Nowhere to Go...but Home!

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Mr. Reindeer
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Nowhere to Go...but Home!

Post by Mr. Reindeer »

So the concept of "home" is referenced a lot this season. Just having rewatched the first four Parts, Dougie repeatedly references home, and Mr. C says he's never left home. We also have MfAP saying Coop had nowhere to go but home in TMP (a line which I believe is repeated in S3 by either Mike or the EotA, but I'm blanking on when). Any thoughts on where his home is, and what Part 18 adds to the conversation?
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dud
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Re: Nowhere to Go...but Home!

Post by dud »

nothing to add but solid observation, 'nowhere to go but home' certainly seems like intentional foreshadowing especially if that line was repeated in season 3
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Saturn's child
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Re: Nowhere to Go...but Home!

Post by Saturn's child »

The Richard of part 18 is arguably the closest to 'True Coop' we see, a combination of his selves. 'Richard Horne' looks like 'Richard Home'. Not sure what else to add after this many drinks.
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Re: Nowhere to Go...but Home!

Post by Novalis »

Just to get the most obvious Oz resonance out of the way...
Dorothy/Judy Garland wrote:Aunt Em
There, there, lie quiet now. You just had a bad dream.

Dorothy
But it wasn't a dream. This was a real, truly live place.
And I remember that some of it wasn't very nice - but most of it was beautiful.
But just the same, all I kept saying to everybody was, 'I want to go home!'
And they sent me home.

[All Laugh]

Doesn't anybody believe me?

Uncle Henry
Of course we believe you, Dorothy.

Dorothy
Oh, but anyway, Toto, we're home! Home! And this is my room - and you're all here!
And I'm not going to leave here ever, ever again, because I love you all! And -
Oh, Auntie Em, there's no place like home!
...if only because this is such a common theme.

Part 18 is very, very interesting in that it zeroes in on the Palmer house, which is Laura's home, not Cooper's. Additionally, it isn't the Palmer house, but the Tremond house. For us the viewers, the effect is somewhat like watching Dorothy waking up in her room and finding herself surrounded not by familiar farmers and her beloved family, but in a room devoid of life and laughter. In other words, while she dreamed of a strange and wonderful world that was both breathtakingly beautiful and blood-curdling in equal measure -- eventually finding salvation and the way home -- home turns out not to be what she supposed it to be. It's an unheimliche heimat, an unhomely home that is a disturbing blend of the familiar and the unfamiliar. It is disturbing because it is familiar. There's a 'narcissism of small differences' as Freud would say: there's nothing more unsettling than meeting someone or being somewhere that is very similar, but just a bit different. Catching sight of someone's face in a mirror and thinking they look a bit off, then realising you're at the wrong angle and are seeing someone else's face entirely, for example. Or returning home after a prolonged vacation and finding your house, in your absence, has somehow acquired a slightly different personality. I think part 18 plays on all these kinds of feelings, sometimes subtly and sometimes not so subtly. The overall effect is one of growing disquiet, which creeps and builds throughout the whole episode and then explodes at the end in a moment of recognition and terror. The disturbance you felt -- the metaphorical off-ness of the face in the mirror, the weird feeling things are different, etc. -- was there after all, and you brought it with you!

At the risk of sounding undergraduate this was a very gothic flourish, redolent of the kind of twisted ending E.A.Poe might give to a story.

How this is 'home' for Cooper is an outstanding question. I doubt any of us can answer it in a perfectly straightforward way. I'll just ramble a bit in an impressionistic sense about what the theme of home brings up for me. On first approach, I would be more inclined to view the Twin Peaks Sheriff Station get-together of part 17 as Cooper's 'home' given the amount of time he spends there in previous seasons. Added to which, Coop of yesteryear -- the Cooper we know -- was only really at home when the game is on; when he's embroiled in a strange mystery and sleuthing away with his intuition. But that somewhat cartoonish, feel-good Coop is gone here. We don't know what this Cooper wants; since the appearance of the overlaid face in episode 17, what this Cooper wants is as much of a mystery as who he really is. Things will change, he claimed -- and chief amongst these changes was his own deportment: he becomes sombre and sacrificial, even bloody-minded perhaps. Having gone home to Twin Peaks, and at times having revelled in the strange journey that led there, he still hasn't landed. There's another side to Twin Peaks after all, a side that is as much home as any, but is dark as pitch. The unhappy 'big face' Cooper tugs at his heartstrings and urges him to rectify this -- which many have read as hamartia, the tragic character flaw that will strand him in a world of mirrors. Nonetheless, his journey to the past/underworld lies before him and he seems to assume its burden with grim resolve. Coop as we know him falls away with every passing scene.

Is this 'home' then? Is this the most basic truth about Cooper: the flawed over-reacher who will deprive Sarah of her grief (or her goblins of their garmonbozia), Pete of his tragic discovery, Catherine and Jocelyn of their feud over compassionate leave of their workers, Ben of his breakdown, Donna of her time with James, etc., etc. all just so he can get to be the one who saves the day?

Others have proposed this, but I'm not sure. Things get complicated, and all these divergent narratives look like they are Matryoshka dolls nesting inside each other rather than traditional sci-fi 'timelines'. Cooper feels to me to be going further and further inwards, away from the surface reality of things, in search of some mythical centre point behind layers and layers of onion skin that don't ever reveal a true core. He's lost. He doesn't even know what year this is. That, maybe, is his home. He spent 25 year lost, let's face it. So perhaps there's no centre, there's no home, there's no origin; just the recurrence of the same thing on every level: Sarah shouts for her missing daughter, Laura screams and the lights go out. It seems bleak to call that darkness home, but that is, on a narrative level at least, where things began: a mysterious violence and Cooper as yet unknowing just how mysterious it can/will get.
As a matter of fact, 'Chalfont' was the name of the people that rented this space before. Two Chalfonts. Weird, huh?
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Mr. Reindeer
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Re: Nowhere to Go...but Home!

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From Room to Dream: “Almost everybody has a bunch of stuff floating in them, and I don’t think most people are aware of the dark parts of themselves. People trick themselves and we all think we’re pretty much okay and that others are at fault. Like Maharishi says, built into the human being is always wanting more, and that desire leads you back home. Everybody finds their way eventually.”
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Re: Nowhere to Go...but Home!

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Mr. Reindeer wrote:So the concept of "home" is referenced a lot this season. Just having rewatched the first four Parts, Dougie repeatedly references home, and Mr. C says he's never left home. We also have MfAP saying Coop had nowhere to go but home in TMP (a line which I believe is repeated in S3 by either Mike or the EotA, but I'm blanking on when). Any thoughts on where his home is, and what Part 18 adds to the conversation?
Laura: “Where are we going?”
Cooper: “We’re going home.”

He then begins leading her to the Fireman's entrance.

BTW, could it be BOB-infected Leland was eavesdropping on them at that moment?
Carrie Page: "It's a long way... In those days, I was too young to know any better."
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Re: Nowhere to Go...but Home!

Post by LateReg »

Mr. Reindeer wrote:From Room to Dream: “Almost everybody has a bunch of stuff floating in them, and I don’t think most people are aware of the dark parts of themselves. People trick themselves and we all think we’re pretty much okay and that others are at fault. Like Maharishi says, built into the human being is always wanting more, and that desire leads you back home. Everybody finds their way eventually.”
So what's that mean to you? I'm having trouble interpreting the home part.
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Mr. Reindeer
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Re: Nowhere to Go...but Home!

Post by Mr. Reindeer »

LateReg wrote:
Mr. Reindeer wrote:From Room to Dream: “Almost everybody has a bunch of stuff floating in them, and I don’t think most people are aware of the dark parts of themselves. People trick themselves and we all think we’re pretty much okay and that others are at fault. Like Maharishi says, built into the human being is always wanting more, and that desire leads you back home. Everybody finds their way eventually.”
So what's that mean to you? I'm having trouble interpreting the home part.
Not quite sure, but it’s interesting. Sometimes DKL expresses himself imprecisely (as we saw last week), but he seems to be implying that greed is the (or a) pathway home. Which is certainly an odd sentiment. Maybe he means the fact that we’re constantly searching for some intangible thing eventually leads us to the ultimate truth? He does say elsewhere in the book that he believes in reincarnation.
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Re: Nowhere to Go...but Home!

Post by Mr. Strawberry »

I don't see "always wanting more" as equating with greed. It just implies that once we find something we have been seeking, we become familiar with it, and soon begin to seek something else. If you connect that with his statement about how that always leads back home, I get that. It seems to me that no matter where I go or what I do, there's always an eventual yearning to see familiar places and faces so ingrained in my sense of reality that they can never be replaced. Revisiting them always brings the strongest sensations of wholeness, warmth and belonging.
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Re: Nowhere to Go...but Home!

Post by Hester Prynne »

I think that ties into some of the earlier Wizard of Oz references on the the thread. The end of Ep. 17 definitely has a Wizard of Oz feel to it when Cooper says goodbye to everyone in the Sheriff's Department, so what is Cooper's home?

Do you think Lynch is referring to home in a more spiritual sense or a literal one?

Also, the excerpt made me think of Mr. C's comment that he doesn't need - he "wants."
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Re: Nowhere to Go...but Home!

Post by Mr. Reindeer »

Hester Prynne wrote:Also, the excerpt made me think of Mr. C's comment that he doesn't need - he "wants."
Interesting connection to make. In the original show, Dale tells Audrey that what he needs and what he wants are two different things — implicitly rejecting “want.” Is it an important step in Dale’s journey “home” for Mr. C (who embodies his “wanting”) to take control out in the world for awhile?

I definitely think “home” in this context is more metaphorical than literal. It’s clear from DKL’s biography that he didn’t stay in one place long enough during his formative years to have one clear geographical “home,” but Missoula, Spokane, Boise, Alexandria, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles all act as symbolic “homes” to varying parts of his psyche/ideology. Because of his life experience, I don’t think he places much weight on the concept of a physical “home” that you can return to. It’s more of an idea or abstraction, probably having to do with the truest version of yourself that you’re striving to find over multiple reincarnations.

I think I’ve noted this before, but the passage in MLMT when Dale revisits his childhood neighborhood in Philadelphia and finds that he is no longer home because everything except the cemetery has changed feels oddly prescient to Dale being untethered in TP:TR and not quite knowing what/where home is. In some sense, the original seasons can be viewed as him rather desperately trying to establish a new home, having discovered this warm northwestern town, nearly making what many might consider a rash impulse buy of Dead Dog Farm so he can settle there. But he needs to dig beyond traditional human definitions and concepts to truly go home, and he doesn’t quite grasp that. Which is why he takes Carrie/Laura to her physical childhood home. To quote the Man from Another Place, “Wrong way.” Dale is being overly literal by returning Laura to that house....her home, where she needs to go to find peace and bring balance to the universe, is somewhere else, in a more metaphorical space.

And I’m convincing myself more and more that there is a S4 that has to happen.
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Re: Nowhere to Go...but Home!

Post by Hester Prynne »

Mr. Reindeer wrote:
Interesting connection to make. In the original show, Dale tells Audrey that what he needs and what he wants are two different things — implicitly rejecting “want.” Is it an important step in Dale’s journey “home” for Mr. C (who embodies his “wanting”) to take control out in the world for awhile?

I definitely think “home” in this context is more metaphorical than literal. It’s clear from DKL’s biography that he didn’t stay in one place long enough during his formative years to have one clear geographical “home,” but Missoula, Spokane, Boise, Alexandria, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles all act as symbolic “homes” to varying parts of his psyche/ideology. Because of his life experience, I don’t think he places much weight on the concept of a physical “home” that you can return to. It’s more of an idea or abstraction, probably having to do with the truest version of yourself that you’re striving to find over multiple reincarnations.
Cooper in the original series, while intuitive and curious and capable of care and empathy, still seemed devoid of just natural human emotions at times - too perfect, too careful, too committed to his FBI mantra. He never loses his temper, and even his attraction towards Annie seemed more of a fascination with her circumstances - having to come into the world anew and relearn life after retreating from it after a traumatic experience (sound like someone we know from Season 3?). Or perhaps she made him feel needed or fed his hero complex in some way.

I wonder if Mr. C is an aberration of Cooper's psyche - the worst version of himself that he has created in his mind - the "dark parts" that Lynch is referring to, his idea of what he would be like if he was only driven by his wants and desires. I wonder if that's why he's so heavily stylized - the hair, the jacket - interestingly though, while Mr. C is driven by his wants and desires, he is completely devoid of human emotions - similar to Cooper's suppressing his own.

But then there is Dougie - someone who is also driven by wants and desires, but in a much more basic way and someone who is capable of expressing emotions because his mind is not obstructing them.

I hope you are right about Season 4. I wonder if Richard is supposed to be "home" - the sweet spot of all these different reincarnations or if Richard is just another reincarnation himself. Maybe Richard is the test, the dweller on the threshold, Cooper's other self, or real self, that he is still afraid to accept/confront.
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Re: Nowhere to Go...but Home!

Post by Xavi »

And I explain to myself that Judy (Jowday) is indeed an extreme negative force, that Phillip Jeffries has "met," and that it is "undoing death", which blocks "the final return home." Also Judy forges time into a loop "Listen to the sounds."
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