Twin Peaks https://stephenjones.blog/2018/10/17/twin-peaks/

It goes without saying that David Lynch is a genius.

In 1990 and 1991, in between orchestral tours and fieldwork trips to Hebei, and just as I met the great Li Qing for the first time, I spent much of my time back home in London glued to Twin peaks on TV.

As always, it’s both disturbing and enchanting, with a diverse cast of stunningly beautiful female and male characters, and

an uneasy strain of nostalgia that blends sentimentality with menace; hideous secrets chafing against the illusion of innocence […] postwar trauma buried beneath an aggressive normality.

Just a couple of clips to epitomise Lynch’s mastery. After the cliffhanger of the series 1 finale, just as we’re all desperate to know what happened to Agent Dale Cooper, the seemingly interminable room-service scene at the very opening of series 2 suspends the whole drama unbearably. You can read a detailed analysis here—this is the only brief clip currently on YouTube:

Long after the 1992 movie Twin peaks: fire walk with me, now I’m in a similar kind of suspense as I try and work out how to view the recent season 3 (also here).

And apart from his taste in coffee, we may note Agent Cooper’s affinity for Tibetan mysticism, as in this lecture, also typically startling within the plot:

Angelo Badalamenti’s soundtrack goes perfectly with the drama (this article has a link to the complete album on Spotify).

Badalamenti had already worked with Lynch on the haunting Blue velvet:

And the Julee Cruise song Mysteries of love:

For Thought Gang, Lynch’s band with Badalamenti, see here (with link to album only recently released!).

Lynch also has great taste in using earlier music (not “early music”), as in the magnificent ending of Wild at heart, with Richard Strauss morphing into Elvis.

For more on film music, and the importance of taking seriously all kinds of musicking throughout human societies, see here.