The Lodges and the Convenience Store

[N. Needleman]

Okay, so I thought this might need a dedicated thread given the speed of the episode/part threads: What do people think is the nature of the 'convenience store' and its above area, as detailed last night and in FWWM/The Missing Pieces?

I've heard some suggest recently the store and the motel/halls above it are actually the Black Lodge, an equally detailed counterpart to what is presumably the White Lodge seen in part 1, part 8 and part 14 (the White Lodge having featured Andy, the Fireman/Giant, Cooper and Senorita Dido).

Others think the Black Lodge is what most of us have always known/assumed it to be, and what the show has often associated with it - namely the endless Red Room we all know and love. I think multiple synopses from the show and indeed scripts cite the Red Room in episode 29 as the Black Lodge. Annie also tells Laura "the good Dale is in the Lodge".

Still others suggest, then, that if the Red Room = Black Lodge, then the convenience store+above is a kind of summit or meeting place for both White and Black spirits. But that hypothesis proves difficult as the Fireman was seen in the Red Room in the original series, as was the real Laura. They were able to summit there.

Anyway: We may not be able to make sense of any of this ever, but we can try. What do you think the relationship of the convenience store and surrounding area above it is to the Lodges or Lodge-related beings? Any ideas? Anyone? Here's to another 25+ years of endless speculation.

[mtsi]

I've only seen the red room as the "waiting room."....Lynch's version of Purgatory.

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[Louisahoo]

The convenience store scenes and the white lodge scenes all have the white and grey tonal quality. The convenience store may be a bit more dark. I reserve the right to reevaluate, but right now I think red room = black lodge, convenience store = middle ground, firemans big house = white lodge.

[Dreamy Audrey]

Maybe the place above the convenience store is like a station from which you can go to different spirit places like the Black and White Lodge, the convenience store meeting room, the Purple room and the motel.

In Laura's dream in FWWM, we were at first in the corridors with the flower wallpaper (which had several doors) and there was an archway with red curtains that might have led to the waiting room. And the dream later even dissolved into a waiting room scene.

In Part 15, Mr. C. went through the corridor with the flower wallpapers, arrived at the motel and when he was in Jeffries' room, one of the walls disappeared and we were looking at the Purple Room and the evolved Jeffries.

So it seems like these rooms are somehow connected (by the corridor and doors) and maybe accessible from different places.

[The Jumping Man]

I'm not so sure there really is a Black Lodge and a White Lodge. Seems like those might just be names humans gave to what they didn't understand, and the lines between all of these extra-dimensional spaces might be more blurred than that. The only real reference we've gotten this season is Evil Coop saying "I'm supposed to get pulled back into what they call the Black Lodge, but I'm not going back there." Dismissing it as "what they call" could be his way of saying that it's beyond the understanding of ordinary people.

And if I'm wrong about that, well...he wouldn't have willingly entered the room above the convenience store if it was part of the Black Lodge, seeing as he told us he's not going back there.

[John Justice Wheeler]

I'm not so sure there really is a Black Lodge and a White Lodge. Seems like those might just be names humans gave to what they didn't understand, and the lines between all of these extra-dimensional spaces might be more blurred than that. The only real reference we've gotten this season is Evil Coop saying "I'm supposed to get pulled back into what they call the Black Lodge, but I'm not going back there." Dismissing it as "what they call" could be his way of saying that it's beyond the understanding of ordinary people.

I think this is key.

[Deep Thought]

I'm still with Martha Nochimson. I think the "convenience store" is human consciousness (a "convenient" way of rationalizing the world), and the room above it is the subconscious. I see the Lodge Entities as having created an "outpost" of sorts in the human subconsciousness, while the dirty bearded men are now in charge down here and are a well established part of human nature, unfortunately, aka The Farm. I believe Dale has transcended all of this nonsense and will emerge as the übermensch after his 25 year journey in the collective unconsciousness of the Lodge and the higher reality. At least I hope he does not return as a mere human.

[dropkick23]

Maybe the place above the convenience store is like a station from which you can go to different spirit places like the Black and White Lodge, the convenience store meeting room, the Purple room and the motel.

In Laura's dream in FWWM, we were at first in the corridors with the flower wallpaper (which had several doors) and there was an archway with red curtains that might have led to the waiting room. And the dream later even dissolved into a waiting room scene.

In Part 15, Mr. C. went through the corridor with the flower wallpapers, arrived at the motel and when he was in Jeffries' room, one of the walls disappeared and we were looking at the Purple Room and the evolved Jeffries.

So it seems like these rooms are somehow connected (by the corridor and doors) and maybe accessible from different places.

Agreed
This would be very much like inland empire where many worlds/levels were connected with various shortcuts.

[Little Pine Cone]

The Dutchman brings up so many tantalizing questions regarding place and function. We know you can get there above the convenience store (or IS IT above the convenience store, literally, the place known as "above the convenience store."). It can be accessed via photographs, at least inside the dreams of the gifted and damned.
It appears to co-exist simultaneously within Ghostwood, slightly out of step from our own dimension and time. It connects to the Blue Diamond Motel from FWWM, or some shadowy netherworld version of it.
The convenience store itself appears to flicker in and out of existence. Does it move? Is it like a literal interpretation of the legendary Flying Dutchman, sailing through our reality and trapping and devouring the souls of wary travelers and lost innocents? I kind of picture the station (and possibly motel) as a giant Venus flytrap cloaked in a gas station's disguise. An isolated roadside gas station would surely be the perfect front for gathering the Garmonbozia of unsuspecting motorists. There may be nothing to really to arrive with at this conclusion but I'm sticking to it because it sends a shiver down my spine. All around spooky stuff.

[Soolsma]

I'm not so sure there really is a Black Lodge and a White Lodge. Seems like those might just be names humans gave to what they didn't understand, and the lines between all of these extra-dimensional spaces might be more blurred than that. The only real reference we've gotten this season is Evil Coop saying "I'm supposed to get pulled back into what they call the Black Lodge, but I'm not going back there." Dismissing it as "what they call" could be his way of saying that it's beyond the understanding of ordinary people.

And if I'm wrong about that, well...he wouldn't have willingly entered the room above the convenience store if it was part of the Black Lodge, seeing as he told us he's not going back there.

I've been leaning towards that notion since the original, even more so as S3 progressed. I would not at all be surprised if entrances to/ encounters with other worlds are spread across the globe, and that they are explained and named differently throughout various cultures and religions.

The Red Room surely seems to have different role than being solely a place of great evil, especially this time around. The guidance that Good Coop had seems to be leaning towards the side of good, though we can't be sure of it's true intent.

The convenience store is a yrev hard one to crack. I'm regarding it, like you say Needleman; a kind of summit, only I would rather describe it as being ''deeper''. Above all, it seems to be a meeting place of sorts. We've had the FWWM scene, literally described as a meeting. It was even as if Coop went up to a sort of reception with the Woodsman before his chat with Jeffries. It seemed to me like Coop didn't finish his personal business there yet (WHO'S JUDY?!), but the store decided meeting time was over and he was forced/tricked out of there by the phone.
For now, I'm definitely associating the convenience store more with the side of evil* and the Black Lodge. However, it puzzles me a bit the Tremonds were there, though their nature remains a mystery.

*I'd like to quote TSHOTP when talking good and evil:
''These final truths you must never forget: we are utterly incapable of knowing their true intent, and their true intent may not be to wish us well. It may be that they're here to guide or even aid our evolution; it's equally possibly we may matter no more to them than those random protozoa in our tap water do to us. In other words, by our meager moral defintions, there may be both "good" and "evil", and those precious distinctions of ours mean nothing to them. There may even be a "good" and "evil" side at play there, and we, the human race, is the game."

[Cipher]

Re: Does the convenience store move?: It must. Jeffries says he encountered it in Seattle, we first see it chronologically in New Mexico after the atomic-bomb test, and most recently it appeared somewhere between Montana and the pacific northwest.

Is it a lodge? I don't think it'll ever be fully clear. I also agree that the locations in the other world aren't as clear-cut as the Black Lodge/White Lodge mythology implies, though there are obviously opposing factions to some extent. I do think it's worth noting though, that Mr. C is adamant about not going back to the place "they call the Black Lodge," but willingly enters the convenience store and connected locations in episode 15.

For what it's worth, both Annie and Windom Earle (via Sarah) also refer to the red room as "the (Black) Lodge."

So where does that leave the convenience store, or the netherworld version of the Blue Diamond Hotel that houses some form of Jeffries, along with lodge spirit managers? I interpret it that all as existing in the interstice between the physical world and the other world, a representation of their movement between one location and another. It has both shadowy copies of real-world locations of significance, and the ability to eject entities out into their physical equivalents. After all, Mike, in describing the convenience store, says they lived "among the people," so I do think there's a literal, grounded convenience store, even if it picks up and moves. We know the lodge entities can travel through the physical world in some fashion--often as electricity and fire. Mr. C is ejected through a phone line this episode. We also see the woods of Twin Peaks superimposed over shots of Mr. C and the woodsman walking down the hallway.

The location(s) above the convenience store are where these entities are when they're traveling. They probably take on shadow forms of real-world locations of significance. They probably grant access to lodges, to the real-world locations, to forests, etc., so long as you know where you want to go.

I've been leaning towards that notion since the original, even more so as S3 progressed. I would not at all be surprised if entrances to/ encounters with other worlds are spread across the globe, and that they are explained and named different throughout various cultures and religions.

This is absolutely the reading I run with as well. All supernatural/spiritual/religious/alien phenomena in the world of Twin Peaks stem from different interpretations of the single parallel world it's connected to. (And really, what is any of that in real life except a repository for various feelings and mysteries projected onto the universal human longing for something else -- for another world interacting with ours.)

We know it as the Black Lodge and White Lodge, but it could be called any number of other things. It's Heaven and Hell, alien abduction, ghosts, nirvana, the Zone, and more. But it's all a singular alternate realm interacting with our love and fear.

[KyleRickards]

Re: Does the convenience store move?: It must. Jeffries says he encountered it in Seattle, we first see it chronologically in New Mexico after the atomic-bomb test, and most recently it appeared somewhere between Montana and the pacific northwest.

Is it a lodge? I don't think it'll ever be fully clear. I also agree that the locations in the other world aren't as clear-cut as the Black Lodge/White Lodge mythology implies, though there are obviously opposing factions to some extent. I do think it's worth noting though, that Mr. C is adamant about not going back to the place "they call the Black Lodge," but willingly enters the convenience store and connected locations in episode 15.

For what it's worth, both Annie and Windom Earle (via Sarah) also refer to the red room as "the (Black) Lodge."

So where does that leave the convenience store, or the netherworld version of the Blue Diamond Hotel that houses some form of Jeffries, along with lodge spirit managers? I interpret it that all as existing in the interstice between the physical world and the other world, a representation of their movement between one location and another. It has both shadowy copies of real-world locations of significance, and the ability to eject entities out into their physical equivalents. After all, Mike, in describing the convenience store, says they lived "among the people," so I do think there's a literal, grounded convenience store, even if it picks up and moves. We know the lodge entities can travel through the physical world in some fashion--often as electricity and fire. Mr. C is ejected through a phone line this episode. We also see the woods of Twin Peaks superimposed over shots of Mr. C and the woodsman walking down the hallway.

The location(s) above the convenience store are where these entities are when they're traveling. They probably take on shadow forms of real-world locations of significance. They probably grant access to lodges, to the real-world locations, to forests, etc., so long as you know where you want to go.

I've been leaning towards that notion since the original, even more so as S3 progressed. I would not at all be surprised if entrances to/ encounters with other worlds are spread across the globe, and that they are explained and named different throughout various cultures and religions.

This is absolutely the reading I run with as well. All supernatural/spiritual/religious/alien phenomena in the world of Twin Peaks stem from different interpretations of the single parallel world it's connected to. (And really, what is any of that in real life except a repository for various feelings and mysteries projected onto the universal human longing for something else -- for another world interacting with ours.)

We know it as the Black Lodge and White Lodge, but it could be called any number of other things. It's Heaven and Hell, alien abduction, ghosts, nirvana, the Zone, and more. But it's all a singular alternate realm interacting with our love and fear.

That's a really good point that I hadn't picked up on, the Convenience Store can't be the Black Lodge because of DoppleCoop saying he is not going back there. If I was him I'd still be wary of going too close anything linked with the Lodge though in case they do drag him him back!


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[chrisfil]

I think Mr C isn't worried about going near the black lodge as he no longer has to go back there. He was meant to trade places with Coop, but tricked his way out of this 'deal' using Dougie. Now, the lodge doesn't need him to come back as cooper is already out... But they do want him dead and I think Philip Gerard is behind Ray's attempts to kill him as revenge for tricking him...


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[Cappy]

I'm not so sure there really is a Black Lodge and a White Lodge. Seems like those might just be names humans gave to what they didn't understand, and the lines between all of these extra-dimensional spaces might be more blurred than that. The only real reference we've gotten this season is Evil Coop saying "I'm supposed to get pulled back into what they call the Black Lodge, but I'm not going back there." Dismissing it as "what they call" could be his way of saying that it's beyond the understanding of ordinary people.

And if I'm wrong about that, well...he wouldn't have willingly entered the room above the convenience store if it was part of the Black Lodge, seeing as he told us he's not going back there.

Good point. The notion of a White/Black Lodge could just be the byproduct of dualistic human philosophy, although it is interesting how the Red Room seems to subscribe to a kind of dualism, what with the doppelgangers and all.

[Cappy]

I don't really understand the relationship of the lodges and the convenience store anymore, but it is worth noting the ways in which human characters enter and leave them:

Mauve Room (Purple Room): Souls enter this room, and leave as corporeal bodies on earth (Cooper in ep3 becoming Dougie).

The Convenience Store: Humans enter this place, and become spirits/electricity (Philip Jeffries). This place also creates temporal distortions, throwing Jeffries and Maj. Briggs through time. The different twin peaks spirits are also known to have meetings here.

The FIreman's Place: Humans enter this place, gain insight and knowledge, then are free to leave (Andy, Freddie).

The Red Room (Black/White Lodge): Humans enter this place and confront themselves. If they show fear and shy away from truth, then it is the Black Lodge and they are trapped there, but if they show courage and accept truth, then... ? Not sure what the White Lodge experience might be like, aside from the end of FWWM. Laura was already dead at that point, so it is hard to say what would happen to a living soul who finds the White Lodge.