THE DISSONANCE OF DESPAIR, HARMONIES OF HOPE & A SEASON IN HELL WITH THE MAN FROM ANOTHER PLACE
American animated comedy classic The Simpsons has always had a knack for witty satires of pop culture. Episode 3 of Season 9, “Lisa’s Sax” first aired on October 19th, 1997, but the main storyline is a flashback episode to the year 1990, recounting how and when Lisa was first given her beloved instrument. Many references specific to 1990 are shown, and Twin Peaks makes a comical appearance. In true Simpsons fashion, it’s a fairly accurate summary of how many people responded to the show.
Homer Simpson sits alone on the family room couch, leaning forward in rapt attention, his eyes wide as plates, fixated on the TV. Smooth saxophone jazz music with finger-snapping percussion exactly like the music of The Red Room on Twin Peaks is heard before we see the screen he’s zoned in on. We see Homer watching a lot of TV on The Simpsons, but never posed like this on the very literal edge of his seat. Cut to a close up of Homer’s face, looking intense but confused, and we hear the TV dialogue in voiceover;
“That’s damn fine coffee you got here in Twin Peaks, and damn fine cherry pie!”
The camera cuts to the TV, but instead of seeing Agent Cooper (who delivers the famous ‘damn fine coffee’ line in Season 1 Episode 1, “Traces To Nowhere”) we instead see a field under a moonlit night sky, where the Giant (a memorable supporting character) and a white horse (your guess is as good as mine) are slow dancing together under a tree. The tree has a traffic light stuck on red swinging from a branch. The dancers twirl, then the Giant dips the horse backward.
The jazzy tune crescendos and we cut back to Homer, now smiling and laughing, saying out loud to no one around him -
“Brilliant! Heh heh heh. I have absolutely no idea what’s going on.”
No other show before or since is as simultaneously entertaining and bewildering as Twin Peaks. That’s why we’re still talking about it.
What is the meaning of creamed corn?
HAUNTED SYMPHONIES OF HOPE & DESPAIR
From a production value standpoint, Twin Peaks delivers on every aspect; the set design, the casting, the writing, the acting and more. One element that really stands out is the music. All of the score was composed by Angelo Badalamenti, in close collaboration with David Lynch.
Angelo was born in Brooklyn in 1937 and started studying piano at the age of eight. He began scoring films in the 1970’s and in 1986 was hired to assist actor Isabella Rossellini with her singing for the title track of the film Blue Velvet, directed by David Lynch. Using David’s lyrics and Angelo’s music, the two collaborated to compose the song “Mysteries of Love”, featuring vocals by American singer Julee Cruise. The three would go on to create incredible music together in the following years, and Blue Velvet was where it all started. Badalamenti’s role in the production grew from being hired as a vocal coach to eventually serving as music supervisor and composer for the full score. It was abundantly obvious that Lynch and Badalamenti shared a unique chemistry and harmonic synergy.
Angelo then delivered the scores for A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987) and the holiday classic National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989). Soon after he got the invite from his old friend David to get together and work on music for a new show he was developing with Mark Frost.
In a DVD bonus feature for the Twin Peaks: Definitive Gold Box Edition Badalamenti sat in his music room behind a heavy dark keyboard and explained how history was made.
Gesturing toward the imposing instrument, Angelo recalls;
“This is the keyboard that all the major themes were created for Twin Peaks. It’s an old Fender Rhodes, and um, kinda beat up, and David would sit right over here, right to the right of me, and we would put a little cassette, just about over here on this keyboard, just keep it in record and just keep it playing.”
“David would sit here and 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 uh, 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, you know, just get me into that beautiful darkness with the soft wind.”
“And I started playing… (hits deep ominous minor key notes low on the keyboard, the opening of “Laura Palmer’s Theme”)... And David would say “Angelo that’s great! I love that, that’s a good mood, but can you play it slower?” And I’d say “Slower David? OK…” And I’d go… (plays the same melody at half speed)... He says “That’s it, that’s a good tempo, just keep it going, slow 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. Then he would say “OK, Angelo, now we gotta 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, but get something that matches her…” And I just segued into this… (plays ascending major note scale, slowly moving the melody higher)... And he’d say; “Oh that’s it! That’s very beautiful! I can see her, and she’s walking towards the camera, and she’s coming closer, just keep building it, just keep building it… (continues playing higher up the major scale)... And she’s getting close, now reach some kind of climax…” And I would go… (hits a very high bright major note far up the right side of the keyboard) And he’d say (exclaiming) “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… (begins playing descending melody) so fall down, keep falling, keep falling, and falling… Now go back into the dark woods…” (returns to playing the ominous opening minor tones from the start)... (As David) “That’s it, keep going…just keep it going…very quiet and mysterious… (keeps playing with his eyes closed, finishes the melody and looks up, as if returning from a trance in another world)...”
“David got up. He gave me a big hug. He said “Angelo… (smiling) that’s Twin Peaks.” I said “OK David, I’ll go home and I’ll work on it.” 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.”
Every song on the soundtrack is compelling and worth listening to beyond the context of watching the show. The music is spectacular start to finish.
“Twin Peaks Theme” is the title sequence song that welcomes you to the world with soft piano and plucked guitar notes booming with echo and reverb, followed by a rising melody that crescendos blissfully.
“Laura Palmer’s Theme” is the haunted centerpiece that leaves you unnerved by its contrast of ethereal beauty mixed with the minor dissonance of the damned.
“Audrey’s Dance” is the shadowy lounge jazz drifter driven by loud finger-snapping sounds for percussion, a walking bass line and sudden stabs of brass.
“The Nightingale” is a heroic anthem of guitar chords drenched in reverb featuring soaring vocals from Julee Cruise. It’s not all sadness in this world, and the exceptional performance from Cruise makes this a slow-dance love song of reassurance and hope.
“Freshly Squeezed” returns to the finger-snapping and walking bass theme that makes those sounds a sonic signature of the series.
“The Bookhouse Boys” introduces a saxophone melody, but the echo and reverb is turned up so far it creates an eerie distance of a place far away before rollicking drums and reverb soaked guitar bounce along, bringing back the finger-snapping and walking bass signatures.
“Into The Night” has a faster tempo repeated piano riff and a hi-hat cymbal keeping pace as Julee Cruise adds her breathy vocals, calling out to a missing lover while the music lulls you into the gloom.
“Night Life In Twin Peaks” is a spacey instrumental, again based around a light jazz style drum kit of brushes on cymbals. Strange dissonant off-notes played on horns and brass float in and out, like ghosts in and over and through the trees.
“Dance Of The Dream Man” is almost the same music as “Audrey’s Dance”, but with a faster tempo and a more pronounced, stronger saxophone line. It could be the perfect music for a dark red velvet jazz club, or the dark red velvet dimension of claustrophobic confusion known as The Red Room.
“Love Theme From Twin Peaks” is very similar to “Laura Palmer’s Theme” in melody, but played on layered flutes at the forefront of the mix, with soft piano in the background. The notes are nearly identical but the lighter tone lifts it toward a more romantic, less dreadful place, though the sadness is never completely gone or forgotten.
“Falling”, the last song of the soundtrack, is the “Twin Peaks Theme” with lyrics by David Lynch sung by Julee Cruise. The full version of “Falling” actually came first and was released in 1989 as the lead single from Julee’s debut studio album, Floating Into The Night. The instrumental was used as the theme song for the show a year later. Julee’s version was a big hit at the time, charting in fifteen countries and going all the way to Number One in Australia in April of 1991.
In his October 1990 review of new singles for the UK magazine Music Week, Nick Robinson offered “Every now and again a truly beautiful single comes along transfixing everyone that hears it… The sparse haunting instrumentation combines with Cruise's dreamy vocals to produce a stunning piece of music.”
Badalamenti earned an industry trophy for his efforts in 1990 at the 32nd Annual Grammy Awards, taking home the win for Best Pop Instrumental Performance for “Twin Peaks Theme.” He continued a very successful collaborative run with David, going on to score Lynch’s films Wild At Heart (1990), Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992), Lost Highway (1997), The Straight Story (1999) and Mulholland Drive (2001), in addition to other various short films and episodic projects.
The importance of Angelo’s musical contributions to David’s cinematic worlds can’t be overstated. They are forever united in originality, emotive majesty and atmospheres of mystery. The two remained close friends up to Angelo’s passing of natural causes in 2022 at age 85.
WHERE WE’RE FROM, THE BIRDS SING A PRETTY SONG
One of the most foreboding and disturbing locations in the series is The Red Room, which seems to exist not in the physical town of Twin Peaks but in a supernatural dimension outside of our known realm. You don’t want to go there.
It’s also not really a room, but an unclear series of hallways around a central “waiting room” with shifting furniture, dark brown and white chevron style printed floors and a stubborn denial of the known laws of physics and time. The name derives from the most characteristic feature; long dark red velvet curtains (suspended from somewhere we never see) that serve as walls and distinguish the hallways from the room.
The Red Room was first created as part of the extra twenty minutes of footage tacked on to the pilot episode to wrap up the story with a clear ending so the international version could be sold as a TV movie to European markets. ABC executives requested this in case the show bombed so they’d have a way to recoup costs outside of the U.S. The first time we see the Red Room in the standard series occurs in Season 1, Episode 2, “Zen, or the Skill to Catch a Killer”.
Agent Cooper has a dream. Some theorists argue that the entirety of Twin Peaks is a dream. If that’s true then this is a nightmare. Cooper finds himself sitting in a chair, visibly aged to what we are told is now 25 years older. In the corner of the red velvet walled room, a small man in a red suit is shaking, his back turned to us. Cooper’s now heavily wrinkled face turns from the shaking figure to see a fresh-faced Laura Palmer sitting across from him, dressed in evening wear and smiling languidly. The small man turns around from the corner, claps his hands and proclaims “Let’s rock!”
Thankfully you have subtitles to understand what he says, because from here on none of the language cadence follows what we hear in the waking world. This off-putting effect was achieved during production by having the actors film their physical movements and speak their dialogue in reverse on set, then play the backwards footage in reverse, rendering everything in a twisted, warped netherworld corruption of real time and space. The technique is known as Phonetic Reversal - per Wikipedia: the process of reversing the phonemes or phones of a word or phrase.
The star of this sequence is actor Michael J. Anderson, whose character is later referred to as The Man from Another Place. Some say he’s a demon. He later refers to himself as ‘The Arm’. Could this be a reference to the suspect in Laura’s murder called Mike, the traveling shoe salesman who cut off his own arm because it had a tattoo reading ‘Fire, Walk With Me’? Are you beginning to feel confused and uncomfortable? The Man from Another Place is not your friend.
He walks over, sits down on a black chair across from Cooper and starts rubbing his hands together. A high-pitched ringing sound is heard growing in volume. Cooper looks at Laura, who raises the pointer finger of her right hand and touches her nose. The ringing continues. A shadow of a triangular shape passes across the red curtain behind them.
The small man stops rubbing his hands, beams with a smile and announces to Cooper, in his backwards-contorted voice, “I’ve got good news. That gum you like is going to…come back in style.” Cooper, still silent, looks back at Laura. The man explains, “She’s my cousin.”
Cooper gives him a look of disbelief, and he continues, “But doesn’t she look… ahl-most exactly like Laura Palmer?” Cooper counters, “But, it is Laura Palmer…” - then turns to her to ask, his voice trembling but without the warping effect - “Are you Laura Palmer?”
The blonde woman, in the backwards-forwards voice, replies “I feel like I know her, but sometimes my arms bend back.”
The small man says “She’s filled with secrets.” He rolls his eyes upward and continues, “Where we’re from, the birds sing a pretty song… and there’s always music in the air.” The music from “Dance Of The Dream Man” begins to play.
A strobe light begins flashing from somewhere out of frame. The small man in the red suit can hear the music, as he rises from the chair and starts dancing around, swinging his bent arms and grooving out on his own across the floor. Bright white strobes of light flash over him. The saxophone meanders and so does his tiny body.
The woman (Laura?) gets up from her chair, glides over to Cooper, tilts his chin toward hers and kisses him lightly on the lips. They both smile. She puts her hand up to cover her mouth and whispers in his ear. The small man continues his solo dance. The smile fades from Cooper’s face.
Cooper abruptly awakens in his bed at the Great Northern Hotel.
We were so swept away by the music of the soundtrack for this installment that our exploration into the sinister mythology of owls is moving to next week’s issue. Stay tuned for the conclusion of our trilogy seven moons from now as we finally outline why -
YOU NEED TO VISIT TWIN PEAKS - PART THREE
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