A decade ago today on October 1, 2014, not long after midnight, I uploaded my first Journey Through Twin Peaks video essay to Vimeo: the half-hour Part 1 (composed of five chapters) titled "Harmony of the Dark Woods". The narration was rough, and in fact I soon re-uploaded a whole new audio track, recorded by listening to the original on headphones while repeating its words at a less peak-y volume (no pun intended). The following day on October 2, 2014, I uploaded each of those first five chapters separately to YouTube. And then just one day after that, on October 3, 2014, David Lynch and Mark Frost simultaneously tweeted "That gum you like is going to come back in style..." fueling speculation which Showtime promptly confirmed. Twin Peaks would return to TV with new episodes. Unknowingly, I'd thrown myself deeper into Peaks than ever before at the exact moment its relevance was being renewed.
Even after that exciting revelation, I could never suspect that I'd still be working on new Journey Through Twin Peaks ten years later. The limited event series eventually came and went in 2017 and, having finished the initial run of Journey videos within several months of that first one, I vowed to continue my own series and eventually released a two-hour Part 5 in 2020-21 (largely exploring the "in-between" years of the nineties, zeroes, and early teens alongside a broad strokes analysis of The Return). Year after year, I kept promising a final batch of chapters to be gathered in a Part 6 focused on dissecting the third season (largely by story section) but I became swamped in other projects - Peaks and otherwise - so here we are, ten years down the road with a conclusion still distant on the horizon. The bad news is that this process keeps stretching out and getting kicked down the road, but that's a long familiar phenomenon at this point. On the other hand...
The good news is a fresh development I can now confirm: over this past month I have resumed work on my video series for the first time since March 2021, cutting a "memoriam" montage which will close chapter 37, drafting the narration, and exploring videos to illustrate my subject - in this case, the years since the last pieces of Twin Peaks material, an era swirling with rumors, theories, abandoned projects, and unfortunate passings. The opening of Part 6 was actually already completed five years ago and published in 2020 before Part 5, as "Dark Dreams on the Radio". Continuing that theme, the full chapter will be titled "Fading Signals" in reference to Lynch's comment at a 2018 Q&A about how the Carrie Page character and the final scene of season three were "calling" to him but there were disturbances in that signal. There is obviously a meta quality to all of this, as after this passage of time I am reflecting on a passage of time following a show which is itself about the passage of time.
And how much more time will pass before it's public? Initially I harbored some hope of posting the chapter on this very anniversary but its format proved too complicated for imminent release. As such, even after the video is complete I'll probably wait to publish chapter 37 in 2025, closer to when subsequent chapters will also be ready. Ultimately, I would like - emphasis on like (no more promises, never again!) - to unveil the remaining chapters in three groups: the first eight around the spring of 2025, a couple more in 2026, and the final two during significant anniversaries around the end of summer in 2027. I also want to share the public version of the Lost in Twin Peaks second season podcast and the top thirty of my TWIN PEAKS Character Series during this broad timespan, along with some non-Peaks video essay projects. As always, you can follow the progress of these projects here; the big new development is that I'm no longer waiting to complete the others before resuming Journey Through Twin Peaks. Instead, I will be working on and sharing these videos alongside everything else.
Thanks for your patience and I hope you continue to enjoy the ride.
Here is where it all began on October 1, 2014...
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