We've met before, haven't we?

I don't think so.

At your house, don't you remember?

No, I don't.

So I think following on what both of you just said about the discourse and the kind of reception

surrounding this film when it came out, I think a good point of entry here might be actually

just to push back a little bit against this consensus in the 90s on Lynch.

Because, you know, granting the unavoidable fact that

Lynch can be you know ambiguous and that he engages in I don't know symbolism and and whatever

this seems such an obvious example like Mahal and Drive of a film that has a clear project that

it's carrying out and that is not really that opaque in its symbolism. I don't buy it all that this film or

Mahal and Drive for that matter or really any Lynch film is just some kind of, you know, stream of

consciousness that's not really serious, that doesn't have any kind of thesis on any level,

that doesn't have structure and that it, what was Ebert's phrase about the audience? That it has

breezy contempt for them.

You know, the mystery man says, you know, I'm both here, but I'm also inside your house.

And he says, you know, how did you get inside my house?

And the mystery man replies, you invited me.

I'm not in the business of showing up uninvited.

So I think the mystery man represents

the kind of omniscient gaze of objective reality that exists in your psyche. The mystery man

represents a kind of objective perspective. I think Pete is kind of the subordinate part of the

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