FSM # 4: The proof is in the pudding, but the Muse is in the score…
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When TWIN PEAKS aired on Norwegian TV screens about 10 years ago, I was hooked. I was still in upper secondary school back then and the vivacious, larger-than-life fictional writings of my childhood had been compromized by strict, non-fictional rules and regulations. A lid was put on my creative juices.
However, that series ignited a spark. There was something about the “atmosphere” – vast forest areas, constant grey and drizzly weather contrasted with the warm and fuzzy interiors of the log-built hotel by the huge waterfall. The “twin peaks” themselves towering lugubriously over the village. Additionally, of course, there was the offbeat nature of the characters – some sort of absurd play and the subdued, seemingly passive acting of Kyle MacLachlan that fit marvelously as an opposition to the quirky villagers.
The icing on the cake and the final boost, however, was all Angelo Badalamenti. I am having HUGE difficulties explaining just how that music fit so wonderfully with the visuals, and how it worked independently as well. That bass groove, with reverb effects connoting vast landscapes. The jazzy high-hat rhythm. The somewhat sad melody of the main theme underlining the loss of innocence of the murdered Laura Palmer. Things like that.
And, while some claimed that the series got worse the longer it ran, I thought the opposite. It got weirder, more abstract – just the way I liked it. And few TV villains have scared me more than Bob.
In any case, the series eventually inspired me so much that I sat down, put on my cassette tape of the score and wrote an entire novel. The novel was basically based on a series of long introductions in which I laid out the atmosphere of an autumn-covered drizzly Canada, several hundred miles from nearest city (Dawson), before I started the action. The creative juices were flowing again. And all thanks to a series and a score just a little out of the ordinary.
No, the “owls were not what they seemed to be” for sure.
Does anyone know what I mean? Are there any films or scores like this that have resurrected the Muse in you and inspired you to write, paint, compose something?
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This post was inspired by the “STEPMOM effect”-thread.
Loved the series back then and was so upset when the murderer was spoilered in the media. I still feel even on a rewatch some years ago that the series lost a bit after that in season 1 already. But I liked the rather confusing season 2 as well. Haven’t seen that later follow up season 3. The movie was mixed for me.
The scores is of course a classic. The times when you went out to instantly buy the CD 😉
Does anyone know what I mean? Are there any films or scores like this that have resurrected the Muse in you and inspired you to write, paint, compose something?
I remember being highly creatively inspired when I had watched the movie THE HOURS. When I came home back from the cinema I immediately started drawing. These two pictures might be the best or at least most couragous drawings I have ever done.
Funnily, the movie is about writing, not painting. But the movie appeared to me as a wonderful work of art.
Oh, my. If I recall correctly, the live ascent of one of the space shuttles had me illustrating an answer at that time to the questions you posed almost 25 years ago. And of late I eagerly awaited reading the part on Stepmom in the John Williams bio and was anything but disappointed; in fact, author Greiving’s description matched up well with the post from 1999 that spawned your post, Thor.😎
Yes, and I do remember us discussing what season, exactly, that score gets associated with. For me it’s all 100% autumn, for you it’s winter. Strange how that works. But I do remember it inspiring you to write that post, at least, which is very much what this topic was/is about.
So far I have never watched the later third season of TWIN PEAKS. Gladly our French-German broadcaster currently has all TWIN PEAKS (minus the movie) for streaming (and gladly also in the English original as they usually only have German and French) so I will soon binge through that. Still fighting with myself timewise if I should take the time to re-watch seaons 1 and 2 first 😉
Good luck, Malte! I binge all of TWIN PEAKS about once every two years or so. I have the “gold” DVD box for the original series.
But now that this thread was ressurected, I can add another story (it was either this or the “extra-musical associations” one):
I’ve mentioned Jean Michel Jarre’s WAITING FOR COUSTEAU (1990) twice now, in other threads, and it has a back story that fits in this thread, I think.
It’s one of the very first LPs I got, that was just for me and not culled from my dad’s collection. It was a Christmas gift from my uncle – a teen at the time (he’s not much older than me), who went out to his local record store and bought this for me because he knew I was into Jarre. One of the best and most “tailored” gifts I’ve ever received, which I actually told him last summer. The title track “En Attendant Cousteau” is only half the length on the LP, but I soon got the CD as well, with its longer running time.
I love all the tracks on it, but I got particularly “lost” in the title track over its almost 50-minute running time. Every time, I created a narrative in my head, simultaneously created as I listened – I remember something about deserts, beaches, scorching sun, water, settlements and FLYING. I went back to the same story every time and embellished it. Wish I’d written it down, since I also wrote a lot of fiction back then.
But most DEFINITELY a track (albeit not film music) that inspired creativity elsewhere, which is what this thread is about. Obviously, a lot of my film music love (which emanates from ACTUAL narratives, not imagined ones) stems from these conceptual albums in electronic music and progressive rock.
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