“Open your mind. Figure out things for yourself.” These are the most frightening sentences to most people.
Most people either go to school, go to work, or are retired. And then they die.
These normal people do not want to be challenged when they get home at night. They want to overeat, have some pot or booze, and fall asleep while watching “COLUMBO”, where everything is spelled out clearly and tied with a nice ribbon.
This is called “entertainment”.
Entertainment consists of things you don’t have to think about. The same damned photos. The same food. The same route. Algorithms that all direct the same ads to you. Portaits of horses and doggies and paintings of barns and waterfalls. The same damned symphonies – the “warhorses” – and the same damned Paul McCartney.
And sports. The whole point of sports is that there WILL be a definite conclusion. There WILL be a plot, even though the result will vary. (Sports fans are always disappointed by ties. There’s no conclusion.)
Oh, look! Paul has another album out at 97! Isn’t he amazing! Yankees 7, Mets 2. The murderer was the shifty-eyed guy on “Mannix”. Bach always sounds like the Bach you were “exposed to” – a telling phrase, a damning phrase! – in 4th Grade music class. Yup, that’s my dog. Looks just like him, I’d know him anywhere! Here’s a photo of my family again, yes, I have one! Republicans are the problem, Democrats are the problem, I know, I’m a moron, but this is what I firmly believe, say stuck people.
And there’s nothing wrong with this. We all have to learn, work, and die. We all need to unwind. And we all have to be mindless at times and recite the given script.
However . . .
There is an alternative to eating predigested commercial pablum. It takes effort, not just passive copying, not just comfort food.
You have to WORK with the author or screenwriter or composer or artist, and be uncomfortable while you help “write” the stories in your own mind.
This is the realm of being fully human. This is the realm of true happiness.
And this is the world of abstract art, modern art music or jazz, literary or experimental writing. Things that take work. Things that make you uncomfortable. Things that make you frustrated. Things that make you . . . think.
To think is to be fully human and fully yourself. And happy. Maybe for the first time in your life.
I just read Clarkson University graduate John Thorne’s book, OMINOUS WHOOSH: A Wandering Mind Returns to Twin Peaks.
One of the things Mr. Thorne discusses is the notion that “Twin Peaks” fits its scenes and stories (as such) onto film the way most people surf the internet or “doomscroll”. At random. In little bits. In a hashlike-fashion. With static. Very much unlike an overtime goal that decisively wins a game.
Fragmented. Distracted. Moving from one little interesting nub to another. As David Letterman once described, sort of, how he surfed cable TV, “I switch from channel to channel, see a breast, watch awhile, then move on.”
Sometimes the channels tightly cohere. You have reached the shopping channel tier, perhaps, or the weird religions sphere. Everything blurs together, but they’re about the same and tell about the same story, right?
Sometimes, the channels are randomly squashed together. Smug and condescending PBS next to The Gun Channel next to the Look-At-The-Newts-Mating-In-A-Lovely-Spring-Pond nature channel.
Here is a gallery full of my abstract artwork. Notice how it coheres as abstract, yet each individual painting – David Lynch was an abstract artist, mainly a painter, and an abstract filmmaker – is . . . random in its effects:
And here is the other aspect of “Twin Peaks”: it’s not just doomscrolling or breast-scrolling, it’s not just entertainment to kill time, it’s art to fulfill your humanity and to bring you a sniff of happiness – true happiness.
So the various “Twin Peaks” are surfing-like, but not just random. Each “episode” or scene invites you to help make doomscrolling into a lush and verdant field that you have helped plant.
Suddenly, you’re not just a passive consumer of entertainment, but like The Fireman in the photo above. A co-creator of a universe. Your own universe.
Perhaps your universe is disturbing. Perhaps your inner world is a lot like these scurrying “Woodsmen” that Lynch created:
Get used to your own Red Room.
Creativity. It’s good. Which is why you’ve carefully crafted a banal world of sports and politics and “Columbo”. Because you’re afraid you don’t deserve to be happy?
