setsuled

And now Rebekah Del Rio has died, the singer who made two significant appearances in David Lynch media, first in Mulholland Drive and then on Twin Peaks. Her performance of "Llorando", a Spanish language version of Roy Orbison's "Crying", is one of the highlights of Mulholland Drive, a movie which just this past week ranked number two in a poll for the best ten movies of the 21st century. Mulholland Drive has topped many such lists and anyone who's seen the movie knows Del Rio's performance is key to the film's impact, thematically and viscerally.

So many people from the show have died since the final episode of Twin Peaks aired in 2017. For so long I hoped to get another season, now I really hope I don't. Maybe Mark Frost, Twin Peaks co-creator, could make a spin-off series. I'd be down for that. But there's no Twin Peaks without David Lynch. Lately I've felt kind of angry that he's dead. He wasn't finished, he was making something called Unrecorded Night for Netflix. It bothers me he didn't get to complete that.

At least we'll always have season three and Rebekah Del Rio's incredible, haunting, and piercing performance of "No Stars". The lyrics of the song, which Lynch wrote, seem be from one lover to another, imploring them to return to a good time in their mutual past. Somehow it's a night with "no stars", and this is somehow comforting to the singer. It tends to remind me of the scene in the first episode of season three when the young couple are killed mid-coitus by a demoniac being, presumed by the show's analysts to be Judy, the series' hidden antagonist. The fact that there are no stars may be an implication that no observing, sadistic, antisexual being will impede the will of lovers. It's a beautiful song lamenting, like so many Twin Peaks songs, a love out of reach. And Rebekah Del Rio sang it beautifully.

X Sonnet 1949

An idle question stopped the talk at lunch.
The workers glanced around and sipped their tea.
But then, below they heard a sloshy crunch.
The devil's sun would melt the frozen key.
A sense of dread disturbed the gathered gents.
It seemed the railings changed to shady spies.
And floating eyes emerged from cooling vents.
They pooled some cash and left uneaten pies.
Another year and now the caf's a bust.
The noisy devil drove the crowds away.
And so the diner trappings gather rust.
And only tacky ghosts within will stray.
Another business bites the phantom shot.
A bullet aimed above but hit the spot.