The writing has been on the wall since at least mid- to late March. There was no way I could finish the TWIN PEAKS Character Series on schedule. Each entry got longer and longer and I kept falling further and further behind. There was a shot - back in the period from December to February, I could have focused most of my "online/creative work" time exclusively on these character studies, and I think I could have managed to get far enough ahead to finish them before the new series premieres on May 21. Instead I violated the rule I've known for years, yet thrown aside at every opportunity: You can only have one priority at a time. I tried to do a little brainstorming for screenplays (what a dismal waste of time that was), some video essay work, and even set aside time to watch other video essays and TV episodes in anticipation of projects that were maybe a year or more on the horizon. Meanwhile my comfortable backlog of character pieces kept growing smaller until I was barely ahead. By the time I abandoned that approach and focused as much time as possible on the character series, it was too late. You reap what you sow.
This hiatus is both a relief and a major annoyance. It's a relief because I am now setting NO deadline. The work will be finished when it's finished, and in fact I'm not going to publish any of the remaining twenty pieces until all of them are done. This work has pretty much taken over my life in the past few months, so now I'll be able to visit friends I've delayed seeing, watch movies and read books (this year so far has been a virtual desert for intaking media that wasn't Twin Peaks), exercise, take care of tasks that have gone on the backburner, and generally just relax. I can earn more money as well, since some of my work is based on my own schedule/input and that's fallen by the wayside too (it's been months since I even contemplated a Fandor video). Also, the loss of a deadline means I can take my time with all these crucial characters. I'd like to think I wouldn't have cut corners anyway (and it's a moot point since finishing them on schedule was clearly a mathematical impossibility), but now I can write them when I feel like it, not when I have to.
On the other hand...that deadline existed for a reason. No matter how I rationalize it, it's just plain dumb to conduct a series of character studies that will be purposefully outdated when I publish them. Because I have no desire or intention to include the new material; I think it's going to violate all sorts of precepts that these studies are based on, and even if it doesn't it would make the upcoming pieces seem totally out of step with the sixty-two that came before. At most, I will add a few notes in the "Showtime" section at the end of each entry. But the character series becomes a tad perverse at this point, an exercise in nostalgia that grows more irrelevant by the week. More importantly than all of that, even knowing that I'm no longer going to pressure myself to write the pieces, I hate that they're now going to be hanging over my head when the new series airs. In a way this project was a purging, one last chance to get all analytical about Twin Peaks before I shift into another mode entirely. One of the treasures of David Lynch's work is the ability to enter it like a dream and float through without any expectations. With the left-brained approach to these pieces still kicking around in the back of my brain, I feel like that's going to be somewhat compromised. And it irks the hell out of me.
I'm also quite skeptical that I will have the will or interest to tackle Cooper up to the season two finale when I already know what happens to him after that. For that reason, I'm considering jumping ahead to my number-one entry in the next few days and seeing if I can write and store away that entry for my own purposes before new Twin Peaks airs. But frankly, even that might be an impossible task (how absurd it was to think I could do twenty entries in ten days - I'm not even sure I can do one in a week).
Oh well. I hope you enjoy the pieces when they eventually appear - right now I'm thinking maybe four a week, Tuesday through Friday (so that my responses to the new episodes can stand for a full day), starting the last week of June and finishing the last week of July. I have to admit there's a chance I'll abandon the project if it just seems too irrelevant or burdensome, but I doubt it because I tend to be anal about eventually finishing what I started, even if it takes forever.
From now on, the main priority of this site will be covering the new Twin Peaks, and doing so in a more impressionistic, meditative manner that allows me to savor the work and share that experience with you.
Everything else can, and will, wait.
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