On Peaks and Predilections.

I’ve just been watching a few random clips from Twin Peaks on YouTube. It takes me back to the cold little cottage I rented in the Northumbrian outback between October ’90 and March ’91. It was a bad winter that year and the cottage was inadequately heated, woefully so. But it didn’t matter because as soon as that deep guitar intro started, with its heavy reverb and weeping dessert of strings, I left the cottage and landed in the woods of Washington State.

I can honestly claim that there have only ever been three TV series of which it can be said that I was a devoted fan, and Twin Peaks was chief among them. The other two were Dennis Potter’s Pennies from Heaven and The Singing Detective, but even they didn’t transport me to another reality the way the big one did.

And now you may have my confession. Twenty four years on I have no reputation to guard, and so I’m free to make it. I was a Donna man.

The point is, you see, one of the things which lifted Twin Peaks to near mythical status was the classic three-woman motif. I doubt it’s far from the truth to claim that every man (every straight one, that is) would have to be either a Donna man, a Shelley man, or an Audrey man. Audrey was perfect for the lonely nights. Shelley was ideal for the busy days. Donna was universal. Psychoanalysts are free to make of it what they will. After all, what’s the point of clinging to a reputation when you’re busy trying to find a way to stop being thirty two?