Twin Peaks: "Dark Dreams on the Radio" (video)

While creating the first Journey Through Twin Peaks video series in 2014, I decided to preview one clip a week ahead of time. I was excited by the juxtaposition I'd found between the killer's reveal in Twin Peaks and W.B. Yeats' poem "The Second Coming", and I knew that the video containing it wouldn't be ready for release as early as expected - so I posted it early. Now I'm taking a similar step even further ahead of time, for a few reasons.

"Dark Dreams on the Radio" is a non-narrated montage of clips from Twin Peaks' third season (and Blue Velvet) cut to This Mortal Coil's cover of "Song to the Siren" (as incorporated into the sound mix of David Lynch's Lost Highway). There are a number of compelling rhymes between soundtrack and image, as well as between images from different works (or different parts of the same work). I first conceived of this idea - believe it or not - before the incredibly well-suited Part 17/18 aired and afterwards I was even more determined to launch the new Journey this way.

Ultimately, however, I decided that this would be a better beginning for Part 6, which will premiere in late May or June, rather than Part 5 (which is going up in a few days). But I still wanted to find a way for this montage to not only kick off Journey but conclude a month of shorter video essays that began in mid-March with (not accidentally) a montage, Far Away Music, scored to another version of "Song to the Siren," this one by its author Tim Buckley. That the images in that montage came from the work of Federico Fellini, a major inspiration for Lynch, only added another level of symmetry - as did last week's Side by Side video essay on Nights of Cabiria and La Dolce Vita, covering two of the films from that montage.

So here is a full-circle conclusion to my March cycle and a teaser for the new series. That's it for the run-up to Journey Through Twin Peaks. As I tweeted last week while preparing a season three marathon, and in the spirit of that season's finale...see you on the other side.