The art of David Lynch made a lasting impression on me. In memory of his life, that ended exactly a year ago, I decided to jot down some personal recollections I have of his work — the first being Twin Peaks.

September 1st 1991 was the first time Twin Peaks was broadcast on Dutch television. All 30 episodes of the series had been finished in the United States a couple months earlier; before long, cable TV station RTL4 owned the rights to broadcasting the show in the Netherlands, and could have started any damn time they pleased. While they decided to sit on it until the whole thing was finished, early birds were already tuned into the BBC, and could pace along with just a couple weeks worth of delay. The rest had to wait it out, so as was to be expected, all the initial hype surrounding Twin Peaks blew past the Netherlands mostly unnoticed. 

Not that it made any difference for me personally. Up until halfway 1993, the tiny little village I grew up in didn’t have cable television anyway. The ginormous TV antenna in our yard sure was impressive, but only reaching as far as Belgium and Germany — the BBC was clear out of range — the only things it delivered into our home were easily digestible serial shows, mostly Dutch and British comedies, and German crime procedurals. I didn’t know there was anything more. But much like teaching me there was more to be found in music beyond the confines of traditional radio, music magazine OOR caught up early on the unexpected hype surrounding Twin Peaks in the States. As early as 1990, the magazine covered everything about Twin Peaks before the second season was even finished. Memory is an elusive thing, and although I don’t think Twin Peaks caught my immediate attention at the time, at the very least my brain must have filed away some tiny fragment of information about this mysterious TV show.

When September 1991 came rolling by, and Twin Peaks launched in the Netherlands for real, OOR devoted another two articles to the show, its characters and its creators, trying to drum up a hype of its own. In hindsight it’s quite funny: RTL4 were so late to the party that by the time Twin Peaks launched and some hype was being manufactured, in the United States the show was so dead and buried it was like it never even existed. The ratings waned dramatically as the second season progressed, so much that most of the interest in the series ending or the prequel movie dried up completely.

Late 1993, in what felt like the very last goddamn village in the whole of the nation, sturdy men finally started digging trenches and laying cables, bestowing upon us the divine gift of MTV. I remember my parents being reluctant about getting a subscription, and it might have taken some persuasion from their children to convince them it was better to just give in.

With all interest in the show gone and the misconceived prequel movie a dud, Twin Peaks’ first re-run in the Netherlands was an event of little spectacle. Freshly launched RTL5, aimed at “youth, men, and intellect” and boasting shows like Miami Vice and Beverly Hills 90201, included Twin Peaks in the wee hours of Saturday night by nothing more than legal obligation — they had to do a re-run within two years of its first airing. I don’t remember if seeing the first episode of Twin Peaks was something I planned in advance, clearing my schedule so to speak, or if it might have been sheer luck: a Saturday night on which I just had no plans, leafing through the TV guide, coming across some insignificant little announcement — when suddenly it dawned on me that this time around, this mystifying show was something I myself could experience.

More to come in the next part