The Frezno's Raving Rants Tenth Anniversary Retrospective

Welcome, friends and lovelies, to the festivities. If I've timed things correctly it is August 16th, 2023. Ten years ago today, this blog was created out of the spark of an idea. Ten years. Think of it. A child born when I first crafted those words is now old enough to be in the fifth grade. Ten years. A not-insignificant fraction of a human life. Ten goddamn years. Over that time, this blog has shifted in its mission statement and what it has talked about. To wit, I myself have also shifted and changed in those ten years. I often speak of my internal landscape, and this space represents a decade-long road map of it. Our party, then, is a metatextual retracing of my steps. We're going to go over a brief history of Frezno's Raving Rants. What inspired the posts, what led me to do and say the things I did back then, and what led me to the me I am today.

Whether you've been a constant companion on this trip, or you've somehow just stumbled upon this party, you are welcome to accompany me on this adventure down my metaphorical memory lane. It's alright. I've done this introspective song and dance before. I've never done it quite so thoroughly down my own timeline, but it's a party and one can be indulgent. Take my hand, if you so please, and come along with me. Let us celebrate and discover what made this blog tick, and how it grew and changed as I so did. Let the Frezno festivities... begin.

The Impossible Dream Of A Walking Fire (Twin Peaks: Part 4) [Twin Peaks: The Return]

(Before we begin, a quick little bit of self-promotion. I was a guest on Whowatch 16, with my friend Sean Dillon and his friend David Mann, to talk about the latter half of Series 8 of Doctor Who. You know, Peter Capaldi's first and where I got my start on Doctor Who critique. These two let me talk about Clara Oswald for an Amount Of Time, and I enjoyed the discussion with them and hope you do too. Now, then. Let's finish this journey.)

So far, 2023 on the blog has been a completely unexpected surprise of creativity and invigoration for me. I honestly thought I'd be recapping musical anime and talking about anxiety and my own inferiority complex. We very well might do some form of that someday, but instead a beautiful thing happened. I encountered Twin Peaks, and my inability to write about it in a way that explained it forced me into a new and exciting form of writing, a form that I love. I found my brevity again, and found a new and better way to talk about media. As I write this, it's the 6th of April. I'm currently a little under the weather, which is annoying because I want to bang this entire thing out, but I must take a slow recovery from this cold and pace myself carefully. I at least want to bang out the intro here, while I have enough energy. 

2023 is a quarter of the way through, and what I am about to tell you may very well be the lynchpin of it for my creative era on the blog. It echoes back to what I wrote before, and echoes forward to what I will write after we put Twin Peaks to bed in this (probably massive) blog post. Let me set the stage for you. Let me tell you a story. I already told you, in part 1 of this impromptu project, how I became aware of Twin Peaks. How I found a secret diary and read it, and how that later got me to tape a TV airing of Fire Walk With Me. I know I taped it, but remember very little of it beyond that. The tape was lost to time, probably taped over long since. Ah well. I forged new memories of the show, the diary, and the movie. I moved on to pace out the gap between Fire Walk With Me and The Return with more of David Lynch's filmography. During that time, other things happened beyond me watching movies. Sometimes you can't just sit on your butt to watch movies or write about them. Sometimes you have to do errands.

The Impossible Dream Of A Walking Fire (Twin Peaks: Part 3) [Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me/The Missing Pieces]

(In addition to the content warning which you should heed below, I'm also going to add a spoiler warning: This post will reveal who killed Laura Palmer in Twin Peaks. If these writeups have made you curious about the show and you don't know who did it, I urge you to check out the show and see the mystery unfold for yourself. I have to talk about it to express the way this film made me feel, so I cannot be vague about it. Please understand, and tread carefully.)

(CW: parental abuse)

I've put this off for long enough, but when you understand what we're dealing with here I don't think you'll blame me. The last time we were here, we skirted around a secret shame, peeking into a girl's diary and finding only darkness and despair within. Despite that, though, there remained a disconnect. It was a disconnect that I myself created to try and shield myself from the alternative, which was too horrible to contemplate. A shield can only last so long, though, and its defense finally shattered. That last dark arrow which tore through me, which left me harrowed and haunted, staring in stunned silence as a swirling storm of inevitability crashed forth upon me? It was called Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. A film which I tried to tape when I first encountered the diary, but bounced off of back then. I was older and wiser now, and in the right headspace to watch the movie. As shameful as it was to look upon the Secret Diary, there is one positive. It did give me insight into Laura Palmer, and more importantly extra empathy for her plight and tragedy... and that's what this film is all about.

The Impossible Dream Of A Walking Fire (Twin Peaks: Part 2) [The Secret Diary Of Laura Palmer]

"The girl who received this diary on her twelfth birthday has been dead for years, and I who took her place have done nothing but make a mockery of the dreams she once had."

Like the people of Twin Peaks reacting in shock and horror at her sudden and untimely death, I thought I knew Laura Palmer. What I knew was a half-remembered dream, an ethereal echo of happening upon a book long long ago and reading through it. A nightmare in prose form, a horror story of a girl descending into darkness and eventually being killed by it. Years later, I saw how the town she lived in reacted to that loss and the secrets which came to light about her. Then, at the halfway point of that show, we learned who killed her. The network practically strong armed the creators of the show to solve the mystery, and they did. What the show became after that is sort of a mess, and the fact that it both righted itself near the end is a small miracle. It even managed to full circle itself back to the story of Laura Palmer, in an esoteric way. Still, the need to answer the question, to reduce the feeling and emotion of the loss of Laura Palmer into something to be solved, revealed, put back onto the fucking shelf as a closed case... it hurt the show. I could summarize what the show decayed into, but I'll just point you to this Tumblr post.

The Impossible Dream Of A Walking Fire (Twin Peaks: Part 1) [Twin Peaks 1990]

This is not a place you were supposed to find yourself in. We have had many coffee shop dates, you and I, but you must understand that I am an introvert at heart and sometimes I enjoy my solitude. I fully intended to come here on my own, drinking my coffee and eating my slice of cherry pie in the blissful loneliness that is a comfort to me. I say this not to imply that you have intruded upon that solitude. Far from it. It is the warm and kind gesture of a mentor and friend, speaking honestly and truthfully, which made me decide to invite you to join me for this particular coffee date. They happened to pass by my table as I muttered to myself, not speaking to you but to my own sense of self. In these casual whispers and mumbles they heard a spark of poetic bliss, a spark which burned like a crackling fire quite unlike any before. That spark, that praise, made me realize that I simply must invite you here. It will be a coffee date unlike any you have had before, but it is one that we will navigate together here in this strange ethereal diner of my internal landscape. Don't be scared of the flame. Place your order, take my hand, and come with me. It will not be a long journey, but I hope that I can capture that blazing flame and turn it into song. 

Fire. Walk with me.