Counter Esperanto Podcast: Winds Of The Weird

Welcome to the fourth episode of our “Attempted Conversations about Robert Aickman” series. This time around, we were quite fortunate to be able to speak to author, songwriter, book collector and publisher, R.B. Russell. Ray has published several novels, novellas and collections of short stories, is the author of Robert Aickman: A Biography, and along with Rosalie Parker, runs the award winning Tartarus Press, which is a godsend to those of us who enjoy beautifully crafted editions of strange books. When I asked him if there was an aspect or work of Robert Aickman’s that he felt was underappreciated, he immediately responded with Aickman’s late novel, Go Back at Once which wasn’t published in his lifetime.  Aickman himself said in one of his letters to Kirby McCauley that Go Back at Once is a deeply odd novel, even for him. Throughout its course, there’s very little that one could describe as “supernatural,” but there’s something of the transcendently weird, especially in the novel’s back half. The first portion of the book, however, feels like a send-up, if not a pastiche of what would now be termed a “Young Adult” novel: a story about two young women making their start in the world, and finding the world lacking. Then, they are whisked away to a strange land, which plays out a bit like a  “fish-out-of-water” story like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland or The Wizard of Oz. Russell couldn’t have chosen a more apt work to discuss, especially as his biographer. The work is steeped in all of Aickman’s interests and predilections, from his devotion to the primacy of Art over all things, to his troubling and complex fascination with Fascism, and, as always, his facility to imbue the ordinary world with a deep sense of unease and the uncanny. This is heady stuff indeed! Twin Peaks and David Lynch fans will also want to listen, because Russell is a big fan, and he has some very astute observations to make as to the spiritual (if not aesthetic) linkages between the two artists.

In this, the third episode of our Attempted Conversations About Robert Aickman, we welcome John Thorne back to the show. John is co-creator of the legendary Twin Peaks fanzine Wrapped in Plastic, the book Ominous Whoosh, and most recently, Devious Dreams: Reimagining David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive. First, we talk to John about his book, which guides the reader through the strange world of Mulholland Drive, and its unlikely journey from TV pilot to one of the most heralded works of cinema in this still-young century. Afterwards, we delve into two Robert Aickman stories, “Your Tiny Hand is Frozen,” and his much-anthologized “The Hospice.” While John is a relative newcomer to the strange world of Robert Aickman, he’s a veritable expert on David Lynch, which makes him a perfect companion as we consider the eerie resonances between the two creators’ work, which, while being very different in theme and aesthetic, are both characterized by an abiding commitment to the preservation of Mystery above all else. “The Hospice” is available for free online, and can be found in Aickman’s Cold Hand in Mine collection. “Cold Hand in Mine” is available in Aickman’s The Wine-Dark Sea collection. Music at the beginning: “Che Gelida Manina” from La Bohème, as sung by Enrico Caruso. Edmund St. Jude – voiced by Ray Russell Bothersome Caller – Ramsey Campbell

In this, our second Attempted Conversation about Robert Aickman, we have brought in a formidable duo as guests to grapple with two Robert Aickman stories: “Ringing the Changes,” and “No Stronger Than a Flower.” Hilary and Indigo of the Full Blossom of the Evening Podcast, who are newcomers to the Capital-S Strange world of Robert Aickman, bring their talents of intertextual analysis to bear on two very different (yet tantalizingly resonant) stories of marital tension. Like your “Humble Hosts,” Hilary and Indigo fell quickly in love with Aickman’s world of “The Strange,” because, as fans of David Lynch, it was easy to do so: while both artists could hardly be further apart aesthetically, they are both committed to the power of mystery, and the understanding that the line that divides the concrete world and the world of the unconscious, is both porous and slippery. While we believe that Aickman’s stories are uncommonly resistant to the detrimental effects of spoilers, you can find one of them for free online at this link: Ringing the Changes by Robert Aickman Free Online And the other can be found cheaply in the Faber & Faber collection The Unsettled Dust. If, like us, you love Aickman’s work enough to spring for something fancy, Tartarus Press has the complete short fiction of Robert Aickman in beautifully crafted hardcover editions of Aickman’s collections under their original titles. Here is a link to one of his best titles, Sub Rosa. Links to the other titles are also on this page: Robert Aickman on Tartarus Press A big thanks to all of you who have stuck with us over the years. Here’s to many more!

Greetings listeners! We are pleased to bring you the first episode in a series about one of our favorite writers, Robert Aickman. As longtime listeners of Counter Esperanto know, we are something of a hybrid podcast: we began as a Twin Peaks podcast which filtered that series, and other David Lynch projects through weird stories, folklore, and history. In that process, we have often featured authors such as Thomas Ligotti, Franz Kafka, and of course H.P. Lovecraft. It is Robert Aickman, though, that we feel deserves special attention. As we will discuss in this inaugural episode, those who have loved the mystery of Lynch’s films, especially the late films, and especially Twin Peaks: The Return, will find much that resonates with Robert Aickman’s brand of “the strange.” To get a sense of what this author is all about, read one of his most anthologized stories, “The Hospice,” right here. Robert Fordyce Aickman, born June 27, 1914, was in his time chiefly known, and now chiefly remembered, for two things. First would be his work as co-founder of the Inland Waterways Association, which was instrumental in the rejuvenation of the British canal system, which, by the mid 20th century, had long fallen into disrepair. The second would be for his career as a writer of what he called “strange stories.” While he wrote all his life, Aickman was something of a late-bloomer, publishing most of his work after the age of 40. Still, he must have felt that being an author was in his blood. His maternal grandfather was Richard Marsh, a contemporary of Bram Stoker whose macabre and spooky novel The Beetle initially outsold Dracula upon release. Aickman was a believer in ghosts and the supernatural, and as a young man participated in ‘ghost hunting’ investigations, which included excursions to the Borley Rectory, which was infamous as one of the most haunted buildings in England. When he began writing stories in earnest, Aickman had become editor of the Fontana Book of Ghost Stories, generally including one of his own recent tales in the mix. Robert Aickman wrote 48 “Strange Stories,” In addition to a handful of novels and novellas. While not great in number, Aickman’s stories stand alone not only in their economy and effectiveness of characterization, but also in their ability to submerge the reader into the feeling of a real dream, or nightmare. These are subtle stories which, while they aren’t necessarily to everyone’s taste, they have nonetheless gained new life, an “Aickmannessance,” if you will, thanks to the wide availability of Faber & Faber’s reprints, the masterful and astute readings by actor Reece Shearsmith, available on Audible, and of course deluxe volumes of his stories under their original titles published by Tartarus Press, run by authors R.B Russell, and Rosalie Parker. Russell also wrote a fantastic biography of Aickman, also available by Tartarus.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and Merry Yule, everyone. Today, just in time for us to call it a Christmas gift to you, we present just a taste of our Super Secret Project that we’ve been cooking up for over a year now, one which we have given the provisional title, “Project Mercy Seat.” We don’t know if it will be a novel, a series of interconnected stories, or something else entirely, but we do know that we will be sending out these dispatches periodically as we work. This is a sprawling work of Weird Fiction that takes place over the course of 140 years, from evildoings near a mining town in Washington State, to dark drawing rooms in the roaring 1920s, to a van making a pilgrimage to San Francisco in 1967, to realms beyond all common understanding. And we’re just getting started! Karl kicks it off with a reading of a short prose poem by the great Clark Ashton Smith, and after a brief introduction, Jubel reads a portion of the journal of one of our primary characters, Leonora Wiggins. To finish off, we re-enact a lost interview with a musician who has perhaps bitten off more than he can chew, existentially speaking. All music and editing by Jubel Brosseau. Text written by Jubel Brosseau, and Karl Eckler.

The Last of Us series of games on Playstation did a great deal to promote serious consideration of the medium as a true narrative art form. The performances, the attention to detail in building its characters and world, and especially the writing and directing from Neil Druckmann and others gave a story that players are still discovering, and in indeed weeping over. It’s this emotional core, among other things, which has been brilliantly transferred to the medium of television thanks to Druckmann and Chernobyl creator Craig Mazin. The HBO series eschews many of the game’s action sequences in favor of expanding the characters, the world, and the complex connection between protagonists Joel and Ellie. Ultimately, as Druckmann and Mazin have stated, The Last of Us is a story about love. Love of all kinds, how it survives through the darkest of times, how it enriches and enlivens us, and how it may cause us to commit unthinkable acts. For this conversation, Karl and Jubel are joined by Bryon Kozaczka of the acclaimed Twin Peaks Unwrapped and Geekonomics Podcast, and Josh Minton of the Red Room Podcast, In Our House Now, and author of the book A Skeleton Key to Twin Peaks. We thank you for joining us for our at-times emotional discussion, as we celebrate this fantastic story.

2022 was something of an experiment for Karl and Jubel, and we believe it was a resounding success. We’ve always talked about wanting to incorporate more interviews into the mix, so we did five consecutive interview episodes exploring Twin Peaks: The Return. We want to extend our heartfelt thanks to John Thorne, Rob King, John Bernardy, Lindsay Stamhuis, and Adam Stewart for their generosity, patience, and insights. To paraphrase some version of Dale Cooper towards the end of the series, “we hope to see each and every one of them again.” This episode is something of a wrap-up on the rewatch and discussions of the past year, and it’s particularly tangent heavy. For example, we bring up the topic of Hauntology, which we explored a bit with Adam, and then we drifted off to other things. This is due in part to the fact that while we had questions written down that we wanted to ask each other, we decided in the moment that a loose discussion would be more fun, and yield some unexpected results. The other reason was that Jubel was in the midst of a really gnarly head cold, so keeping himself on track was an exercise in futility. Our hope is that the magic of editing has at least made the conversation listenable!

This episode marks the last in a series of five episodes following our re-watch of Twin Peaks: The Return, which feature guests each of whom bring a unique and thorough perspective to the puzzling, beautiful, haunting, heartbreaking, harrowing and frustrating text that is Twin Peaks. Karl and I would love to offer our deepest thanks to John Thorne, Rob King, John Bernardy, Lindsay Stamhuis, and of course, this episode’s guest Adam Stewart. We hope to talk to each of them again, someday soon. Our last guest in this series, Adam Stewart of Diane Podcast takes us into a broad view of Twin Peaks: the space of “post-theory” Twin Peaks. To get there, we need to talk about hauntings. We start with the classic author of ghost stories M.R. James, what made his work so special at the time, and why his work resonates now, and why it also resonates with our beloved show. We talk about John Thorne’s new book, Ominous Whoosh and question whether Twin Peaks theory doesn’t get any better, or comprehensive, and if so, now what? From there, things get “hauntological,” (a term coined by Jacques Derrida, and popularized in the modern era by media critics such as Mark Fisher, a podcast favorite for Diane as well as us), and we see how the past haunts the present in the real world, in the world of the show, in media at large, and how all of these realms interplay and comment on each other.  For a deeper view, we discuss the concept of “late style” in art, and how David Lynch’s late style comes to bear as he revisited the world of Twin Peaks all these years later.

This is the next in our series of revisits of Twin Peaks: The Return. This time we are happy today to have with us author, teacher, and co-host of The Bicks Podcast (Formerly Bickering Peaks), Lindsay Stamhuis. We begin by covering Parts 13-16, but we branch out and talk about the series as a whole. Lindsay, Karl and Jubel cover a great deal of ground in this one. Since this sequence of Parts carries the bulk of the tragic and perplexing arc (or is it tragic?) of Audrey Horne, we thought it fitting to bring Lindsay on at this point, since she has written about Audrey several times on the 25 Years Later Site, and our hosts are excited to delve into that particular corner of strangeness. In Part 16, we finally see the return of our Cooper! Or is he “our Cooper”? Who is it that wakes up in that hospital bed, and how much of him remains? We get into one of the central themes of The Return, which is essentially a deconstruction of the hero myth itself. For all his charm, competence, and heroism, Special Agent Dale Cooper is a complex figure, and true to much in David Lynch, there is a dark side squirming under the surface.

We are happy to begin our next exploration into the Return with John Bernardy: journalist, Twin Peaks master-theorist, and host of Blue Rose Task Force podcast, which I believe is the first of its kind, being a holistic podcast that looks at the entirety of Twin Peaks including production details. John, Karl and Jubel start off discussing Twin Peaks: The Return Parts 9-12, but soon branch off into other vistas of strangeness. They discuss the troubling saga of the Hornes, their favorite new characters and bits, the secret hidden inside Diane and Sarah Palmer’s favorite beverages, and the strange, open-endedness of the whole story.  Our guest John brings his extensive production knowledge to bear on these details, and elucidates his “Moebius Strip” diagram, which he says is the key to one of the major themes of the Return, exemplified by Dr. Jacoby/Amp’s golden shovel. So fix your hearts, shovel your way out of the sh*t, and have a listen!

Greetings Listeners! We continue our series of guest-packed Twin Peaks: The Return re-watch discussions with author, scholar, and all-around lovely gent Rob E. King! Rob E. King is an associate librarian at Texas Tech University’s Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library and a doctoral student in English at Texas Tech University. He has contributed to 25YL, Blue Rose Magazine, Twin Peaks Unwrapped podcast and published in New American Notes Online and the West Texas Historical Review.  Rob is also co-editor with Christine Self and Robert Weaver of a book of essays titled David Lynch and the American West: Essays on Regionalism and Indigeneity in Twin Peaks and the Films. We begin our discussion with classic Weird writer (and creator of Conan the Barbarian) Robert E. Howard, discuss regionalism in that author’s writings, and bring it around to Twin Peaks, discussing the importance of the Las Vegas bits, Jerry’s Odyssey,  the role of electricity and telecommunication, and much more.

Greetings listeners! This week we are excited to have on, as our first guest in a five-part retrospective of Twin Peaks: The Return, none other than John Thorne, author and co-creator of the Wrapped in Plastic magazine, and more recently Blue Rose magazine, and co-host of In Our House Now Podcast: An Inquiry Into Twin Peaks. John, Jubel and Karl have a free-wheeling discussion which was ostensibly supposed to be about Parts 1-4, but who are we kidding? We talked about it all: What’s really happening in those Audrey scenes? Who’s dream is this, anyway? Who’s reflected in the rear-view mirror of Jade’s Jeep? And is Evan Williams whiskey a new mystical substance? We’re not promising answers, but we have a lot of hunches.

When Karl and Jubel realized that they had passed the five year mark of the podcast, they thought it would be fitting to return to their “Tangents About Twin Peaks” roots, and use Mark Frost’s The Final Dossier as a springboard to dive into Twin Peaks as a whole. What resulted is our longest episode yet, which bounces between the text of the book, and our memories and reflections on the whole saga as it stands. Twin Peaks is a dense knot of mystery and Weirdness, and we hope you will join us, perhaps over the holiday weekend, as we, to pull a phrase from H.P. Lovecraft, “correlate its contents.”

Here’s a short reading by your Humble Co-Host Jubel Brosseau, of “Yule Horror,” a short poem by H.P. Lovecraft. Lovecraft made a habit of writing Christmas poems every year that he sent to friends and family, but generally they were mild, festive affairs. This poem delves into a dark vision of the pagan origins of the Christmas mythology, and is consummate Lovecraft. Happy Holidays everybody!

“Dreams are messages from the Deep” In this episode, a review and impromptu analysis of Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s “Dune,” Karl and Jubel are surprised to find their views and thoughts on the film evolving as they break it down. They share a few laughs as they compare/contrast the film with David Lynch’s adaptation. Bear with us folks, this is a bit of a ride!

“It never got weird enough for us”  Here’s some audiovisual notes about today’s podcast: Guild Navigator – Dune Ben (Dean Stockwell) from Blue Velvet The “Bum” behind Winkies Mr. and Mrs. X (Mary X’s parents from Eraserhead Mrs. Tremond (and her grandson Pierre) Lil from Fire Walk With Me “The Baby” – Eraserhead “Oh You’re Sick” Cutting open the bandages Mr. Gotta Light – TP: The Return, Part 8 Menaces people on highway “This is the water…” The Cowboy – Mulholland Drive Mystery Man: Lost Highway  

Jubel and Karl give in to the lure of nostalgia and return to movies that they haven’t seen in 25 years or so: The Keep and Phantasm.  These are weird movies, and also really Weird movies. We talk about them, how we enjoyed them in our salad days, and what they mean to us now. Other subjects include high school cabals, sci/fi fantasy video crash pads, and the good-old bad days of cocaine-fueled media.

….But Counter-Esperanto will return: Greetings Listeners, Jubel Brosseau here. We are doing something a little different with this episode. Late June saw the release of the long-awaited sequel to The Last of Us, a fan-favorite and critically heralded game exclusive to the Sony Playstation platform. The Last of Us Part 2 had a lot to live up to, and I was absolutely floored by the game. The original was a beautiful, heart-rending game, but this release is absolutely a watershed moment when it comes to elevating video and computer games to the level of high art and literature. I knew I needed to talk this over with someone, but our co-host Karl Eckler doesn’t play video games, so it was time to improvise. I decided to invite Twin Peaks Unwrapped and Geekonomics Podcast co-host Bryon Kozaczka and Red Room Podcast, and In Our House Now Podcast co-host Josh Minton, who are avid gamers, to do a big crossover episode which will be available on our respective feeds. I hope you enjoy it, and Karl and I will be back with our regularly (not so scheduled) programming soon.

Millennium is Coming    “We apologise for the inconvenience.”

In this episode, your hosts delve into two jungles; one 8,000 miles removed from from familiar Twin Peaks psychogeography, and the other in the very center of America’s heartland.  One set in, arguably, the most hopeful American Decade, the 1960s.  The other marinates in the psychic despair of “The End of History.” Both, in their own ver different ways could be called Cold War movies.  They depict the varied fields the first Post-Modern War took place on: one at its figurative and literal hottest, the other in the chill of its coldest pyrrhic victory, where the forces of Liberal Democracy declared themselves winners of the conflict, and in so doing managed to grab defeat from the rushing jaws of victory.  This juxtaposition became even more interesting to us when  we realized that both “Apocalypse Now” and “Candyman” have their tap roots sunk deep into the 19th century, the slave trade, and the most murderous ghost to ever stalk the world: Colonialism. So, what does a psychedelic war movie based on Joseph Conrad’s 19th century critique of Belgian murder in the Congo, “Heart of Darkness”, have in common with a ghost story set in Chicago’s most notoriously failed housing project?  Join us and find out what we think about domineering, even cannibalistic power structures, the desperate revenge and stratagems of resistance by oppressed lands and peoples, and the weird nature of very real evil have to do with it. If you are patient with us, we will trace Conrad’s river of blood through its roots in a disturbingly mundane 19th century colonial genocide to the weirdly repressive focus of slasher mythopoetics up to the present moment (“The horror. The horror.”) we find ourselves in.  If you are very, very patient with us, we might even say something about how all this relates to how Lynch and Frost see the World. Some jungles are made of Douglas Firs.  

“You are entering the vicinity of an area adjacent to a location. The kind of place where there might be a monster or some kind of weird mirror. These are just examples.  It could also be something much better. Prepare to enter, The Scary Door.” — Futurama, “A Head In The Polls” An episode about such vast and important subjects as “Apertures and Doorways” deserves more than a few scattered puns and pop culture references to introduce it. You, dear listener, deserve insightful analysis and deeply researched facts of impeccable pedigree. The sort of treatment that a Joshi, a Price or a Vandermeer would give. These are just examples. It couldn’t get much better. While not that, we are still proud of some of the far shorelines that this conversation paradoxically beached itself on. We start with the need for an inciting incident to enter into a protagonist (or at least their house) through a door of some kind. This is either the traditional sort of door, or the more metaphorical kind, such as those reputed to window the soul.  For the auteur director to which we focus much of our interest, the camera aperture may be more apropos, but Lynch is not the first stop on our weird odyssey this episode. Ligotti is in fact the beginning and end of our conversational carnival this time out. We are the Grimscribe’s Puppets as he leads us from the heights of horror celebrating “The Last Feast of Harlequin” and “The Frolic” to the absurd humor of the famous parody of his style reviewing a particularly horrifying pizza product sporting a crust too insane to contemplate, much less devour. We end on a familiar territory made alien in his unproduced script for the X-files: “Crampton.” Karl forgets to mention the chain of thought that runs from That Town to Barbara Crampton, to the curious interplay of horror and other dangerous subjects. This is almost certainly a good thing, since he was planning on referencing what the rift that Elle opens to the Upside Down in Stranger Things most resembles. Honestly, the mention of Lovecraftian sinuses is plenty bad enough. Jubel saves the day by defining Liminality, allowing us to ride the Lost Highway all the way to a paradoxical shoreline by way of CS Lewis’ alternate dimensions of Christian Allegory, Altered States of consciousness like Beyond the Black Rainbow, Dreamscape, and in a fortunately family friendly way, Stranger Things. Our indulgence in nostalgia takes a Naval turn with Jubel’s mention of Battleship Potemkin and Karl’s incoherent babble about the horizontal time-traveling hurricane that swallows the USS Nimitz in The Final Countdown. From the warmth of the South Pacific in 1941, we turn our attention to one cold night in February of 1989, and how the roads we travel matter. Even when they aren’t matter and don’t behave as roads. Those equivocal paths may lead to you to a set of freestanding curtains or a Scary Door, but there is no reason to be afraid. After all, fear is the mind-killer that gets you eaten by the Lurker On The Threshold. If you let the path pass through you, and turn your mind’s eye back toward the shimmering aperture you will realize that, “Beyond this world strange things are known. Use the key, unlock the door. Come explore this dream’s creation, Enter the world of imagination.” — Rush, “The Twilight Zone”

We grew up In Search of…  the Mysteries of the Unknown.  For those shows–and indeed for most of the 20th Century–the arch unknown has been Alien. So, your hosts will be talking about Aliens.  We talk a lot about how very, very similar our modern abduction narratives are to 17th Century fairy stories, and a little about how Twin Peaks‘ concept of lodge denizens as aliens (or aliens as the lodge entities?) Heralded the modern state of the folklore. In order to do so, it was necessary to time-travel to the beginning of human culture, tracing down the path of daylight disks and flying saucers through the ages until H.P. Lovecraft and Charles Fort hitch us to Chariots of the Gods?  The gods contained in that dog eared and yellowed paperback conveyance entice us, beckon  us on through the final and most dangerous leg of our journey toward final and horrible truth. That truth is a gaping maw.  A yawning Stargate leading not only your hosts, but also you true believer, to fictionalization and beyond!  There, in that gulf of ultimate chaos, we have arranged for you to have a Close Encounter (kind currently unclassified) with a mysterious Blue Book crammed ever so deeply In the Mouth of Madness. A mouth constantly burbling infinite inanities in the long-lost language of…. Counter Esperanto …Please stand by.

Today, Counter Esperanto is celebrating Women in Horror Month, which is February and therefore a bit in the rear-view mirror, but now it’s March, which is Women’s History Month, so it all works out in the end! Karl and Jubel begin by discussing Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca and “Don’t Look Now.” Daphne du Maurier brought the Gothic into the 20th century, and looked at the modern world, and human relationships through the classic Gothic lens.  High-profile adaptations from Alfred Hitchcock and Nicholas Roeg helped to solidify her legacy, but while she is certainly not a forgotten writer now, her extraordinary work deserves praise and reappraisal as some of the finest horror written in the 20th century. We look at some other classic authors, but it is important to us that we help spread the word regarding the exciting work that is being made here and now. Not only do we live in the so-called “Weird Renaissance,” where hundreds of talented authors are able to disseminate their work through digital media and boutique small-press publishers, but many of the best of these authors happen to be women.  So in this episode, Jubel presents a short piece written about some of his favorite women authors working today: Gemma Files, Livia Llewellyn, Nadia Bulkin, Betty Rocksteady and S.P. Miskowski. Some information about the “queen” of the Gothic, Ann Radcliffe Leonora Carrington “in her own words.” Features great examples of her paintings. Anne Rice’s website Official site for Poppy Z. Brite Caitlin Kiernan’s website A bibliography of Ellen Datlow’s many anthologies Marjorie Liu’s website for Monstress “Who Needs Women in Horror Month” by James Chambers We all need women in horror month.

For this “minisode,” Karl and Jubel discuss “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, our most recent reading, which features all-new music and sound design, and a masterful performance by actress Suzanne Owens-Duval. We break down the story’s use of the “unreliable narrator” device, its nebulous supernaturalism, and its role as an influential work of feminist fiction. True to form, your hosts compare and contrast the story with other works, including Gaslight, Rosemary’s Baby, and of course Twin Peaks. The ghost story (and most Weird fiction) frequently explores and builds upon themes of madness, and this is the first of no doubt many discussions of these themes as we move ever onward into the new year.

As with most pieces of great literature, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is many things simultaneously. It is an exquisite ghost story, a prime example of the “unreliable narrator” in short fiction, a psychologically astute depiction of a descent into madness, and a legendary piece of 19th century feminist writing. For this reading, we have had the astonishing fortune of working with actress Suzanne Owens-Duval, who is one of the principal actors on “Annex,” a podcast written and directed by Drew Beard, which is recorded, edited and scored by Jubel Brosseau. Knowing that this is a rare stroke of luck, Jubel took great pains to make sure that this reading was as polished and immersive as the performance and source material deserves. All sounds and music are by Jubel Brosseau, except for the Overture, which is composed and performed by Jubel Brosseau and Nicholas Swartz, and a section of “Gnossienne No 1,” composed by Erik Satie.

We talk about ghosts in this one. We start at Laura Palmer’s suffused spirit and how it haunts Twin Peaks for most of the original run and our dreams ever since, then I completely fail to bring that conversation around to discussing Sarah Palmer and how she haunts the family home, but don’t worry, Jubel makes an awesome save there. We bring in everything from The Innocents to the current Netflix version of The Haunting of Hill House, but make sure to take a big fat steaming one on Amityville (or I do at least) and possibly even say something interesting.  It’s Halloween (but not “This is Halloween. Halloween, halloween!”) It’s ghosts. And it’s–sorta–Twin Peaks. Also, the links in the show notes? Here they are: Horror at Harold House (The Seventh Song) EP 121: YOKAI HORRORS OF JAPAN (via Astonishing Legends)

“I have a question for you. Apologies, it’s a bit of a long one, but I think I’m going to need to unpack it a bit. Okay. So you love Mark Fisher’s The Weird and the Eerie. I want to talk a little bit more about the Eerie, because you so often talk about the Weird. Here is a nutshell quote from Fisher ‘the Eerie is constituted by a failure of absence or by a failure of presence. There is something where there should be nothing or there is nothing where there should be something’. Now season 3 is riven with eerie absences. First and foremost, or at least the most obvious being Dale Cooper and Laura Palmer’s absenteeism. There are more fundamental absences: absences of story progression and structure, absences of narrative and temporal cohesion. Absences of place. We spend very little time in Twin Peaks as a location, and next to no time in a Twin Peaks that is recognizable to us as fans of the original show. By venerating Laura, part 8 highlights and helps to foster a yearning for something that is fundamentally lacking. Even the music that underscores the scene in the fireman’s Palace reinforces this View. This lack can also be found in the way the season continuously defers, confounds and obscures its meanings, a quality which finds focus in elements that imply a hidden order, such as the recurrent instances of mysterious, seemingly metaphysically significant numbers. All this absence generates a feeling that there’s a radical outside to this tale. A place where these structuring elements reside just behind a curtain that the fans attempt to glimpse behind through theories and readings. Perhaps if we are to talk about encounters with the weird in season 3, an incursion of something beyond the edges of the known, we need to talk about the way this vast sense of eerie absence bears down on the story and the characters. On us. Naturally I have ideas about what this absence is. What this outside is. But this isn’t my podcast. So what do you make of it?” –Adam from Diane podcast. You can tweet at him (and the other Dianes) at: @DianePodcast and you should, because they are smarter than us.   The Struggle is Real:

This week, Rob King of 25 Years Later joins us in a non-synchronous, phase-shifted, pan-dimensional interview. Not to worry, we’ll still throw more tangents per minute than any other podcast of this type! (what type are we again?) Apology: Diane, you are academics of several wonderful types not merely “of a type” please forgive the slip of my frazzled tongue.  –Agent “K” Here are the promised Show Notes (danger, danger, massive linkspam incoming!) Podcasts that Inspired Us: Diane: Entering the town of Twin Peaks Twin Peaks Unwrapped Sparkwood and 21  a Twin Peaks podcast by No Ship Network Karl’s podcasts: WYRD_SIGNAL: A Podcast from out of broken time. Invoking the ghosts of lost futures through cult film, fringe ideas and strange sounds. The Shadow Trap:Catching fiction’s worst monsters with strategically limited information to go on – a podcast by @NotNowRosie & @bobsymindless The Last Podcast on the Left: Last Podcast on the Left barrels headlong into all things horror — as hosts Ben Kissel, Marcus Parks and Henry Zebrowski cover dark subjects spanning Jeffrey Dahmer, werewolves, Jonestown, iconic hauntings, the history of war crimes, and more. Whether it’s cults, killers, or cryptid encounters, Last Podcast on the Left laughs into the abyss that is the dark side of humanity. Hidden Experience: “And now they’ve come to take me  /  Come to break me  / And yet it isn’t unexpected  / I have been waiting for these visitors /  Help me” The Witch Wave: The Witch Wave is a podcast for bewitching conversation about magic, creativity, and culture. On each episode, host Pam Grossman speaks with a leading visionary about art and Craft. The Unexplained (With Howard Hughes) Unexplained (with Richard Maclean Smith) “Unexplained is a bi-weekly podcast about strange and mysterious real life events that continue to evade explanation.” “A show that explores the space between what we think of as real and what is not. Where the unknown and paranormal meets the most radical ideas in science today…” Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History The Podcaster’s Guide to the Conspiracy: A humorous and informative analysis of current conspiracy theories and conspiracy theory theories by Josh Addison and Matthew R. X. Dentith. The Gralien Report With Micah Hanks Astonishing Legends: Scott & Forrest have been called the ‘Click and Clack of esoterica’ by their listeners. Their mission is to take a look at legendary strange and unusual events from throughout history and interview people who’ve had close encounters with the unexplained. They strive to bring you everything that’s entertaining about those stories and remind you that it’s ok to laugh at scary stories and respectfully, even the people that tell them. Jubel’s Books: Mark Fisher “The Weird and the Eerie“ TV Peaks, by Andreas Halskov Twin Peaks FAQ, David Bushman and Arthur Smith Reflections: An Oral History of Twin Peaks by Brad Dukes Essential Wrapped in Plastic by John Thorne Full of Secrets: Critical Approaches to Twin Peaks  by David Lavery, Patricia B. Erens (Editor) Lynch on Lynch by David Lynch, Chris Rodley Room To Dream by David Lynch, Kristine McKenna Jirel of Joiry: The Mother of Us All via Black Gate magazine Jules De Grandin  

We’re back! Back in the Twin Peaks zone… Some Notes on the 15th Secret of Counter Esperanto: How is Red like a courtly fool? Why is China back in the Twin Peaks Narrative? Will we say something about infiltration? Will it reference Mark Fisher’s The Weird and the Eerie? Will we find a white paper on technology in Twin Peaks? Would we be satisfied with a user’s manual for a Spiricomm and Agent Jefferies’ teahouse handle? A 27 hour meditation on the nature of reality, carried on during the ultimate road trip. Many questions, few answers.  Just the way we like it, once one learns how to see the Fnords. We also encourage you to check out the following: Hanging with Agent Cooper: A Twin Peaks Podcast WYRD_SIGNAL (A podcast from out of broken time. Invoking the ghosts of lost futures through cult film, fringe ideas and strange sounds.) Compulsory Games by Robert Aickman Vastarien: A literary Journal (The place to go for scholarly articles about the work of Thomas Ligotti) Crampton: The Unproduced Screenplay ALL THIS AND 50% MORE TANGENTS BY THIS VOLUME!

Here’s something a little different… It used to be that the dark of the year was the time to tell each other ghost stories, and so this particular song would not be out of place with it’s six fellows. Yet, it is very different indeed, for those other stories were all–or claimed to be–fiction. This one is real. Today, Jubel offers Counter Esperanto the true story of certain spectral happenings at “The Harold House.” A true story that happened to him. A strange odyssey into the impossible, complete with Swords, Spirits and the Secret of 4:17 AM.

The holidays are holiday-rific as they say, and their multi-spectral horror and insane blandishments have had certain “insalubrious” effects upon your humble hosts.  Rallying against this tinseled terror, we present for your hopeful approval, the initial results, interpretations, commentary and tangential matters arising from Jubel’s academic study of folklore. We asked for your help to fill out our understanding of how Peaks viewers understood and processed modern folklore, and your support and responses just blew us away.  Over a hundred of you took the time out of your day to answer a survey to a level of completeness and deep thought that I have never before witnessed–and as a former pollster, I’ve witnessed more than I can say. Both Jubel and myself pondered how to best process your exquisite thoughts, but in the end the load was too heavy for just the two of us. We’ve therefore asked a few members of the Twin Peaks community to be surprise guests on today’s show, and they have very generously agreed.  For this reason, Michael Wilson and Caemeron Crain of the Drink Full and Descend podcast, and Eileen G. Mykkels of the 25 Years Later site deserve some seriously good slices of cake, they are fabulous human beings and incredibly knowledgeable scholars. Thank you again for lending us your expertise and insight!

Much like the corpus of our favorite TV Show/Movie/Franchise/Intellectual Property/… “Art”, this story has something of a tortuous production background, interference from the studio…er, the publisher (Weird Tales) resulted in at least two versions, and later editors have combined these in various arrangements. A number of synopsizes further confuse the issue of original authorial intent, and so we present here Clark Ashton Smith’s masterful tale, “The Beast of Averoigne” as originally printed in the May 1933 issue of WEIRD TALES. Many thanks to The Eldritch Dark for their work in preserving and presenting Smith’s tales, poems and other writings to the greater public through their website http://www.eldritchdark.com/ as well as the tireless efforts of Karl Eckler the Elder, who lent his time, patience and voice to this recording. This reading is presented here both as a surprise Hallowe’en Treat to our listeners, but also because over the last 18 numbers of Twin Peaks, we have learnt well that, “strange abominations pass evermore between earth and moon and athwart the galaxies; and the gulf is haunted by that which it were madness for man to know.” What seems at first a simple werewolf tale in disguise hints at a meaning as deep and old as the stars, and the dark between them, which is the dark in the woods and the human heart. Enjoy!

In their first post-finale podcast about Twin Peaks: The Return, Karl and Jubel begin what will surely be the long task of parsing out what the hell just happened. Setting aside the cross-textual analysis for the most part, they look at how Lynch/Frost structured the Return, discuss some of their favorite (and least favorite) elements, the chances of another season, and break down that haunting final scene. Some outside tangents are explored: Orpheus and Eurydice, Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring,” and the phases of human sexuality are brought in as tools to understand both the text of Twin Peaks, and the phenomenon of such a challenging piece of art, and popular entertainment. Graphics provided by http://www.int33h.com/test/tc/ To Listen, Punch It up to 88MPH: 

After some major technical issues, your intrepid hosts are back and talking about Twin Peaks: The Return, with a focus on Parts 9 through 12.  True to form, we live up to the “tangents” part of our title, talking about everything from the intricacies of story structure in modern premium television, to why we love Dougie so damn much.  We discuss H.P. Lovecraft’s “From Beyond” as a key Weird text, and some intriguing parallels between that story and The Return’s approach to sound and energy as a way to split the barrier Between Two Worlds.

An overarching theme of The Weird is that some knowledge is–or should be–forbidden. That seeing into the abyss means that it’s denizens may see you, reach you, touch you… and do worse than see and touch. In various ways, Twin Peaks has always dealt with this idea. Sara Palmer, the Log Lady, and Cooper himself all found themselves seeing beyond the normal 5 senses that most humans share, and all of them have paid a steep price. The Return has gone even further, introducing devices, spaces and places that offer glimpses behind the curtains of reality, and what we have seen there has been the exact opposite of safety and mundanity. Therefore we offer you a chance to reset your clocks 97 years into the past and witness the very first time that the foundational horror writer H.P. Lovecraft ventured to set down the facts relating to what issues, From Beyond.

Today, ladies and gentlemen, we will concentrate on “Eight”. The 8th installment of Twin Peaks: The Return, we feel, will be looked on as the beginning of a new thing in the world of Television. It is also the best information we have today about the ultimate beginnings of BOB, Laura, and… Gnosticism? It’s a hot take everyone, so grab some Iced Tea and focus on our 11th secret, “A Beginning is a very delicate time…”

In this episode, we wrestle with the awesome beauty and genius of David Lynch’s triumphant Return to Twin Peaks by way of Buckhorn South Dakota, Philadelphia and… New. York. City? We won’t get a rope, but we will explore what is in The Box!

It’s hard to believe that we have already made it to the 9th secret of Counter Esperanto, and because 9 is a magic number we talk a lot about magic this time. The magic of 25 years ago and the anticipated magic of next week. The power of poetry, the nitty-gritty of pulling down the moon for fun and profit, and an intense speculation into the real secret history of Annie Blackburn, a character having a most amazing and intricate background… or lacking one entirely. It’s not that we are vacillating, it’s just that, “Depending on how one looks on the situation, it appears they both have merit.” Because of that, we’ve gone back to the textual ur-text of Counter Esperanto, Mark Frost’s The Secret History of Twin Peaks, in order to investigate why Annie does not appear in it, and what that (and other things) may reveal. From there we have put out our feelers in order to really get the lay of the land as it sits, take the current temperature of Twin Peaks, and nail down some things that we think about David Lynch’s Enigmatic tales that bridge the gap between the small screen, the big screen and the mental screen. To wit, this episode contains: (1) Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan: Or, a vision in a dream. A Fragment.” read by Karl Eckler the elder. (2) Jubel’s introduction (3) A snapshot of Twin Peaks 25 years later, and 7 days from the return. (4) “What’s Annie?” A wandering primer of esoterica, modern alchemy and Nth dimensional physics by K, all used to advance a theory both wild and unexpected. Submitted as a reply, with all due reverence and reciprocity, to the recent work of Lindsay Stamhuis. Typecast:

The Music of Erich Zann is a haunting reminiscence of a place found outside the normal rules of society, order and physics. Something exists behind the high wall that only Erich Zann can see over. Does he long to see? Or is he afraid of the cold fire from beyond that longs to walk with him? Like the town of Twin Peaks the Rue d’Auseil cannot be found on any map, and those who seek for it fail, unless they walk with their inner sight. We Invite you then to close your eyes in a tightly curtained room, and shudder along with us a we walk up that steep hillside street where the houses bend together like supplicants in prayer, they and we are anxiously awaiting the concert to begin. Waiting through the long meanwhile to again catch the haunting strains of… The Music of Erich Zann Read by Karl Eckler the Elder. Music and Engineering by Jubel Brosseau Typed shownotes by a 1963 Hermes 3000: The clatterings of Karl Eckler

For artists, their outlook of the world can be expressed in the form of discrete symbol systems, and in this way artists are likely to refer to their art as their children. For this is true in a partially incestuous way. Our start positions in life are given to us primarily by our experiential parents: Those brave humans who choose to raise us. We take on that gift (or baggage) and transform it over the course of our lives, our lived encounters with the human and natural world. This forms individual outlooks on the world, for none of us see all of it, or even an identical portion of it. An artist cannot help but incorporate this subjective model of the unknown objective world into their object ‘d art, or can they? In this episode, we discuss the work and lives of a number of authors working in the genre of “The Weird.” From H.P. Lovecraft to David Lynch. Yes, it’s Arkham to Twin Peaks, by way of Cross Plains, Texas and Detroit, Michigan.

The Horla is all about a creature from “outside” that causes a previously good and sane person to doubt their sanity, indulge in actions of questionable moral turpitude and ultimately make a terrible choice with unknown consequences. Sound familiar? Read by Karl Eckler the Elder. Music and Engineering by Jubel Brosseau

She is the reason that we are first introduced to the town of Twin Peaks, but died before that lonely foghorn first blew. Homecoming Queen and sex worker, murder victim and drug dealer, charity volunteer and thief, Laura is a character that exists beyond the pale boundaries of “good” and “bad” that television–especially the soap operas that Twin Peaks was inspired by–tends to sort its characters into. Using her Secret Diary as a guide we peel back a few of the layers, look under one or two fingernails, and ultimately become blinded by the brilliance of Laura’s mind and soul. Taken from us too soon, we hope to see you again… the 25 years is almost up after all.

Nathan Carson is the drummer for Witch Mountain, a Doom Metal band from one of our favorite Twin Peaks adjacent cities, Portland! He’s also (in no particular order) a Twin Peaks fan, a really cool dude, and the author of the Bizarro Fiction novel Starr Creek which is perhaps more Lovecraftian than Peakian, but is very, very good, which is the main thing, isn’t it? We talk to him about music, the weird, weird things, writing, touring and really get down to the brass tacks about what kind of wonderful trees there are out there. Also, his publisher is Lazy Fascist Press, which puts out many books that are enjoyed by us.

The Key to the Key of Theosophy, a Counter Esperanto joint. Being a mostly Clear, although somewhat muddled Exposition, in the Form of questionable Question and improbable Answer, of the ETHICS, SCIENCE, AND PHILOSOPHY (such as they are) for the Study of which The Theosophical Society founded itself. Also, trick riding and Owls that are not what they seem.

This ain’t no Star Wars Christmas Special folks. This is Karl Eckler the Elder reading H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Festival“, a story about the Yule-time, which is older than Christmas and fated to survive it.

The detective hero falls into a few quickly identifiable types: There is the tough guy, like Mike Hammer or Dashiell Hammett’s Continental Op; the systematic police that shows up on Law & Order or CSI; and of course there is the brainy “Great Detective” embodied in Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot. And then there is Dale Cooper. In a forest of investigator protagonists, FBI Agent Dale Cooper is an oak among evergreens (Douglas Firs, specifically). Herein we run through the top ten (pre-season three) moments that we find wonderful and amazing about our special agent, and comment on their importance and meaning to the two of us at least, and possibly to you as well. As the man himself says, “I have no idea where this will lead us, but I have a definite feeling it will be a place both wonderful and strange” (S2E18)

As promised, this week we take out our microscopes to examine things as they are, and as they might be. Jubel examines Weirdness as a literary and cultural phenomenon, while Karl goes and gets himself lost in the woods… and the mountains, the high plateaus, the river-bottoms, the deserts and mysteries of upper air. No joke, Washington is the only state in the Union that contains all of earth’s major environments, including a Rain Forest, but we investigated that last month along with our locally iconic Tree Octopus. Psychogeography: is this real or some strange and twisted dream? Personally, I think it’s too Weird.

Along with the rest of the country, we have been a little too successful at our “Counter Esperanto,” and the heaping plates of Double R Diner Turkey Specials have done us in for yet another year. And yet, in our repletion, we have not forgotten you, gentle listener, and so we offer up this holiday song of sorrow and wonder. A somewhat carnivorous canto in three parts: “The Lake” by Edgar Allen Poe, reading by Karl Eckler the Elder. “Nyarlathotep” by H.P. Lovecraft, reading by Jubel Brosseau. “Floating into the Night” by Julee Cruise, as covered by Universal Self Awareness.

In this mini-sode, the terrible twosome find traces from nowhere leading into the town of Twin Peaks: impossible octopi and the Fortean “Star Slime” that rains down mysteriously on the just and the unjust alike. No connections, says you? We got your connections right here. Get ’em while they’re still wet and wriggling!

The Counter Esperanto Podcast: Tangents about Twin Peaks is the work of Karl Eckler and Jubel Brosseau, and represents their first foray into podcasting about their Weird interests.  This is not a recap podcast (there are plenty of those), spoilers abound as Jubel and Karl discuss the Twin Peaks mythos as a whole, generally working backwards from Mark Frost’s new book The Secret History of Twin Peaks.  This first episode discusses the clues that may be present in the typographic layout of the book, the Archivist’s typewriter, the “Race of giants” coverup mystery, Hawk’s puzzling document, and more.  Future episodes will delve further into this beloved world, Weird history, and Weird fiction.