Killer Bob, and other such marks David Lynch left on us.
Wide eyes, bared teeth, and wild rasping breaths. The man moves through a bland suburban living room – long grey hair, denim shirt and jeans – crawling low, bestial, over a couch, a dark wood coffee table.
His predatory presence is uncanny, unnatural, somehow obscene amid the twee normalcy of this domestic setting. He is a hunter closing on prey, hungry, thrilled at the fear he can smell on me. And it is me he’s stalking as he surges closer, directly into the camera.
Killer Bob shook me to my core. Nothing on television, before or since, has scared me like Twin Peaks. The show that David Lynch and Mark Frost created together blew my teenage mind repeatedly as I watched their weird world unfurl around the murdered Laura Palmer, week after week. I’d never seen anything like it. But it was Bob – the terrifying man-demon flitting through the shadows, the homes, and the woods of this small town – who terrified me, and captured my imagination most completely.
Later, I would learn of the now-legendary story behind Frank Silva’s casting as the shadow entity, Bob. Silva was working as a set dresser on the Twin Peaks pilot, crouching out of shot, when his reflection was caught on camera, reflected in a mirror.
This unplanned glimpse, coming as Laura Palmer’s mother received a traumatic vision, fired Lynch’s imagination. Rather than reshooting the scene, erasing the mistake, the director embraced this chance event, reworking his show around it, weaving this new character into the universe, making him central to the plot and the lore of Twin Peaks.
Lynch’s passing has affected me deeply. His life and work inspired my own creative practices in so many ways. His refusal to be bound by any one medium or genre. His emphasis on mood over coherence. His ability to approach deep human truths through dreamlike imagery and events.
But most of all, I try to emulate his intuitive willingness to trust the work – to assimilate the mis-steps, and diversions that come along the way, to accept accidents, make room for chance, and bring those unexpected turns right into the heart of my creations.
I know I’m not alone. Lynch’s legacy – alongside a visionary body of work – is that he touched generations of writers, painters, film-makers, and creators of all hues, leaving us inspired, grateful to have shared the planet with a truly great artist.
Mathew Gostelow (he/him) is the author of short stories, poems, and books including See My Breath Dance Ghostly (a speculative story collection), Dantalion is a Quiet Place (a novella-in-flash) and Watcher (a horror-thriller he co-wrote with his friend JP Relph). Mat has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best Microfiction. @MatGost. Website.
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