While a high school senior living in Columbus, Ohio, I first made the journey to David Lynch and Mark Frost's town via a local library in fall 1993. After falling in love with Angelo Badalamenti's otherworldly tones on David Lynch's "Wild at Heart" soundtrack, I quickly sought out other music by him. Enter the soundtrack to "Twin Peaks."
The soundtrack cover was magnificent – an empty road in the shadow of snow capped mountains inviting me to solve a mystery. The back of the album contained images of characters from a series I had never seen (I had missed the original ABC broadcast in 1990/91). Songs like “Laura Palmer’s Theme,” “Into the Night,” and the “Love Theme To Twin Peaks” were on constant rotation. The music was definitely dreamy.
It wasn’t until October 1993 that I discovered the Pilot episode and the first season on VHS at my library. I played hooky one day just to watch it. The rest is history.
Years later, I am beyond grateful for this obsession that my mother and aunt thought would be a passing fancy. I now run TwinPeaksBlog.com and have spent hours documenting minor details, identifying props and sharing photos from visits to countless film locations. I realized tonight that this interest has consumed more than half of my life.
Yet I love every moment, especially meeting fellow fans from around the world. They are incredible, kind, generous and loving folks. The same kind of people who I imagine would live in the fictitious small town from Lynch and Frost's mind. We laugh. We cry. We wonder at the beauty of life that many times is surrounded by darkness. This show helps us finding meaning to our own wonderful and strange world.
To paraphrase Special Agent Dale Cooper, "Twin Peaks is special." And I'm glad I am long-term resident. Another slice of pie please.