What Year Is This?

These are words most explicitly about Twin Peaks, and though I do not spoil anything beyond the pilot this will make considerably more sense if you’ve seen all of it! This piece is more for my own posterity and memory than anything else, but whoever wants to join me whenever I inevitably rewatch it all… sign up below <3

January 15th (16th technically, but this is how I mark it in my journals), about 2am

“Grief does funny things to time.” When he died I looked to art. What else could I have possibly done? My friends were helpful. My family was loving. But the only thing that really made any sense was when I reconnected with some old friends at his memorial service and compared it to Twin Peaks. To me, the earth-shattering unreality of bone-deep personal grief has always looked like Donna and James desperately trying to figure out why they find love for each other in Laura’s death. Grief has always looked like Sarah’s howl when Leland won’t/can’t tell her what happened. 

It took a conversation with a new(ish) friend to really figure out just one of the many ways his death has affected me. I talked to them about what radicalized me. What really broke me free from clinging to comfort and the status quo (this frames radicalization as a single event with an ending, a dishonest premise that obscures the constant inconstancy of any change) was the utter hostility with which my grief was subjected. I may not have needed to, but I pasted his obituary into emails to professors. To even consider the necessity of that is an inhumanity incongruous with a healthy society. A just reality would not subject a grieving heart to such indignities. Even navigating an airport with as little friction as that process can allow felt like a slap in the face to his memory and my beating heart. These necessities attempt to chip away at the beauty that we all carry. They frequently win. It is hard to see a world in which they stop winning. My heart continuing to beat is a testament to the possibility, but so many hearts no longer do. How can we live with that?

Writing this will help me figure out what Twin Peaks means to me. I have remarked before that my introduction to the show was catching my dad watching the roadhouse brawl in the pilot on one of our TVs. I don’t remember how old I was. I barely remember where in the house it was. I think it was the kitchen but I’m not sure. I think I’m going to credit catching that moment with a lot of my understanding of the world. That will be what made me fall in love with cinema. 

The night after I learned of his passing I stood in a parking lot with a bunch of friends. We had all dressed up in fancy clothes for no real reason. We stood in the parking lot and played games. Somebody climbed a tree. A car raced by at a dangerous speed. At least one of those people I never saw again. I think they transferred to a different school. 

My face is tingling as I write this. I finished The Return tonight. It’s why I started writing this. I’m not sure how much of anything this will be. That’s something I say a lot about my writing. I think I should stop. Every poet who puts pen to paper thinks something like that to themselves. When I read their words I never doubt that they should have shared it. I suppose sometimes things don’t connect. Fear of that would mean nothing ever gets shared. My whole body is trembling now. I can’t tell if it’s because of the writing or the art I’m trying to capture in the writing. Or the cold.

There’s snow outside. It’s been years since it really snowed here. It’s been years since I truly felt at home here. I don’t know if that means anything. I don’t really believe it does. I’m so adept at shifting into a new context as long as I feel settled. I need a bed and a desk. I’ve told myself that so many times yet every desk feels like a betrayal. Every bed feels untrue. 

My nerves haven’t been this raw since I tried to write a fucking Instagram post for him. I cried so much writing that. It felt really good. I also felt more insane and disconnected from the world than I’ve maybe ever felt before or since. That’s grief. 

Why did I write an Instagram post? Why do I post anything? Why do I write anything? Why do I say anything? The Instagram one is far more insidious. Commodified beyond comprehension. I wish it would all stop but it won’t until we make it. It won’t stop until we force it to look down the barrel of the gun it handed us when we emerged from the womb. Operation Prosperity Guardian. How different is that from any other gun that’s been pointed at a contradiction. They keep telling us that the things they do aren’t actually about what they are about. George Bush doesn’t care about Black people. Yet here he is on Alex Jones praising Hitler. I can’t blame that on anything other than capitalism yet there are billions of people who don’t go on Alex Jones and praise Hitler so some of it has to be his fault. 

Blood on the leaves was a Nina Simone song for a moment. A fleeting moment. Which moments aren’t fleeting. How could I possibly stand up from writing this. I don’t know what to do with these words. I’ll probably share them. Tomorrow I’ll look at the countdown to whenever I set them to publish and I’ll think about all the things I didn’t manage to fit into them. 

My words feel so inadequate, my connections feel so unarticulated. There are so many webs in my mind that I will never be able to fully explain to you. That’s the whole joy of it isn’t it. The untanglings and the explanations will never be finished. We can’t just step into the past and understand everything. You can’t just change one thing. You can’t look at anything in a vacuum. You can’t live without the world. I’m getting very tired.

Words will always be inadequate. So will images. So will sounds. So will feelings. It’s probably for the best that the only way things make sense are completely intangible and incommunicable abstractions that we can only ever make gestures at conveying to others. It’s the pursuit that makes us human. 

I’ve never been more scared. 

What year is this?