Love in the land of Twin Peaks

When I think about David Lynch, I think about love. This isn’t just some­thing that arose from the over­whelm­ing out­pour­ing of love for the film­mak­er and his work just after his death and what would have been his 79^th birth­day, but some­thing that trails through every sin­gle one of his works. Even more than his films – like Wild at Heart which unabashed­ly declares ​“don’t turn away from love” – this notion is strongest in his beloved series, Twin Peaks.

Asked to pick a sin­gle scene, I went through my inter­nal Rolodex of Twin Peaks scenes I adore. In these dozens of hours worth of tele­vi­sion, select­ing any one moment doesn’t feel like enough, but the theme I kept com­ing back to was love. It’s in cer­tain line read­ings – like the Log Lady ask­ing ​“Is love the blood of the uni­verse?” or Major Brig­gs fear­ing ​“the pos­si­bil­i­ty that love is not enough” – or in scenes where the sen­ti­ment is nev­er even men­tioned, like the cries of those who lost Lau­ra Palmer or Gor­don Cole becom­ing elat­ed at being able to hear Shelly perfectly.

None of these moments ever ring as false and that’s because sin­cer­i­ty is key to every­thing that David Lynch is. Whether he’s play­ful­ly jok­ing with the audi­ence (and his actors) or trans­lat­ing his dreams for the view­er in a way that is some­times dis­ori­ent­ing, he is always work­ing in good faith. Which brings me to the one char­ac­ter I think about the most when I think about Twin Peaks: Albert Rosenfield.

The detec­tive is, well, kind of a cunt, but that speaks direct­ly to me. As good as he is at his job – and, boy is he – he’s also blunt and prone to call­ing peo­ple stu­pid while deliv­er­ing results. His entire pres­ence is that of ​“gen­er­al unpleas­ant­ness” as Agent Coop­er notes, so much so that he prac­ti­cal­ly insults every­one in Twin Peaks and is lit­er­al­ly punched by Sher­iff Tru­man. He’s a queer and cat­ty lit­tle man (and, no, I’m not just say­ing that because I think he’s bisex­u­al), com­ment­ing as much on people’s fash­ion choic­es as he is their life choices.

But he is, at his core, a good man. Lynch and Mark Frost only reveal this slow­ly but sure­ly, as they do with most of the char­ac­ters they peel back the lay­ers of in Twin Peaks. Albert’s moment comes in sea­son two, where a speech reveals a deep­er ethos around Albert. Just after deliv­er­ing anoth­er barb com­par­ing Tru­man to a cave­man, he is threat­ened once again. As Tru­man grabs his col­lar, Albert grabs his back. He says, with­out a hint of humor: ​“Now you lis­ten to me. While I will admit to a cer­tain cyn­i­cism, the fact is that I am a naysay­er and hatch­et man in the fight against vio­lence. I pride myself in tak­ing a punch and I’ll glad­ly take anoth­er because I choose to live my life in the com­pa­ny of Gand­hi and King. My con­cerns are glob­al. I reject absolute­ly: revenge, aggres­sion, and retal­i­a­tion. The foun­da­tion of such a method… is love.”

As he says this, he fix­es Truman’s col­lar, looks straight into his eyes, looks away, and then back at those eyes, and says, ​“I love you Sher­iff Tru­man.” In this instant, any ounce of pre­tence falls away; his jokes and insults have always been a shield, a means of keep­ing cas­es and peo­ple at arm’s length. Per­haps, we real­ize, he cares too deeply, and has had to build this wall around him­self to stay sane in a world where he must deal with the evil of man as often as he does. It’s not nec­es­sar­i­ly a state­ment of roman­tic love – that’d be too obvi­ous for the kind of cryp­tic but sin­cere sto­ry­teller that Lynch is – but one that reveals just what a pas­sion­ate man Albert is.

It’s the Hedgehog’s dilem­ma ren­dered per­fect­ly into one man: we must be guard­ed with oth­ers for fear of get­ting or caus­ing true hurt, but this at times results in our own iso­la­tion and pain. But we long for con­nec­tion, we are des­per­ate to find peo­ple that we tru­ly trust in a world that is so often prone to break­ing us down and sculpt­ing us into hard­ened indi­vid­u­als. That Coop­er caps this scene with the line, ​“Albert’s path is a strange and dif­fi­cult one,” is both beau­ti­ful and a reminder of just how hard it can be to exist in a world as cru­el as this one. David Lynch made it eas­i­er to under­stand how to nav­i­gate that weird world full of won­der and we may feel lost with­out him, but, in look­ing back at moments like these, we find a road map for guid­ance. In an age when vio­lence sur­rounds us at every turn, let us all remem­ber Albert’s fight against that very vio­lence by instead focus­ing on love.

To com­mem­o­rate the life and cre­ative lega­cy of the peer­less film­mak­er David Lynch, Lit­tle White Lies has brought togeth­er writ­ers and artists who loved him to cre­ate ​‘In Heav­en Every­thing Is Fine‘: a series cel­e­brat­ing his work. We asked par­tic­i­pants to respond to a Lynch project how­ev­er they saw fit – the results were haunt­ing, pro­found, and illuminating.