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 79th 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.