Counter Esperanto Podcast: Winds Of The Weird

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 curr...

“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 i...

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 &#8220...

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...

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 c...

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...

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...

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 fi...

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,...

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 mo...

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 sec...

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 charact...

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, unl...

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 ov...

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&...

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 abo...

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...

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...

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...

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 Pe...