Festival of Distraction

David Lynch called his fundraiser the Festival of Disruption, after a Maharishi line about breaking the surface of ordinary life. For nearly thirty years, Twin Peaks fans gathered in Snoqualmie and North Bend for something else: cherry pie, bus tours, signing lines, and the occasional high school drama. This essay is about fan communities, the Mistake of the Intellect, and why the most important question in a dark theater isn’t who made the film. It’s who is watching it.