Mysteries Abound

Will I ever unravel the secrets of Twin Peaks?

Heather Hart’s The Oracle of Lacuna

A wise man once told me that mystery is the most essential ingredient of life, for the following reason: mystery creates wonder, which leads to curiosity, which in turn provides the ground for our desire to understand who and what we truly are.

The search for meaning at the heart of life brings us to the contemplation of an eternal enigma. Mysteries are the stories we tell ourselves to contend with life's resistance to our longing for answers. Mysteries abound.

— The Secret History of Twin Peaks

I think I loved mystery before any other kind of story. My yellow Nancy Drew hardcovers were the pride and joy of my childhood collection. My fondness for these stories was so great that I wanted to be part of them — talk to suspects, look for clues, find the truth. Mysteries always seem to invite the onlooker in, for better or worse: Are you paying attention?

From the moment the plastic was pulled back to reveal the lifeless face of the town’s homecoming queen, Mark Frost and David Lynch’s Twin Peaks became a cultural landmark of the ’90s. The ubiquitous question: Who killed Laura Palmer? Over the course of its run, Twin Peaks toyed with the tropes of soap operas and crime fiction before eventually settling into cult classic status. This month, I’ve been thinking a lot about how Twin Peaks’ creators approached the particular idea of its mystery.

One of the great appeals of the mystery genre is the fantasy of a solution. There’s that moment where the detective gathers up the community at the end of the book and makes the accusation, carefully detailing the clues that add up to the conclusion, and then the perpetrator is led away — the dream of justice served. A formula like this is soothing because it validates an idea of how the world should work — when something bad happens, there will be consequences. People will be held responsible.

I wrote the above paragraph in an earlier draft and then remembered I interviewed the mystery writer Sara Gran on this exact topic earlier this year:

I think mysteries are a sort of machine for alleviating anxiety. There’s tension, tension, tension, and then there’s a resolution… I also think the idea of things having solutions is soothing. Most mysteries in life do not have solutions. We don’t know why we live. We don’t know why we die. In LA, we don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow—we’re back on fire watch again. The whole city might burn down. We don’t know. So it’s nice to have this break from that, where you are going to get an answer. You are going to get a solution.

And there’s something about the pilot episode of Twin Peaks and its infamous trope of the murdered homecoming queen that invites the idea of that solution. But one of the things that remains so fascinating to me is Twin Peaks’ seeming resistance to the simplicity of formula + solution, a dynamic that appears to originate within the distinctly different artistic visions of its co-creators:

Lynch: When we wrote Twin Peaks, we never intended the murder of Laura Palmer to be solved … Maybe in the last episode.

Frost: I know David was always enamored of that notion, but I felt we had an obligation to the audience to give them some resolution. There was a bit of tension between him and me.

The complexity of this co-creator relationship is compelling to me, though it isn’t necessarily unique to Twin Peaks. There will always be some blend of magic and friction between two different people trying, each in their own imperfect way, to make anything together — music, film, a life. David Canfield further explores the nature of Frost and Lynch’s collaboration in a deep-dive for Slate:

From the outset, the creative partnership between Mark Frost and David Lynch seemed just peculiar enough to work. Frost, a writer for network shows including Hill Street Blues and The Equalizer, had a conventional background, schooled in the rules of quality broadcast television. Lynch—who, when he met Frost in 1986, had made a handful of movies, including the disturbing, surrealist Eraserhead—was not so … mainstream, to put it mildly… ABC executives exerted pressure on the two to resolve their central mystery, a prospect that Frost supported and Lynch did not.

Maybe that central tension is why I keep returning to Twin Peaks — that impulse to solve colliding with the possibility of never knowing.

Perhaps the most Lynchian room I’ve been in, at Seattle’s Central Library

For months I’ve wanted to write about what David Lynch’s work has meant to me — ever since that day in January when I got off a Zoom call and found my various feeds flooded with memorial. It never gets easier to learn of the death of an artist whose work mattered deeply to you through some reposted headline in the middle of your mundane daily routine. My phone kept autocorrecting his surname: RIP David lunch. Death itself is weird, the way it brushes right up against life — another everyday mystery we, the living, can’t seem to solve.

As the year wore on I hoped I would gain more of a sense of what I wanted to say about him. I resolved to read more books and do more research and so understand Twin Peaks better — this strange and mysterious thing that had opened up a door in the possibilities of storytelling for me. But the further I progressed in my quest to understand, the less I felt I knew for sure. The screenwriter Richard Hatem was referring to the mystery behind the West Virginian Mothman legend when he said the following, but honestly it pretty much sums how I feel trying to understand Twin Peaks:

The harder you look at it and the more sense you try to make out of it, in a weird way, the further you get away from any answer.

Even if there’s so much that still eludes me about Lynch and his vision, at least I have the comfort of knowing that a simple explanation was probably the last thing he wanted. After all, some mysteries don’t get solved. But I think making art can be a way of filling the gaps between the answers we yearn for and the place we’re standing now.

It has been a year of learning how to sit with discomfort and live with paradoxes, realizing that I can’t solve or fix everything. And Lynch has been my guide. Twin Peaks taught me that it’s important not to look away just because something is unpleasant, that we should still try to engage with things we can’t explain or understand.

In many ways, the art that Lynch made is in opposition to my instincts. I guess that could be why I’m so drawn to him — he pushes me to write and grow in new directions, defies my attempts at logic, challenges that impulse to solve. The truth is, I still don’t know what to do with Twin Peaks. Somehow it makes me laugh, infuriates me, and also soothes my soul in the midst of this trying year. But I’m reminded of something the man himself said once, back in 1989:

I don’t know why people expect art to make sense when they accept the fact that life doesn’t make sense.

And that’s a fair point, Mr. Lunch. Fair point indeed.

If you are like me and enjoy exhaustive personality quizzes, click here

Bonus Rabbit Holes!

• Keep reading about mysteries. Sometimes I accidentally do research in advance for something I don’t know yet that I’m going to write. My Sara Gran interview (about her latest book + what draws us to mysteries) and my Mothman Prophecies essay (about the film + a favorite cryptid legend) both ended up feeling very connected here.

• Order this Twin Peaks zine (then flip to the back and begin with the activity section)! I am completely OBSESSED with the Twin Peaks issue of TV Grime, a TV Guide-style walk through every show that was inspired by Twin Peaks. (Did anyone else watch Wolf Lake? Eerie, Indiana?) Also includes clever lil Peaks-themed activities like a maze, paper doll, and puzzles!

• Let the Twin Peaks soundtrack keep you company while you work. Playlist here, and here’s a bonus video of composer Angelo Badalamenti talking about how he wrote “Laura Palmer’s Theme.” (I’m always curious about composer’s processes and found it a fascinating peek behind the scenes!)

• Play a downloadable game inspired by Twin Peaks. Oh man, I was so excited to discover Little Town! Made for storytellers. I haven’t had the chance to properly dive in yet, but here’s a video that should give you an idea of the play style if you’re new to games in this vein.

• Read your way further into the Twin Peaks universe. So far I’ve gotten to The Secret History of Twin Peaks, Twin Peaks: The Final Dossier, The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer, and The Autobiography of FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper: My Life, My Tapes. Next on my list: Twin Peaks and Philosophy and Reflections: An Oral History of Twin Peaks. There’s also an entire David Lynch issue of Bright Wall/Dark Room that’s worth a read!

• Listen to Kyle MacLachlan’s performance of the Diane… The Twin Peaks Tapes of Agent Cooper audiobook. Just a little over $5 on libro.fm + you’re supporting indie bookstores! There’s something about Cooper’s outlook on life that’s so soothing to me; he makes a great driving companion.

• Replace one of your social media feeds with the Wikipedia app. Quit doomscrolling and hop on Wikipedia so you can find anecdotes like this about your favorite movies (poor David but also I need to know what Angelo did):

A few fun announcements to close out this month’s Microfascination:

I’m now the editor of Split/Lip Press’ Lost/Found imprint, which gives out-of-print books a new home! Authors can submit their out-of-print books for consideration starting on September 3. This imprint is very much an experiment, but I’m hopeful that readers will enjoy going on this journey of (re)discovery with me. There are so many authors with wonderful books that went out of print, so many small presses with beautiful legacies, and I can’t wait to share what I find!

Connecticut folks! I’m hosting a free zine workshop on September 25 at Wesleyan RJ Julia. RSVP to come hang out and make a zine!

My short story about a girl who finds her doppelganger on the internet got the nicest shoutout in Lit Mag News. (Thank you, Jessica!) We’re approaching a year since the story was published and I’m so happy that people are still discovering it.

All right y’all, see you in September!