This article is part of a series of investigations, reflections, and reminiscences by writers, artists, and musicians who were influenced by David Lynch’s seminal television show Twin Peaks. To read more, or to learn about participation, visit www.twinpeaksproject.com.
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“People call me a director, but I really think of myself as a sound man.” —David Lynch
Music and film share a strange space, between two worlds. Since the Lumiėre Brothers started screening movies along with a live pianist in 19th-century Paris, film has been defined by its shadow self. Nosferatu is more than creepy when followed by the music of Hans Erdman—he’s a terrifying, otherworldly spook. Many of the finest “talkies” are rooted in musical cues: the creepy single-piano of Krzysztof Komeda’s Rosemary’s Baby, John Carpenter’s skin-crawling ‘70s synths in Halloween, Deliverance’s violent backwoods banjos, or the scorched earth strings of Jonny Greenwood’s There Will Be Blood.
David Lynch has scored his films from the beginning, starting with 1977’s Eraserhead. He told Interview Magazine, “I didn’t know anything about film when I first started—I was a painter— but I [always] felt that sound was just as important as the picture. The sound, picture, and ideas have to marry. If an idea carries with it a mood, sound is critical to making that mood.”
Lynch and composer Angelo Badalamenti began creating Twin Peaks years before filming began. The two initially worked together in 1986 on the menacing, candy-colored Blue Velvet soundtrack, as Badalamenti famously transformed Isabella Rossellini into a disturbed lounge siren. Lynch deemed the project “peachy keen,” and suggested they pen a whole batch of lush, weird-ass ‘80s pop tunes, with him writing the words and Badalamenti making sense of Lynch’s odd and often formless lyrics. With singer Julee Cruise—whose breathy vocals waft around Blue Velvet’s “Mysteries of Love”—the three recorded the Floating Into the Night album, an oddly successful effort that sounds just like 1989. The album includes early version of “Falling”, which is impossible to hear without conjuring the sights and sounds of the instrumental: a wren on a branch, a sharpening saw blade, and the Great Northern Hotel.
Baseball players get a walk-up song that plays over the PA as they head to the plate. With Twin Peaks, Badalamenti and Lynch created a theme song for major characters, creating an immediate aura every time they appear on screen. Badalamenti told Rolling Stone, “The thing about Twin Peaks music is it runs the gamut of styles. It also incorporates pop, blues, some country, soft rock, film noir—no question about that—nightmarish stuff.”
Laura Palmer’s came first, a somber dirge that spreads to enclose the world Lynch created—full of innocence and evil, the supernatural, oddball humor, violence, dreams, and the incessant clash of perception and reality. The two men wrote the piece side-by-side at a piano; Badalamenti explains, “David said, ‘Start it off foreboding, like you’re in a dark wood, and then segue into something beautiful to reflect the trouble of a beautiful teenage girl. Then, once you’ve got that, go back and do something that’s sad and go back into that sad, foreboding darkness,’” the composer recalls. “Maybe it was luck, but literally, in one take, I translated those words into music.”
Audrey Horne: part sweater-girl femme fatale, part naïf. The finger-snapping, lounge lizard jazz of Audrey permeates the entire Twin Peaks world.
Badalamenti’s compositions “The Bookhouse Boys” and “Dance of the Dream Man” are from the same log bag, full of jazz cool and quiet malice. They share added significance because of their heavy associated locales, the Bookhouse and the Black Lodge.
The repertoire of Leland Palmer is absurd—hysterical by default—as the man possessed by Bob does silver-voiced versions of “Mairzy Doats” and “Get Happy.” It’s hilarious and insane, another example of Lynch’s brilliant contrast (not unlike Ben’s “cover” of Roy Orbison’s “In Dreams” in Blue Velvet, pre-joy ride.)
“It is happening, again.” This is it. Agent Cooper and Sherriff Truman share a table with the Log Lady while Julee Cruise does “Rockin’ Back Inside Your Heart” at the Bookhouse. Donna and James share a nearby booth, staring and doing some pretty gross lip-syncing. Then, the music begins to fade, the light begins to rise, and that low alien drone comes in. For me, Twin Peaks can be distilled to that 10-second transition when the Giant appears at the Bookhouse.
After the series, Badalamenti continued to work with Lynch on Mulholland Drive, Wild at Heart, and Lost Highway. Each film is encased, steeped in its own skewed logic and atmosphere. With the recent announcement of the show’s 2016 revival, there’s been speculation as to whether Badalamenti’s original score will also return. In my opinion, it has to—Neil Brand has said that Lynch’s series “couldn’t work without Badalamenti’s music,” but it goes beyond that. Music is where David Lynch’s creative process begins, and without Angelo Badalamenti, Twin Peaks wouldn’t exist.
A “Do Not Disturb” sign from Edoardo Flores’s collection, from Chaweng Resort, Koh Samui, Thailand, #8673 (all images courtesy Edoardo Flores)
As the son of a hotel manager, Edoardo Flores spent his childhood around objects many of us associate solely with the niceties of vacation. His interest in collecting “Do Not Disturb” signs didn’t come until later, when he grabbed some unique ones as business trip souvenirs. Around 1995 he began collecting in earnest, and he now owns close to 9,000 signs from 190 countries.
Afonso V Hotel, Aveiro, Portugal, #6478
In a history of the collection that Flores provided to Hyperallergic, he claims that little is known about the development of the “Do Not Disturb” (DND) sign, now such a common, expected component of hotel stays. Flores speculates that the DND sign was the wise invention of one hotel manager, and that other places later emulated the practice.
Some of the signs in Flores’s collection approximate the typeface and design of what one imagines the average DND sign to be. But this assembly also demonstrates the human interest in aesthetics beyond functionality. Some of the highlights: a sign from Hungary that approximates a Rorschach inkblot — are those lips and a finger or something more psychologically revealing? There’s the sign from Lufthansa that looks like the original “world’s saddest owl.” And many signs that lasciviously suggest, usually with the image of a woman pressing a finger to her lips, the reason these guests should not be bothered. One from the Helix Hotel in Washington, DC, combines an image of a red-lipped woman with the phrase “I just want to be alone” — a kind of anti-Lichtensteinian play on Pop art imagery.
The vast range of shapes, colors, and themes in Flores’s collection seems a plea for more unique design of all mass-produced objects, if not for functionality than simply for the sake of the optical, intellectual, and emotional stimulation that comes from visual diversity.
Lufthansa, Germany, #4258
Codan Hotel, Copenhagen, Denmark #7329
Coral Bay Resort & Spa, Koh Samui, Thailand, #6022
Helix Hotel, Washington, DC, USA, #3628
Hotelito Casa Las Tortugas, Isla Holbox, Mexico, #8021
So, I have been thinking about my story, “If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love,” for obvious reasons. I’ve spent a lot more time thinking about that story than probably anything else I’ve ever written, which is amusing, given how short it is. On the plus side, that makes textual analysis relatively simple.
There are a lot of legitimate critiques of “Dinosaur” and I’m cool with people disliking it. I’m not cool with some other stuff that’s going on, but I don’t have a problem with people disliking it. (Which, for the record, is not limited to the puppies – the story actually has a mixed track record with “SJWs”. It was initially rejected by a market specializing in “diverse” fiction, as being too much like other queer fiction that’s been done before, and therefore not really surprising. Nick Mamatas dislikes it on aesthetic grounds, although I’m not sure if he counts as an SJW or not. Etcetera.)
Anyway, I have thinky thoughts about a lot of the story, and maybe I’ll write those down at some point. But maybe not, because internet arguments, meh.
What I wanted to address in this post is the criticism of my use of the word “gin.” The assailants in the story are described as gin-soaked.
This has been interpreted as a class marker. Initially, I didn’t pay much attention to this, as some of the framing of the way it was brought up was irritating. However, that doesn’t really matter. If it’s a problem, it’s a problem.
I will say that I did not intend “gin” to be a class marker. My primary association with gin is hipsters. I have friends who make their own. (I pictured a college bar when I was writing the story, although I didn’t want that image—or any distinct markers–to be in the story itself.) My secondary association with gin is bathtub gin as discussed in musicals about the 1920s. My third is the inappropriate anecdote that Eliza tells about gin in My Fair Lady–which, I suppose, should have clued me into the class association.
I did not want the assailants to be marked at all, except that they were into beating people up with flimsy excuses, an activity of which I disapprove.
So: what can I do? My intent to not be classist isn’t significant. Some of my previous trespasses have been totally unintentional, such as the fact that the dwarf in “The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers Beneath the Queen’s Window” is easily read as an evil stereotype. (My intention was that, since the main character is evil, her judgment is unreliable.) Readers of Alas, a Blog brought that to my attention after the story had been published. I apologized but didn’t revise–it would have required substantial change, and I feel like the best way I can actually address that problem is to do a follow-up story from his perspective sometime. (Though my writing ambitions, alas, outstrip my productivity.)
However, this is where the brevity of “Dinosaur” is helpful. The change would be tiny. The story is online, which is a medium that allows for revision. People are still reading it, apparently, so revision is also potentially useful. I can’t do anything about printed copies, but I can ask the editor of Apex Magazine to switch out the word. (And leave a note in comments about having done so, which would allow people to easily trace the history.) He might decline, but I doubt he will.
So: what alcohol is unmarked? Pabst is definitely too distinct. Is Vodka too dourly Russian? Tequila too college party? Rum too, I dunno, piratey? Whisky too hardcore masculine? Wine sounds sort of melancholy poet, and beer seems Homer Simpsony. (From this list, rum seems like the most likely candidate to me.)
I don’t drink a whole lot, and when I do, I drink girly fru fru drinks because I’m a wimp. So, I don’t really know what the subcultures of alcohol are. Help me out. Sad Puppies welcome to contribute, especially since you’re the ones who spotted it.
(I assume it’s a given, but I’ll note anyway: please stay on topic and civil. That means everyone.)
In recent weeks, several famous figures—including Khloe Kardashian, Kanye West, and Wiz Khalifa— have attempted to shame Amber Rose for her past, which includes a stint as an underage stripper. Instead of cowering and remaining silent, Rose has used her platform to illuminate the myriad ways race and class influence societal perceptions of sexuality.
Jon Cohn has a good piece on Florida Republicans painting themselves into a corner on the Medicaid expansion:
To put it another way, expanding Medicaid in Florida would likely require a net investment by state taxpayers that, over the course of a decade, would work out to less than a half-billion dollars a year. That’s without accounting for any additional growth and tax revenues that the huge infusion of federal dollars might provide. That’s also without accounting for the more than $1 billion a year in that, without expanding Medicaid, Florida would probably have to scrounge up in order to help hospitals defray the cost of charity care.
In short, if the numbers were lopsided in favor of expanding Medicaid before, they are even more lopsided now. And it’s not as if anybody is arguing seriously that those grants are a superior way of financing care for the poor. If anything, the opposite is true — and it’s one reason the editorial page of the Tampa Bay Times called Scott’s position “indefensible.” Other editorial pages, civic organizations, and business groups across the state have made similar statements.
[…]
No, the level of hostility to Obamacare makes very little sense — unless it’s about something beyond the policy particulars. It could be the fact that Democrats finally accomplished something big, for the first time in several decades, thereby expanding the welfare state at a time when conservatives thought they were on their way to shrinking it. Or it could be the idea that, on net, the Affordable Care Act transfers resources away from richer, whiter people to poorer, darker people. Or it could be the fact that “Obamacare” contains the word “Obama,” whose legitimacy as president at least some conservatives just can’t accept.
Who knows? The only thing certain is that, in Florida, turning down Medicaid has even weaker logic than it did before — except for officials obsessed with Obamacare or determined to please the people who are. Rick Scott may belong in either category and he might just belong in both.
Greg Sargent observes that one anti-Medicaid-expansion Florida rep “chanted ‘liberty’ as he walked past reporters camped in the hallway.” Poor people suffering and dying because they lack access to health care is not a “liberty” that should be valued very highly. But, as Sargent says, the rather obvious problem here is that there isn’t even any such principle involved. Scott and his allies aren’t opposed in principle to the federal government giving Florida money to cover health care for poor people. They’re opposed to the federal government giving Florida money to cover health care for poor people if it’s done via “Obamacare.” It’s pretty hard to argue that there’s some sort of major liberty interest involved when you’re literally making (idiotic) arguments that the state of Florida is constitutionality entitled to federal health care grants.
Evidently, exposing the empty, posturing mendacity of the Florida Republicans who oppose the Medicaid expansion won’t be much consolation to the poor people who will be denied health care in the short term. But eventually (particularly after Obama leaves office), more and more states are going to start taking the money.
Heart emojis (screenshot by the author for Hyperallergic)
Ah, French people. We can finally rest assured that they are, in fact, better lovers than the rest of us.
That’s because a new report breaking down emoji use by country and language found that hearts make up 55% of emoji typed by French speakers. That’s four times the international average, and three times as much as the next most “heart-y” language. By contrast, hearts account for a mere 8% of US English speakers’ emoji use.
The report was issued by SwiftKey, a technology firm best known for making a keyboard that learns its users’ habits. Its conclusions are based on one billion pieces of emoji data collected between October 2014 and January 2015 from SwiftKey Cloud’s Android and iOS users, representing 16 languages and regions around the world.
Since there are more than 800 emoji characters, the company divided them into 60 categories. All those red, blue, purple, yellow, and green hearts, along with the vibrating, swirling, and sparkling ones, were characterized simply as “hearts.” Whenever an emoji could potentially fit into more than one group — like the smiling face with heart-shaped eyes — it was assigned to the broadest one (“faces”). Other groupings include “cats,” “tech,” and “food,” though Asian food, possibly overrepresented among emoji characters, got its own label.
A break down of Emoji use by category (image courtesy SwiftKey)
The results seem to reinforce a few other cultural stereotypes as well. French speakers, though amorous, are often considered rude — and lo and behold, they are the only people for whom the smiley face (sometimes used to indicate an approving tone in a message that could otherwise be misread) doesn’t dominate. Australians, sometimes thought to be wilder and rowdier than English speakers from other continents, send 50% more alcohol-related and 65% more drug-related emoji than average. Use of the winking face in the UK, a nation known for its droll humor, is double that of the rest of us.
The report also cuts through a few stereotypes. Canadians scored highest in the use of emoji the authors note might be more typically associated with the US — ones fitting into the categories of “money,” “raunchy,” “sport,” and “violent” (i.e. those creepy gun emojis and poop). For their part, speakers of American English employ twice as many “royal” emoji (crowns, princesses, and the like) than those who speak the Queen’s English.
Canadian English speakers use the poop emoji more than any other English speakers. (image courtesy SwiftKey)
Other findings seem fairly logical: Russian speakers rely twice as much on cold-weather emojis than average, and Arabic speakers, perhaps craving a bit more greenery, avail themselves of flower and plant emoji at four times the normal rate.
But it’s probably best to not draw any serious conclusions from the report. Faces still remain the most ubiquitous characters, making up 60% of all those sent anywhere. And the fact that Brazilians sent twice as many religious emoji as everyone else doesn’t necessarily mean they’re more spiritual, since characters like praying hands and church buildings still made up only 1.1% of Brazilian emoji use. Similarly, people in the US sent more LGBT emoji than those in other countries, but rainbows and same-sex couples were just .13% of all the emoji used by Americans.
What to make of the fact that crying faces comprise a full 20% of emoji use by US Spanish speakers? They were also apparently the most unhappy emoji users, with negative characters making up 22% of all emojis they typed, compared to the international average of 15%.
Maybe they just wish they could emoji like Malaysians do. Of all emoji users, people in Malaysia are the most savvy. They employ only 37% of the top 10 emojis internationally, which means they make frequent use of all those random ones the rest of us don’t know what to do with.
Just because someone was a terrible person, doesn’t necessarily mean they can’t still inspire people, right? If you didn’t know who the quote was from, these words may make you feel more empowered. But your reaction may change quickly when you find out the author.
Swiss artist Felice Varini (previously) recently opened a new solo exhibition titled “La Villette En Suites” featuring a number of anamorphic projections designed to be viewed from a single location creating an uncanny optical illusion. Varini is fascinated by architecture as backdrop for his artwork and seeks unusual spaces with varying planes of depth for his installations which can grow to be quite dramatic.
The new geometric pieces (which are technically paintings) are installed in both interior and exterior spaces around the Grande halle de la Villette within Parc de la Villette through September 13, 2015. You can see more views of the exhibition on StreetArtNews, and follow Varini directly on Facebook.
The brilliant minds at ThinkGeek just launched this set of 10 glass coasters printed with sequential illustrations of the brain. When stacked in the correct order they reveal a complete three-dimensional “scan” of human brain. Available here. (via Laughing Squid)
Los Angeles' traffic problems are legendary, which is probably why the City of Angels is following Boston's lead and partnering with Waze for real-time traffic alerts. The LA mayor's office Periscoped the announcement (as you do, I suppose), and twee...
You may recall federal prosecutors wasting tens of millions of dollars prosecuting Barry Bonds. Bonds committed the Very Serious crime of breaking non-enforced non-rules threatening the sentimental fog of various narcissistic sportswriters, and hence was targeted in an indirect War on (Some Classes of People Who Use Some) Drugs prosecution. While prosecutors came up with a goose egg in their similarly asinine prosecution of History’s Other Greatest Monster Roger Clemens, they were able to secure a conviction against Barry Bonds. The conviction was on an obstruction of justice charge. What was the basis for the obstruction charge? Bonds was asked a question in court and gave a rambling non-answer to a question…that he answered directly in a follow-up question.
I’ll give the final word to Judge Kozinski’s concurrence:
Making everyone who participates in our justice system a potential criminal defendant for conduct that is nothing more than the ordinary tug and pull of litigation risks chilling zealous advocacy. It also gives prosecutors the immense and unreviewable power to reward friends and punish enemies by prosecuting the latter and giving the former a pass. The perception that prosecutors have such a potent weapon in their arsenal, even if never used, may well dampen the fervor with which lawyers, particularly those representing criminal defendants, will discharge their duties. The amorphous nature of the statute is also at odds with the constitutional requirement that individuals have fair notice as to what conduct may be criminal.
When asked if racism is no longer a problem in Oregon, 76 percent of survey respondents said it’s still an issue. But at the same time, 55 percent of Oregonians polled said they agreed with the idea “we talk too much about race and race relations.”
Guys, we totally Britta’d it
At least one respondent understood:
“Oregon has got its history,” he said, referencing the state’s exclusion laws, which aimed to keep African Americans out until the 20th Century. “You don’t have white supremacists marching down the street anymore, but I don’t think people realize they have ideas that are racist.”
Photographe et motion designer résidant en Espagne, A. L. Crego est l’auteur d’oeuvres street art auxquelles il donne vie à travers des GIF animés. Ces fresques en mouvement interagissent souvent avec l’environnement qui les entourent. Une sélection de ses GIF est disponible dans la galerie.
Japan has a mystery on its hands. A worker has discovered a drone on top of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's office that was not only carrying a water bottle, but was marked with a radioactive sign and carried a "miniscule" amount of radiation, according ...
Stacey Tyrell, a Canadian artist whose parents are from the West Indian island of Nevis, knows that when most people look at her they see a black woman.
But Tyrell has a background that's invisible to many observers. She explained in an interview with the Huffington Post that some of her ancestors were enslaved African people who were forced to work on plantations and often coerced into sexual relationships. The result: she, like many other people in the Caribbean and in the United States, has Europeans in her family tree, too.
Still, because of what she calls "a dualism that is inherent in Euro-centric constructs of 'Whiteness' and 'Blackness' in western societies" — the idea that most people are one race or the other, not both — she often gets uncomfortable looks when she openly claims her English, Scottish, and Irish ancestors, she wrote on her website. She says it started when she was "a black child attending a predominantly white school," and it hasn't stopped.
"Over the years I have found that a lot of people (often white) get very uncomfortable at the mention of such a connection because they half expect me to launch into a diatribe about colonialism and slavery when all I really seek is an inclusive conversation about the fact that all of us are more related than we think," she told the Huffington Post.
The solution: in a photography project titled "Backra Bluid," (the name combines the Caribbean slang for "white master" or "white person" and the Scottish word for "blood" and "kin") she's dressing up like the white people in her family tree using full costumes, hairstyling, and makeup, to challenge the way people think of race and heritage.
An image from "Backra Bluid." (Courtesy of Stacey Tyrell/Staceytyrell.com)
"The images in the series are an attempt tointerpret and explore these relatives from both past and present that I know are out there," Tyrell writes.
An image from "Backra Bluid." (Courtesy of Stacey Tyrell/Staceytyrell.com)
The artist believes the resistance she often encounters when she discusses her white heritage is "due to the fact that with the very act of mentioning such ties I am inadvertently reminding them of the brutal system of colonial African slavery and its legacy that has brought about such connections."
An image from "Backra Bluid." (Courtesy of Stacey Tyrell/Staceytyrell.com)
She says she's simply trying to get across that the majority of people in post-colonial societies are "hybrids of its past and current inhabitants. "
An image from "Backra Bluid." (Courtesy of Stacey Tyrell/Staceytyrell.com)
What's the point of using her own face and body to make this statement? Tyrell says, "By simply changing my skin color and making subtle tweaks to my features I wish to show that if someone were to take a closer look at my face they would see that it might not be that much different than their own."
"Backra Bluid" artist Stacey Tyrell prepares for a photo shoot. (staceytyrell.com)
im a bad person who thinks bad thoughts like ‘ew what is that girl wearing’ and then remember that im supposed to be positive about all things and then think ‘no she can wear what she wants, fuck what other people say damn girl u look fabulous’ and im just a teeny bit hypocritical tbh
I was always taught by my mother, That the first thought that goes through your mind is what you have been conditioned to think. What you think next defines who you are.
Los Angeles' traffic problems are legendary, which is probably why the City of Angels is following Boston's lead and partnering with Waze for real-time traffic alerts. The LA mayor's office Periscoped the announcement (as you do, I suppose), and twee...
Japan has a mystery on its hands. A worker has discovered a drone on top of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's office that was not only carrying a water bottle, but was marked with a radioactive sign and carried a "miniscule" amount of radiation, according ...
