0:00Alright, would you like to lead us into episode 9? Uh, yeah. Sure. Hello everybody. Let me just pick up my tape recorder. Hello, hello. Uh, HV listeners. Uh, it's me, it's John and I am back in the town of Twin Peaks, uh, continuing the investigation into season two of David Lynch. Uh, David Lynch is Magnum, Opus of a television show joined as always by the log lady of the crypt. Ash, how are you my friends? Oh, I'm, I'm doing, I'm doing really good and my, my log has something to tell the audience. Um, and if you listen carefully, you can hear it.
1:08Uh, but I will endeavor to translate in any event. Um, I believe you can tell me if I've gotten this message wrong, uh, but the message from the log is that more people need to go to horrorvangot.com or patreon.com slash horror vanguard. And for the price of just a few bucks a month, get bonus episodes, get early access and host of other goodies. Is, am I close? Am I close? That feels like a lot of nail it, nail it. Uh, we are talking about episode nine. All, uh, for, uh, the other numbering system, episode two, coma.
1:52This is, this is not another Twin Peaks officially has a third, a second season, according to our podcast. Uh, the show itself has two numbering systems, technically three numbering systems because there are total number of episodes of which this is episode 10. This is episode two of season two. And this is also episode nine, uh, based on the naming convention of naming them episodes, not counting the pilot. Uh, well, after last week's reintroduction to the Denizens, citizens and tormented psychological monsters of the sleepy American town, we continue our adventures into, uh, the kind of see thing, libidinal underbelly of American consciousness.
2:43Um, where would you, where would you like to start? Why would you like to begin? That is a wonderful way to put this to borrow a phrase from our friends at Weird Signal in one of their recent episodes. Uh, uh, this is fucked America vibes here. Yes, 100%. Uh, uh, uh, but really, but really like, but really like that's the universal category of American vibes, right? That's true. Like, is the only have one flavor. Yeah, isn't the whole, isn't the whole point of the show in some ways? This idea that like the, the American ittle actually, if you, if you just, peer under the floorboards, just a little bit, there's all of this kind of weird psychological torment, just frothing away.
3:27Oh, you said weird psychological torment. And that means wacky sound effects here. We get to talk about major brigs. Yeah. Let's talk about the psychological warfare expert. Let's talk about the US military.
3:48So, so, uh, in this episode, major brigs has an encounter with a log lady, right? And I think it's really interesting to just, just oppose these two characters because the log lady is a true mystic in the sense of the word, right? And she is, she is absolutely communing with a barely traceable plane of thought. You know, however, we want to explore the intricacies of that, whether we approach it from a, a spiritual, religious, philosophical, a transcendental, however we want to look at it. Like she is, she is weaving the cosmic threads of our fates into, into a tapestry we can barely understand.
4:21And then you've got major brigs who like, can, can very easily quote some kind of like, say, you can say things that have the shape of philosophy. But when laid over his life and his existence, like the log lady is a true aesthetic, you know, like she, she lives this half sane world communing with this sawed off log. And the major brigs is a major in the United States military, right? But we get this, this really interesting exchange where, uh, the log lady says, oh, you, you wear many shiny things and, uh, SMF use proud and major brigs said achievement is its own reward.
5:02Pride merely obscures it. And I think that that's really interesting because on its surface, like that's a very commendable thing to say, right? Achievement is its own reward. Pride does obscure, you know, the joy you should have in your accomplishments to a certain degree, you know, depending on how pride is expressed, right? But like on another, on another level, like what are those metals signify? What exactly is he proud of? You know, is he, is he proud of like doing doing some coups in South America? Like is that the thing for which he has great pride?
5:35You know, like, like his, the locus of his pride comes from one of the darkest possible places. His achievements are out there. Absolutely, absolutely. There is this, there's this notion of like, so what does service mean? What does service mean if a kind of big theme of this episode is secrecy, I think. You don't really know what major brigs does. You don't really know what a lot of the clues that Cooper is working out from being given by the giant really means. You don't really know yet how all of the pieces start to fit together, although by this, the end of this episode, the next one we do get more of a kind of feeling for it.
6:22And like to me, one of the big kind of themes of Twin Peaks as a show is about this notion that like there is no such thing as a secret. That every secret, like every secret, like has a kind of like psychic pressure that it exerts and eventually it manifests itself in some way.
6:55And this is why I think what you have immediately after that is you have a weird scene with the the the ledges, right? That's in, is this the, yeah, that isn't coming. Yes. And the Ben and Jerry talking about the ledges, they're talking trying to, they're trying to decide which, you know, there's the fake ledger which showed that the mill was turning a profit. And there's the actual ledger which shows that it was having money kind of siphoned out of it. And they have this, like honestly, it's wild because it's basically an incredibly Marxist point, which is that the transformation of a natural resource into an asset does all kinds of like weird, occult stuff. So they basically go, they don't really know what to do with these two kind of arcane texts, texts that they've got in front of them. And yeah, they could burn either. And there would be advantages to that. What do you think about the stuff with the with the ledges with the finance, the finance angle? I think I think that that scene I think is really fun. It's like this really exciting sequence. And we kind of see New Leland, one of the things that Leland is going to be up to lately in season two. And that's he is kind of the court gesture to the to the Baron Horne's empire.
8:18It's it's it's going to be his role now to kind of like just just hoist the horns by their own petard in a way. And like, you know, because we have them and they're trying to cook the books, right? They're trying to figure out which which of these documents will be better for them financially and better for them in terms of the white collar crime that they're up to. Like what color crime and quotes there because it is the far worse type of crime in terms of damage to society. And then you've got Leland who comes in and Leland like Leland did the the right thing. Leland called their business partners and said there'd been a big disaster in the local area that that could have wide-ranging repercussions in the community. You know, like Leland, Leland did the thing that a that a noble person would do, right? Like noble of hearts, not of class standing, you know? And like but know that accidentally screws all their crime stuff because their crime stuff relies on like you were saying this network is complicated network of lies that that are now so complex that like the value of the truth or the lies kind of irrelevant. Yeah. Yeah, it is a fun scene. It's a fun scene because like the thing about Ben and Jerry is that they they love scheming they they like middle-aged men in Twin Peaks love to do crime. They they love they love to do crime.
9:46Yeah, crime and adultery. Those are the two. Yeah, crime adultery and kind of work out their weird sexual neuroses. That's what they that's what they really love to do. Both of them just have such kind of glee in what they're doing. Right. Yeah, they seem they seem so genuinely happy with like not it's not even the profit anymore. It's just the the the chicaneery and the farce of their own little criminal empire. And I think I think this brings up this brings up one hijacks quite nicely. Yes. And this the kind of the literalizing the literal like construction of this idea of like crime that that which happens in secret and their own sort of like their own libidinal economy right to put it in delusional terms right. It's all bound up in one hijacks.
10:47It's bound up in in essentially the domination and exploitation of women. And this is what's happened to Audrey. Audrey Audrey has ended up there because Audrey is trying to get involved in the investigation and find out what's happened to Laura. So so what do you think of that the way that the show kind of interlinks the the the kind of social and sexual dynamics of these characters with with crime and with one hijacks particularly. So I think this is really interesting right because like so we we learn in early season two that the the proprietor of one hijacks is none other than Ben Horn. Dun dun dun there's a twist. And so he's he's inadvertently now continuing his kind of arc as this insesuous gothic patriarch he has now forced his own daughter into sex work.
11:47You know like inadvertently through his own financial machinations he has brought this reality about. And I think what are the interesting things that this this you know like can be used to highlight is like what what is the kind of like what are the hinge points of like quote unquote criminality in sex work right like like like sex work is heavily criminalized it is something that is you know like the the the legal branch breaks upon its back and like it's it's sex workers right like they're the people who experience the force of the crime. But what is kind of like causing crime and like like a step back not not people who are doing acts that we deem to be criminal but like why is the thing a crime. And we see it's it's Ben Horn Ben Horn is the reason why it's a crime. And that's because Ben Horn can can can shell game his finances through crime in a way that he could never do through a legal a legal place or let alone a unionized shop unionized one hijacks.
12:49Yeah I mean once again right once again there's this doubling between Orchery and Laura um which uh is kind of crystal clear Laura at Laura ended up at one hijacks uh Ordry's there now there's the kind of like strange Freudian familial relationships all of this is getting played out again there's a kind of like circularity to a lot of this right there's a there's a sort of wheel of fate as it were um that the ordry is kind of going through and as you pointed out last episode it's a deeply kind of gothic narrative um right she's she is entrapped in the labyrinth of of the the gothic melodrama that is being uh you know a young woman in
13:35Twin Peaks um yeah I guess I guess what do you think of the way that the show is kind of handling that her her initial arc yeah I think I think this is this is again this is again really interesting because still decades later like I think a lot of people have a read on Ordry horn that's like way too simplistic as as the kind of wayward troublemaker bad girl when no like the show is very explicit that that's Laura Laura is the wayward troublemaker bad girl who kind of hurts everyone around her and is in his chaotic and unorganized. Ordry is simply young you know like she just doesn't have the years and the experience yet to to better correlate her intent with her action and and so it appears to be chaotic but it's really just an experience and I think like we're we're we're kind of like fleshing that distinction out much more clearly as we go into this you know in like it's it's Audrey who is able to like stay at one hijacks longer to kind of like pull the crime tether out of that one to draw out her father's involvement to do these things whereas like Laura was kind of just swept up in it for a brief moment and then her own chaos swept her away and I think the distinction between the the two of them and this is something that I think appears in a lot of like classic gothic literature too is there's this kind of like paradoxical agency to a lot of gothic heroines that they are heavily confined confined into appropriately enough a metaphoric or literal patriarchal labyrinth but they have a a strange agency within that and I think we're we're seeing a contemporary riff on that with Audrey yeah and again I think the the show is super interesting for a a kind of serious engagement with like I kind of a psychological horror often often does treat women particularly incredibly especially young women very very simplistically and very very kind of condescendingly and I think what's really what's really good about the show is
15:44Audrey I'm very fond of Audrey's character particularly because I think it's just she's one of the most interesting interesting and complex and conflicted people in the show um but there was something else that happens in this episode which I thought you particularly would have some interesting things to say about is like we start talking about Tibet again ancient Tibetan history let's go this this is like we start to get some exciting stuff Albert's character is is becoming increasingly awesome you're awesome I don't know that's a bit too finished increasingly interesting well it's a double act there's a double act that's starting to happen yes yes so so in this in this episode we we see the first kind of like a real blossoming of of that tree that's been nurtured between
16:40Albert and coop and and coop is talking about events of to Tibetan history that occurred thousands of years ago and and to which Albert responds we're like oh I prefer what does he say it was um you see says something like I prefer to focus what's going on in our own century and then Cooper is like ah you you may be surprised at how much they have to do with each other you know like doing the standard kind of Cooper Cooper Rai commentary but I I really really love this as a juxtaposition of of two two entirely separate ways of engaging with the world and the kind of like very interesting criticisms and utilities we can kind of pull out of each of them yeah so for example uh for for example they're both they're both correct like like like what you like in any good duality right like the real answer isn't one of them has a better position than the other it's it's synthesizing the two together right like like like Cooper Cooper is correct there is so much we can pull from learning from the past is literally all we have you know but like you know like his his counterpart is also correct Albert's also right if all we did is kick the can of the past back and forth we would be nothing more than like um actually if Archduke France for Dan would have been assassinated two months later um this blip blip blip blip blip blip blip blip blip and it would have been nothing more than like comic book fanboy commentary about the the machinations destroying our planet
18:18I mean isn't the point though so all right a slightly left field take hit it the show treats the investigation of crime as essentially an investigation of historiography yes the point is to try and it's not to find out guilt because there is no such thing as individual guilt really not really but actually to understand something of the kind of processes of immediate lived experience history history is something that is made lived and then died through by ordinary people right so really what they're having a debate about is modes of historiography uh and this it's the kind of conflict between presentism and a sort of mystic historicism and you're completely right the obvious answer is to is to see those things as kind of constantly informing one another but this is the this is the big the big kind of like driving force between Alfred and Cooper is that they're fundamentally distinct epistemologies
19:30so so you are one absolutely right as always and two you wrote something really interesting in our notes that i'm very excited for you to to crack into and that's the question of madness well at a certain point right this is something that that comes up with these characters like Alfred who have like more traditional modes of knowing the question becomes what does it mean to know something right so what's interesting is like the way that a lot of the town treats the log lady for example this is someone who who clearly has like major breaks has visions people have visions they report visions to the police and it's like none of this is ever dismissed none of this is there's no kind of like arch rationalist who goes well actually Neil degrass Tyson has not filtered into the consciousness of twin peaks right and so like at at what point and the the person that i'm thinking of here is like um
20:33uh i'm just making sure which which um uh while you're looking that up Neil degrass Tyson voice um actually the owls are what they seem because they're just birds well yeah it's his it's Cooper's ex partner right Cooper's ex partner has gone mad has gone mad right has been institutionalized and it's like hang on in the world of twin peaks what does that mean and secondly the other question seems to be what kind of knowledge does that give you access to because it isn't necessarily pathologized right existing on a slightly different plane of reality it doesn't seem to be pathologized in in this show so it's really interesting that Cooper actually seems quite nervous by the idea that like his ex partner might be in the mix somehow um what do you think about that oh i have tics i think i think the show uh that this particular aspect of the show offers a secret approach to like mad liberation because we like not not only do we have characters like the log lady right in a character who will be introduced to shortly who has like severe agoraphobia but like in these people are treated very normally you know like like there there is difference uh but there there is not negation or criminality or discrediting embedded into that difference right you know like like like the log like you know like people people react strangely to the presence of the log lady carrying a log at first but it's the kind of strangeness where you would react strangely to like i don't know a juggler walking up and talking to you it's just kind of not common it's quite literally strange but everyone takes her seriously everyone recognizes that there's something to be had in her account of the world you know like there there there there is like a deeper social value held within the log lady that only she can express and then we also see with major brygues that these phenomena happen in degrees but are very common you know if we widen the field of that degree that even people who are a high ranking government officials can have these kinds of idiosyncratic perceptions these visions yeah and i think the fact that you know like a coup's former partner is you know like incarcerated for his insanity it has has crossed some kind of line what what that kind of like to me expresses and like the thing that i kind of like pull out of that is not a distinction in kind but a distinction in proximity you know like his his insanity is no longer useful or is running contra to the mechanizations of state and power therefore it needs to be incarcerated and held away right it is it is running against the grain of the direction in which capital points when all of these other people are like like you said reporting their their visions to the police and well this is a little problematic in the context of twin peaks because of how they code good and evil but i think it is it does kind of like flush out a good introduction to a discourse well let's kind of dig into this and let's talk about let's talk about things be not being what they seem particularly owls yes so this is one of the clues that the Cooper is given by the the giant that appears in the first episode of the second season the owls are not what they seem um how do how do you interpret this so so i think um just really quickly though you just brought to my mind the one of the other clues of the giant gives him is without chemicals he points which which is you know like we have the one armed man ceasing to take his medication and then gaining a much more powerful a site that he was repressing which again fits into a lot of like mad liberation discourse and i think that slots in really well to the owls are not what they seem in that discourse but rather than following that line i'm gonna pivot to talk about funco pops again uh because like the thing the thing that really sticks out to me is that the owls are not what they seem is one of the most popular lines from twin peaks it has become to be its own signifier for the show right like like along with the zigzag stripy pattern and and you know like damn fine like it it has become to embody aspects of the show that supersede the limitations of the show itself and i think it's interesting it's how that's come to happen right there's a kind of hollowness to the owls are not what they seem right there's a kind of like funcified degradation that has happened to that term to that like entry point into a mystic discussion is now just like something printed on the side of a mug from an etsy shop there's a kind of reduction happening here what are your what are some of your thoughts well i think that's a good kind of matter point about the wider cultural discourse about the show um but there's there's there's there's a couple of ways that we can read this right so like we can read it almost cosmologically because major briggs comes along and part of his job is to he is that the gal you know the the spy of the galaxy uh and he reports that their radio telescopes are picked up on this message the owls are not what they seem something is trying to get in touch um secondly we can kind of read this in the context of kind of the natural world right the the idyllic mountains and forests and waterfalls of twin peaks um when do the owls appear they mostly appear at dusk in the show um and there is a sort of like there's a kind of liminality to them as creatures right in this space and at that time they appear on the kind of edge of things it's a very common idea to use birds as omens of things right so i think it's interesting to think about how it how it has become a kind of like cultural shorthand but i also think that maybe it's p this is going to make me sound very very very uh kind of pretentious i think but like i love i love whatever you're about to say i think people miss the fact that twin peaks isn't some ways very straightforward right it has it has a very distinct aesthetic and it has a very kind of um uh it has a very uh deliberate way of constructing its stories and that's true of all david lynch projects but it's also it is also very clear about its its themes and the ideas that it's trying to explore it's very clear about all of that um but i think a lot of people like to just take the kind of weird moments and actually just remove them from the wider aesthetic frames it gives them meaning which is you know this is exactly what you were kind of critiquing and so i'm like can we not just see it as a sort of warning right it's a warning it's a warning about something it could be and like any good bit of imaginative writing you can read it on multiple levels between not being kind of just taken in by the adiallic picture of nature that you're surrounded by to seeing these hours kind of harbingers as omens as representatives of something to seeing them as a kind of like marker of a kind of cosmological disturbance well i think i i think your reading is perfect because the owl as a symbol fits into a broader like set of american cosmological signifiers and and the owl is is often mapped back onto the alien gray right like it and this and this appears in a whole host of novels and movies and like ufology right like the the connection between whether you want to read like sightings of alien grays as people misinterpreting seeing an owl which owls can often be very large and they have the kind of oval shaped head if you will with the large reflective eyes or you know kind of more spooky connections therein and i think it's this is a very inviting phrase right like it's it's not only it has that seller door quality it's just pleasurable to say the owls are not what they seem and and you're absolutely right it is inviting us to kind of step beyond the natural right like to to step beyond reductionist readings and simplistic things into kind of attain a wider sight and speaking of attaining a wider sight which is like to talk about musicals yes can we can we talk about just you and I can we talk about that we have just you and I are talking hey zing who's on third well i i i i thought there's been a lot of music in these opening two episodes and i was curious to know what do you think about that that song particularly so this this i think this is one of those things where now because we have twin peaks the return it kind of fundamentally changed how i see that forever because twin peaks the return is almost in a way like return to american bandstand it's american bandstand for fucked america you know like it's we have this like pageantry of american excess decay and collapse and then you get a band performing you know then trend resonant pops up on stage and hits you with the number like and we're we kind of see the the the predecessors of that it twin peaks is a deeply mutual musical show you know a geolo angelo bottle of mentees score it defines a whole aspect of twin peaks and twin peaks would arguably so much weaker without it and now we have like the show is kind of like we have these like diogenic music sources emerging from the show like i just think this is like phenomenal where what are some of your thoughts on this one yeah i think i think there's this super interesting use of diogenetic and non-diogenetic music in the show and i it's it's like it's genuinely like haunting little moment between the three donno donno james and maddie and it's a great way of actually it's called just you and i and there are three of them you know it's just like it's just like what a what a lovely moment of just like a visual narrative right setting up all these intense like emotional psychological pressures and fracture points between the three of them and unsurprisingly this all blows up particularly in the next episode um so i love it i think is a great it's a sort of a really great enhancement of the um constant use of music and yet bad lamentees kind of noirish jazz touches in a lot of the school i just still remain just like unbeatably good and i think i think i think also uh just you and i ties into a lot of your your comments unlike the gothic and doppelgangers within twin peaks because who whose you know maddie is it's the same actresses laurea palmer it's literally Laura's double in the show and we have like again that's another layer of this kind of like gothic doubling that's going on here we have we have james hurley falling who wasn't love with Laura now falling in love with Laura's doppelganger and in so many ways like the whole town is a doppelganger of laurea palmer and the song is just like i you know it's meant to be a love song but in so many ways it's a dirge to twin peaks oh what a great point what a great point um should we i mean we've gone over half an hour again should we should we wrap it there let's let's let's do oh thank you everyone we're joining us for season two episode nine coma of our twin peaks retrospective uh we look forward to joining you tomorrow for season two episode three episode ten episode i don't remember uh the man behind the glass
32:51you die it is that we have more questions than we have answers a new episode new episode
33:03you're going to kick out of this one if the long history of the reception of owls or reveals one thing it is that we have more questions than we have answers