Twin Peaks and the Divine
Is there a secular path to the comforts of deep religious faith?
A few weeks back, on an episode of the pod that turned very existential,
(rightly) pressed me about what she felt was a cop-out response. I had invoked “art” and “the sublime” as a possible answer to dealing with existing in an immensely cruel and violent world.“That’s how you live? That's what makes it fine to live — art?” she said in audible disbelief. “But why is there an experience of the sublime at all? Why do you feel a wonder? . . . You experienced transcendence, you've experienced the sublime. Does that not indicate to you that there's something outside of yourself?”
The ancient Greeks had an answer, according to Simone Weil. “Audrey” holds firm that Christianity has an answer too — not just a compelling one, but one that is obviously true. (And
gnomically wouldn’t declare how he felt about absolute truth claims. But that’s neither here nor there for the purposes of this essay.)Me, I wasn’t able to fully articulate my answer. And, dear reader, I doubt I’ll be able to do better here in written form either. But I do think I have an outline of something that I’d like to share.
Let’s fast forward a bit: A few days after recording the podcast, I sat down to re-watch David Lynch’s Twin Peaks. “Audrey” took her pseud from the show and said she was a huge fan. I had seen parts of it when it originally aired on television, but had never gone back to it.1
Twin Peaks is iconic for being frighteningly weird. In the show, coincidence frequently points to something else going on — something ghostly, dark and mysterious, subterranean. Did Lynch have answers about the sublime? I definitely didn’t start watching in hopes that he might. But for whatever weird reason, Twin Peaks beckoned to me.
The plot is simple even if the metaphysics aren’t. The core question of the series is “Who killed Laura Palmer,” the innocent high school sweetheart prom queen from this imaginary small town somewhere in the Cascades. The tightly written first season dances around the mystery but never comes close to revealing what happened. Season two, a much messier affair, reveals the answer halfway through. (No spoilers ahead, don’t worry.)
The thing that immediately strikes you about the show is that the story is being told as if it were a soap opera. The music is overwhelmingly sentimental throughout. The dialogue drips with sentiment, too. And a lot of the acting is very over-the-top (which admittedly adds to the weirdness). But as the series goes on, one comes to suspect the sentimentality is not just stylistic. David Lynch is up to something else.
The killer is finally revealed to us in an excruciating murder scene — a scene that goes on and on, with a man furiously beating a female victim into a bloody pulp with his bare hands before sending her careening into a wall skull-first. Throughout the murder, Lynch suggests that a supernatural evil is in fact responsible for the violence. But for all that ghost story overlay, the scene is one of the most brutally physical in the entire series.
The physicality stands in jarring contrast with the sentimentality that preceded it. And as the town comes to grips with the reality of the murder, it’s clear that the sentimentality itself was a coping mechanism. The eerie insistence of every character to do his or her utmost to stick to the town’s happy script is an attempt to not face an immensely cruel and violent world that surrounds them on all sides.
So what’s the sublime on display here? On the one hand, it’s the confrontation with the enormity of the evil being perpetrated. With his sentimental set-up to the extremely jarring murder scene, Lynch gives viewers a terrifying glimpse into the abyss. And the brevity of the glimpse only accentuates the darkness. In fact, the evil presented is so enormous that you immediately feel a desire to run back into the arms of the treacly soap opera that preceded it. You immediately understand why all the denizens of Twin Peaks were so keen to keep from realizing what was actually going on: It’s really too horrible to contemplate.
But at the very same time, we get a glimpse of the impossibility of the human condition. We all inhabit a demonic world, and so we reach for whatever comfort is available. For it’s the only way to accept — to be able to continue. And that comfort is not a delusion! In the Twin Peaks universe, what may at first strike the viewer as almost cloying sweetness ends up being incredibly moving. And more importantly, achingly honest.
“Audrey” (our dear friend and podcast guest, not the wonderful character on Twin Peaks) went on to explain how she experiences her Christian faith in the context of a fallen world. “I feel it in the absurdity of the sacrifice, goodness in the face of despair — and it working and feeling so satisfying on a very deep soul level, right? It shouldn't work, but it does! And that absurdity to me is like proof of the divine.”
I guess I’d offer up that the sublime is precisely satisfying because of its contradictions, its absurdity. I can’t go on I’ll go on, to coin a phrase. I certainly won’t be the last to point out that the core of the Christian drama is the height of the sublime.
I still stumble with “Audrey’s” question about “why”. Why do we feel wonder? And how is it acceptable, or even comforting, to live with only mysterious satisfaction rather than the more definite kind?
I don’t know the answer.
But I guess I’m comforted in the suspicion that an honest secular approach doesn’t land too far away from the comforts of full religious faith.
That will have to be good enough for now.
The show is a remarkable achievement. Something was clearly in the water in the Pacific Northwest. It captured the country’s attention completely: Twin Peaks on TV, Nirvana on the radio.
There is a priest named Richard Rohr who has written a number of books about spirituality that not only are inspiring, but also, make intellectual sense to me. I have had personal experiences that are inexplicable in the reality that is familiar in everyday life, not often but several times in my near eighty years of life. They have not frightened me but rather left me in a state of peaceful awe. For that reason I find it normal to accept that there are realms outside our physical existence and to also accept that there is no need for me to understand the ground from which these experiences arose. I know what I know for myself and am content to exist without explanations.
On another level, the intellectual side of me constantly puzzles about what I observe in the world around me and what I read. The way I see things is that everything tends toward balance and a turbulent transition exists after any severe disturbance. The innocence that existed, metaphorically, before ‘the Apple’, exists still in the sense that the physical world cannot exist without both creation and destruction; but both are without the intention of good or evil. If lightening destroys my favorite tree it is just an occurrence in the turbulence of physical existence.
However, once I introduce my ego into the picture I interpret what happened as good or bad in relation to me. That is why I have never seen affliction as punishment from God. It is the price of physical existence.
However humans do have the ability to insert intention into our acts of creation and destruction. To me, we have the power to create evil but also the power to generate compassion. Both spring from the type of soul we have nurtured. Even in the midst of suffering we are capable, out of empathy, to have compassion for others. That is what binds us as a human family. And that is what causes us to see the reflection of the love of ‘God’ in the eyes of those to whom we extend our empathy.
Damir, I think you’re hitting on the concept of awe. In today’s language, it tends to take on a very positive tone. But in truth, awe/awesome is really a more complex state — one that combines a bit of fear/apprehension with any positive feelings too (fear at the awesome power of a storm, God, etc.). What we know from psychological research is that awe does three things when you feel it. First, it makes the self feel small, as in you’re facing forces that are beyond your control/comprehension/full understanding. Second, it makes people feel more connected, and leads to prosocial behaviors. And third, it also makes people more willing to believe in the idea of supernatural forces (or at least the idea that there is an unseen order in the universe). In other words, awe itself (whether from witnessing beauty or threat) is the perfect emotion to reinforce a sense of spirituality for those inclined that way, or to give a sense of wonder (and meaning) to those who aren’t.