"I tell what I have seen and what I believe; and whoever shall say that I have not seen what I have seen, I now tear off his head. For I am an unpardonable Brute, and it will be thus until Time is no longer Time. Neither Heaven nor Hell, if they exist, can do anything against this brutality which they have imposed on me, perhaps so that I may serve them….Who knows?

In any case, in order to lacerate me.

What exists, I see with certainty. What does not exist, I shall create, if I must."

Antonin Artaud

HBO'spremiered on January 12, 2014, 42 days before the 25th anniversary of Laura Palmer's death on February 24th, 1989. This is appropriate becauseworks like the magical child of David Lynch's strange and mystifying masterpiece. And just like, everything that happens intakes place within a dream. A nightmare.The mystery before us then is, whose dream is it?

history is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake James Joyce why should I live in history, huh? Fuck, I don't want to know anything anymore. This is a world where nothing is solved. Someone once told me, "Time is a flat circle. Everything we've ever done or will do we're gonna do over and over and over again." Rustin Cohle in eternity, where there is no time, nothing can grow. Nothing can become. Nothing changes. So death created time to grow the things that it would kill and you are reborn but into the same life that you've always been born into. I mean, how many times have we had this conversation, detectives? Well, who knows? When you can't remember your lives, you can't change your lives, and that is the terrible and the secret fate of all life. You're trapped by that nightmare you keep waking up into. Rustin Cohle





Grand Guignol





Where else have we seen that symbol?





*Remember, we are investigating a dream here, and dreams follow a fucked up logic.









"I don't sleep. I just dream."

Terence McKenna





played the role of our true detective in TP. He spent two seasons searching for the killer of a young woman, searching for salvation.





Salvation?

There was also a physician in TP, Dr. Lawrence Jacobi, played by Russ Tamblyn. Dale Cooperplayed the role of our true detective in. He spent two seasons searching for the killer of a young woman, searching for salvation.There was also a physician in, Dr. Lawrence Jacobi, played by Russ Tamblyn.









RussT.





It is no coincidence that Dr. Jacobi looks like Terence Mckenna, because the character was based on Terence McKenna. McKenna is most widely known for his views on psychedelic drugs, but for those who really spend time with his work, you will find him to be one of the more astute pataphysicians around. His examinations of Joyce, coincidence, and the plain old weird happenings of life in the twentieth century led him to a pretty bold conclusion:





I think that the whole of the twentieth century is informed by this hyper-dimensional understanding, and that, you know, Jung tapping into it in the twenties, the Dadaists in 1919 in Zurich, the surrealists, even earlier the Ecole de Pataphysique, Lautréamont, Jarry, all of these people…it’s what it’s about.





Terence McKenna





join forces with them, because even they can't do it all by themselves.



School is in session. Go get a copy of Finnegans Wake and start studying.







A.A.: Lone Star In Sight We are asleep in a nightmare called history. We will never achieve salvation (wake up) until we solve the mystery before us, until we catch the killer whose crimes keep happening over and over and over again. Joyce, Lynch, McKenna, and now Nic Pizzolatto, are compelling us towith them, because even they can't do it all by themselves.School is in session. Go get a copy of Finnegans Wake and start studying.

In 1995, a young woman is found murdered, and two CID homicide detectives are called in to investigate a crime scene that suggests ritualistic intent. The case of Dora Kelly Lange is officially opened.Our first clue that we are in fact in the world of the dream is that the case of D. Kelly Lange is reopened 17 years later. This not only mirrors the 17 years it took James Joyce to write his epic book of dreamsit also mirrors the structure of the book, as the final sentence on the last exhausting page ofdoes not bring closure, it simply reopens.Coincidence? It doesn't matter right now, it's a clue, and at this point you take what you can get.Our second clue is embedded in the title of the first episode, "The Long Bright Dark". This is a pretty decent description of a dream. It also includes the last name of our victim, as "Lange" is German for "long". "The Lange Bright Dark", maybe this is simply Lange's dream (maybewas Laura's dream?). If I was murdered, I would hope that my life warranted a thorough investigation, and that brave individuals would risk their lives to bring my killer to justice. Let's look a little closer before we close this case.Our next clue is the spiral symbol painted on the body of the deceased.The spiral symbol painted on the body is the same spiral symbol we find in front of another haunted detective (also hunting an underground chemist), and is utilized as a kind of logo for the 'Pataphysics of Alfred Jarry.This term 'Pataphysics first appears within the text of Jarry's play, and the most direct definition is "that which is above metaphysics" (or shit you don't talk about at work). The killer's use of the symbol is odd. The murder scene suggests the use of sympathetic magic, a work that is "below metaphysics" (below not in a critical sense, but in a directional dense). Something very bi-polar is going on here.From Antonin Artaud's The Alfred Jarry Theater:To entertain someone pataphysically, to take an audience's thinking beyond metaphysics requires an absolute shit-ton of confidence and trust. I consider David Lynch to be the consummate pataphysician of our time. He bravely recognized that the American television audience was ready for the pataphysical mind-fuck of(bi-polarity) in 1990. Ifreally is the magical child of Lynch, it makes sense then, at least for me, that the best way to approachis pataphysically. Like a true detective (we have a title!).In The Alfred Jarry Theater, Artaud insists that the audience plays an integral role in the success of the show. He demands that for the theater to work, there must exist at least a "minimum of confidence and trust" within the audience. The bare miminum of this confidence and trust is represented in the character of Detective Martin Hart. His shallow, hypocritical defense of the sanctity of marriage and his eye-rolling disdain for anything beyond his ken will clearly not solve the case, but his participation is still essential. As much as they would like to believe, pataphysician's do not exist within a void, even they require someone with heart, someone a little more grounded in "reality" to make sure that they don't go too far off the rails, and Woody fulfills his role admirably.The person closest to our Tall Man, our true detective, is the one with the tall boy, a Lone Star trekking across the desert abyss with his trusty Camel. Detective Rustin Cohle can't sleep. He can't sleep because("a jury rig of presumption and dumb will . . . it was all . . . a dream you had inside a locked room. A dream about being a person"). He continues to search for clues because he isn't quite sure the dream is his or the killer's, or someone else entirely. If he was sure it was his dream, he would just put a bullet in his head and end it. But if it is indeed the killer's dream, a bullet in his head won't solve a thing. The nightmare won't end until he puts a bullet in the killer's head.As Cohle searches for the killer, we realize what he is really searching for is salvation. Not the kind that is promised by ordinary metaphysics, and not the kind delivered by sympathetic magic, but the kind that promises the total annihilation of doubt. The answer not to "what?" but to "why?".