The tears are real

Before I start the 2025 installments of my column proper next week, I wanted to say a little about an artist, in the widest sense of the word, who opened my eyes to an entirely new way of looking at the world; or rather showed me that they way I looked at the world was both valid and worthy of expression.

I cannot recall whether I saw David Lynch’s version of Dune, which was first shown on British television in June 1989, before Twin Peaks, which began airing in October the following year, or the other way around (as I am sure Dune was shown on TV more than once the subsequent years), but I do recall that both had a profound effect on me.

Whether or not the plot of Dune or its execution made much sense was beside the point, and I did not care whether it closely followed a book that I had not read. As a highly impressionable teenager, I was utterly absorbed by Lynch’s visual style, and the scenes seemed to talk to me in a way that was beyond the script or the action; a way that was inexpressible in words but was instead ‘experienced’ (in much the same way that dance communicates in a manner that surpasses anything one could or might say).

While Dune had a major impact on me, it was Twin Peaks that irrevocably altered me as a human being and opened up a universe both out in the world and within myself that lay just beyond that in which I lived on a daily basis.

To label Twin Peaks as a soap opera, as some newspapers have in the wake of Lynch’s sad passing, is perhaps a literal truth, in the sense that that is how it may have been categorised in listings magazines (and admittedly the series did play on soap opera tropes), but is so far wide (or short) of the mark that it is practically laughable. It is also commonly said that the series explored the dark underbelly of rural American life, and did so by combining a horror-mystery with eccentric characters and moments of levity and outright humour.

All that is true, but for me the series went much further than that, and asked questions around what it means to be human and the nature of existence, through the introduction of philosophical, spiritual and even supernatural elements. In so doing, it went far beyond the confines of conventional storytelling and broke out into something far more fundamental and far-reaching, making the solving of the murder of Laura Palmer practically beside the point.

That it was told in an exaggerated style and with a saturated colour palette, resulting in scenes that were works of art in themselves; that Lynch interwove moments of respite through music that allowed the audience to breathe in the storylines even further; and that Lynch brought out wonderful, sensitive performances in his stars, simply added to the spectacle and drew me even further in.

And despite, or perhaps because of, the characters being drawn in such bold lines, I identified in some small way with all of them. I loved Audrey Horne, with her daring, her utter disregard for authority and her deep-seated vulnerability, perhaps more than any other and secretly (desperately) wished I could be her. Saying that, I would have happily settled for being Agent Cooper, Donna Hayward, and perhaps less obviously by the steadfast Ed Hurley (played by the always brilliant Everett McGill).

I was reminded of all of this recently when I embarked on a slow but steady rewatch of the entirety of Twin Peaks (including the feature film Fire Walk With Me) for the third time since that first, startling experience at the start of the 1990s. This time around, now much older and having produced several works of my own (which have revealed to me depths one must plumb to create anything of meaning), I saw and appreciated more in the series than I have ever done before.

I could go through scene after scene from across series one and two that affected me deeply at the time and stayed with me over the intervening decades (and so informed my love and appreciation of the third series), and there are many moments that shine a light on the more mysterious aspects of the story. But there is perhaps one that, for me, is emblematic of the creeping dread and horror of the series and indeed of life, once one begins to peel back the layers and search for answers to questions one does not know how to pose.

It is quite a simple shot and yet was used several times across the two (eventually three) series and film to great effect: the turning of the ceiling fan at the top of the stairs in the Palmer household. We immediately know that there is something awful up there, lurking in Laura’s bedroom and every child (and not an inconsiderable number of adults) has experienced moments of existential fear as they contemplated crossing a very familiar and utterly normal domestic space that has somehow become transformed into a no man’s land separating the comfort of family life from something of utter terror.

I lived that scene completely as a young person, and I still having a tingling sense of foreboding as I contemplate it now. That, to me, is master storytelling, and David Lynch could conjure up moments like that seemingly at will.

I cannot pick a favourite of his works, as I loved all that I saw (so far), and all have left me with indelible visions that have illuminated something within me as much as they did the work in question. Suffice to say that I longed to see his next project, whatever that might have been, but I hoped desperately that he could produce one more series of Twin Peaks.

That he will never, and I will never get to fulfil my fantasy of meeting him in the flesh, will me stay with me for the rest of my days.

Lynch was a genius at bringing together the mundane with the awful or ludicrous, and one mixing of the banal with the bizarre that I have always loved is that New Year staple in the entertainment universe is the award ceremony, more specifically the red carpet parade that pits celebrity against celebrity in a fashion show-down.

The New York Times, as always, provided a good overview of the best dressed of the 2025 Golden Globes, and I must give a shout-out to Michelle Yeoh and her gorgeous Balenciaga gown, alongside Demi Moore, whose Armani Privé was the choice of many fashion editors for best frock, as well as the over-the-top glory of Viola Davis’s outfit, the outré elegance of Tilda Swinton’s two-piece and the exuberance of Colman Domingo’s bow-adorned suit.