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52 Letters: #12

Dear Bastille,

I am Laura Palmer. I know I'm not your hit radio track, Pompeii, but let's rap a bit about how your new album has made me 1% famous all over again.

Photo cred to High School classmate, Charity Malke.

Flashback to 1990: I'm 7 years old and attending Hayes Catholic Elementary school. It's April, so we get to play outside in the parking lot which means super serious games of foursquare or a game without a name that involves the boys chasing the girls. This new David Lynch show had just aired on ABC called Twin Peaks. Like any good Catholic kids, we hadn't seen the show, but you can bet we'd seen the promos. 7 year old me was chased in the game without a name as the boys behind her yelled "Who killed Laura Palmer?" (Aw.) Being 1% famous at 7 is terrifying and perhaps a little scarring.

Eventually people under 10 forgot about the show, I aged, so did the cult following of Twin Peaks. Google wasn't really a thing, or a big thing, yet, so I was less haunted by "The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer."

(Laura Palmers featured above.)

Flashback to 2005: I'm a freshman at the University of Iowa taking lots of art and writing classes (all that work paid off as you can see from this bad ass piece of prose) taught by hippie-haired grad students who, back in 1990, were all wrapped up in that twisted mind of sir David Lynch. I'm sitting in my desk/chair thing in North Hall for that first day of creative writing and right after Jim Opal's name is called there's a pause, a deep breath is taken and that teaching assistant looks up smirking, shouting my name so exuberantly that even that football player looks up from his laptop and stops playing Snood. Being 1% famous for a show that was on television 15 years earlier just makes you that weird kid who has to explain who Laura Palmer is and why that matters. I'm sure at least 6 TA's went home and told their grad student buddies that they have a student called, no joke, Laura Palmer.

Flashback to March 1, 2013: Bastille's new album drops, Pompeii is all over the airwaves, these hip kids have performed on Saturday Night Live making them 92% famous. Then you scroll down to track 11 and, poof, these Lynch lovers made me 1% famous, all over again. The video is truly disturbing

Truth be told I've never seen the show. Ever. I'm waiting for Mr. Lynch to bring it back, 25years later, as promised by the whispering ghost of Laura Palmer

In conclusion (see how my writing improved thanks to my elective writing classes), being 1% famous because you share your name with a deceased homecoming queen from a 90s cult classic comes with it's perks. You get followed by Twin Peaks fanatics on twitter. You get facebooked by old friends when Bastille writes a song about you. You get free passes to Twin Peaks fest (ok this didn't happen. yet.) What you don't get: free dessert at Twin Peaks, the breastaurant. FYI: It is not, shockingly, a David Lynch themed restaurant. 

Thanks for the 1% fame, Bastille. You're the best. (Can't you feel it? Can you feel it?)

xo-LP