The Wild Heart of David Lynch

No doubt I was little amped up, an excitable David Lynch fan sitting down to the Pilot episode of Twin Peaks, and my slight mania may have heightened the impression, but when the opening credits started rolling my head almost exploded with how slow they were. This was prime-time, 9pm, the major America network of ABC, home of quick-beat sitcoms and frantic car-chases, and here was, by far, the slowest television I’d ever seen — a bird doing nothing on an evergreen stem, steam taking forever to exit the several chimneys of a mill, a lazy waterfall almost freezing as eerie slow-motion is imposed upon it, a glassy river barely drifting, automated sharpeners tracing the teeth of a saw-blade as if with the slow patience of an ancient craftsman, and of course the gorgeous music with its glorious slowness, every note nestled in its own little eternity. The exquisite slowness of this opening was central to it also being, and also by far, the most beautiful television I’d ever seen. Two-and-a-half minutes in and I’d already watched the slowest, most beautiful thing I’d ever seen on TV.