TWIN PEAKS FO’ LIFE
gpoy
To this day, I cannot see Ray Wise in anything without thinking of Leland Palmer.
I don’t think I ever wrote this story, so here it goes.
In the early 90s, straight out of school, a wee teenager with a deep love of writing and theater, I found myself in medical school. Let’s leave out the details of how I ended up there because well, the people involved are no longer alive to chime in. I hated every second of medical school. I hated the smell of death. I hated touching dead bodies, which I was supposed to cut through so that I would understand how muscle tissue works, how it runs through us, how it keeps us moving. I wanted to know who these people were, how they ended up in a morgue, dissected by someone like me who had no interest in ever cutting anyone, dead or alive, open. I was supposed to study subjects that I genuinely couldn’t grasp: chemistry, anatomy, physiology. I don’t know if it’s because I didn’t put enough effort or because I truly do not have the ability to learn certain topics, I just couldn’t understand any of them. Not a word. I had the books but I felt they were written in a foreign language. I tried switching to books in English to see if they would make more sense, if they would be clearer, but I had no such luck. The language of science was alien to me. (I did get around to understanding a lot of it later on, when I did switch study paths, but I don’t want to anticipate myself here). I thought if I put enough effort I could get through the seven years of medical school and eventually become a psychiatrist, which was, of all medical fields, the only one I could remotely see myself pursuing. I would then be able to talk to people, instead of cutting them open. I wasn’t revolted by blood or the body itself; I was, and still am to be honest, horrified by human pain, by this idea that people experience unspeakable levels of pain and I was supposed to witness that, day in, day out.
So, I did what a privileged rebellious teenager does: I started skipping classes. My routine was two fold: I would alternate with long visits to the Library of Congress, where I could read and write undisturbed and I’d go to an art house cinema, which charged a very small nominal fee to see a different classic film every day. It was around this time I discovered Wim Wenders’ filmography and his collaborations with Peter Handke and Sam Shepard. It was also around this time when they started broadcasting Twin Peaks. And then I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted nothing else but to write like that. I had been writing since I was a child, mostly poetry and short stories. But it was seeing Twin Peaks, seeing Paris, Texas, seeing Wings of Desire, that I realized that words and images and telling stories were, to me, inextricably connected.
And then I went to study Literature and Philosophy, and eventually followed up with theater studies*. Which, you know, certainly beats cutting dead people open with a scalpel.
*Yes, there was a HUGE family scandal. But let’s focus on the good memories and the epiphanies.
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