Mark Frost’s The Secret History of Twin Peaks, due in October 2016 as a book and on CD, will be a dossier of documents about our favorite Pacific Northwestern town, compiled by a mysterious person (we’ll discover his or her identity by the end of the book). Last weekend, for the first time ever, the author not only revealed a page from his upcoming tie-in book, but narrated it at The Ojai Valley Museum in his hometown.
Mark Frost picked a moment towards the end of the book, which is an account of Margaret Lanterman, our beloved Log Lady, delivering a eulogy for her friend Robert on the shores of Pearl Lakes, where they’re scattering his ashes. It’s an incredibly moving paragraph, especially knowing Catherine E. Coulson herself passed away shortly after the cameras started rolling again in September. And hearing it in Mark’s voice makes me hope the Twin Peaks co-creator will be part of the cast for the audiobook. October can’t come soon enough!
Mark Frost reads from The Secret History of Twin Peaks
Hat tip to Jason Eastman!
She holds her log and looks around. Really looks for some time before speaking. And she says:
This is now. And now will never be again.
Blue sky, cool air and green, green forests. Mountains, lakes and streams. The wind. Water. Earth. Air and fire. Red, yellow, purple and white. We come from the elemental and we return to it. There is change, but nothing is lost.
There is much we cannot see. Air, for instance. Most of the time. But knowing our next breath will follow our last without fail is an act of faith, is it not?
Dark times will always come as night follows day. A dark age will test us all. Each and everyone. Trust and do not tremble in the face of the unknown. It shall not remain unknown to you for long. Robert knows this now… as will we all in the sweet by and by.
(Transcription by Welcome to Twin Peaks)
Pre-order The Secret History Of Twin Peaks as a hardcover on Amazon.com (US $29.99*) and get this book on the day of release. Also available from Barnes & Noble, Amazon Canada, Amazon France, Amazon Italy, Amazon Germany, Amazon Brazil & Amazon Spain. Alternatively, the UK-based Book Depository is offering free worldwide shipping.
An Audio CD / Audiobook release with an estimated runtime of 10 hours is available for pre-order on Amazon.
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Join us in counting down to the release of Mark Frost's Twin Peaks book filled with secrets!
Posted by Welcome to Twin Peaks on Friday, February 19, 2016
Fire walk with 
I hope I’m not the only one who’s noticed that Twin Peaks somehow attracts people from all ethical points of view, with an amazing variety of degrees and types of self knowledge. Why do many people this Twin Peaks is a celebration of self-centered egotistical hedonism, I do not know. Maybe they’re just looking for any excuse? I had dropped out of the fandom for a few years after seeing the influx of pornographic elements (i.e. the clueless “Pink Room” obscenity/exploitative ripoff fest). I’ve never seen anything in Twin Peaks that promotes degeneracy or misogyny; in fact, I find the entire project ultimately fiercely pro-family, pro-sexual restraint and personal responsibility, and absolutely feminist. Yet, I keep running into people who think the show is somehow a Yea BOB Yea Murder! Yea Prostitution! club. Did we see the same show? Anyway, all that said, this excerpt is an example of why I’m hanging around despite the vast numbers or clueless, loud, vulgar people who Just. Don’t. Get. It. This is the real Twin Peaks.
(Sorry about any typos. They sneak in like owls…) A P.S. because some people might like this. This is a speech that I have in my notes as “The Cozy Manifesto.” That’s “cozy” as in “cozy mystery.” It was written by J. Michael Straczynski for one of the Murder, She Wrote movies. (The multi-talented Mr. Straczynski is known for many projects, including the current Twilight Zone comics series, on TV with Babylon 5, and at Marvel comics as part of the Spider-Man and Fantastic Four teams.) I hear some echoes of the ideas in the eulogy above. I also think the ideas echo with Twin Peaks’ placing value on the life of every human being, no matter how troubled. I can almost hear Cooper saying this…
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“Popular culture notwithstanding, there is such a thing as right and wrong. The taking of a human life for any reason is wrong. You can never nudge the moral compass far from its true North without losing something vital. A compass is essential for everyone, writers in particular… It’s important to me to pursue those who cross the line, and take another human life. In my investigating murders, I’ve seen some terrible things — so many of them it would take the wind out of anybody’s sails. But, because I am a romantic I still believe that we have the potential to be nobler than we know and better than we think, that the darkness I’ve seen is only a shadow on the potential of the human heart… I urge you to keep your heart’s compass on the true North of your dreams. Be free to be romantics, to reject cynicism, to believe that good will prevail and that those who do wrong will be punished. Because, when the hour of the wolf comes as it comes to all of us, sooner or later, those are the things that sustain us.”
Beautifully written and beautifully presented. If this is what we have to look forward to with the new season, we are in for a real treat.
Is it just me or does anyone else also think the Loglady is the ultimate Zen Buddhist?
Has anybody studied buddhism in the show and would like to share some resources?
Thanks
I think that many Buddhists would disagree with the “duality” presented in the show, i.e. thinking in terms of Black & White. On the other hand (there’s always another “hand” in Twin Peaks), there is plenty of overlap with Buddhism in the presentations of time and cause & effect. A lot of the Jungian synchronicity also echoes with Buddhism, I think. I wish someone well-studied in Buddhism (like my friend, Elaine!) who’s also a Peaker would write a great big long book on the subject! There’s a lot of Christianity woven in, too, of course — references to “the face of God,” the very Western/Aquinas-style angels, the many crosses that show up on characters (The pitiful woman with the ice pack at the Fat Trout trailer park in Fire Walk with Me, for instance. She’s covered in grime, but her gold cross is pristine and gleaming. The Catholic/Episcopal wall shrine at the Briggs’ home.) Also, the Black Lodge members meeting “above a convenience store,” has always struck me as an “evil twin” to the “upper room” where Jesus and the Apostles stayed in Jerusalem…
I had never thought about the “room above the convenience store like that before! Wow, Kell, wow! 🙂
*The Secret History of Twin Peaks*confirms that the Briggses are, indeed, Catholics. 🙂
Thanks Kell, what I specifically mean regarding zen buddhism are the Loglady intros (not sure if they can be seen as canonical), which this above eulogy reminds me strongly of.
I think Buddhism, via Tibet, definitely plays a role in the show. As do the many Christian motifs suggested by Kell. I also think it’s worth remembering that Lynch’s own spiritual views are shaped very much by the Advaita Vedanta tradition of Hinduism from which the Maharashi emerged before founding Transcendentalism. Interestingly, this tradition is explicitly nondualist. I would argue the show is about duality – meaning it explores the multiple manifestations of single entities (everyone/everything has two sides, doppelgängers, etc) in the yin/yang sense. But that the how does not embrace dualism, meaning the opposition & separation of the two sides as different forces. I think this is especially true when Lynch takes the reigns in the end. There is a sense in Lynch’s work, especially in his later films, that evil doesn’t simply need to be defeated and purged, it needs to be integrated – that is, recognized as an inherent part of the individual and only thus transcended. Lynch believes in the existence of a Unified Field in which berthing is beautiful and harmonious, and unhappiness comes not from being trapped outside of this (since there is nothing “outside”) but from not seein the beauty of the whole (both the Log Lady intros and Between Two Worlds with the Palmers strongly suggest this phenomenon is at work in Twin Peaks). You can see hints of this in Blue Velvet, which nonetheless ends with a fairly conventional showdown (followed by a happy “restorative” ending which many seem to find hollow, probably intentionally so). But this idea of grappling with duality as a path to discovering te greater unity is something that really begins in earnest for Lynch with Twin Peaks, with ep. 14 posing the problem (introducing the question of Leland/Bob – which one is in control, or is it both?) and really finding full expression in the finale (where Coop’s good side is subsumed when he runs from instead of faces his shadow self, as Hawk warmed him not to) and FWWM (in which Laura’s essential struggle is to discover that the complexity of her character does not preclude her from doing good and overcoming the limited, enclosed of Bob). This is also consistent with Frost’s main spiritual North Star on Twin Peaks, Theosopy, especially Alice Bailey’s writing on the dweller on the threshold and the angel of the presence.
*from which the Maharishi emerged before founding TRANSCENTAL MEDITATION, not TRANSCENDENTALISM. (Autocorrect plus my own misspelling I guess.)
Kell, here you can find a discussion Joel and I had on dugpa that might be of interest to you. Since the topic is bottomless I only tried to shed light on the very basic level on some limited religious aspects related to TP as I see them from my own religious/spiritual experience of studying Hindu and Buddhist texts and the Bible.
dugpa.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2954&p=38993&hilit=religious#p38993
Thank you all. I see, there is a lot more than just Zen Buddhism involved here. Is there some transcript of the Loglady intros? I have only diffuse memories. I remember a lot of nothingness/emptiness sort of thing. Also the above has a recurring topic which gets me right to zen, and that is being in the moment. Then we have concentration on the breathing as part of universal meditation technique to reach being in the moment…
I guess someone could write a phd thesis on this 😉
“Trust and do not tremble in the face of the unknown. It shall not remain unknown to you for long.”
Those two sentences confirmed my preorder. I can’t wait.