Letting go of my dream life/part 3

I often wonder how my stars were lined up during those commuting years to Seattle.

I packed my bags in Sweden with my DAT tape recorder and my Sony PD 150 video camera. Sometimes I had stories arranged at my arrival, but often times there were only ideas or not even that. I left Umeå where most everything was a struggle and landed in Seattle. Breathing in that moist red ceder, felt my lungs expand with possibilities and life running through my veins. It was a transformation I experienced 2-3 times a year for about 15 years.

At that time I was a public service journalist, freelancing for Swedish National Radio and Television. My field was vast and I could find stories most anywhere. And did so! Those were years when I just happened to be at the right place at the right time, as the expression goes. Things worked out for me in a way they never had before, and never would in the future. Stories and people just fell right into my lap!

The examples are countless. Like when I was doing a radio piece about the book circle If All of Seattle Read the Same Book. That month Seattle read The Sweat Hereafter by Russel Banks. And the City librarian asked me if I perhaps wanted to interview the author, he would fly in tomorrow? Yes Please!

Or that time when I was planning a TV story for the local news in Umeå about a tiny company in the small town Bjurholm, who produced and delivered the device that would lift the engine for the new Boeing Dreamliner into place, and my arrival in Seattle was timed up with the virtual roll out of the Dreamliner! I was the only woman in the line of many men from all over the world on the huge camera podium at the Everett Boeing Factory on that historic December morning 2006. 

This might be my favorite: I happened to be in Seattle when the last episode of Seinfeld was on air. I watched it at a full Paramount Theatre house, an event called the Sein Off. Right after I walked the four blocks to the hotel I called home for many years, doing a live report in a Swedish National Radio morning show. And by the way, Frank Sinatra died a couple of hours later so then I reported that as well.

And how do you like this? There was something really big happening at Microsoft in 1998 and I needed to get in contact with someone crucial at the company. That week, at my friends Terry and Doug’s kitchen table I met Jeff who handed me over a piece of paper with a name. Call this woman, we were in the same class for our MBA, say hello from me, she is best friends with Melinda Gates. 

I am not kidding, this is how it was! Back in Umeå I fought so hard to make things work in every aspect of my life and my heart was constantly heavy. In Seattle I felt like the whole city was welcoming me, there was a flow and I was surfing effortless on the waves moving my way.  No wonder I felt Seattle was my place on earth. This is where I am meant to be, how could it not be?!

I am remembered of my Seattle flow this week, the week of the Twin Peaks season 3 premiere. As the home of the series is Snoqualmie and North Bend 45 minutes northeast of Seattle, the occasion is of course a big thing in the area. My sons were way too young in the beginning of the nineties when Twin Peaks was on air, but they have watched the series later. And our visits to Snoqualmie Falls and Twedes (the RR Diner) have been many.

So the fact that Trouble 2 and Audrey booked a room at Salish Lodge (the Great Northern) and was a part of the event there for episode 1 of Twin Peaks season 3 was just right. And my heart started pounding… I would have gotten both radio and TV stories out of that! Being at the right place at the right time! But I am glad Trouble 2 and Audrey were. And for their own pleasure.

Twin Peaks, 25 years later!

It will happen, it’s official, it will happen!

Coming inside The Great Northern for the first time was a strange experience. It was Easter Day 1993 and I was there with a KIRO TV crew, covering the Easter brunch. Well, not me covering, I was a one day intern with reporter Bob Branom and camera man John Sherman. And The Great Northern wasn’t of course The Great Northern, but Salish Lodge.

To me though, a Twin Peaks fan, it was The Great Northern. The dark place with the dark people and the dark music sitting at the top of the impressive and somewhat scary waterfall. But Salish Lodge at Easter brunch was filled with happy families dressed up in bright colors having waffles with maple syrup. And the sun was shining through the cascades of water spraying from Snoqualmie Falls, creating rainbows.

Twin peaks was on air 1990 and 1991, so arriving in Seattle 1993, the world of Twin Peaks was still fresh and vibrant. Finding that Double R Diner actually existed (although the real name was Mar-T Café, now Tweede’s) and even the cherry pies, made the world even more real. Since then my visits to Snoqualmie and North Bend are uncountable, it was the given field trip with all our visitors from Sweden, and Trouble & Trouble in front of Snoqualmie Falls at different ages is a cute chronological through their lives.

Over the years a return of Twin Peaks has off and on been speculated about. The final episode didn’t give any real answers but kind of left us hanging, so there was definitely room for anyone with desires for the TV series, to wish for a sequel. And the real Twin Peaks nerds keep the interest alive with visiting the annual convention taking place in Snoqualmie and North Bend every summer. 

So can you imagine the exaltation when Showtime executives on Tuesday confirmed that Twin Peaks will be back and David Lynch will direct all episodes, with the production doing some shooting in Washington state in September?!!! 

In October 2014, it was announced that Twin Peaks would return for a limited series, but things didn’t work out and in April David Lynch jumped off the train to a future probable success, at least a lot of attention. Twin Peaks fans were incensed and the show’s cast began voicing support for Lynch’s vision of the revival on social media. And eventually, he jumped on the train again.

So is co-creator Mark Frost and Angelo Badalamenti who composed the film score  which by the way was written before the scenes were shot as a guide for the actors (!). 18 episodes are planned and they will probably be ready in 2017, or maybe even 2016.

Do you remember the dancing dwarf in Agent Cooper’s dreams? And the final episode with the little man slowly swinging among the red velvet curtains? The actor was Little Jimmy Scott, a jazz singer with an unusual high pitch voice, a contra alto. In summer 1995 I interviewed Jimmy Scott. He was just the sweetest man, welcoming me in a bathrobe and a turban around his head, a man who thought fondly about his character in Twin Peaks. Jimmy Scott died in 2014, so he won’t be in the new script, and the cast is still a secret. 

One thing is clear though, Kyle MacLachlan will return as Agent Cooper. Did you know he is a native Washingtonian himself, born i Yakima, east of the Cascades, the mountains where Twin Peaks has it’s home? And that the cherry pies was not in the script to start with? Lynch found Mar-T’s Café while scouting for locations, he and Kyle MacLachlin loved the interior, the pies and the coffee. And the rest is TV history.