‘Twin Peaks’: Long Live The Log Lady

The Log Lady is dead. Long live the Log Lady.
“Hawk, my log is turning gold. The wind is moaning. I’m dying.”
Few Twin Peaks characters are as iconic as Margaret Lanterman, the Log Lady (Catherine Coulson). With her trusty log in her arms channeling cryptic pronouncements about owls and fire, Lanterman became a synecdoche for Twin Peaks’s gently surrealistic humor and mystical underpinnings. Not many took her seriously (except Hawk, of course), but she and her log always saw the truth behind the mystery.
And now, Lanterman is dead, taken by the same cancer that ended the life of the woman who portrayed her. Twin Peaks: The Return has been a lot of things, but its emotional weight has rested on Lanterman, and Coulson’s, shoulders. Her death in “Part 15” is perhaps the most moving moment of any iteration of the Twin Peaks narrative, and it is only fitting that David Lynch dedicated the episode not to Coulson (which he did back in “Part 1”), but to Lanterman herself.

The weight of the character’s history can’t help but mix with that of Coulson’s long relationship with Lynch. The two met back in 1971, when Lynch began production on what would become his debut feature, Eraserhead (1977). The 27-year-old actor was married to the film’s star, Jack Nance, at the time. Coulson became a jack-of-all-trades on set, serving as an assistant camera, assistant director, and anything else Lynch needed. She and Nance would divorce before production was finally completed, but she stayed friends with Lynch, who eventually cast her as the Log Lady almost 15 years later. The character began as an image Lynch had while making Eraserhead, in which he related to Coulson a vision of her clutching a large log.
Coulson had an almost Zelig-like life in Hollywood, when she deigned to work in the place. Besides Lynch, she served as an assistant camera to such luminaries as John Cassavetes, Albert Brooks, and Jim Jarmusch. She eventually moved to Ashland, Oregon, where she became a member of the permanent company at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.
Her most important role, of course, remains the Log Lady. It’s interesting to go back and watch her first few appearances in the first season. Cooper, ever the mystic, finds Margaret a bit too eccentric for even his tastes, looking befuddled or even frustrated at the things she says. By contrast, Hawk intuitively understands how she operates, from her rituals to the “many spirits” living inside the wood across Twin Peaks.

That connection to Hawk is what kick-starts one of the primary narrative threads in The Return, when Margaret calls him in “Part 1” to relay the information that will lead to the discovery of the missing pages of Laura Palmer’s diary. There is a warmth and tenderness to their phone calls; Margaret isn’t calling merely to tell Hawk about the things her log wants him to know. The calls are two old friends, now old themselves, reaching out to bond over their shared experience. She references “our talks, when we were able to speak face to face,” reminiscing like the two linked spirits that they are.
So it is when Margaret calls Hawk for the last time. Coulson’s rail-thin body, post-chemo hair, and breathing tube have given Margaret an even deeper poignancy, as we know that she is not long for this world. Coulson gives the rawest of performances. Her illness cannot help but become Margaret’s illness. There’s barely any barrier between actor and performer.
That is what makes this final moment with Margaret so devastating. Margaret’s tears are Coulson’s tears, knowing that she is about to meet her end. When she says, “There’s some fear in letting go,” that could be Coulson talking with Lynch, a friend saying goodbye for the last time.
And it is all too obvious that this scene is Lynch and Coulson saying goodbye to one another. Lynch makes it achingly poetic, giving depth and texture to the dialogue he and Mark Frost wrote. He cuts from the end of the call to clouds covering the moon, as beautiful a symbol of death as has ever been committed to screen.

That shadow carries over to the conference room. The space is always darkly lit, but this time, only a single overhead lamp illuminates the space when the deputies gather to hear the news. Even the fact that Hawk asks everyone to convene so he can announce Margaret’s death is momentous in and of itself. Everyone’s face is cast in darkness. The community has just lost its seer. Hawk has just lost a friend. He bows his head in sorrow.
In many ways, the entire season pivots around Margaret. It’s no accident that the five episodes in which she appears are affixed with descriptions comprised of her dialogue. She sees the big picture, even if we don’t yet, with all of its moving parts and shadowy mysteries. The light in the cabin turns out for the last time, and Hawk will no longer have the Log Lady to guide him. David Lynch stared Catherine Coulson’s death right in the face, and she stared right back. This final moment is a love letter from one friend to another. It’s the only goodbye Lynch and Coulson would know how to say.

Evan Davis is a writer living in New York City. Follow him on Twitter @EvanDavisSports.

Stream Twin Peaks (2017) on Showtime