That’s what the show Twin Peaks was like to me: a lucid dream (Picture: Netflix/Everett/REX/Shutterstock)
After first watching Twin Peaks in 2005, I had this recurring dream that I was Laura Palmer – the dead young woman the show revolves around.
In it, I was floating along a windy road towards the small American town Twin Peaks, to the theme music by Angelo Badalamenti – my body wrapped in plastic.
I stopped at the town sign that reads ‘Welcome to Twin Peaks, population 51,201’, looked out at the mountains and sighed. Then, my body dropped to the floor – a loud disturbing sound filling my ears.
The sound of my bones hitting the floor woke me up.
It was disturbing, but somewhat comforting. The soundscape of the theme music and the sound of owls hooting – something I’ve never experienced in a dream before or since – made me feel at ease. Surprisingly, it assured me I was dreaming.
Because that’s what the show Twin Peaks was like to me: a lucid dream.
And after the sudden death of co-creator David Lynch at 78 this week, I’ve been reflecting on that curious combined sensation of comfort and unease and how it shaped parts of my life.
Twin Peaks follows FBI special agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) as he investigates the murder of local teenager Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) (Picture: SKY TV)
Part horror-mystery, part small town soap opera, Twin Peaks launched in 1990 and ran for two seasons. In 1992 the feature film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me was released, followed by a long-awaited third season in 2017.
Lynch’s death has left me immeasurably sad. He had given me characters from the show to care for me when I needed them and a strange world to comfort me.
Twin Peaks follows FBI special agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) as he investigates the murder of local teenager Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee).
Viewers are introduced to a town with eccentric characters and a dark mystery – and throughout it, you have a feeling that something isn’t quite right.
When I finally got around to watching the show, nearly 15 years after its debut, the show infiltrated my mind so deeply, it appeared in my dreams. I was obsessed with it, but the reason didn’t become clear to me until much later.
I was emo and so I felt like no-one understood me (Picture: Sharan Dhaliwal)
In 2004, I studied Film and Animation at university and I was a creative dreamer back then. I wanted to make music videos inspired by my favourite band at the time, Tool, and I wanted them to be weird, subversive and dream-like.
I was emo and so I felt like no-one understood me. I had lots of angst and a creative vision for its output.
Then, one day something changed for me. In one of the rare lectures I didn’t skip, the teacher put on Eraserhead – a 1977 surrealist body horror by director David Lynch.
While most students in the theatre grimaced and gagged in disgust, I felt like I was under a spell.
The film itself is not something I would enjoy now – it’s about a man caring for his child who suffers from deformities and is possibly an alien. There are moments of violence and abuse which I now feel are too grotesque and insensitive to bear.
Sharan with Sherilyn Fenn who played Audrey Horne on the left and Mädchen Amick who played Shelly on the right (Picture: Sharan Dhaliwal)
But at the time, it reminded me what I was there for. To create art. To make people happy about sadness. I have since consumed all his work.
Although it wasn’t until later that year, watching Lynch’s Twin Peaks – immersed in a sense of melancholia, the fear and horror of death and a subversive need to be in a constant dream, away from Earth – that I realised I was depressed.
I was entering adulthood at university after having left home as a troublemaker, complete with a tongue piercing and freshly short hair – but it seemed that I couldn’t move past my angst. There was something holding me back, and it turns out it was sadness.
As a woman of colour, navigating my then-conservative parents, my changing body and developing eating disorders, I was vulnerable.
I felt lost to the world, misunderstood. My body was fragile, but covered in hair. I felt disgusting and unseemly – I felt like an alien.
I hadn’t come out – and wouldn’t until my 30’s – so I was hiding in this alien body, and relying on alcohol to make friends. Essentially, I was scared. I didn’t think the world would accept me.
Twin Peaks came into my life at the time I was struggling the most. It became the show that took me under its wing and gave me the dream world I wanted to escape to.
A world where young people were beautiful, soft and sad – but remembered. When they die, they are remembered. People cry over them. People lose their minds for them.
I wanted to be those characters and live with them.
In 2013, I got a tattoo to commemorate my love for Twin Peaks (Picture: Sharan Dhaliwal)
Audrey Horne (Sherilyn Fenn), a school friend of the show’s central figure Laura Palmer, was the woman I wanted to kiss.
I wanted to save the cafe waitress Shelly (Mädchen Amick), from her abusive husband. Lucy (Kimmy Robertson) and Andy (Harry Goaz) from the sheriff offices, had to be my best friends, there was no doubt there. I wanted to marry Agent Dale Cooper – or did I want to be him? I wasn’t sure.
This dream reality wrapped me up and warmly told me to live there for now. Until I was ready for the real world.
Eventually I was – I sought help, I ate, took medication. By that time, my university experience had been hazy and I barely graduated, but I survived it.
In 2013, I got a tattoo to commemorate my love for Twin Peaks. In a dream, Laura Palmer tells Agent Dale Cooper, ‘But sometimes my arms bend back’, which helps him solve her murder. So I got those words tattooed on the inside of my arm. It made me feel saved.
Now that Lynch has passed on, his work still remains with us and so does the world he left me.
Every time I need that warm embrace, that escape from reality, I put on the surreal world of Twin Peaks and chuckle with my strange friends.
Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing Ross.Mccafferty@metro.co.uk.
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