Novalis wrote:I like that in this part, Bobby has the wonderfully sheepish joy about him of one who realises he is finally of some use to the weird world of this investigation. Which then blooms to become full blown boyish enthusiasm tinged with memories of his late father. And then we have the belated discovery that his father believed in him wholeheartedly. That's a whole lot of redemption, in spadefuls. No wonder he's emotional.
Absolutely. I'm just loving Bobby in TPTR.
I did not enjoy how on-the-nose Hasting's 'parallel universes' are. To me it feels to lessen the ambiguity and narrow the potentials; having said that I will be fully aboard if this turns out to be either a red herring or a merely perspectival thing (Hastings' explanation not resolving definitively, and remaining only one of many).
This is exactly how I'm reading it. Hastings had a mystifying experience and he's trying to explain it the best he can, using his own preoccupations as a lens through which to view it. There's a lot of confirmation bias going on, here, and even Bill's own interpretation has wavered--just a few days ago, he was certain it was all a dream.
I think Hastings's "explanation" is part of a long line of largely contradictory, incomplete-at-best attempts we've seen throughout the show: there's Briggs's military investigation, MIKE's "inhabiting spirit" speech in Episode 13, Hawk's local legend perspective, Windom Earle's literalist speechifying, even The Arm's more abstract "from pure air" lecture. Twin Peaks is
full of explanations, and it has been from pretty early on (from Coop's "crack the code, solve the crime" forward). I don't see any reason to read Hastings's version as definitive. He's just another in a line of people trying to make sense these things.
With all this said about Hasting's exposition-heavy scene, Lillard's signature wailing, gurning and sobbing (which must surely have been one of the primary motivations for picking this actor) was truly delightful. In a profound existential crisis of this magnitude, he regresses to a simple bundle of frustrated desires. He wants to go scuba diving with his girlfriend. And that is it. The experiences he's been through have emptied him out. We were gonna go to the BA-BA-HA-MAS and that's pretty much all that's left of him.
I agree. Imprisonment has hit him hard, and it totally makes sense. I found the discomfort of the scene quite moving.
The way the secret capsule is opened is through resonance, not through pressing buttons. This is interesting to think about. Lynch is not pressing buttons, he's attuning various strings to sound in harmonic resonance. One thing recalls another not because they are objectively tied together, but because of their internal relations, their subterranean or unconscious correspondences.
This is a beautiful way of articulating what Lynch is up to with this project. His whole approach to storytelling is all about
resonance. I love that that is how Major Briggs's 25 year-old message in a bottle opened. And I love that only Bobby could have possibly made sense of the message within. Because, again, it
resonates. That's how things work in Twin Peaks.
There's a lot of Nachträglichkeit in part 9. Things that are reported as happening long, long, ago merely happened nominally, and only really fully happen when something in the present activates their memory.
I think this can be said, in fact, about all of TPTR, not just Part 9. Since the very start, it's seemed to me that the piece has been structured so that the traumas of Season 2 have remained, in a very real way, in a kind of stasis that need to be, as you say, "activated."
It's been fascinating me since the beginning, and I've had a hard time articulating it. Your mention of Nachträglichkeit has given me a bit of an ah-ha moment. This
is largely a piece about repressed traumas being reactivated by deferred action, and Lynch is dramatizing it in all kinds of beautiful ways.
Starting back in Part 1, it's like life in Twin Peaks has to be kickstarted back into action. It's Margaret's call that really starts things going, and she underlines this sense that, simply, it is
time to reopen these wounds. I've always felt like Hawk's visit to Glastonbury Grove is
why we're able to catch up with Coop in the red room--like Hawk had to
guide us there or it couldn't happen. I'm also fascinated by the fact that the Twin Peaks police station feels practically deserted at first. It seems as if Lucy, Andy, and Hawk are the only people there until Frank finally walks in and
guides us into the new control room where, suddenly, there's all this
activity. In a certain sense, I feel like the station
was actually deserted until that moment. Nothing could start happening now until the past started to be dealt with.
The whole damn town is gradually waking up this way, and I think Twin Peaks the town and
Twin Peaks the show (its music and iconic characters and locations, etc.) have this very specific relationship in TPTR, and it all revolves around Coop's reawakening--which has everything to do with reactivating past trauma and moving forward after a long period of stasis.