the ending of Fire Walk With Me

Death in my mind isn’t a finality. There’s a continuum: it’s like at night, you go to sleep and in the daytime you wake up, or whenever you wake up, and it’s a new day.

spoilers: Twin Peaks (including Fire Walk With Me and The Return). Notably, I assume you have seen these things, because I have no interest in summarizing them.

I was planning to write this for a while, but I don't really think there's a better time to do it. I am stating for posterity that it is 1:49 PM Eastern on January 16, 2025, and David Lynch just died. I'm crying on the grey couch in my living room. The thermostat is set to 68 degrees Fahrenheit, it is -2 degrees Celsius outside, and it is a cloudy day in Philadelphia. The trees are barren.

So, in the spirit of inscrutability, stream of consciousness writing with minimal editing, and not making a point, I want to talk about what his filmography and artistry meant to me.

It's difficult to overstate the impact which David Lynch's work had on the way that I view art. When I saw Eraserhead for the first time, I was fresh out of an ego death and desperately lonely. My work had a hole in it that I couldn't quite place - it was missing my signature lack of desire to please. I wanted my work to be understood, because I wanted to be understood. Eraserhead changed that for me - it was unapologetically inscrutable. Obviously, it had intent behind it, so much that it bled from the edges of Jack Nance's performance, the elevator, the prop design, the woman in the radiator. I saw the fundamental observation that I had been looking for; that art fundamentally was not didactic, that it didn't have to handhold you through its themes, and that interpretation is the spice of understanding. And, to be clear, out of what I've seen, I still consider Eraserhead to be his worst film. But that's less of a detriment to it, and more of a statement about how obnoxiously incredible everything else he has ever made is.

I think a lot about this section of the Wikipedia page for Inland Empire:

In an NPR interview, Dern recounted a conversation she had with one of the movie's new producers, Jeremy Alter. He asked if Lynch was joking when he requested a one-legged woman, a monkey and a lumberjack by 3:15. "Yeah, you're on a David Lynch movie, dude," Dern replied. "Sit back and enjoy the ride." Dern reported that by 4 p.m. they were shooting with the requested individuals.

This inscrutability gets at a very significant bugbear of mine: the discussion of David Lynch's works as either being "so weird and inscrutable", or, worse, the discussion of dream logic and dream interpretation. To be clear, I believe that Lynch's work does invite you to do dream interpretation on it; in fact, Inland Empire was literally constructed from his dreams. But, specifically, a lot of credence is brought to discussing what specific parts of his works are and aren't dreams; this is especially true of Mulholland Drive as people attempt to make sense of the ending.

I view David Lynch's work as a kind of impressionist painting for film. His works are far less about concrete things — and they are about concrete things, mind you — than the emotions they instill, at least to me. Inland Empire is a deeply inscrutable movie, but it's designed to be; it's a three-hour dissociation chamber of a film. Blue Velvet instills a general primal fear of Frank every time he goes on screen. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me is viscerally uncomfortable and horrifying. Wild at Heart makes you believe in the power of love again. They are about the things that they make you feel, and those feelings are important.

...Which is why I have to talk about the character of Laura Palmer, and the ending of Fire Walk With Me. Given my own history as a victim of grooming, it makes a lot of sense that I would feel very strongly about Laura's abuse by Leland. I saw the scared girl lashing out and living each day as if she was about to die, attempting to spend as much time away from her home as possible, and I saw myself reflected in it. It's why Fire Walk With Me is one of my favorite films, and why it impacts me so hard. It gets pretty close to giving me flashbacks, and then it goes further beyond.

But then, she dies. And she is shown an angel from beyond, one that beckons to her. She is the good in the world; at least that's how I read Part 8 of The Return, with the Laura orb being created as opposition to BOB. She did not deserve it, and she is able to capture a moment of reprieve. She has endured a life of hardship, but she is able to see her death as unjust. Even while David Lynch takes away the ability to see a future for Laura, he insists that she is able to know concretely that she did not deserve her fate. We do not see her beyond the fall of the curtain. She cries, and smiles. She knows, hand on her shoulder, that she is not alone.

...I wish that I could have the same surety about my abusers' wrongdoing, which is why I like to center that image. It's why Part 18 of The Return stuck so strongly with me. Of all the things that you could do, why would you remind her?

It's in this way that you can begin to understand the stereotype that trans women love David Lynch movies, or even more strongly, that David Lynch made cinema for the dolls. Even beyond Denise being a genuinely respectful character to the point where I believe that David Duchovny is the only cis man allowed to play a trans woman, beyond "change their hearts or die" being put in The Return as nothing but a show of solidarity, his films always had a silent and important respect for queerness. This is the most clear in Mulholland Drive, which is very easily read as a critique about the depiction of queer women in Hollywood (and also a lot of other things, I mean fuck, it's Mulholland Drive — Billy Ray Cyrus is there for fuck's sake). His art has always had a visceral transfeminine aura to them, especially given that he very consistently talked about stories of abuse, body horror, and dissociation. It's no wonder that trans women like this stuff! A lot of them have felt it! I know I have!

But, as The Return clearly states, while it's important to understand the past, it's often not good to live within nostalgia, whether that's nostalgia for a concrete thing or a maligned nostalgia for your own trauma. It won't be the same, but maybe it doesn't have to be. While I was watching The Return, I noticed all the tiny references to other David Lynch works. The entire cinematic language of The Return has far more to do with Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire than it has to do with Twin Peaks, which is very deliberate. Laura's mom is shown watching animals kill each other, an explicit Wild at Heart reference. Richard is basically Frank from Blue Velvet. All of Part 8 made me think higher of Eraserhead just because the tones are so similar. I can go on.

It is in this way that The Return felt, even before his death, like David Lynch's final work. It felt like a capstone to his filmography, which I have not even seen in its entirety, and am obligated to now. It was a statement on everything he's done. It was the last thing he did before he became too ill with emphysema to leave his home. I said multiple times while watching The Return that if this is the last major project he directs, I'm satisfied with it. It makes sense. I am really glad he got to make it.

I am, at least, glad to know he went out making art until the very end. May we all die that way, knowing that we managed to impact people concretely. The world is now not better or worse, but it is different, and it will forever be different. Maybe that's okay.

It started snowing outside my house just now. I am listening to Xiu Xiu's Into the Night. I just bought a keychain of Coop's hotel room marker.

I hope David Lynch sees his angel, and I hope there's coffee, donuts, and cigarettes where he's going.