Around the dinner table, the conversation was lively. Thank you but for now, the forum has been archived.
I'm happy that you're happy 😛
I did read your theory; perhaps I should go back and look again.
Just a note on the discussion about scripts earlier in the thread; I got the dvd for xmas and I'm making my way through the Jason S. film extras, but in a couple of them somebody is seen reading to Lynch from the script as he's preparing to film a scene. There's also a bit where he gets FEROCIOUS about the fact he can't take time to experiment and "get dreamy". Which suggests there wasn't much opportunity for improvisation (although I think there was a lot more fluidity of structure when it came to the editing).
Ok, I like it too.
We're saying that time became un-moored, maybe skipping around wildly like a lug nut inside a hubcap while going 60mph; or is it more like the threads of events are braided into one rope of time but the rope is getting frayed and events and facts are bowing away and falling off from the linear.... Or maybe like an electrical flow through the power cable of reality that has been sheared and is now arcing electricity in stabbing branches. Or would it be more along the lines of a bullet through a sequoia tree and sap slowly bleeds out in multiple trickles down the trunk? Maybe a mirror that got bent to its limits and shattered with each shard now reflecting a slightly different image than any other.
metaphors help me.
This would definitely put some rhyme to the date errors. But do we have any other cinematic evidence of this happening? Are Diane's texts then repetitions (or simultaneous but 'parallel') of the same chain of events? Which would explain her time variations and slight detail changes. Mike asking, "Is it past, or is it future" can be understood this way.
Garland accurately foreseeing the future works with this theory. Especially because he may well be on the outside looking in.
What else falls into place? Not that I am doubting, but I'm very keen on having that same moment of clarity like Jack so convincingly described above. TwinPeaks! And thank you for Kairos. I can dig it.
I like all of these metaphors. I'm not sure if we're going to be able to really capture it in an image, though. I don't know. I am still thinking about if there is a way to get more precise about this. I think how I put it above is the clearest I have gotten my thoughts on this.
I am definitely approaching Diane's texts along these lines, and would say Yes with regard to the other things you mention. Also, there is the end of Part 7, with the shifting patrons at the RR. And maybe this could give a way of interpreting the appearance of a Diane double outside of the motel... But I am not sure exactly how as yet.
Some sort of déjà vu? Something along the lines of "I was here before".
Maybe deja vu, but I am thinking more along the lines of her having gotten out of the car to wait for Cooper to get a room in another timeline/reality, or something like that.
I've been thinking along the lines re: Diane seeing herself that it isn't meant to be literal, rather symbolic or a metaphor. From the moment Diane is in the car with Coop she seems anxious and has obvious misgivings about whatever plan Coop is pushing ahead into.
So when Diane sees herself at the motel Lynch uses a POV shot, which of course not only is a matter of showing what someone sees, but also of subjectivity - just because the character can see something, doesn't mean we can see it or that if we were there in that world that we would see it. Its Diane's interior applied to the exterior dimension filtered through Diane's perception. And I think she sees herself as a way for her anxiety to warn her off taking whatever action Coop is planning - possibly validated by the awkward sexual encounter and Diane/Linda's running away the next day (if it is the next day - what day is this?!?).
Yeah, I could see that. I'm not sure if the two readings are mutually exclusive, or, I mean, it's ambiguous.
I definitely felt a cognitive dissonance moment when Diane saw herself. It's like when you do something very frightening, or very very naughty it's almost like you're watching yourself do that thing from afar. Like, I'm not me.
I had the same reaction recently when reading it again. I've realized it's intentional though. Those aren't the only seeming descrepancies there either.
Time is funny in Twin Peaks and other places.
The answers are in the many enriching writings on thesearchforthezone.com.
🙂
You know, after reading some of the articles linked on thesearchforthezone.com , I figured that because they explain things like multiverse theory and the flow of time in the 5th dimension and so on, that this could explain some of the descrepancies that we've all found in the book at least for age. I assumed that Lynch had some involvement with this book or at least that Frost was respecting Lynch's narrative decisions.
After looking a little closer though I found something that really troubles me. And that's the fact that Frost wrote in TFD that in the alternative timeline, where Laura is interrupted by Cooper and never makes it to Jacques' cabin or the traincar, that Leo still goes on to the traincar - the way he phrases it is to say that even though Laura was not killed in the train car and never made it there, that Leo still went on to it. This makes no sense to me because Leo never went to the traincar in the first place. Laura, Ronette, Leland and Bob were there, never Leo. So him saying this for me most decidedly looks like a glaring error on his part. Even if we buy the mulitple timeline or even multiverse theory, where all possibilities could be real at the same time, it still would be a very random thing to include in the book and only stirs confusion.
Another one I found, and I think I am remembering this correctly, is that a photo of Hank Jennings in the RR, has a caption that says it was his "last day" at the RR. The photo is a still from season 1 and it was actually the first day he started working there after getting out of prison.
So these, along with Johnny Horne's age, and the major problem with Annie's age, are starting to not really look like they were intentionally changed to suit some kind of weird N-dimensional time shifts in TP. They look like a guy who can't remember what the fuck happened in the original series that he himself wrote! For me it's just about unforgivable that with material like this he would trust his memory and not fact-check it for himself which would take all of an hour.
There's alot of really ham-handed prose and exposition in TFD which frankly I never liked. It was neat to get some expansion there and certainly to find out more about the engimatic Judy, but it reads like something he wrote over a weekend and completely lacks nuance and mystery. It's artless and kind of embarrassing, especially employing a character's speculative thought as a facile device for expose over and over again.
Looking over transcripts from interviews with Sabrina Sutherland, she says Lynch had exactly zero to do with it and hadn't even read it. He certainly didn't sign off on it and the book shows no kind of collaboration or respect for Lynch's material so that really dissapoints me. At this point I reject it as canon because the contradictions are too many and too serious.
To be fair, the actual passage is:
"The next day, Ronette Pulaski—the girl who was abducted and nearly killed along with Laura, and who had apparently still been taken captive—escaped and ended up in the hospital after being found wandering along a railroad trestle, just like “before.” But she also testified that Laura had wandered off into the woods before she and Leo and Jacques entered the railroad car.
Laura was never there."
It doesn't actually say Leo still went to the train car, but that Ronette did and futhermore she was still assaulted there. It's just some of the circumstances of the assault have changed: Leo and Jacques are now the guilty parties, not Leiland.
The way I read that whole section is this; although time can be meddled with, it also finds a way to keep certain fundamental events the same. Leiland still kills himself, Ronette still ends up in the train car, Coop still comes to town. The importance of these events in the grand scheme of existence is one that will be debated for a long long time, especially in light of episode 8, but I certainly don't think the end of the book clashes with the show. The Secret History you could make a good case for being non canon, and the first half of The First Dossier (the sections on Donna and family, and Annie) but I think the end chimes quite nicely with the show.
If we're talking 'ownership' of Twin Peaks, its as much Frost's as it is Lynch's. He's entitled to tell his version of the tale if he wants. I suppose the good thing about the books is, if you want, they can be as much canon or as easily ignored as you want them to be. The show will always be the core. But I like that the books are there.
I'm really glad we have the books to read and enjoy, they sustain me now that the telly show is done and doesn't appear to be coming back. I would be quite happy to see the Twin Peaks universe continue in written form, but I suspect that's not likely to happen. For now, I'll just continue to enjoy all the offerings that we've had.
Fire walk with 
