David Lynch has been on my mind lately, but really his art has never really been far from my mind.

A few weeks ago, I was collaborating with one of my favorite models, Kim and, as our sessions often progress, the images became a bit darker and more surreal. This time was no exception. Reviewing the shots I remarked that the photos had a Lynchian vibe. Two days later, on January 16, Lynch died. Kim texted, remarking, “we were just talking about him.”

But as I say, Lynch has never really been far from my mind, not since I was eighteen years old and first exposed to his beautiful genius—on April 8, 1990, the date that Twin Peaks premiered on television.

Rarely, when I really adore a work of art, I imagine that the universe has created it especially for me—that it exists solely to make me happy, console, or challenge me. To my mind it’s the highest compliment one can pay to an artist or their work, that it feels as a gift from the universe. Twin Peaks is one of those works of art.

But Twin Peaks resonated with a lot of people, at least for a while. The first season was a genuine hit in the ratings. It was so popular, the Queen of England apparently blew off Paul McCartney to watch it.

For the uninitiated, Twin Peaks is difficult to explain. On the surface, it is a police procedural involving FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper investigating the murder of a small-town homecoming queen, Laura Palmer. As with the Dallas cliffhanger a decade earlier that propelled “Who shot J.R.?” into the lexicon, in the spring of 1990, everyone wanted to know, “Who killed Laura Palmer?” However, because this was a David Lynch project, that is an absurd summary of Twin Peaks or what made it so special.

I won’t waste time doing that here because I believe Twin Peaks must be experienced first-hand. But I will say the show’s essential procedural components dovetailed nicely with my life as a high school student and that the synchronicity felt intentional. The universe was telling me to pay attention.

David Lynch, by all accounts was earnest, and as his cinematic stand-in, Kyle MacLachlan, played the character, so was FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper, the quirky, perpetually bewondered Eagle Scout. Like David Lynch (and Dale Cooper), I am an Eagle Scout, and as an 18-year-old was a by-the-book, clean living, straight arrow. A nerd, to be clear, so to see a show where a quirky, earnest, rule-following detective was the hero, I felt oddly validated.

Twin Peaks also resonated because it felt authentic to the sleepy little town I grew up in—a rustic lake community nestled in the mountains of northwestern New Jersey. Lake Mohawk was developed as a vacation community in the 1920s and even today feels out of step with suburban America. Its cabins finished in pecky cypress paneling had massive fieldstone fireplaces and slate roofs—each house unique, yet in harmony with its neighbors.

Part fairy tale village, homes were built with fanciful gables and oddly sloped roof lines. Rustic cottages were built with castle-like turrets. Attic rooflines were punctuated with dormers that housed leaded glass windows. Homes were often decorated with antlers and taxidermized hunting trophies. Lake Mohawk felt like no place else, but then Twin Peaks came along, and our intrepid hero Agent Cooper took up residence in the Great Northern Hotel, sleeping in a guest room that eerily resembled my own lake house bedroom.

The third, and perhaps most profound reason that Twin Peaks made such a personal impact is that it essentially serialized my own small-town experience. On February 12, 1989, when I was a junior in high school, we were jolted out of our provincial naivety by a brutal murder.

The victim was a senior in high school. He was popular, a good student and gave back to the community. He was at a party and was stabbed to death after he tried to intervene in an argument between another guy and his girlfriend. The killer then abducted his girlfriend, and made a daring cross-country escape, resulting in a televised chase and capture at the Mexico border days later.

As the events surrounding the murder came to light, the community learned sordid details about the secret life of its honor students, and the drug-fueled parties they were attending. The incident became national news, with one of the New York City tabloids labeling our community a “teenage wasteland.” Which led the jaded senior class to select the Who’s Baba O’Riley as their prom theme that spring.

The following April Twin Peaks premiered. Promotional materials described it as a town full of secrets. The beloved homecoming queen, the quintessential good girl who volunteered for Meals on Wheels and tutored a disabled student was also a cocaine-addicted prostitute. While on the surface everything appeared beautiful and wholesome, the rot lurked just underneath—itself a summary on the themes Lynch explored in much of his work.

According to the show’s chronology, Laura Palmer was murdered on February 24, 1989, Just twelve days after the real-life murder in my hometown, with its own rot lurking just behind the carefully cultivates lies we told ourselves.

In one of the show’s early episodes, Agent Cooper observes, “gentlemen, when two separate events occur simultaneously pertaining to the same object of inquiry, we must always pay strict attention.”

I share this not as a career-summarizing tribute to David Lynch, of course. Others have written more eloquently about his innate optimism, his advocacy for transcendental meditation, his catalog of films and his other artistic endeavors. This was merely my introduction to his world.

The universe was offering me clues, inviting me on a journey Agent Cooper would describe thusly: “I have no idea where this will lead us, but I have a definite feeling it will be a place both wonderful and strange.”

How lucky was I that both events and my experiences conspired to demand my attention?

And now David Lynch has left us. A week before his death, my dog died. Both occurring just weeks before the fascists seized control of American government, it has felt at times that the universe is stripping me of my coping mechanisms.

In the days following Lynch’s death, a meme that first circulated in 2016 resurfaced. Created by Paul Darling, it appears to be a low-fidelity movie still, we see only a woman’s hand clutching a cigarette, her arm draped over her stockinged legs. The frame contains a brief caption: my idols are dead and my enemies are in power.

Once again, the universe is commanding that I pay attention.

But let me also be clear. This is not a time for despair. At one point in the series, Twin Peaks sheriff Harry S. Truman, played by Michael Ontkean, tells Agent Cooper about a secret society known as the Bookhouse Boys, explaining:

There's a sort of evil out there. Something very, very strange in these old woods. Call it what you want. A darkness, a presence. It takes many forms but…it’s been out there for as long as anyone can remember and we've always been here to fight it.

And we too must fight the evil here in our world. If we do nothing else throb. will always stand up against racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia and bigotry in all forms. We reject categorically the forces of hate that wish to marginalize and erase our communities.

Know hope.