#Laura Lyons | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

notmuchtoconceal · 1 year ago

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Verily, verily I say unto you! Laura Palmer is the image of the Feminine Messiah, for she is what we consume at our daily meal, wrapped section-by-section, genre-by-genre, a full-course luncheon in a box served up by an early-adopter auteur slumming it up in TV Land, for he believed in the good of public works and the joys of episodic narrative!

Look back now to the Image of Tina in A Nightmare on Elm Street, not only clawing bloodied and bitten-of-nail on the inside of her bodybag translucent as the mists of a high school shower. See her not only dragged down the halls by an unseen malevolence leaving a slime-trail of blood as she goes -- See her also in the Dreamland which was her prison and tomb standing shrouded as the Holy Virgin in Plastic, Deflowered though she was by her Hunky Tighty Whitey wearing Latino Greaser Boyfriend who too was to be found alone, strangled of his own volition.

See the continuity in these images, not only for how one may influence another, but how in each is a reflection of the time and place from which they arose. See the dead girls on the news in placid suburban 80's homes. See them now always for what they always were -- offerings to the Moloch of the Mainland, Our Homeland Hungering for the Blood of the Pure. See how the boogeyman was always a necessity of the loving patriarchs which your grief-stricken mother, intoxicated in isolation, barred the windows of your home to keep your father out. See your father the lawman hiding the crimes to which he knew he was entitled for the law was his and the courts always shows for the public. The letter of the law could not reflect the will of the people, for the people hunger for blood and the annals of our court are not a butcher's trough, though we may permit each tree within our garden a gallows!

The blonde girl. The Radiant Madonna. Who is she? In her name we see the laurel crown, the hands which reach and touch. As the heart is what mediates the two, and she is the heart of the town, the daughter of a respected lawyer for the local last tycoon, she was the most fecund portal through which to inject corruption. She is the Feminine Messiah for She is the Paradoxical Image of God in The Flesh.

In Laura's embrace of Stoic Wisdom, her acceptance of struggle, decision to withstand hardship and rejection of witchcraft, we see the font of her status as a glamor goddess is a masculinized mind which compromises neither its feminine allure nor immersion. From a young age, she is bombarded not only by repeated sexual and emotional abuse from a loved one, but continuous assault by the irrational and yet inarguable presence of supernatural forces. As with the first scene of Ash's sister Cheryl's possession in The Evil Dead, the unseen forces of darkness lurking always out of sight seize her hand against her will and use her own body as an instrument to intrude upon the pages of a meditative space where she may be alone with her thoughts.

The treasury of Missing Pieces from Fire Walk With Me are a particular boon to this subject, as the additional scenes featuring Laura and her mother shed warm rays of luminance on a relationship foundational to not only the heart, but the core tension of the series.

In a brief scene where Sarah, Laura's mother, is coming inside carrying groceries, three developments occur in rapid succession, which key the viewer in to the intimacy of these women's dynamic. Laura is harried, for she has just found pages ripped from the Secret Diary she had hidden, tipping her off that her secrets can no longer be safely kept in her own home. She is smoking a cigarette, as she was only moments before (in the main body of the text) living out an impromptu early-90's alterative hip-hop video as she comes home from school (as one does), which we soon find out is despite her mother's protests. (The smoking, not living in a improvisational music video. No matter what timeline you're in, you can't take the 90's out of a 90's girl even if it's still the 80's.) Yet also despite her protests, her mother will hold her cigarette for her as Laura in turn takes the groceries. Laura needs to ask her mother to borrow the car (fortuitous, I'm only now realizing, as she had just gotten home) for she is still only a high school girl, but first -- she must withstand another bout of lecturing from her mother where she insists she will never be a smoker if she never starts smoking. We can see in this briefly that Sarah is instilling in Laura a purity ethic where a corrupted-identity is based on an initiation ("being a smoker", "starting smoking") -- the definitive feature of idol worship, which Sarah is sadly living out half-consciously, as her own husband is drugging her with milk. The milk which she seems inevitably to accept, making her go into the white dissociative horsey dreams. As a final comic touch, once Sarah agrees, Laura runs out the door, leaving her cigarette in her mother's hands, which she needs to then run back in and grab to eye-rolling maternal exasperation.

This connects to a later scene which elaborates upon a vital point of ambiguity in the main body of the film -- an ambiguity which reads as such for it is not immediately parsible, for it is irrational.

Laura ascends to the local Roadhouse to once more prostitute her underaged body for the coke money she so desperately needs to fuel her lifestyle of endless social charity and drug-fueled bisexual intrigues. Her childhood best friend, Donna Hayward, played by a different actress in the film than in the series (perhaps embodying Laura's projections of her own naivety onto the cuter, smaller, mousier new girl) follows her. She is not only curious about her best friend's distance, her twoness, but she is aware of how Laura sees her. Donna is dating one of the two Local Mikes, the Earthly Dumb Jock, who proudly boasts from his convertible in his letterman jacket with her drug-dealer leather bro by his side that HE. IS. THE. MAN. This Donna will, in the same breath, wonder aloud if her football player boyfriend could ever write her a poem, then scandalously whisper to Laura about ... the mere possibility ... of having sex. Holy shit. This bitch was having threesomes in public when she was twelve. Girl, you know not what little you know. Oh my god. You are not yet ready to steal this woman's second boyfriend and develop main character syndrome as you shout on her grave in the dead of night. Right now, you are gonna do some weird needy insecure shit and it's gonna be fun.

(My little brother is a hardcore Donna stan and I know not ever why.)

As we have said, Donna follows Laura to her nightside prostitution meetup, which prompts Laura to react with barely-disguised dismay equal parts shock contempt and expectance. This Donna ... is gonna get fucking good at playing Laura's games. This Donna ... is gonna slut it up. This Donna ain't no fuckin prude. This Donna has cute lil perky tits and she's gonna whip em out! You ever see that other Donna's tits? Nuh-uh, bitch. TV standards. No full-frontal female. See em on the big screen, motherfucker. Bathed in hot pink electro-grunge hate-fucking your ears! I am a Goddess! I am the Concubine! I am the Queen of Whores! Ow. Don't cry from that one shot you took. That was real spicy. I'm such a good girl this is hard for me. I'm not gonna let it show, though. Do I have to be at church in the morning? Am I out whoring on a schoolday? What happened to my lesbian sister who writes poetry? How can Laura be best girl and biggest slut, how is that possible, what am I missing?

Once more you may see as it is revealed -- as Donna approaches the table at which Laura is seated with her two bucks, one asks if she is included in "the deal" -- to which Laura objects, which Donna insists on including herself, sealing it with the shot she takes from her mark.

Donna is self-initiating into the cult of ritual prostitution by means of libation that she may enter into sympathetic resonance with Laura. Laura, though she may seem to dismay it, is protective of Donna's innocence, and doesn't wish to see her corrupted. Though Laura may appear beautiful and bright and alive, inside she is consumed by darkness and fears being close to anyone, fears that her influence on anyone might be corrosive, and yet -- she's missing Meals on Wheels deliveries and unable to give excuses, although -- nobody wonders why despite the fact there's nobody there. There's nobody there, but maybe the two of us can sneak off later and snuggle in my truck while we listen to non-diegetic music over the radio and reflect on the beauty and tragedy of the night.

Furthermore, the Missing Pieces make clear the crossing of an additional boundary -- namely that the girls literally cross northward into the territory of Canada to engage in their Pink Room Prostitution Cube. The abrupt cut in the feature film, on first impression -- may lead one to believe the Pink Room is an extension spatially, literally ... (a backroom) as well as metaphysically and thematically ... of the Roadhouse, rather than another place, called The Power and the Glory some many miles away.

It is in this scene where Donna loses herself to her latent passions, caressing herself as a boa in the sweater which Laura had discarded as she disrobed, she sees then her old coworker, Ronette Pulaski (named for the park by my house, by which I mean not the French Jesuit Missionary, but the street not named for him) emerge from the pink fog of time, the mirror image of what Donna might become: the two reflect upon their past experiences in the brothel where they worked, recruited through the perfume counter at Laura's dad's lifetime friend and business partner's department store high school grooming and sex trafficking ring.

It is important to understand that consensual sex work performed voluntarily by an adult woman (or man or anyone else for that matter) who understands the risks they're accepting, as they would accept with any choice of occupation, is quite different from a situation where a girl is coerced, both overtly and subtly, into acting against her own self-interest by playing into what seems inevitable pre-scripted scenes by invisibly abusive authorities with loving faces. Laura may enjoy sex, and sex is empowering, but this is occurring from a place of deep hurt. Laura has been repeatedly humiliated, repeatedly disempowered, repeatedly had her body turned into a source of shame, that her ability to connect and be vulnerable with other men has been compromised. Truthfully, Laura enjoys humiliating men through sex. Laura loves the power she has over them. Laura enjoys that she can coerce, bully and intimidate adult men who know they're raping her, because at least these fuckers aren't her own father. Remember when Bobby breaks down crying with Laura in his arms, realizing she's only using him for cocaine, and he just gives it to her anyway cause he wants her to be happy? He just knows that she's in pain and he can't really help and he needs her, and it's fine. She needs these drugs. Maybe she needs these drugs. You can't get her off drugs. What can you do for her? What can anyone do for her? Nobody appreciated how Bobby was a good man all along but his own dad and nobody can understand that because nobody has a time-traveling airforce superdad who can hypnotize you in a diner with the best possible version of yourself he glimpsed in his Project Bluebook heaven research because an actual Good Christian Man might as well be sci-fi!

Oh my god, bro.

It just now occurs to me that I am literally recapping a soap opera to explain the gospel. The cute Polish pup with the muscly veins and roid acne was right, you are obnoxiously American! Well, it's important to remember that if cute little German boys didn't love American melodrama, we wouldn't have the great works of RW Fassbinder.

I win and this is an effective hybridization of film criticism and spirituality which rightfully makes actual Christians look like aesthetically and intellectually stunted-dweebs formaldehyded into guppies by doctrine!

My page is so much fun, you will not see this shit elsewhere. Never forget how special you are to me for appreciating my words, brothers.

Laura, you see, understands the nature of discreet energetic resonance.

Laura knows that the essentialized state which underlies fetishism is not simply sympathetic psychological association, nor strictly a consequence of molecular chemistry. While Laura would agree that, yes (for Laura is keen-eyed and scientifically-minded, yet nevertheless -- is not blind to subtler forces at work in the world around her) that if your cute lil queer boy ass wanted to lick an alpha man's armpits cause it tastes real woody and salty almost like a saltwater toffee, but a bit more mulchy and mushroomy, like -- yeah, there'd deffo be a molecular component, for you would be inhaling his pheromones direct and they would be seeping into your tongue creating fast-acting pathways straight to your brain, and yeah -- your direct proximity to a hunky alpha man's muscular triceps and biceps and big meaty pecs would cement the paraphilic association, acting as both a trigger and deepening a visual impression around which your mind would naturally mold itself, allowing your body to follow -- all of that is true. She would probably agree in 2023 Twin Peaks reboot timeline where she's watching gay tumblr porn prolly cause she finds it lolzy and how gay are Mike and Bobby, actually? At least as gay as Donna is for me, right? Am I ready to speak publicly about how gay I suspect Donna is for me? She's basically a little sister. I can't believe she grows up to be the bad guy in Men in Black 2 before fully morphing into Pete Burns. Holy shit. Maybe I am a mean bitch. Why the fuck do I wanna come for Donna so bad? I just feel she brings it on herself?

All that aside, Laura understands the essentialized state transferred by a fetishistic object is primarily energetic. That is, as everything is vibrational, one might say that a shirt worn by a person, or their underwear, vibrates at the same frequency as that person, coming to -- in time -- carry subtle traces of that person, for the very fibers of the garment could be said to have been energetically infused via the pitch or the sound at which the individual's spirit resonates or sings, and things such as smell, while real -- are themselves closer to self-induced inductions where we recall distant days and so surrender ourselves -- making ourselves blank to receive the song we'll never hear.

Laura wears her mother's clothes. In another deleted scene, Sarah chastises Laura for taking one of her sweaters, then not only not returning it, but leaving it balled up on the floor of her closet. Later, Sarah wonders if Laura took her sweater again, for she'd spent all afternoon looking for it, only for Laura to then say rather pointedly "Mom. What are you wearing?" Prompting Sarah to glance down, and slip into a fount of weeping, to which Laura slowly and tenderly approaches.

We understand. Sarah has some demons in her. Sarah sees the visions of the white horse. That wasn't explained for a long time, and even now that it has been, it's still not something which is readily sensible to the casual majority of viewers. The explanation is given, but the intellect refuses it, for it confounds the intellect's neat and tidy categorical schematizations. The white horse is frustrating for it is both obscure and obvious. The readily material explanation is drugs, slang, things one step removed from immediate reality. You can have Abe Lincoln descend from the Sky in Blackface and Crush People's Brains Open before Reciting In Slant Rhyme the Answer All Along to Mock to Your Face Your Conscious, Logical, Route Memorization Sensibilities, but in truth, the image is less paradoxical than a depiction of a current and emerging unity.

Sarah's memory maybe isn't all there. Sarah's had her mind played with. Sarah's been on some shit. How much has Sarah been playing along all along? How much does it only look that way, for she doesn't see?

How much does she always allow?

Mom. What are you wearing?

Mom, are you wearing Sarah?

Laura takes off her face.

Laura is filled with Light.

Saraha takes off her face.

Sarah is filled with Darkness.

Sarah has Laura's smile.

Sarah has a swollen spirit finger.

What would it mean for her -- to know the man she loved, wasn't only cheating on her, not only abusing her daughter, but both in a single act which violated the very underpinnings of both their marriage and their family; to feel she had brought this on herself, by selecting this man, by... not being enough ... by breeding a whore ... why would this happen?

Did you sit there after the reveal of Laura's killer and see this woman standing upright, eyes-alert at her husband's funeral, vowing to be awake, vowing to be present, vowing to remember and to live?

Do you remember how she was then written out of the show forever? How nobody cared? Nobody wanted to look at her? Nobody wanted to think about what happened? Everybody wanted to immediately forget. Nobody wanted to admit that it was happening. Bobby cried out at Laura's funeral that they collectively killer her by ignoring what was obvious and nobody said anything. Bobby was right all along. Bobby was never the real asshole. Bobby was maybe one of the only people who really loved her almost selflessly despite being an infantile douchebag who got secondhand raped by his shrink, who -- oh yeah. Was a jealous older man pining away listlessly and leeringly for underage Laura's hot and heavy secret trauma, who wanted to fuck with Bobby for being a badboy hot jock with powerful latent telepathic abilities, the likes of which his false-gold Mercurial debt-scheme which miraculously works only on cyclopean state champ wresler kooks with amazing pussy control could never hope to dream, let alone conceptualize in false 3D.

Mike the Man grew up to be an insurance agent because of course he did.

Remember how Sarah only came back in at the last minute to deliver a message from the realm of chthonian spiritual trial, reduced and elevated to a cameo, being both chorus and iteral messenger of a hidden devil?

Fuckin sucks for her, am I right? Prolly made her a lil loopy while it was happening, then -- once everyone she thought was a friend or family ignores her cause now she's nothing but a walking reminder, invisibly reduced to a pariah in her own life, it's like she does nothing but sits and festers in a wound of her own making which will never heal.

Damn.

She sat in that house. Where it happened. For 25 years.

In front of the television.

While nobody talked about it.

You know, I've always just really liked Grace Zabriskie. I was sad when she was murdered in Child's Play 2. This is the only thing by David Lynch she's in where she's not already alarming and insidious. Wild at Heart. Disabled Vampyre Ritual Mexican Sex Assassin. Inland Empire. Your 6th grade history teacher harboring an omen of immanent death before using her witch powers to rearrange time. The Return. Literally Queen of Darkness. There she is, folks. The Mother of Evil.

Here in the pilot, she is simply a primal wail of despair which induces some to laughter simply for its intensity disturbs their peace of mind and they must laugh to hold their fragile rational framework together.

(You may attempt to prove me wrong if it would please you.)

Therefore we understand. Whatever is in Sarah is in Laura and whatever is in Laura is in Sarah. They're, now you sense, energetically tethered -- not only cut from the same cloth, for her flesh was stitched of her loom, but if their strings were plucked, they would produce pleasing sounds of a similar timber, and none could confirm this better than Leland Palmer, father, husband and brother, who has readily plucked them both!

You understand now fully -- why, for Laura, at the Pink Room called The Power and the Glory, to see Donna as the image of Ronette, a prostitute saved only at the last moment by providence, that she may open the door to beckon Laura's protective spirit -- why to see Donna wearing Laura's sweater would incense her as to leap to Donna's rescue and cease all further consumption of libation and ritual sex. Laura remembers who she is, and what she values. She doesn't want Donna to be like her. She doesn't want Donna to do what she inevitably does -- investigate her double, triple, quintuple life, adopt her manner and her attitudes, seduce naive doofy biker idiots and cute agoraphobic nerds who are so sheltered and fragile they will suicide at the first sign of betrayal.

She doesn't want her stable family life to fall apart when she discovers that she-bitch Audrey Horne is her sister, holy shit. It was so obvious. If Donna had any charisma she'd be Audrey, who is too feisty and independent which is why her own father never tried to rape her!

Why would her own father try to rape her? Her father has a healthy and trusting creative-personal-business relationship with his brother. Her father lacks the core loneliness to make him that kind of monster. Neither Donna nor Audrey understand men, which is why they're not Laura. Laura understanding men makes her Best Girl. The fact that her own father never tried to rape her made Audrey feel so weirdly inadequate -- much like Donna -- that she has to do mentally ill things like hide naked in Hunky FBI men's bedrooms before dishing out her daddy issues.

God. Thank God our old pal Coop's semi-autonomous AI demon-half shot a corruption load in her so she had a raise a hellspawn, marry her accountant, then go insane wishing she was still young and pretty!

Joshy Fuck Me. That's what I say instead of Jesus fuck now!

I was gonna keep this G-rated for language, but holy shit!

This shit's got as much rape and incest as an actual bible story, I'm just gonna assume you're all adults and have the psychological resilience to handle a dirty word or two, ooooh. What if I post a middle-finger pic? Like and reblog telling me if you would swoon or drenche yer knickers.

Rather tellingly, all Leland can see as he arrives up to pick up Laura for breakfast -- is this same fear of Laura herself. He sees Laura seated beside Donna on the couch, and remembers the day he was almost the John to his own underage prostitute daughter, arranged via their mutual connection, Theresa Banks, his earlier kill in Deer Meadow one year prior.

God, imagine how that must feel for the poor guy!

Ya fuck your own daughter's brains out in a drug-induced demonic trance, thinkin she'll have the common sense to be trauma bonded ta ya for life, but nooooooo. She wants to be out here like that totally scary and unfuckable little Audrey bitch threatening to cut off daddy's tiny peepee with her intimidating precocious little scientific intellect. Girls are scary! If they're not dumb, they're gonna notice how dumb we are first! We need to destroy their capacity to think and feel with our dicks! This is the right way of the land, for it is the right of the conqueror, the female being fecund and plenty as the soil and just as fit to trod upon.

I love America! It's real fun to pollute and rape!

I mean I absolutely believe Dolores seduced Humbert, let's not kid ourselves. Humbert Humbert may have had a silver tongue, but he was not leading man material, folks. Humbert Humbert wishes he was James Mason, but Kubrick's film of Lolita is a perverse Wonderland full-immersion in the psychopathic ideations of a pedophile verging on a pederast for Humbert is so fucking hipster and selective of his vintage, he will only rape little girls in these precise specific age ranges, holy shit.

You are the most autistic and socially inept sex monster! I really believe all the women you meet are throwing themselves at you and Peter Sellers is the neurotic spazz radio man of a thousand voices. Kubrick's film is an irony which requires a level of psychological detachment which verges on psychopathic. It's more-than-less a feature-length 4chan joke, and I understand nobody will understand or appreciate it as a sterling treatise on irony as insurmountable as I do and I accept and appreciate this. Dolly can absolutely be aware of the sexual power she can wield over an infantile adult male, and it can still be illegal, immoral and that man's fault when he succumbs to his emotional weakness and rapes a child.

Joshy fuck me. Uncomfortable people leap to stupid fucking conclusions cause they're basically animals! People who are uncomfortable talking about raping children prolly wanna rape children, there I said it. I have only ever wanted to rape powerful and virile athletic men of an appropriate age and ferment, for I am a conqueror, a king, an alpha.

Well, you see -- Laura couldn't protect Donna, same as nobody could save Laura. In the end, Laura was the only one who could save herself.

Laura gave her body, to protect her Soul. When she places the Jade ring around her finger and weds herself to the Spiritual Mike, the Shoe Salesman and One-Armed Man Whose severed Autonomous Limb became First a Dwarf, then an Axxonal Bubblegum Tree, she was Free of Bob's Influence, and so ... Bob no longer able to farm her, was compelled by obligation to his former master to reap and immediately harvest her.

To put this in an economical sense more readily graspable for earthly carnivores, when Laura put on the ring, she allowed herself to be claimed by Mike, thus becoming His Property. BOB -- the spirit inside Leland -- once being Mike's familiar, now a runaway, was compelled by his very nature to kill this girl who had given herself to his master. As BOB had sought her out, slow-cooked her, flavored her, BOB saw Laura as his and wanted to enjoy her for a long, long time. When Laura gave herself to Mike, BOB was himself forced to sell now, and trade a good long steady drip for an immediate short-term gorging, most of which he then needed to immediately discharge submissively at the feet of his master.

For Laura had wedded herself to a demon, her soul was placed in the Black Lodge. Yet, Laura did not wed herself to a demon for any desire for earthly power or authority, but for it was a way to minimize malign influence. Laura's spiritual wedding was simple, practical harm-reduction. If BOB had corrupted Laura and entered her body, BOB could use her connections to every artery of the town to spread this influence everywhere. Laura "chose to let herself be killed" because this was in line with her dominant value of protecting the innocence she lost.

Look at Deer Meadow, the setting of the prologue to the film. See how little life means there. See how its evident nature as a stained and distorted reflection of the eponymous town was clear even before the doppelganger motif took stage as primary thematic preoccupation. Remember how nobody knew Theresa. Nobody came forward to claim the body. She was a drifter, a statistic, no family. Totally forgotten.

See how it was the love of real people who tried, who stepped forward, who had a desire to connect, and to care, and serve, despite the fears, the follies, the secrets and entanglements of other people in a vanishing tribal structure and way of life we do not and may not ever understand.

See how anyway, they never spoke.

For a time, they did.

Then all was inevitably forgotten.

See how it was through the laws of cause and effect; the accumulation and deterioration of karma as a debt, that Laura self-actualizes by taking control of her life by taking control of her death, that she breaks the cycle of violence and is so uplifted into Grace and Reverence.

See how the angel which came as she sat splendid and curled in the velvets of the Red Room was of her own making, as the one which appeared to open the door of the car for Ronette was of her own making, the lights splendid and alive as if hung ourselves on our own tree!

Tell yourself, brothers, as our sisters our able. That we deserve to be forgiven. That others will forgive us when we forgive ourselves. Any crime which may be mended may be done as such when we approach one another with a firm grasp of truth in an open heart. We were not born to be corrupted. We are not lowly and bestial. We are not the pawns of the powers that be, nor fated to sell ourselves half-willingly into slavery. If it is in a market that we must we live, we may set our value with those of so little they would design to ever think to put one on a human life.

Of this now, and at this time, I have said enough.

On another day, I will return to the ways in which our leading man and hero, chipper and chivalrous knight of the FBI -- boyscout in black tie --- who is easily able to clear the low bar of taking a high school girl crush out for ice cream and a pep talk instead of feeling her up, he already being telepathic enough to know a girl'd be murdered here a year ago, instead of, like ... y'know... fondling her prone naked body -- I will return to the ways in which he complements and contrasts the enigmas of our heroine, he being, by means of his multiplicity, quite an enigma himself.

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