Falling, Floating, Dreaming: The Magic of Twin Peaks Episode 1: The Pilot | The Tower

“Gone fishin’”, the very first words uttered by Pete Martell in the Pilot episode of Mark Frost and David Lynch’s seminal television masterpiece Twin Peaks followed by the sound of a distant horn somewhere and Pete observing “the lonesome foghorn blows.” Although not the first image presented to the audience of Twin Peaks,(more on that later), these first spoken words are essential sigils that can help us to unlock so many of the mysteries and deeper meanings that abound in this show and make up the complex and fascinating web Frost and Lynch weave over the course of this work. The fish, the idea, the slippery thing David Lynch dives deep to find inside his own creative mind and the thing he writes about in his own creative memoir “Catching the Big Fish”; how to live the Art Life and catch that big creative idea, juxtaposed here in the opening moments of Twin Peaks with the bellowing of a lonesome foghorne, interrupting the process of catching said fish, a dark and macabre harbinger of the shattering of foundations about the come for the Town Peaks. Indeed, it is this foghorn blast that causes Pete to turn around and see the body of Laura Palmer, wrapped in plastic, lying face down, naked, on a rocky beach, murdered, that will become the Tower moment for everyone in this story, the triggering event that will lead to so much pain, torment, struggle, fear but also rejuvenation, redemption, new life and the de-structuring of old forms; the very essence of sixteenth card in the major arcana presented here in the opening seconds of the Twin Peaks Pilot.