[Twin Peaks Analyzed] Hidden Messages in “Gotta Light?” Episode: The Surreal Nature of Reality

The United States dropped its first atomic bomb on it’s own soil—an empty stretch of desert in New Mexico—in 1945. Soon after, the US would drop two more on Japan. The first was called “Fat Man,” and killed 80,000 people, injuring multitudes more. The second, “Little Boy,” obliterated the city of Hiroshima and 66,000 of its citizens.

The New Mexico test was named “Trinity,” in honor of a poem by John Donne. The poem reads as follows:

Batter my heart, three-personed God; for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurped town, to another due,
Labor to admit you, but O, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
but is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betrothed unto your enemy.
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again;
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor even chaste, except you ravish me.

"Holy Sonnet XIV," also known as “Three-personed God,” expresses a kind of possession by the holy trinity. The “I” in the poem is in love with this divine entity and submits to the torture and pleasure of its control in order to be reborn, free from the “enemy.” In this case, a kind of epiphany or enlightenment is compared to the rape or ruin of a virgin. Horror has its hooks in goodness.

Laura Palmer and the haunting phrase, "Fire Walk With Me," comes to mind.

David Lynch now, almost 75 years after the fact, remembers this moment, as a turning point not only in the history of the United States, but in the evolution of Nature as a whole.

The cosmic setting of Episode 8, “Gotta Light?” encases strange structures in outer space. Inside a dark cinema, Earth is projected on the wall. Here we glimpse an invisible dimension of reality to which we had no access until now. In the deep woods, there is a portal to that dimension. And now, in New York city, there is another, a mysterious glass box, constructed by an unknown billionaire for an unknown purpose. What exists in that other realm is a horrifying mystery. We have to wonder what might jump out at us as we watch.

According to Lynch’s narrative, in the moment of detonation of the first atomic bomb, some kind of mother of pure malice becomes sick in the heavens and spews the contents of her gut into space. From this mess, something falls to earth in small shell and hatches some years later in the same desert where the nuclear explosion occurred.

Witnessing this, a giant, elsewhere in the cosmos, also erupts. But for him it seems intentional, a beautiful act of creation. A kind of gold glitter rushes from his head as he floats in the darkened cinema. As the sick mother creates a being of pure darkness, the giant creates a being of golden light. The faint semblance of Laura Palmer’s high school photograph radiates in the orb as it is sent into the projection on the wall, to Earth.

This is Lynch’s creation myth. Instead of beginning with the dawn of mankind, he begins with the perversion of mankind, the ultimate loss of innocence. I am reminded of a piece Murakami Haruki wrote in The New York Times, “Reality A and Reality B,” exposing the reason behind his own surreal narratives. Here he imagines what the world would have been like had 9/11 never occurred:

Let’s call the world we actually have now Reality A and the world that we might have had if 9/11 had never happened Reality B. Then we can’t help but notice that the world of Reality B appears to be realer and more rational than the world of Reality A. To put it in different terms, we are living a world that has an even lower level of reality than the unreal world. What can we possibly call this if not “chaos”?

It’s easy to argue that before 9/11 and before the atomic bomb, horrific instances had occurred already. Men were hardly innocent prior to these particular instances, but metaphorically these events represent a raising of the bar of horror—a realization of the insanity, or unrealness of reality—that cannot be undone. In this sense, I think both Murakami and Lynch are on to something big.

For Lynch, the horrific science of nuclear technology excites him. The strange nature of reality and the very limited logical perception of it, are always at play in his works, pushing against each other, making love and killing each other. The “Trinity Test,” therefore, provides the perfect opportunity to establish the logic of his surreal vision.

In this world, mirrored by Lynch’s Twin Peaks, there is a natural law, a balance between good and evil. Both need each other to exist. Horror and Goodness walk hand in hand. Like sadness provides the contrast needed to experience joy, so does darkness provide the space in which a light may shine.

Murakami Haruki, in a speech he made accepting the Hans Christian Andersen Literature Award in 2016, confronts this duality.

Just as all people have shadows, every society and nation, too, has shadows […] if there are bright, shining aspects, there will definitely be a counterbalancing dark side. If there’s a positive, there will surely be a negative on the reverse side […] You have to patiently learn to live together with your shadow. And carefully observe the darkness that resides within you.

We must not run from our dark nature, pretending atrocities never occurred. Instead we must investigate it to find out where the destructive instinct comes from, to discover the mother. Look into the Black Lodge, but do not get stuck there. See the places where this strangeness seeps through the veil of reality and find the wisdom there. But watch out when the light flickers and electricity hums through walls in wires unseen.

Contrary to popular belief, I don’t think Lynch lives for disorienting and confusing us. His mission seems to be the opposite: to challenge our perception of Nature that we may expand our imaginations in order to, actually, see things more clearly.