I agree with the above. I think DL is quite widely read and studied art at University. He probably knows some of the symbolist sources as well as relying on intuition. Often DL has a dream or vision and cannot explain it logically. He feels the power of the vision and wants to replicate or convey it. It isn't artificial but of course every artist is influenced subconsciously by the art/literature/cinema they know. Some of that comes out in the dream.

The blue flower motif also appears in the Harkonnen complex in "Dune". The slave is brought in to place blue flowers and is killed for fun by the Duke.

Montana

has this been brought up before? because i have made the connection perfectly. it seems it fits right in.

i haven't seen dune, but wouldn't that be frank herbert putting the flower in, not lynch? or are there significant differences between the novel and the movie. for some reason that is the one lynch movie i never wanted to see...i have heard both good and bad feedback on it. and i'm also not a big fan of cheezy sci-fi as it as the movie seems to be.

True, along with what else you have mentioned.  The blue rose, in particular is a perfect symbol for a mystery because in nature it does not exist- it is a thing of dreams.

I am quite fond of the blue rose concept and even gone as far as making jewelry inspired with blue roses.

 It is my least favourite Lynch film. I don't much like sci-fi either. If you definitely don't like sci-fi, Dune won't convert you. Actually there is quite a bit of Lynch in the film (I don't know where all these people get the idea that Dune isn't a DL film come from). The blue flowers (tulips) could well be DL. I haven't read the book so maybe someone else can help there.

Even I, as a DL fan, would not recommend Dune. But that is just a personal response. 

I don't think this has been posted before. I do have a bit of info about blue roses. I'm quoting the official description and including a pic for reference. This may have absolutely nothing to do with David and Twin Peaks, but it's food for thought.

Kelly

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Jeffries, genius!! That insignia has got to be a connection!

Anyone heard the Dr. Octagon song ´blue flowers´? One of the best videos i´ve ever seen.

Killing time. It won´t die.

Human gene may produce blue rose

Roses are red. Violets are blue.

Now, thanks to VU, roses could be blue, too.

Two biochemists researching cancer and Alzheimer's disease drugs at Vanderbilt University have made a startling discovery quite by chance — and it could prove to be the grand prize for rose-lovers yearning for that elusive blue rose.

You see, there are no natural blue roses.

But there could be, thanks to Peter Guengerich and his colleague Elizabeth Gillam.

The two were studying how drugs are metabolized in the body when they took a gene from a human liver and placed it into bacteria.

'Well, the bacteria turned blue,' said Guengerich, professor of biochemistry and director of the Center in Molecular Toxicology at Vanderbilt. 'That was surprising.

'We knew people have been interested in making a blue rose for years, so we thought if we could move these human genes into flowers, we might come up with one.'

Gillam, a senior lecturer in pharmacology at the University of Queensland in Australia, was in Australia and could not be reached for comment. She was a post-doctoral trainee in Vanderbilt's biochemistry department from 1991-93 and has been working with Guengerich on research since then.

A blue rose would be a first, according to Carol Spiers, assistant to the executive director of the American Rose Society.

'There aren't any true blues, and there aren't any true blacks,' Spiers said, referring to petal color. 'The most popular so-called blue, which is Blue Girl, is actually mauve.'

Local rose breeder Robbie Tucker agreed.

'There is no blue pigment in a rose. It just doesn't exist,' Tucker said. 'So you've got to genetically take the code for blue from a different plant and introduce it to the rose.'

Sam Jones, chairman of this weekend's Nashville Rose Society Spring Show, expressed excitement over the discovery.

'It's a goal we've been looking for for a long time. And for it to come about from biochemistry rather than plant breeding is very unique.

'It should be a very popular rose, because blue is often associated with patriotic themes. You could have red, white and blue bouquets. And for Mother's Day, it would be nice. And, it's novel, as well.'

Guengerich and Gillam have filed for a patent for their process and, if it proves successful, they could be sitting on, well, a bed of roses.

But they've encountered some real thorns along the way.

'In our initial attempts, the gene didn't know whether to turn the stem or the thorns or the flower blue,' Guengerich said. 'We've seen some of each.'

So the biochemists must figure out how to target the flower with their 'blue gene.'

And blue roses won't appear at your local garden center this summer. Guengerich said it could be a year or more before an actual blue bloom materializes.

'I'm working on other things with the drugs,' he said. 'And, it will take some time to work on the blue showing up in the flowers rather than the stems.'

Speaking of blue genes, er, jeans, the coloring could have consequences beyond genus Rosa.

Think genus Levi Strauss.

'If it works, we could make blue cotton,' Guengerich said. 'You know, when they make blue jeans, they start with white cotton and dye it. Well, you could soon see fields and fields of blue cotton growing along the road to Memphis.'

The 'blue gene' could also translate into lots of green, according to local seller Betty Smith of Betty Smith Nursery at the Nashville Farmers Market.

'If somebody comes up with a blue rose, they'll sell real good,' she said. 'People like blues and purples. I could sell a lot of them.'

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Was just marking a students essay on Romanticism in which the mention of Novalis and the blue flower came up:

For Novalis this 'heimat or true home... was lost in a golden age, sometimes that was in the future, sometimes in a distant present foreign land'

She is quoting from a book by Maurice Cranston on Romanticism, but I thought the particular connection between the flower and the sense of true home, a place that is in a potentially undefinable place, was too good to ignore... and to unnecessarily revive this thread to mention! Maybe the ultimate fate of Laura and Theresa is in some way similar, in that they were both 'seeking', or at least found, a true home away from the pain experienced in this material life?

Something that I don't think anyone has mentioned... but where the Blue Rose is a symbol of impossibility, there are also two scripted but deleted scenes involving a RED rose. Doc Hayward tries to do a magic trick early on in the Laura Palmer section of FWWM, but he says "I don't know why it's not working, it worked early when I was practicing near Sparkwood and 21." Near the end of the film, when Laura yells "I love you JAMES!" and runs into the woods, the camera pans down from that to a red rose laying on the side of the road (at Sparkwood and 21).

Obviously the red rose just is a reference to love, which is nothing new, but I thought it was a cool added reference to another rose in the film. 

I like to think of FWWM as a sequel of sorts. With Cooper in the Lodge the prequel is happening under the influence of that occurrence. This caused the use of Chet Desmond for the Teresa Banks case (though I realize they did that as a result of an inconvenience), the appearance of Phillip Jeffries, the Tremonds, Mike (his confrontations with Leland), and others. Phillip Jeffries' accusation of Cooper is probably unrealized until the events of the series happen, but then again we don't know.

 But what I remember from the alternate ending of the pilot (or maybe just the script) was Mike's mention of the red threads. This is mentioned in FWWM, but it's trumped by the blue rose and the ring which are objects of the film's reality.

"...as a symbol for the unknown. or the unknowable."

This is what I thought it might represent.

"Desmond: Did you notice what was pinned to it?

Stanley: A blue rose.

Desmond: Very good, but I can't tell you about that."

If the rose represents the unknowable then by definition one can't speak of it. One must know of it to speak of it at which point it has ceased to be the blue rose.

It seemed to me that in that situation a 'blue rose' could be a very effective tool. The initiate (Stanley) might strive to figure out the meaning behind the blue rose and in doing so provide the teacher (Desmond)with insights from a fresh prespective, somthing that can be useful.

It might represent a specific kind of the 'mystically unkowable.' This dovetails well with my supposition that there are secret socities opperating in the TP world engaged in confronting the kind of mystic shenanigans that take place around the world and specifically in spiritual hotspots like the woods around Twin Peaks.

That's one of the things I love about the TP, it's hard to come up with theories that are further out there than the show it self.

Call me crazy but I kind of liked Dune. Of course I haven't seen it in somthing like 24 years.

rb

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