As part of my ongoing (re)watching of David Lynch’s creations, I just watched once again Part 8 from Twin Peaks - The Return. If you’ve watched this series - yes, it’s THAT episode. The one I’m totally amazed was made for mainstream television.

Now, trying to impose a straightforward interpretation on anything that David Lynch made - definitely this one - is kind of stupid, I know. If you think you can explain it all it probably means you got it wrong, or at least missed something important. Sure. But still, I can’t resist the (possibly ridiculous) interpretation that struck me as somewhat obvious.

If you haven’t watched this series or this episode, I’ll try to avoid any real spoilers. Let’s just say this episode is what I would call The Birth of Evil; rather than going through the whole thing I’ll just talk about this gang of evil beings that look like homeless people – ’the woodsmen’. Towards the end of the episode, one of these, who always has a cigarette in his mouth and keeps asking people ‘Got a light?’, walks at night towards a radio station in the middle of the desert in New Mexico, 1956. A really lovely guy that everyone he puts his hands on ends up suffering from… let’s say… brain damage.

Up to this point it all seems like loosely connected bits and pieces. But then he enters the radio station, which is playing a soft, romantic 1950s song (The Platters, My Prayer) to listeners who happen to be awake. Skipping some spoilers - he then takes over the broadcast, stopping the song and speaking to the microphone, repeating the same words over and over:

‘This is the water, and this is the well. Drink full, and descend. The horse is the white of the eyes, and dark within.’

David Lynch was not, as much as I can tell, a great fan of mainstream media (Mulholland Drive anyone?). So in an episode about where THE evil came from, it’s kind of obvious that having this guy control a radio station - probably the mainstream media of that time - can’t be good. To take an amazing scene and summarize it poorly: When the bad guys take control of the media, what do you think is going to happen to people’s consciousness?

Fast forward to today’s mainstream media. What was the woodsman saying? Let’s map that to our own world:

  • ‘This is the well’. (Yes, I know I’m changing the order here). Commercial radio or TV; social media.
  • ‘This is the water’. The news, supposedly objective facts but never really. Fake news. Misinformation and partial information. Divisive opinions that attract attention.
  • ‘Drink full, and descend’. Definitely. Just look around you.
  • (As to the horse part - I have no clue about that…)

So sure, maybe Lynch meant nothing like what I wrote here. Doesn’t matter; I’ll still take this scene as an incredibly sharp saying about the poisoned well people have been drinking from for decades, with the water getting more and more toxic every day.

Can you block this noise? If so, maybe you can still hear the crickets in the quiet desert night.