Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Satisfied Support Group

[eyeboogers]

The new Badalamenti material, great as it is, is also a lot more minimalist than his work on FWWM & the original run. I think all the new pieces are Angelo solo compared to the band performances on the earlier soundtracks.

We know that Grady Tate (no longer with us) played on the new material.

[Mr. Reindeer]

The new Badalamenti material, great as it is, is also a lot more minimalist than his work on FWWM & the original run. I think all the new pieces are Angelo solo compared to the band performances on the earlier soundtracks.

We know that Grady Tate (no longer with us) played on the new material.

Did he? I know Angelo created a new overdub/remix of the classic “Grady’s Waltz” track from the original series (redubbed “Grady Groove”). Which track has a new performance from him?

[claaa7]

i was also under the impression that Grady Groove submitted a few new cues to the series but this seems to have been debunkned... Unfortunately, but who knows!

[eyeboogers]

I remembered that a family member confirmed that one of the musicians from the original soundtrack was recording for The Return. I thought that was Grady Tate based on that track but it could be one of the others.

[mtwentz]

One of the reasons I was fascinated by TP:TR is that it really got me thinking about what may lie beyond life and death, the 'afterlife' so to speak.

Did anyone else have these thoughts? Specifically, the show started me thinking, 1. How would we know what is real and what is not in an afterlife? This came about when we speculated Rancho Rosa was a 'manufactured reality' and it occurred to me there was no way of knowing whether the world Cooper entered was 'real' in the conventional sense. 2. Would our memories be intact in any afterlife? How about our identity? In fact, the whole Dougie story, and then later 'Richard', struck me as a metaphor for reincarnation. 3. When we die, is it as if we are waking from a dream? This was evoked of course by the 'who is the dreamer' line.

There are actually a lot more thoughts that I had related to life, death and the afterlife, but those are the ones that come to mind immediately. There is something about this particular piece of art that really has me hungering digging into more books about philosophy, spirituality, etc.

[Hester Prynne]

Did anyone else have these thoughts?

Yes - for some reason I have been going back and reading Emily Dickinson's poems as a result of The Return - her preoccupation with death, the afterlife, and how death could also be interpreted in her poems as a metaphor for losing one's sanity. Everything is so open to interpretation in TR, I sometimes wonder if Cooper is actually dead or if he's still in the lodge, dreaming what is left of his sanity away. When Dougie cries watching Sonny Jim in the car, I felt like that was a part of Cooper recognizing his mortality. TR is so dense and layered with these themes.

[mtwentz]

Did anyone else have these thoughts?

Yes - for some reason I have been going back and reading Emily Dickinson's poems as a result of The Return - her preoccupation with death, the afterlife, and how death could also be interpreted in her poems as a metaphor for losing one's sanity. Everything is so open to interpretation in TR, I sometimes wonder if Cooper is actually dead or if he's still in the lodge, dreaming what is left of his sanity away. When Dougie cries watching Sonny Jim in the car, I felt like that was a part of Cooper recognizing his mortality. TR is so dense and layered with these themes.

I think there can be a case made that Cooper never left the Lodge, except in his head, since the last image from the show is Laura whispering in his ear while in the Red Room.

One of my way out there theories is that the entirety of Twin Peaks is a dream, and Cooper was always in the Red Room- it's the only place that is 'real'. Remember, when Cooper asked the Giant, 'Where do you come from'? the Giant shakes his head and retorts, 'Where have you GONE?'

Which makes me wonder, is there any place to really 'go' to? We are HERE after all, and it doesn't matter if the life we are living now is just God's dream, we are experiencing it, it feels real to us. That's why I cringe sometimes when posters say 'just a dream'. Who's to say dreams aren't as real as what we assume to be 'our waking life'.

[Rami Airola]

Which makes me wonder, is there any place to really 'go' to? We are HERE after all, and it doesn't matter if the life we are living now is just God's dream, we are experiencing it, it feels real to us. That's why I cringe sometimes when posters say 'just a dream'. Who's to say dreams aren't as real as what we assume to be 'our waking life'.

Atheists sometimes say your life after you are dead feels the same as how you felt before you were born: nothing.

But I often ask some questions after that:
Do you remember your last dream?
Have you ever seen a dream you felt was 100% true and where the feelings you felt were amazingly powerful and might've even felt bigger than in real life?
Have you ever remembered your dream right after you woke up and remembered it vividly while still laying on your bed but forgot the whole thing right after you moved yourself even a bit.

At least for me this happens very often. I see a dream that feels great and might even feel like real life. I wake up and I go through the dream while lying on my bed and I remember everything clearly. Then I move a bit and the whole dream disappears from my mind, but I still remember that I just remembered the dream and I remember some of the feelings I had in the dream. But as days go by, I don't even remember those situations that well anymore. I have forgotten those exact situations. I can't say what the day was. I can't say what kind of feelings I had. I can't say what kind of dream it was (a nightmare, a pleasant dream, a "wet dream"). The only thing I can remember is that those situations have happened many times.

So just because you can't remember what it felt like before you were born doesn't mean there wasn't anything before you were born.

Dreams go so very often to the deepest core of your being. Feelings in dreams can feel more powerful than in real life. And you often deal with things you can't quite put to words. You are often dealing with things in your subconscious and things that touch the deepest core of your very soul.

So, who knows if death will be falling into a neverending dream. If so, will that dream be the most pleasant thing you have ever felt or the most horrible nightmare you have ever gone through?

[LateReg]

One of the reasons I was fascinated by TP:TR is that it really got me thinking about what may lie beyond life and death, the 'afterlife' so to speak.

Did anyone else have these thoughts? Specifically, the show started me thinking, 1. How would we know what is real and what is not in an afterlife? This came about when we speculated Rancho Rosa was a 'manufactured reality' and it occurred to me there was no way of knowing whether the world Cooper entered was 'real' in the conventional sense. 2. Would our memories be intact in any afterlife? How about our identity? In fact, the whole Dougie story, and then later 'Richard', struck me as a metaphor for reincarnation. 3. When we die, is it as if we are waking from a dream? This was evoked of course by the 'who is the dreamer' line.

There are actually a lot more thoughts that I had related to life, death and the afterlife, but those are the ones that come to mind immediately. There is something about this particular piece of art that really has me hungering digging into more books about philosophy, spirituality, etc.

Thanks for this post. I agree with you and then some.

As it pertains to The Return itself, my thoughts of dreams and the afterlife and reality are that The Return itself is specializing in blurring the line between all of these. So the central question of "who is the dreamer" is more of an existential one than one that is supposed to be answered (though of course I have five or so theories on who the most likely dreamer might be!). I think that somehow everything happening in the show might be happening on multiple planes of reality, or projections of reality, but all are equally real. I believe that that is the point of never knowing if what we're seeing is real, or meta-real (beyond the frame yet within the frame), or dream, or subconscious projection, etc. And therefore my impression is that to really gain all you can from The Return you really have to let go of the need to differentiate between these different planes of being and kind of take it in all at once. It's a beautiful experience based in feeling and ideas when viewed that way. Which is not to say you also can't step into it from a strictly plot-based or meta-based perspective, just that to kind of let it wash over you really opens up certain channels so that everything can be felt or understood more intuitively, which is what I think at least Lynch was going for and how he operates. Where it gets so interesting is that I also think this is the most intellectually rigorous work of Lynch's career, and I think that has to be owed to the push/pull between he and Frost.

[chromereflectsimage]

One of the reasons I was fascinated by TP:TR is that it really got me thinking about what may lie beyond life and death, the 'afterlife' so to speak.

Did anyone else have these thoughts? Specifically, the show started me thinking, 1. How would we know what is real and what is not in an afterlife? This came about when we speculated Rancho Rosa was a 'manufactured reality' and it occurred to me there was no way of knowing whether the world Cooper entered was 'real' in the conventional sense. 2. Would our memories be intact in any afterlife? How about our identity? In fact, the whole Dougie story, and then later 'Richard', struck me as a metaphor for reincarnation. 3. When we die, is it as if we are waking from a dream? This was evoked of course by the 'who is the dreamer' line.

There are actually a lot more thoughts that I had related to life, death and the afterlife, but those are the ones that come to mind immediately. There is something about this particular piece of art that really has me hungering digging into more books about philosophy, spirituality, etc.

Tibetan Book of the dead. Cooper quotes it when Leland dies. It could be interpreted Cooper is in the Bardo, inbetween lives

Some parallels:
https://www.reddit.com/r/twinpeaks/comm ... s/dknx9p9/

David Lynch on the Consciousness and Afterlife. He talks about being 'confused' inbetween lives depending out enlightened you are, and that's why one should meditate while they are still with the body.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-aCQElLl1I

[chromereflectsimage]

One of the reasons I was fascinated by TP:TR is that it really got me thinking about what may lie beyond life and death, the 'afterlife' so to speak.

Did anyone else have these thoughts? Specifically, the show started me thinking, 1. How would we know what is real and what is not in an afterlife? This came about when we speculated Rancho Rosa was a 'manufactured reality' and it occurred to me there was no way of knowing whether the world Cooper entered was 'real' in the conventional sense. 2. Would our memories be intact in any afterlife? How about our identity? In fact, the whole Dougie story, and then later 'Richard', struck me as a metaphor for reincarnation. 3. When we die, is it as if we are waking from a dream? This was evoked of course by the 'who is the dreamer' line.

There are actually a lot more thoughts that I had related to life, death and the afterlife, but those are the ones that come to mind immediately. There is something about this particular piece of art that really has me hungering digging into more books about philosophy, spirituality, etc.

Thanks for this post. I agree with you and then some.

As it pertains to The Return itself, my thoughts of dreams and the afterlife and reality are that The Return itself is specializing in blurring the line between all of these. So the central question of "who is the dreamer" is more of an existential one than one that is supposed to be answered (though of course I have five or so theories on who the most likely dreamer might be!). I think that somehow everything happening in the show might be happening on multiple planes of reality, or projections of reality, but all are equally real. I believe that that is the point of never knowing if what we're seeing is real, or meta-real (beyond the frame yet within the frame), or dream, or subconscious projection, etc. And therefore my impression is that to really gain all you can from The Return you really have to let go of the need to differentiate between these different planes of being and kind of take it in all at once. It's a beautiful experience based in feeling and ideas when viewed that way. Which is not to say you also can't step into it from a strictly plot-based or meta-based perspective, just that to kind of let it wash over you really opens up certain channels so that everything can be felt or understood more intuitively, which is what I think at least Lynch was going for and how he operates. Where it gets so interesting is that I also think this is the most intellectually rigorous work of Lynch's career, and I think that has to be owed to the push/pull between he and Frost.

The dreamer is referring to the Hindu concept that life is God's dream. Like the end of Lynch's Ronnie Rocket script, Ronnie floats up gold into space, and all the other characters and the city merge inside Ronnie.

Ronnie turns into a gold egg, then the gold egg is seen floating in an endless ocean with a plethora of other golden eggs. Blue Lady on a Lily Pad in the ocean (probably Judy in TP) is dancing and touches the egg, and calls it Ronnie.

Basically, everyone is a dreamer with their own universe inside them, as well as being part of a higher being's dream. In Twin Peaks terms, I think that means either Judy or the Fireman.

[krishnanspace]

The dreamer is referring to the Hindu concept that life is God's dream..

This is something that I havent heard,hmm...

[Hester Prynne]

Which makes me wonder, is there any place to really 'go' to? We are HERE after all, and it doesn't matter if the life we are living now is just God's dream, we are experiencing it, it feels real to us. That's why I cringe sometimes when posters say 'just a dream'. Who's to say dreams aren't as real as what we assume to be 'our waking life'.

"We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded by a sleep."

[Snailhead]

Happy to say I'm now profoundly satisfied!

With all of my original expectations and disappointments about was the show was/wasn't out of the way, I have a much better appreciation for the work. I don't think it's Lynch's masterpiece, and I do think it could have been cut down just a wee bit in the editing room, but I do think it's brilliant and daring. Watching it on Blu Ray makes a big difference too, being able to see it as it was intended (I didn't have the best streaming service last year)