Who is the Dreamer? The function of a Living Receiver in Art

 2/9/2025 8:33 PM CST

Dear Reader,

I don’t know why I am starting this so late. Probably because I started to feel guilty that I was going to skip my blog this week like I did last week. I know the informal promise is down to a blog three Sundays out of every month, but I wasn’t even going to do that.

I must be honest, social media has been a total party ever since I met a bunch of other David Lynch fans, and it has been hell trying to tear me away from anything that isn’t in some way tacitly David Lynch related.

I feel I owe you a blog. I am working on two huge blogs in the background: my Street Fighter blog and my INLAND EMPIRE blog. (Hell, there is one cooking on The Killing of a Sacred Deer as well, and that one is going to be controversial.) So today, tonight (What time is it?), I am going to do a little compromise with myself and try to keep it brief with a little blog that is inspired by a question from a scene in David Lynch’s The Return (Twin Peaks Season 3).

I HAD THE MONICA BELLUCCI DREAM AGAIN.

In the scene, a character who is played by David Lynch, Director Gordon Cole, is having a dream in which he is in Paris having a meal at a sidewalk café with Monica Bellucci. She says to him (while looking directly at the camera), “We are like the dreamer who dreams and then lives inside the dream. But who is the dreamer?” Then Director Gordon Cole turns and looks back toward the camera at a venue where the real-life David Lynch had just been hosting some kind of event. (I don’t remember; look it up.)

Many have used this to say that David Lynch himself is the dreamer. After all, Twin Peaks is his dream; he created it, and he lives inside of it as a character. This is a perfectly reasonable interpretation, and I think that it does work. However, I think there are more layers to it. (I have made the vow to myself to do this particular blog analysis from the hip, so I won’t be looking anything up, so bear with my vague references.)

I have heard others say that the whole phrase as spoken by Monica Bellucci is from the Upanishads. This also clocks with different things one may have heard concerning David Lynch’s views on spirituality. So, in this interpretation, the dreamer is basically anyone and everyone that is conscious or is a consciousness. The world we see is a manifestation of our own collective dream. I also love this interpretation, and I feel it works.

THERE'S ONE MORE MYSTERY, COOP.

While I think both of the above interpretations are beautiful AND correct. I think we can add another layer to the philosophical sandwich. I will start by saying that it is extremely telling that when Monica Bellucci asks the question, she is staring straight down the barrel of the lens. She is staring at you, the current viewer, when she asks, “Who is the dreamer?”

I think it is also quite telling that David/Gordon Lynch/Cole turns and looks back toward the camera. This maneuver is not quite as dead-on as having Bellucci look down the camera, but I think this is also meant to give the impression that David looks at you, the current viewer, too.

Through this visual cue, he is telling us the answer to the question. Who is the dreamer? You are.

(Again, the other two interpretations are true; I think it also intentionally works on this layer as well. Twin Peaks has always operated with an intense level of meta-awareness.

Let’s couch that discussion for a second and go to another age-old philosophical question:

If a tree falls in the woods and there is no one around to hear it, does it make a sound?

Physicists have a pretty clear-cut answer to this question.

The answer to the question, exactly as stated, is: No. The tree does not make a sound.

Physicists arrived at this answer by clearly defining the terms. They define sound as the brain’s interpretation of kinetic waves that act upon the tympanic membrane. Basically, any and all movement in our earthly atmosphere causes these waves of particles to move through all mediums of matter, but especially air, and these waves of physical particles tap on our eardrums, and our brains turn that tapping into what we call sound.

So, with that definition of sound in mind, if the tree falls in the woods and there is no one there to hear it (taking this literally, not a single living thing with sound-receiving organs), then there is no sound. All the conditions for sound to exist are present and happening, but without a receiver to turn that kinetic information into an interpretation known as sound, then no sound has occurred.

I agree with this answer (mostly). Without a receiver, the wave phenomenon known as sound is not quite SOUND yet. (We could argue about the power of resonance, but I would say that while something resonating with the wave may be receiving the wave, that resonating object still isn’t experiencing “sound” unless it has ears or some equivalent.)

Light me up in the comments about this sound thing.

Anyway, what is the point?

I think, even more than sound, art functions the same way. Art needs a receiver. If there is a showing of Lost Highway in Saskatchewan, projection is automated, and it plays to an empty theater, was there art? If the Mona Lisa gets stolen and put somewhere hidden where not a single eye of any species ever witnesses it again, is it still art? I would argue no. Art requires a receiver.

That receiver can take different forms. The two I can think of are observer and creator (or, as Lynch might say, a preparer). The art exists as an idea first and needs to be received and nurtured by those willing to create it.

So, let’s take the piece of art that is the scene in question. At bare minimum it took David Lynch, Monica Bellucci, all the actors present, whoever was working the camera, and the editors to create this piece of art. While these people were in the act of creating the art, the art existed, but in a very specific way for each of the creators that took part. They were very much like the dreamers who lived inside the dream. Like players of a play performing the art for each other.

It is not until they finished putting together the physical conditions necessary for the art to exist that it then could be observed and come into being within the imagination of the mind of the observer. The art does not truly exist without a receiver. Again, through the experience of creating the art, one perspective of the art exists, but it is not until the art is observed that it is truly born into reality.

So, they all filmed that scene and worked on it together to make it what it was. Then it was cut to a digital file that sat on computers somewhere. Now inert. No longer the art, but the potential for the art. One version existed while they made it, and then it lay dead, waiting for its moment on cable television. Then for the glorious minutes that it aired to millions, it was art once again. Then it was art every time it was on rerun.

David Lynch once said (remember I am always paraphrasing) that no two cuts of a film were the same, no two showings of a film were the same, and no two viewings of a film were the same. Basically, it is saying the film exists in the imagination (as a dream) of the viewer as they watch and is always affected by many factors.

Hopefully I am not beating a dead horse here, but I believe the answer to the question Who is the dreamer? is you, the viewer. In this context, you are especially the dreamer when you are watching Twin Peaks. The art or experience of Twin Peaks is a living, breathing dream that happens in your imagination as you watch the show. Without you, the viewer, the dream of Twin Peaks would cease to be.

When the last digital file of Twin Peaks is deleted and the last DVD has worn out, the dream will be over for good.

This is also why the answer to the very last question of The Return, “What year is it?” is whatever year you happen to be currently watching it at.

K. Bye now. BUH BYE. BYE NOW. (Tara Mooknee reference; check her out on YT.)