Some Final Words
I cannot leave you without saying this:
the past is nothing,
a nonmemory, a phantom,
a soundproof closet in which Johann Strauss
is composing another waltz no one can hear.
It is a fabrication, best forgotten,
a wellspring of sorrow
that waters a field of bitter vegetation.
Leave it behind.
Take your head out of your hands
and arise from the couch of melancholy
where the window light falls against you face
and the sun rides across the autumn sky,
steely behind the bare trees,
glorious as the high strains of violins.
But forget Strauss.
And forget his younger brother,
the poor bastard who was killed in a fall
from a podium while conducting a symphony.
Forget the past,
forget the stunned audience on its feet,
the absurdity of their formal clothes
in the face of sudden death,
forget their collective gasp,
the murmur and huddle over the body,
the creaking of thee lowered curtain.
Forget Strauss
with that encore look in his eye
and his tiresome industry:
more than 500 finished compositions!
He even wrote a polka for his mother.
That alone is enough to make me flee the past,
evacuate its temples,
and walk alone under the stars
down these dark paths strewn with acorns,
feeling nothing but the crisp October air,
the swing of my arms
and the rhythm of my stepping—
a man of the present who has forgotten
every composer, every great battle,
just me,
a thin reed blowing in the night.
by Billy Collins
from The Art of Drowning
University of Pittsburg Press, 1995
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Lynch’s adoration of musicians has been a constant, and he’s often blurred the line between musical and on-screen performance. In Blue Velvet (a film named after a 1950 ballad), Frank Booth is almost driven mad by the beauty of Roy Orbison’s 1963 song “In Dreams,” as lip-synced by Dean Stockwell’s character. Composer Angelo Badalamenti has played an outsized emotional role in every Lynch project since Blue Velvet, where he also appears in-world as Dorothy’s pianist. Lynch loved “Mysteries of Love” singer Julee Cruise so much that, after making an entire album with her, he planted her among the residents of Twin Peaks as a performer at the Roadhouse. Twin Peaks’ James Hurley (James Marshall) is a would-be Chris Isaak, a sentimental singer with a guitar, a motorcycle, and a heart of gold. Lynch also frequently uses musicians as actors, as he did with Sting in Dune, Henry Rollins in Lost Highway, Chrysta Bell in Twin Peaks: The Return—and David Bowie, who appears alongside Isaak in Fire Walk with Me. “Musicians are very close to actors,” Lynch told me, simply. “They go in front of people on a stage, and they have really no problem being in public, just like being in front of a camera. And they perform.”
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It is hard to imagine humans spending their lives in virtual reality when the experience amounts to waving your arms about in the middle of the lounge with a device the size of a house brick strapped to your face.
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In the late 19th century, a Sunday school leader in New York, Charles C. Overton, called for the 
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Nobody wants to hear anyone else’s dreams, and nobody wants to see anyone else’s photo albums. A rare few good souls might express interest at first, but will almost certainly find their attention flagging long before the sharer is finished.
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