83–​4 Nochimson, Martha P. 112, 114 Norelli, Clare Nina 110–​11, 203, 204, 205, 211 nostalgia 48–​59, 63; Blue Velvet 73, 97; Twin Peaks 39, 48–​53, 55–​8, 59, 63, 73–​4, 97, 199n50, 212, 213; Twin Peaks: The Return 39, 48–​9, 50, 52, 55, 58–​9, 61n25, 146, 212, 213; Wild at Heart 73–​4 Oettingen, Arthur von 169 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest 200n54 Ontkean, Michael 2, 193 Oppenheimer, J. Robert 219 Orbison, Roy 6; “Crying” 6, 140 Orff, Carl: De temporum fine comoedia 185, 185; Die Bernauerin: Ein bairisches Stück 185, 185 Packard, Josie 190 parallel sound 151 paratexts 15–​19; advertising for Twin Peaks 20–​9 Penderecki, Krzysztof 221; Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima 9, 122, 218–​23 performance: social capital 80–​2; Twin Peaks 7–​8, 63–​74; Twin Peaks: The Return 7–​8, 63–​74, 80, 82–​8 peritexts 16, 17, 18; advertising for Twin Peaks 20–​1, 23–​9 Peter Gunn 209 Petermann, Fred 19 Pitre, Jake 36 Platters, The, “My Prayer” 194 Pollack, Lew, “Charmaine” 194, 200n54 Porter, Linda 143 Presley, Elvis: “Summer Kisses, Winter Tears” 97; Wild at Heart soundscape 6 “previously on” peritexts 17; Twin Peaks 23–​9 promos see advertising Psycho 151 Pythagoras 152, 169 Quayson, Ato 136, 142, 146 Quill, Greg 20

Radelet, Ruth 96, 101 Raimi, Ted 200n59 Rammstein: “Engel” 139; “Rammstein” 139–​40 Rapée, Ernö, “Charmaine” 194, 200n54 Reagan, Nancy 84 recording: late capitalism 78–​9; nostalgia 49–​51 Regni, Al 209 Return, The see Twin Peaks: The Return reuse of music 6; “Audrey’s Dance” 66, 72–​3, 214; “Falling” 51–​5; “Just You” 66, 68–​70, 69, 194–​5; “The World Spins” 55–​8, 97 Reznor, Trent 6; “She’s Gone Away” 84 rhizome 125–​9 Richardson, John: on Cruise 5, 91, 95; on Laura Palmer 67, 187, 190; “Laura Palmer Theme” 151, 191; sound design of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me 109–​10; Twin Peaks as postmodern parody of film noir 208 Roach, Max 204 Robie, Wendy 195 Rodgers, Richard, “Where or When” 60n19 Rodley, Chris 172, 174 Rodman, Ron 60nn15–​16, 72 Roeg, Nicolas 94, 99 room tone 3–​4, 34, 35, 44n5 Ross, Atticus, “She’s Gone Away” 84 Rossellini, Isabella 3, 60n20 Rota, Nino, Amarcord theme 139 Rothenberg, David 122 Sánchez, Antonio 216n7 Schaeffer, Pierre 152, 169 Schubert, Franz, String Quintet in C Major, D. 956/​Opus post. 163 197n11 Scott, Little Jimmy 100 Scrubs 215n7 Serres, Michel 140 Sesame Street 82 Shaar Murray, Charles 92, 94 Sheen, Erica 173 Sheinberg, Esti 195 Shining, The 221 Shins 74n6 Showtime 1 Sigman, Carl, “Pennsylvania 6–​5000” 194 Sigur Rós 82 Silva, Frank 110, 187

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240 Index

Simpsons, The 82 Slusser, David 112 Small, Christopher 177n15 Smith, Murray 2–​3 Snow, Mark 19 social capital: Twin Peaks 77–​8, 80, 82, 88; Twin Peaks: The Return 8, 77–​88 Sontag, Susan 170, 172 sound design: metaphysical 149–​60; Twin Peaks 36, 37, 40, 110, 113, 123; Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me 8, 107–​17; Twin Peaks: The Return 36–​7, 39–​43, 121, 135–​9, 141–​3, 149–​60 Spottiswoode, Raymond 167 Stefani, Gwen 88n1 Sterne, Jonathan 177n11 Stilwell, Robynn J. 53, 109, 113, 153 Straight Story, The 172 Strauss, Richard, Also sprach Zarathustra 184, 184 Strobel, Al 110 Struycken, Carel 187 subjective sound 8, 135–​46 Susca, Carlotta 64 Sutherland, Steve 99 Swift, Taylor 88n1 Szohr, Jessica 69 Tamblyn, Russ 191 Tate, Grady 203–​15 Taylor, Timothy 78 Tchaikovsky, Pyotr Ilyich, The Nutcracker 56 teasers see trailers Teavis, Walter, The Man Who Fell to Earth 94 Testament of Dr. Mabuse, The 151 This Mortal Coil 98 Thorne, John 117 Thought Gang 4; “A Real Indication” 113 time 203–​15 Tommy 95 Torrey, Jack 84–​5, 85 Total Request Live 82 trailers: paratextuality 16–​19; Twin Peaks: The Return 1 Trinity atomic bomb test 9, 122, 155, 218–​23, 229 Truman, Harry S. 219 Truppin, Andrea 151 Tucci, Louis 97 tulpas 100–​1 Turkle, Sherry 171 TV Guide 15

Twin Peaks: advertising 7, 15, 17, 19–​29; ambiguity of parody 193–​6; Americana 9, 173–​6; “Audrey’s Dance” 20, 48, 113, 174, 190, 193, 199n42, 206, 214; background 1–​2; “The Bookhouse Boys” 60n18, 174; Cactus Blossoms’ “Mississippi” video 85, 85; Chromatics’ “Shadow” video 96; closure, refusal of 186; collaborators 2–​3, 5; critical analyses 170–​2; Cruise 5, 8, 91–​3, 95–​8, 100–​1, 48–​51, 53, 55–​8, 59n4, 66–​8, 75n19, 174, 190; “Dance of the Dream Man” 23, 25, 26, 206, 209, 212; drumming and time 203–​10, 212; evil 122–​3, 128, 130; “Falling” 48–​9, 51–​3, 59n4, 190, 190; fandom 34, 38–​9, 40, 73, 165, 167–​8; firewood 4; “Freshly Squeezed” 60n18, 206; “Get Happy” 67; “Getting to Know You” 67; hearing aids/​loss 135–​7; as hypertext 129–​30; “Into the Night” 50, 59n4; Invitation to Love theme music 194, 194, 200n56; “Just You” 66, 68–​70, 69, 194–​5; “Laura Palmer’s Theme” 9, 25–​6, 48, 100, 110, 113, 151, 165–​8, 170, 173–​6, 181–​96, 182, 183, 184, 186, 219, 224–​7, 225; “Lynchian” style 150, 172; Lynch’s interest in music 6, 7; “Mairzy Doats” 67; musical performance 7–​8, 63–​74; music as compilation soundtrack 7, 48; “The Nightingale” 59n4, 174; nostalgia 39, 48–​53, 55–​8, 59, 63, 73–​4, 97, 199n50, 212, 213; “Pennsylvania 6–​5000” 194; pervasion and projection of music 190–​3; “Rockin’ Back Inside My Heart” 56, 59n4, 67, 97; setting 1; social capital 77–​8, 80, 82, 88; “Solo Percussion 1” 206–​7, 206, 208, 209, 210; “Solo Percussion 3” 210; sound design 36, 37, 40, 110, 113, 123; “Surrey With the Fringe on Top” 67; Theme 48, 190–​1, 191, 192, 199n42; themes 171–​2; Veils’ “Axolotl” video 86, 87; “The World Spins” 48–​9, 51, 55–​8, 59n4, 97 Twin PeaksArchive 205, 206, 211 Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me: “Agnus Dei” 227; ambiguity of parody 194, 195; “Audrey’s Theme” 111; authorial clarity, lack of 127; closure, refusal of 186, 187; collaborators 3, 5; Cruise 91, 95, 97, 99, 100; “Deer Meadow

240

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Shuffle” 211; “Don’t Do Anything (I Wouldn’t Do)” 111; drumming and time 203–​7, 210–​12; evil 122; “Falling” 53–​5; firewood 4; “Jacque’s Cabin/​ The Train Car” 117; Judy’s acousmatic personification 149; “Laura Palmer’s Theme” 110, 113, 115, 193, 199n50; The Missing Pieces 149, 193, 199n49; nostalgia 49, 50, 53–​5, 59, 60n22; “Opening Theme” 54; “The Pine Float” 111; “Questions in a World of Blue Velvet” 59n4, 97, 110, 115–​16; “A Real Indication” 107, 113–​14; redemption of Laura Palmer 227; sound design 8, 107–​17; and subjective sound in Twin Peaks: The Return 142; “The Voice of Love” 117, 187, 188 Twin Peaks: The Return: advertising 1; “American Woman” 213; “Audrey’s Dance” 66, 72–​3, 203, 214; chaos in 218–​23, 220; “Charmaine” 194, 200n54; closure, refusal of 186, 187; collaboration and exchange 3–​4, 81–​7; creation in 219, 223–​7, 224; Cruise 8, 92, 95–​6, 99–​100; drumming and time 203–​6, 210, 212–​14; evil 8, 121–​30, 154–​20, 212, 218, 219, 221; “Falling” 55, 91; fandom 7, 34–​43; “The Fireman” 9, 189, 218–​19, 224, 226, 226, 227; firewood 4; “Grady Groove” 205; hearing aids/​loss 135–​42, 145–​6; “Heartbreaking” 143, 145; “I Am (Old School Hip Hop Beat)” 157, 200n53; Judy’s acousmatic personification 8, 149–​60; “Just You” 66, 69, 69–​70, 71, 195; “Laura Palmer’s Theme” 191, 192, 193, 199n50; Lynch’s interest in music 6–​7; “Monica Belluci Dream” sequence 60n13; musical performance 7–​8, 63–​74, 80, 82–​8; music as compilation soundtrack 7, 48; “My Prayer” 194, 200n53; nostalgia 39, 48–​9, 50, 52, 55, 58–​9, 61n25, 146, 212, 213; “No Stars” 66, 70–​1; redemption of Laura Palmer 227–​8; social capital 8, 77–​88; sound as object 37–​8, 39, 43; sound design 36–​7, 39–​43, 121, 135–​9, 141–​3, 149–​60; subjective sound 8, 135–​46; “Take 5” 213; taxonomy of sound 153–​4; theme 214; title sequence 191, 192; “Tube Wind

Dream” 44n5; “The World Spins” 58, 96, 97 underscoring, in Twin Peaks: The Return 153, 159 unseen, power of the 150–​2 Until the End of the World 97 van Elferen, Isabella 36, 37, 226 Vedder, Eddie 63 Veils, The: “Axolotl” 86–​7, 87; Twin Peaks: The Return 83, 86, 87 Venn, Beth 125–​6 Veronica Mars 25 Vertigo 61n24 Viola, Bill 125 Von Dohlen, Lenny 114, 193 Wagner, Richard, Ring Cycle 169 Waits, Tom, “Bone Machine” 113 Wallace, David Foster 123, 172, 173 Wallenfels, Jessica 224 Walton, Saige 111, 116 Warhol, Andy 92–​3, 99, 101; Americana 173; Pork 93 Washington Post: advertising for Twin Peaks 15, 21; review of Twin Peaks 21 Watts, Naomi 98 Weinstock, Jeffrey Andrew 37, 43 Wender, Wim 97 Who, The, Tommy 95 Wild at Heart: collaborators 5; Lynch’s interest in music 5, 6; musical performance 65; non-​sequiturs 149; nostalgia 73–​4; Penderecki’s music 221 Willet, Gene 6, 65 Williams, John, “The Mission” 19 Williams, Rebecca 73 Winters, Ben 109 Wise, Ray 2, 110, 187 Wizard of Oz, The 151 word-​of-​mouth 21 Wright, Eugene 213 X-​Files 19 Yentob, Alan 94 YouTube 167, 177n10 Zabriski, Grace 2, 187, 195 Žižek, Slavoj 152

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