Lost Highway

or; Dick Laurent Is Dead

“You and me, Mister… We can really out-ugly them sumbitches, can’t we?” - Dick Laurent, Lost Highway

I slept poorly last night. I didn’t get to bed until late, and then I tossed and turned all night, which is uncommon for me. I’ve always been fortunate enough, most of the time, to be able to set my cares aside when I crawl under the covers and sleep soundly. Last night, however, was another story. I dwelt somewhere in that unpleasant half-waking somewhere between dreaming and wakefulness, sometimes too hot, sometimes too cold, but never able to get comfortable.

Sleep is a strange thing. It has occasionally brought me glimpses of future truth, and it has also brought me terrors and false prophecy. I don’t consider sleep, on the whole, to be a residence of reliable narration, although I do think that more often than not, you can tell when something is directionally accurate in dreams. In any case, I have noticed over the last two years or so that I tend to sleep badly right before something significant happens on the world stage.

You’re free to be as dismissive of that as you want to be. I certainly don’t claim to have any insights on the specifics of the future, but I can usually tell when something foul is afoot. My personal interpretation is that the timeline is shifting in a meaningful way, or perhaps there is a massive information download happening. I tend to view it as an indication of wider events more than personal ones.

I got up early this morning, unable to half-sleep any longer. I sat and started reading the day’s news. For no particular reason, I flipped to the online edition of People, and I was greeted by the headline that Robert Blake had passed away from heart disease at the age of 89. I nearly fell off of the bed.

Robert Blake was a child actor who kept going, and he was, by all accounts I’ve read, a bit of a character and a rather strange man. I only know him from one film, his last and one of my favorites: Lost Highway.

In Lost Highway, Robert plays the Mystery Man, an eerie, foreboding figure in kabuki makeup who shows up uninvited at unsettling times and says Lynchian things. To be sure, he’s a spooky character, and Lost Highway is, like most of Lynch’s film work, unsettling and spooky in parts.

At bottom, it is the story of an unreliable narrator who states early in the film that he prefers to remember things his way, not as they actually happened. Over the course of the film, we realize that Fred Madison is unstable and lying to himself and everyone around him about certain events in his life - specifically, the gruesome murder of his wife, Renee.

Lost Highway came to theaters in 1997, and it was Robert Blake’s last screen role. In 2001, he was credibly accused of murdering his second wife. He was acquitted, and it had long been my understanding that he died shortly after. In fact, up until early this morning, I was certain I had read such across many Lost Highway forums over the years. If you had asked me at this time yesterday where Robert Blake, the Mystery Man from Lost Highway was, I would’ve told you that both he and Robert Loggia (Mr. Eddy/Dick Laurent) died several years back.

Dear reader, I was wrong. Apparently. Perhaps. Possibly maybe. When I read that he died yesterday, I was stunned. I never expected to see his name in print for anything again because I was sure that he was dead.

Let it be fairly stated that I’m willing to admit the possibility that I misread something or confused him with Robert Loggia or even Jack Nance. It was Nance’s last film, as well, but I have a hard time believing that I would confuse those two men, since Nance was a frequent collaborator with Lynch and highly recognizable to fans. Robert Loggia was just as recognizable in his own right, and one of my favorite stories about Lynch movies is how Lynch kept him waiting at a reading for Blue Velvet. Lynch ended up giving the part to someone else and never even hearing Loggia, and Loggia flipped his lid on Lynch and read him the riot act. It left such an impression on Lynch that he called Loggia back years later to play Mr. Eddy and wrote his road rage scene as an homage to that fateful rant for the script reading that never was.

It could be that I have become an unreliable narrator for the man who possibly (probably) committed murder and was in a movie about the same, but I feel some kinda way about it. As I sat on my bed reading the article, I had a strange, unsettling feeling the whole time. The article never mentioned Lost Highway, yet the whole thing felt like a real blue rose to me. I posted about it on Twitter, and one of my mutuals suggested Mandela Effect, which is what I am leaning towards.

As I checked back on the news intermittently as the workday wore on, I saw that the Silicon Valley Bank collapsed today. I’ve heard that other banks are beginning to hold onto withdrawals. I have known for a long time that a collapse was coming. For one thing, I’m a libertarian, and like most libertarians, I hold the belief that you can’t shutter the economy for months, pump it full of funny money, and expect a total lack of blowback. I’ve been expecting it for a long time now - my whole life, honestly - but people that I trust have lately been sounding the alarm, saying that we need to batten the hatches for 2023.

Something happened overnight. Something has been happening. The energy is weird. I rarely get on my old Facebook, but I opened it this evening to find a message from an old friend, telling me about a weird event that happened to her last night. When I read the details, I felt surer that I had assessed the energy correctly?

What does a potential Mandela Effect relating to Lost Highway mean on a larger scale? Well, several things, to my mind. The driving theme of the movie has always been the unreliable narrator. Fred has a vision of himself as a good, caring man, and he wants to see other people in similarly positive lights, but the reality underneath is so much grimmer. His frustration at reality ultimately leads to his murderousness. We perceive the duality of the two main characters through their doppelgängers, another favorite Lynch theme.

Two films, one screen.

We are coming to the reckoning, I believe. The timelines must merge, and reality must prevail. There is going to come a time when all people that possess even the slightest ability to reason will be forced to see certain things, however gruesome or unsavory or frightening they truly are. If we are to advance beyond this, we have to step into truth. This won’t happen overnight. Things will have to get ugly before that happens, and still not everyone will get it, but I do think it will trend that way.

Stay grounded in the coming days, weeks, and months. Things will accelerate further in April, and people need to be prepared for what’s coming. Keep a level head and a weather eye, and if you have an experience like mine that has interesting timing and feels significant, pay attention. Trust your gut.

Until next time, friends, keep your lamp lit, and more importantly than ever, keep your powder dry.