Category: Counter Esperanto

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Ep. No. 20 — The 14th Secret: Folklore of (and in) Twin Peaks

The holidays are holiday-rific as they say, and their multi-spectral horror and insane blandishments have had certain “insalubrious” effects upon your humble hosts.  Rallying against this tinseled terror, we present for your hopeful approval, the initial results, interpretations, commentary and tangential matters arising from Jubel’s academic study of folklore.

We asked for your help to fill out our understanding of how Peaks viewers understood and processed modern folklore, and your support and responses just blew us away.  Over a hundred of you took the time out of your day to answer a survey to a level of completeness and deep thought that I have never before witnessed–and as a former pollster, I’ve witnessed more than I can say.

Both Jubel and myself pondered how to best process your exquisite thoughts, but in the end the load was too heavy for just the two of us. We’ve therefore asked a few members of the Twin Peaks community to be surprise guests on today’s show, and they have very generously agreed.  For this reason, Michael Wilson and Caemeron Crain of the Drink Full and Descend podcast, and Eileen G. Mykkels of the 25 Years Later site deserve some seriously good slices of cake, they are fabulous human beings and incredibly knowledgeable scholars.

Thank you again for lending us your expertise and insight!

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EP No. 19 — The 6th Song: “The Beast of Averoigne by Clark Ashton Smith”

Much like the corpus of our favorite TV Show/Movie/Franchise/Intellectual Property/… “Art”, this story has something of a tortuous production background, interference from the studio…er, the publisher (Weird Tales) resulted in at least two versions, and later editors have combined these in various arrangements. A number of synopsizes further confuse the issue of original authorial intent, and so we present here Clark Ashton Smith’s masterful tale, “The Beast of Averoigne” as originally printed in the May 1933 issue of WEIRD TALES. Many thanks to The Eldritch Dark for their work in preserving and presenting Smith’s tales, poems and other writings to the greater public through their website http://www.eldritchdark.com/ as well as the tireless efforts of Karl Eckler the Elder, who lent his time, patience and voice to this recording.

This reading is presented here both as a surprise Hallowe’en Treat to our listeners, but also because over the last 18 numbers of Twin Peaks, we have learnt well that, “strange abominations pass evermore between earth and moon and athwart the galaxies; and the gulf is haunted by that which it were madness for man to know.” What seems at first a simple werewolf tale in disguise hints at a meaning as deep and old as the stars, and the dark between them, which is the dark in the woods and the human heart.

Enjoy!

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EP No. 18 — The 13th Secret: “What year is it anyway?”

In their first post-finale podcast about Twin Peaks: The Return, Karl and Jubel begin what will surely be the long task of parsing out what the hell just happened. Setting aside the cross-textual analysis for the most part, they look at how Lynch/Frost structured the Return, discuss some of their favorite (and least favorite) elements, the chances of another season, and break down that haunting final scene. Some outside tangents are explored: Orpheus and Eurydice, Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring,” and the phases of human sexuality are brought in as tools to understand both the text of Twin Peaks, and the phenomenon of such a challenging piece of art, and popular entertainment.

AtLeastWeDidItInStyle

Graphics provided by http://www.int33h.com/test/tc/

To Listen, Punch It up to 88MPH: Screen Shot 2017-09-10 at 3.05.29 PM

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EP No. 17 — The 12th Secret: “or… ‘Technical Difficulties: Being a Cadenza in Several Parts for Resonator and Atom Bomb'”

After some major technical issues, your intrepid hosts are back and talking about Twin Peaks: The Return, with a focus on Parts 9 through 12.  True to form, we live up to the “tangents” part of our title, talking about everything from the intricacies of story structure in modern premium television, to why we love Dougie so damn much.  We discuss H.P. Lovecraft’s “From Beyond” as a key Weird text, and some intriguing parallels between that story and The Return’s approach to sound and energy as a way to split the barrier Between Two Worlds.

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The Fifth Song: “From Beyond”

An overarching theme of The Weird is that some knowledge is–or should be–forbidden. That seeing into the abyss means that it’s denizens may see you, reach you, touch you… and do worse than see and touch. In various ways, Twin Peaks has always dealt with this idea. Sara Palmer, the Log Lady, and Cooper himself all found themselves seeing beyond the normal 5 senses that most humans share, and all of them have paid a steep price. The Return has gone even further, introducing devices, spaces and places that offer glimpses behind the curtains of reality, and what we have seen there has been the exact opposite of safety and mundanity.

Therefore we offer you a chance to reset your clocks 97 years into the past and witness the very first time that the foundational horror writer H.P. Lovecraft ventured to set down the facts relating to what issues, From Beyond.

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