Re-watching David Lynch films in the Cinema: It came to Me in a Dream (an introduction)

There is a crushing force to how she lives; it is more than living, it is an all encompassing or always on the verge of obliterating pressure knocking against her incessantly.
She lives in dreams, and often nightmares.  Living for her is certainly real, but it is simultaneously surreal, with the weight of subconsciousness and uncertainty of WHAT and WHO is REAL haunting her.

She is Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee), in David Lynch's TWIN PEAKS:  FIRE WALK WITH ME.

She is also  the Bill Pullman and  Balthazar Getty character in David Lynch''s LOST HIGHWAY.

Did i mention she is both female protags in MULHOLLAND DRIVE and Nikki Grace (Laura Dern) in INLAND EMPIRE?

Los Angeles is in primary focus in the latter three films, a witch who charms, casts spells, and plays a Medusa like role with her mesmerizing sea of serpentine neighborhoods and freeways.

Signs appear organically, but there is always a period of intense confusion at the outset.  From here, a sense of mystery is borne, driving the narrative.  But the spectator's experience of the mystery is more driven by ecstatic moments, where we feel the crush and the euphoria of the protagonist's sorrows and pleasures.

The value of life for a Lynchean person is upheld as the greatest privilege, a blessing that is delicately balanced, easy to break. One must live above all.  Vice is always a major tool in living, as it helps one  remain alive through hellish pain, abuse and injustice.

Laura Palmer is so terribly haunted and miserable because her consciousness obscures and confuses the exact nature of her life.

Nikki Grace is brought into sorrow and the crushing fear of misery when, as  a victim of another woman's traumatic pain (a woman on woman stabbing) she, like us in the Cinema, is driven to brutal emotions; an empathy unique to the Cinema of Lynch.