Places Wonderful and Strange: A Cinemyth Lecture Series on Lynch’s LA & the Mysteries of Twin Peaks

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LAURA PALMER! SCREAMS, DREAMS, & MYTHS OF METAMORPHOSIS IN TWIN PEAKS

My soul is wrought to sing of forms transformed to bodies new and strange! – Ovid

The whole world is wild at heart and weird on top. – David Lynch

Laura Palmer, percolate muse of Twin Peaks’ mysteries, was born on this day, July 22, 1972. Laura has meant many things to many people. The Log Lady says Laura is the one leading to the many. Laura describes herself as the two. And, in the terror and transcendence of her splitness, we see Laura branch into forms natural and supernatural, cosmic and material, demonic and, to many viewers who “feel like they know her,” angelic.

Myth is known for its hybrid creatures and uncanny transformations between gods and animals, humans and objects, angels and monsters, underlings and kings. These strange fascinations are not only wonders of the imagination but look-alive images of emotional truth. Metamorphic myths portray the necessity of alteration during moments of crisis—when survival is a matter of changing form.

To honor Laura in all of her complexity, we’ll harken back to her mythic ancestors in Ovid’s Metamorphoses: Persephone (Proserpina), homecoming queen of the underworld, and the girls who become trees, birds, and snake-haired stone-gazers to escape bodily violation. We then turn to the modern mythos of Twin Peaks, in which sufferings and joys transfigure into bizarre objects like ceiling fans, traffic lights, creamed corn, drawer pulls, and pale horses, demonstrating how aesthetic correspondences act as psychic portals within the series, and in cherished aspects of David Lynch’s dreamy creative process. Above (and below) all, we’ll look at the transformative faces and fates of Laura, from her plastic arrival to her nuclear creation myth in The Return: Part 8.

Come celebrate the 54th birthday of the eternal Laura Palmer, dreamer of Twin Peaks and the best screamer in the world. We will have an altar to Laura, where you may leave offerings and take a chocolate bunny, maybe even a slice of cherry pie.

Devon Deimler, PhD is a writer, artist, and researcher. She earned her PhD in Mythological Studies with an emphasis in Depth Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute with a dissertation on Dionysian aesthetics. She holds a BA in Interdisciplinary Sculpture from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Her experience in the arts includes founding an independent record label, Wildfire Wildfire Productions, and working as Assistant to the Director at the Dennis Hopper Art Trust. She is a professor at Pacifica Graduate Institute, Curator at OPUS Archives and Research Center; and former Scholar-in-Residence and a Contributing Artist at the Philosophical Research Society, where she now serves as Operations and Publications Manager. Devon is the editor of three volumes of Manly Palmer Hall’s The Twilight Hour: Dreams, Sleep, and Symbols and Mythology I and II, and is published in Truth & Soul: A Robert Downey Sr. Reader.