View Poll Results: what type is David Lynch?

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  • ILE (ENTp)

    1 20.00%
  • SEI (ISFp)

    0 0%
  • ESE (ESFj)

    0 0%
  • LII (INTj)

    1 20.00%
  • SLE (ESTp)

    0 0%
  • IEI (INFp)

    1 20.00%
  • EIE (ENFj)

    0 0%
  • LSI (ISTj)

    0 0%
  • SEE (ESFp)

    0 0%
  • ILI (INTp)

    0 0%
  • LIE (ENTj)

    0 0%
  • ESI (ISFj)

    1 20.00%
  • IEE (ENFp)

    0 0%
  • SLI (ISTp)

    0 0%
  • LSE (ESTj)

    0 0%
  • EII (INFj)

    1 20.00%
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Thread: David Lynch

  1. #1
    Ezra's Avatar
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    Default David Lynch

    On product placement


    On the iPhone


    On ideas

    His Ni to xSEs must be like nuclear missiles to Hiroshima.

    IEI IMO.

    I've just realised. His aggressive attitude (probably Se valuing) faintly resembles BulletsAndDoves. This is an interesting breed of IEI.

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    i really don't see IEI. Ti type.
    asd

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    Dioklecian's Avatar
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    INFP 100%. As to him being aggressive: not more than the average INFP. They have a tendency to change your opinions and emotional state.
    Well I am back. How's everyone? Don't have as much time now, but glad to see some of the old gang are still here.

  4. #4
    Exits, pursued by a bear. Animal's Avatar
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    Here is the entire interview (about 20 minutes) if you're interested:

    "How could we forget those ancient myths that stand at the beginning of all races, the myths about dragons that at the last moment are transformed into princesses? Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love."
    -- Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

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    olduser's Avatar
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    not iei.
    asd

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    Yeah, I don't think so, either. Here's a director I'm pretty sure is, though:



    (he kind of talks like Anthony Kiedis)
    "How could we forget those ancient myths that stand at the beginning of all races, the myths about dragons that at the last moment are transformed into princesses? Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love."
    -- Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

  7. #7
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    i think this is a good comparison.

    David Lynch talks about how he thinks, his system of ideas, organization, doesn't seem to relate personal stories, seems prepared. I think he is a rational type.

    the second person(i didn't catch the name) started off telling a personal story with a revelation about why he set out the way he did. A much more relaxed person.
    asd

  8. #8
    Dioklecian's Avatar
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    Second person: ENTJ.
    Well I am back. How's everyone? Don't have as much time now, but glad to see some of the old gang are still here.

  9. #9
    Ezra's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dioklecian View Post
    Yup INFP or ENTP. who is he?
    He directed Blue Velvet, Eraserhead, Mulholland Dr., and, most recently Inland Empire. He also created the TV series Twin Peaks, which I'm yet to see.

    Quote Originally Posted by heath View Post
    i really don't see IEI. Ti type.
    The reason I said IEI was because if you watch his films, there's a massive Ni influence, and since I don't see the Fe PoLR, IEI made most sense.

  10. #10
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ezra View Post
    He directed Blue Velvet, Eraserhead, Mulholland Dr., and, most recently Inland Empire. He also created the TV series Twin Peaks, which I'm yet to see.



    The reason I said IEI was because if you watch his films, there's a massive Ni influence, and since I don't see the Fe PoLR, IEI made most sense.
    Well, i think you percieve his movies as massive Ni, but he develops them using Ti. listen to that entire interview and it's not about dreaminess or sudden revelations, but about how he organizes himself and his ideas.
    asd

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    I've always thought that he was INTp/ILI... but I guess that he's actually an IEI.

    But, anyway, why does he keep moving his fingers like that, in the interviews... It's like he's trying to hypnotize the interviewer or something.

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    He's a fucking genius.

    Mulholland Dr. is such a blast.


    Quote Originally Posted by Ezra View Post
    His Ni to xSEs must be like nuclear missiles to Hiroshima.
    “Whether we fall by ambition, blood, or lust, like diamonds we are cut with our own dust.”

    Quote Originally Posted by Gilly
    You've done yourself a huge favor developmentally by mustering the balls to do something really fucking scary... in about the most vulnerable situation possible.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Outside View Post
    But, anyway, why does he keep moving his fingers like that, in the interviews... It's like he's trying to hypnotize the interviewer or something.
    LOL! I don't think he does it intentionally (or that he's even aware of it, or paying attention.) Weak Si-role maybe? (I agree with IEI, by the way)
    “Whether we fall by ambition, blood, or lust, like diamonds we are cut with our own dust.”

    Quote Originally Posted by Gilly
    You've done yourself a huge favor developmentally by mustering the balls to do something really fucking scary... in about the most vulnerable situation possible.

  14. #14
    from toronto with love ScarlettLux's Avatar
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    I think he's IEI with a good hold on


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    IEI-Ni maybe?
    “Whether we fall by ambition, blood, or lust, like diamonds we are cut with our own dust.”

    Quote Originally Posted by Gilly
    You've done yourself a huge favor developmentally by mustering the balls to do something really fucking scary... in about the most vulnerable situation possible.

  16. #16

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    Default David Lynch's movie characters

    I am a fan of Lynch. Recently I've been watching twin peaks and wild at heart all over again. Has anyone thought about the characters from those movies and their types?

    For example, Sailor and Lula from Wild at Heart - a weird example of IEE/SLI duality in the world of beta psychos ?

    as for twin peaks, my types would be:

    Cooper - LII? ILI?
    Sheriff Truman - SLI
    Audrey Horne - SLE
    Bobby Briggs - SLE
    James Hurley - SEI?
    Donna Hayward - IEI
    Shelly Johnson - dunno
    Leo Johnson - some psychopath. SLE?
    Ben Horne - not sure

    any ideas, people?
    Last edited by Marietta; 03-29-2011 at 02:06 PM.

  17. #17
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    Um, all I know is that David Lynch is a crazy leading type. I'm going to watch Twin Peaks pretty soon and I'll let you know what I think.

  18. #18
    High Priestess glam's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by thehotelambush View Post
    Um, all I know is that David Lynch is a crazy leading type.
    yeah i have thought ILI in the past based on interviews, what i've seen of his movies, and his VI.

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    Really? I've seen him typed as ILE. Def N-type, but why Ni instead of Ne?

    thehotelambush, after you watch TP don't forget to let me know about your typings cause I'm really curious *.*

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    Quote Originally Posted by Marietta View Post
    Really? I've seen him typed as ILE. Def N-type, but why Ni instead of Ne?
    Because of all the uber-weird fantasy stuff.

    thehotelambush, after you watch TP don't forget to let me know about your typings cause I'm really curious *.*
    Will do!

  21. #21
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    Cooper ILE
    Sheriff Truman ISXp
    Audrey Horne EIE
    Bobby Briggs EIE
    James Hurley EII
    Donna Hayward IEE, dunno
    Leo Johnson - SLE
    Ben Horne LIE
    Josie Packard IEI
    Ed Hurley XSTj
    Hawk ESTp/ISTj
    Nadine Hurley EIE

  22. #22
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    Cooper is 100% Delta ST. For some reason I prefer SLI > LSE but maybe I'm crazy for thinking that (temperament-wise there is a strong case for EJ). Cooper's personality is easily the best-developed of all the characters. He is always commenting on the quality of food, his physical surroundings, etc. Very observant and diligent.

    Pretty sure David Lynch is ILI at this point.

    Truman: yeah, SLI

    Donna - I thought Alpha NT at first, but Beta NF could work. For Alpha NT - very curious, investigative. For Beta NF - somewhat of a romantic?

    James: LSI, LII, or maybe SEI? Depends on what Donna is.
    Bobby: agree w/ jouziou, definitely EIE
    Shelly: ESI but I think the actress is LSI (there's a thing w/ David Lynch and a few of the actors on the DVD)
    Leo: idk, SLE?
    Leland Palmer: ESE
    Josie Packard: IEI > EII
    Audrey: Probably SEE? Very good at manipulating people; certainly has and/or ego. SLE or IEE would be other possibilities.
    Ben Horne: It's difficult to think of a type that would explain his poor relationship with Audrey. I thought Gamma SF was likely, but perhaps EIE? Their conflict seems like a rational/irrational thing, so maybe he could be ESI.
    Jerry Horne: SLE?
    Andy: ILI > IEI
    Lucy: ESI
    Norma: IEE or EII
    Catherine Martell: LSI (tenacious, kind of bitchy)
    Ed Hurley: SEI
    Nadine Hurley: ESE
    Major Briggs: LSI, although his character seems to deviate from this typing later on
    Log Lady: ILI (the voice of David Lynch, essentially)
    Maddy: IEE

  23. #23
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    Oh yeah, by the way, this show is amazing. I would say one of the best TV shows of all time. I wonder what type Frost is. The show is so incredibly comprehensive. What I mean is, while other shows sometimes tend to focus too much on one aspect of reality, Twin Peaks spans a wide variety of human experience. This makes me think Frost has a complementary relationship with Lynch.

    It's also kind of interesting how Cooper uses so much in the context of a highly work.

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    Quote Originally Posted by thehotelambush View Post
    Cooper is 100% Delta ST. For some reason I prefer SLI > LSE but maybe I'm crazy for thinking that (temperament-wise there is a strong case for EJ). Cooper's personality is easily the best-developed of all the characters. He is always commenting on the quality of food, his physical surroundings, etc. Very observant and diligent.
    I cannot see Cooper as anything but intuitive with his dreams, talking to Giant, methods based on Tibet stuff etc. His success in the investigation comes from N. Yep, he is interested in Si stuff, but I see him as N. Don't know if INTP or INTJ or maybe ENTP... doesn't seem to have an Fi polr, he seems likable and always very correct towards people (opposite to Albert, the autopsy guy , he could perfectly be an ENTP).

    Also, I see Major Briggs as ESTJ and his wife as INFJ, which could explain the difficult relationship with their beta son Bobby.

    I think Audrey is SLE cause she doesn't seem to value emotions as an aim it itself, she only uses it to reach the goals. Definetly Se ego. And if Cooper is INTP their relationship would be semi-dual, which kinda fits.

    Donna seems hopelessly romantic and James Hurley sucks all the way

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    I recall seeing Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me and I like it.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Marietta View Post
    I cannot see Cooper as anything but intuitive with his dreams, talking to Giant, methods based on Tibet stuff etc. His success in the investigation comes from N. Yep, he is interested in Si stuff, but I see him as N.
    What about his incredible attention to detail and his physical surroundings? IMO it goes far beyond an "interest." There are a bazillion examples of him using , and only a few of . He extensively critiques the quality of the hotel food, for example. Not really typical for an intuitive type.

    Also, he has a rather short-term proactive way of dealing with situations.
     
    Going across the border to save Audrey
    for instance; he didn't really think about the long-term consequences (he says something like, it was the right thing to do at the time).

    I would think the whole mysticism thing comes from Lynch's , not necessarily from the character itself (and indeed is more on the level of an "interest" rather than a constant activity). Sherlock Holmes is usually typed as LSE, and from what I know he resembles Cooper quite a bit.

    I think Audrey is SLE cause she doesn't seem to value emotions as an aim it itself, she only uses it to reach the goals. Definetly Se ego. And if Cooper is INTP their relationship would be semi-dual, which kinda fits.
    SLE is ok but it would be odd given my typing of Cooper.

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    I can't see Truman and Cooper being the same type. They are too different in how they handle things and the investigation. When Cooper uses his N Truman is often very impressed, but he is also confused with it, he doesn't seem to fully understand it, he is a bit doubtful. Coop is very sure that he is on the right path. I don't think a sensor would be so attentive to this kind of things. an S type wouldn't probably rely that much on such things as dreams, theories, seeing the big picture and connection between Tibet and Twin Peaks etc.

    Truman doesn't talk about the quality of food all the time but we know he is an S. I see Coopers food remarks and stuff like that as something less natural for him than his intuition based methods.Also, he always relies on other people to provide him clues about sensory pleasures and where to gain them. Yes, he is new at the town, but somehow he always has to have others providing him that or directing him.

    In the scene where Cooper bases his investigation on rocks and bottles - Truman, Lucy and Andy are looking at it with praise but they don't understand it at all. On the other hand he seems very confident on what he is doing in that scene, he "shines". This is actually what he brings to Twin Peaks police - the intuitive stuff, not typical of FBI or policework in general, but his own. Where does he provide them any S stuff? Maybe he is Si HA, which would make him INTJ... not sure yet, but for me def. N type and rather I than E.

    Btw if you also watched the prequel "Fire Walk With me" what type do you think Laura Palmer is?

    And the real question: what type is Diane? ^.^
    Last edited by Marietta; 03-31-2011 at 01:03 PM.

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    Default David Lynch


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    There have been threads on him before, I still think ILI.

  30. #30
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    ENTj. He is a genius. Also hasn't anyone noticed how he chooses Gamma SFs for his leading female roles?
    Sincerely Yours,

    Beyond the clouds. Beyond the sun.

    The Rebel without a cause.

  31. #31
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    yes yes yes entj yes yes yesssss i agree

    (probably infp)

  32. #32
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    Harmonizing LSE-Si subtype.

    IEE Ne Creative Type

    Some and role lovin too. () I too...
    !!!!!!

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    Umm... people really think that Lynch is IEI? His films are so emotionally flat. I can't imagine that he's Fe anything.

    I love this project.
    "[Scapegrace,] I don't know how anyone can stand such a sinister and mean individual as you." - Maritsa Darmandzhyan

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    he's IEI. you should all be ashamed of yourselves. it's an incredibly obvious typing.

    Here's David Lynch on...INTUITION :


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    A dusty and dreadful charade. Scapegrace's Avatar
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    Have you ever even watched one of his films, Gooey? I agree completely that he is a massive Ni uzer, but he's devoid of Fe.

    He has to be either ILI or LIE.

    Go watch Inland Empire and tell me he's IEI.
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    I've watched all of his films from Eraserhead onwards multiple times, including his short films. I've been a fan of his since I was 15 years old. His best, IMO, are Mulholland Drive and Blue Velvet. I KNOW, the usual suspects. But, c'mon, they are obviously his masterpieces. As to him lacking Fe, I find that absurd (get it?). For examples of it in his work, look no further than The Straight Story, the ending to the Elephant man, ending to Mulholland Drive, as well as the ending to Lost Highway. There is ALWAYS an emotional center in his work UNLIKE say, Kubrick, who I believe is also a Ni utilizer, but ultimately ILI.

    Barry Gifford (co-writer on Lost Highway) on Lynch:
    "David likes to portray himself as the straightest guy on earth. And Innocent. And naive. Uh...he's neither of those things. He's very complex, very complicated, obsessive. He has a great, corny sense of humor. That's probably saved his life."

    And yes, I've watched Inland Empire. And yes, I'm telling you he's IEI.

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    Ending to Elephant Man:



    the sweeping melodies from the violins, the Victorian setting, the themes of being an outcast, the sadness of his death, the pain of loss, the memory of his mother, the visual representation of the eternal and infinite. I mean, COME ON.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Scapegrace View Post
    ...he's devoid of Fe.
    Dude, this


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    I think my favorite David Lynch movies are Mulholland Drive and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me.

    I see Mulholland Drive as an artistic commentary on income inequality, heterosexualization, consumerism/materialism, intergenerational dissonance, (spiritual and/or economic) poverty vs. wealth, etc. Kind of like the younger generation is being set up for a fall. Other themes include guilt, urban deprivation, what lies behind the face ('persona'/mask) people present to the world, guns/killing/violence, and the convergence of culture/society and (repressed) traumas/family background.

    In some ways I also see the car crash as symbolizing conception (an "accident") and the transition between the two realities (one that is 'prettier' and the other 'uglier') as birth.

    'America is ruled by this hazy mix of pop-culture, media and desperate clueless search for a hybrid identity between an arbitrarily patched up self (for lack of self-knowledge) and a socially acceptable self (that had the potential to prod one into the orbit of the 15 min fame), it is almost grotesque.' -- my Aunt


    "Money is condensed wealth; condensed wealth is condensed guilt…money is filthy because it remains guilt."




    ‘ . . . there is no doubt that Freud believed that possessiveness as such—i.e., having—was an unhealthful orientation, if it was dominant in an adult person.

    He brought to bear several kinds of data to establish his theory—first of all, those rich data in which excrements were symbolically equated with money, possession, and dirt. There is indeed ample linguistic, folkloric, and mythical data to bear this out. Freud had already in a letter to Fliess of December 22, 1897, associated money and miserliness with feces. In his classic paper, “Character and Analeroticism” (1908) he added more examples to this symbolic identity:



    The connections between the complexes of interest in money and of defaecation, which seem so dissimilar, appear to be the most extensive of all. Every doctor who has practiced psychoanalysis knows that the most refractory and long-standing cases of what is described as habitual constipation in neurotics can be cured by that form of treatment. This is less surprising if we remember that that function has shown itself similarly amenable to hypnotic suggestion. But in psychoanalysis one only achieves this result if one deals with the patients’ money complex and induces them to bring it into consciousness with all its connections. It might be supposed that the neurosis is here only following an indication of common usage in speech, which calls a person who keeps too careful a hold on his money “dirty” or “filthy.” But this explanation would be far too superficial. In reality, wherever archaic modes of thought have predominated or persist—in the ancient civilizations, in myths, fairy tales and superstitions, in unconscious thinking, in dreams and in neuroses—money is brought into the most intimate relationship with dirt. We know that the gold which the devil gives his paramours turns into excrement after his departure, and the devil is certainly nothing else than the personification of the repressed unconscious instinctual life. We also know about the superstition which connects the finding of treasure with defaecation, and everyone is familiar with the figure of the “shitter of ducats” (Dukatenscheisser). Indeed, even according to ancient Babylonian doctrine gold is “the feces of Hell” (Mammon = ilu mamman). Thus in following the usage of language, neurosis, here as elsewhere, is taking words in their original, significant sense, and where it appears to be using a word figuratively it is usually simply restoring its old meaning.

    It is possible that the contrast between the most precious substance known to men and the most worthless, which they reject as waste matter (“refuse”), has led to this specific identification of gold with faeces. [Freud’s Collected Papers, S.E. vol. 9 (1908). This connection is important in connection with the phenomenon of necrophilia. Cf. E. Fromm, The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness.]


    A few words of comment are indicated. In the Babylonian notion that gold is “the feces of Hell,” the connection is made between gold, feces, and death. In Hell, meaning the world of the dead, the most valuable object is feces and this brings together the notion of money, dirt, and the dead.

    The last of the two paragraphs quoted here is very revealing of Freud’s dependency on the thinking of his day. Seeking the reason for the symbolic identity of gold and feces, he proposes the hypothesis that their identity may be based on the very fact of their radical contrast, gold being the most precious and feces the most worthless substance known to man. Freud ignores the other possibility that gold is the most precious substance for civilization, whose economy is (generally) based on gold, but that this holds by no means for those primitive societies for which gold may not have had any great value. More importantly, while the pattern of his society suggests that man think of gold as the most precious substance, he may unconsciously carry a notion that gold is dead, sterile (like salt), without life (except when used in jewelry); that it is amassed labor, meant to be hoarded, the foremost example of possession without function. Can one eat gold? Can one make anything grow with gold (except when it has been transformed into capital)? This dead, sterile aspect of gold is shown in the myth of King Midas. He was so avaricious that his wish was granted that everything he touched became gold. Eventually, he had to die precisely because one cannot live from gold. In this myth is a clear vision of the sterility of gold, and it is by no means the highest value, as Freud assumed. Freud was too much a son of his time to be aware of the negative value of money and possession and, hence, of the critical implications of his concept of the anal character . . .’
    —Erich Fromm






    Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me is an artistic commentary on sexual abuse, incest/molestation, and repression/dissociation.

    Before Precious, before Magnolia, there was Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me -- one of the only films that explored and examined the devastating psychological ramifications of incest in such an artistic and creative way.




    EDIT: In Mulholland Drive, I think Naomi Watt's character (BETTY/Diane) is a tragic hero, and perhaps IEE-Fi?, IEI, or EII.... (I wouldn't rule out EIE)

    When I only knew of MBTI, I typed the character of Betty ESFJ and Rita ESFP, I think. I'm not 100% sure regarding RITA's/Camilla's character [portrayed by Laura Elena Harring] -- maybe Beta extravert (SLE-Ti?) or SLI?? (I wouldn't rule out LSI)


    Mulholland Drive is about money, inequality, power, and intergenerational dissonance.
    Last edited by HERO; 04-25-2014 at 08:44 AM.

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    Here’s an essay I wrote about Mulholland Drive around February/March, 2012:




    “Silencio”—An Original Essay



    Mulholland Drive. I’ve never been able to entirely comprehend this film, although it’s one of my favourite movies and I’ve watched it countless times. Its last spoken word—“Silencio” (Lynch, 2001)—uttered by a strange blue-haired female being, is somehow supposed to put a conclusion to the tragic mystery. What follows is my attempt to make sense of what is almost universally regarded as an enigmatic, inscrutable, and nebulous work of art.

    First, before I plunge headfirst into the murky waters of attempting to understand the unfathomable, let me say that one of the elements of the movie that I like the most is the score by Angelo Badalamenti, especially the “Love Theme” which is in the key of A minor. Since I often appreciate music more than film, it means a lot to me that the score should be the film’s worthy equal. Yet without David Lynch’s obsessive-compulsive tendencies and creative genius there would be no story and plot. The film Mulholland Drive has all the elements of a groundbreaking metaphysical masterpiece, in addition to revealing the beauty of what some might perceive to be ugly or mundane. It is a drama that encompasses a variety of diverse genres and themes—tragedy, mystery, Hollywood, doomed love, surrealism, murder, the American Dream, etc. The film Mulholland Drive can be understood and perceived from several perspectives, some of which include the philosophical, the psychological, and the literary or dramatic.

    The first scene of the movie appears to consist of random people dancing or jitterbugging to swing music, and rapidly alternating and swapping dance partners. This establishes one of the themes of the movie in relation to the fluidity (and illusion) of identity: In particular, names, as well as roles, are subject to transmutation. The film Mulholland Drive may teach that there exists a fundamental essence of human nature in the majority of people regardless of the form, expression, or identity (or lack thereof) this humanity may take. Nevertheless, the film doesn’t shy away from revealing and shedding light on the potential destructiveness and depersonalization of an “inhuman, dehumanized world”. (Nietzsche, 59). The world of Mulholland Drive may not be of our world, yet its characters are striving and struggling for meaning, purpose, friendship, love, intimacy, success, self-preservation, survival, and truth just as much as the inhabitants of our reality are. As a result of a car crash the female brunette character—who later on becomes and is revealed to be the inamorata of the blonde protagonist—consequently loses her memory and identity, and in desperation cries, “I don’t know who I am!” (Lynch, 2001). Who has never felt lost in the labyrinth of humanity’s relentless, ineluctable, and everlasting search for identity?

    In a later pivotal scene of the movie, Betty (the protagonist) and Rita (which is the name the brunette has adopted in the first half of the movie) take a cab to what externally appears to be an abandoned and hidden place—“Club Silencio”. (Lynch, 2001). Upon arriving, the cinematography and camera action imbues the otherwise trashy grey urban megalopolitan downtown lot with a certain urgent and numinous surrealism, beauty even. Once the two female characters enter, the viewer must adjust to the dissonance or discrepancy of the exterior of the building in contrast to its high-class interior. Inside the theatre, there’s an eerie presentation, a man speaking in the role of a Magician, the sound of musical instruments, and all of this set against a backdrop of red curtains reminiscent of that of David Lynch’s TV series Twin Peaks. In the movie Mulholland Drive, the “Club Silencio” serves as a mystical centre and doorway between worlds and parallel realities without actually providing direct bridges between said worlds. Rita is compelled to visit this location after repeating Spanish phrases like “Silencio” and “No hay banda” (Lynch, 2001) in her sleep, as if her subconscious, the collective unconscious, or someone’s sorcery or dark sinister influence is speaking through her. Prior to this, they had discovered a dead body, which unbeknownst to both of them, was the corpse of the Betty from a parallel reality in which she’s called Diane. I believe the two characters are searching for the truth, which they can never fully integrate into consciousness.


    It’s also my opinion that one can correlate the scene involving the Magician with the concept of the eternal return. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche, Zarathustra’s animals say, “ ‘Everything goes, everything returns; the wheel of existence rolls for ever. Everything dies, everything blossoms anew; the year of existence runs on for ever.” (Nietzsche, 234). In Mulholland Drive the Magician says, “It’s all recorded. No hay banda! It is all . . . a tape.” (Lynch, 2001). As he motions with his hands you hear the sound of the trumpet, which someone had also pretended to play in order to emphasize that there is a recording yet no band or instruments actually playing. In conclusion he says, “It is . . . an illusion.” (Lynch, 2001). The idea that beneath our perception of reality lies a valley comprising of an infinite number of striations that symbolize parallel planes of existence or altered states of consciousness, as well as the universal patterns and repetitions that underlie existence, is neither new nor original. Nevertheless, its presentation in the film is. In Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov, The Devil suggests that “ . . . our present earth may have been repeated a billion times . . . and the same sequence may have been repeated endlessly . . .” (Dostoevsky, 733). The “tape recording” (Lynch, 2001) can seemingly go on forever; whereas the objects and people are ephemeral, transitory, and ever-changing, while subsisting on the same basic blueprint or formula. Like light refracted through a prism, our world in its multifarious divisions and oppositions derives from a single source. Nevertheless, much like the eternal “tape recording”, there exists an objective timeless element—immune to subjective shifts in culture—which dictates what is salutary, salubrious, and healthful, what is not, and what can easily be both depending on the individuals’ natures and their underlying patterns.


    In the second opening scene of the film, we observe a limousine driving through Mulholland Drive. In it we see the brunette, and when the limousine suddenly stops, she asks, “What are you doing? We don’t stop here.” (Lynch, 2001). We can assume that the brunette knows her identity in this incarnation, and just when one of the men in the front of the limousine is about to kill her, a speeding car full of wild screaming youths crashes into them. The brunette is the sole survivor, and descends the hill, without her memories, into the city which is to be greeted by Betty’s arrival as a friendly ingénue the following morning. This is Betty’s idealized world. Yet in the more dysphoric dystopian reality, the blonde protagonist Betty is called Diane, and is invited by the successful and callous Camilla, the brunette—with her memories and identity intact in this scenario—to her abode near Mulholland Drive. As the blonde protagonist in the form of Diane is being driven in the limousine, it also comes to a sudden stop, and she also asks, “What are you doing? We don’t stop here.” (Lynch, 2001). The following scene which is accompanied by beautiful music depicts Camilla taking Diane by the hand as they ascend the hill together. In Diane’s idealized rose-coloured reality in which she is Betty, the amnesic Rita—who is actually Camilla in the more depressing loveless reality—suddenly recalls the name Diane Selwyn whose decomposing corpse they discover in a townhouse. Yet they’re not aware of this. Betty doesn’t know that the dead Diane is herself from a convergent reality. And neither does Rita.

    Near the end of the Club Silencio scene, we are confronted by a Spanish version of Roy Orbison’s song “Crying” which is being sung by a woman who ends up collapsing on stage as the recording continues. I don’t believe this scene alludes to lip-syncing as much as it alludes to the immortality of music which outlasts the fallen star. If anything, the vocalist, who is portrayed belting out the song with such virtuosity, bravado and emotion, seems to presage singers like Amy Winehouse in regards to appearance, talent, and tragic fate. The movie harks back to an era in American popular culture and music that Amy Winehouse idealized. As the song is playing under the guise of a brilliant performance, Betty and Rita are overcome by an (unconscious) feeling of loss and catharsis which translates into tears. Consciously, Betty and Rita may or may not have partial access to their original history, yet the fact that Diane Selwyn died seems to also have an effect on Betty, since she disappears once they return to the house with the blue box they discovered when they were at Club Silencio. This box contains the truth which comes at the price of lost love. The effect that Club Silencio and the song had on Betty and Rita was ineffable and could not be expressed into words, yet I feel that this excerpt from Thus Spoke Zarathustra can capture the true essence of this fleeting and evanescent anomaly:


    . . . are words and music not rainbows and seeming bridges between things eternally separated?
    ‘Every soul is a world of its own; for every soul every other soul is an afterworld.
    ‘Appearance lies most beautifully among the most alike; for the smallest gap is the most difficult to bridge.
    (Nietzsche, 234).


    What has always struck me about the movie is how prominently the yearnings, realizations, disappointments, and betrayals of romantic love figure in it. Yet who can find a form of romantic love that is healthy, vital, enduring, genuine, life-affirming, and frequently mirthful if one is insecure, insalubrious, deluded, or depressed? The characters of Mulholland Drive cannot find true lasting love because our world’s unpleasant truth is that romantic love can often be an illusion we cling to so we can escape the shadowy demons of our pasts. Who wants to explore the hidden motivations and depths of human destructiveness? Some of us who seek solace in romantic love or infatuation may often feel a sense of playing a programmed role of almost heroically epic proportions in the dazzling game and dance of life. We are validated in our stuntedness or mediocrity, and believe this to be the ultimate, ideal, and quite possibly only, way of life. We defeat ourselves by believing that we can’t find completion, happiness, freedom, self-discovery, emancipation, maturity, and independence without romantic and sexual love.

    In the film Mulholland Drive, the destinies of these two women (Betty/Diane and Rita/Camilla) are inextricably linked and intertwined. I believe that this movie has elements of tragedy in spite of its characters being fragmented and not sharply delineated. In Aristotle’s Poetics he says that “ . . . you can’t have a tragedy without an action (praxis), but you can have it without [clearly defined] characters.” (Aristotle, 73). In the end of the movie, Diane shoots herself after she has hired a hit man to kill Camilla. The agonizing guilt and the irreversibility of the “action” takes such a toll on Diane’s psyche that she can’t live with herself and the consequences. What a terrible turn of events—one that is unfortunately all too common in our world, and often enacted by those who are more brutal and violent than Diane, yet not less broken. I of course understand the dashed hopes and painful loss of a sudden break-up, which occurred with my first relationship, yet revenge is never a solution, and can only make things worse. The more one seeks to make up for what one lacks through a romantic relationship, and the more one entertains overly-idealistic illusions regarding a romantic relationship, the more one is bound to be bitterly disappointed and emotionally wounded. By writing and directing Mulholland Drive as a post-modern 21st century tragedy, David Lynch was able to depict “destructive or painful acts” via the visual medium of film and aided by a “plot” he “put together” so “that even without seeing [anything] a person who hears the events unfolding trembles and feels pity at what is happening . . .” (Aristotle, 69, 99).

    In our modern world we are often so overwhelmed by the apparent absurdity of existence and the countless tragedies and calamities that humankind encounters, that we are often unable to detect any deeper meaning or pattern in the madness. Mulholland Drive is one of those rare gems that seems to reflect our most personal, cherished, or guarded dreams, nightmares, and experiences back to us in an atmosphere of varicoloured city lights, dark quiet urban deprivation and desperation, Kafkaesque bureaucracy, surveillance, Hollywood opulence, and apoplectic paroxysms of the passions. One cannot completely deny the id or instincts, nor can one completely embrace or be consumed by them without incurring grave consequences. The film Mulholland Drive encapsulates the euphoric magic and fearsome ravenous anguish of the simultaneously young and ancient, ever-renewing and dissipating, chimeric opiate of the masses—romantic love. One cannot instantly put an end (either through love or anything else) to all the suffering, pain, and Sturm und Drang in the world. Yet one can take a step back every once in awhile in order to take the time to listen to one’s inner voice and relax. This attempt can often be very challenging in and of itself. Maybe we’re afraid of surrendering our sense of self to the unlimited flow of the universe and the unconscious. Perhaps emptiness and loss need not always be negatives. Because in the vast expanse of interstellar space one can hear a voice gently whispering, “Silencio.”






    Works Cited

    MULHOLLAND DR. Dir. David K. Lynch. Performers Cori Glazer, Laura E. Harring, Geno Silva, Naomi E. Watts. DVD. TVA International Distribution Inc., 2002.

    Nietzsche, Friedrich. Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book For Everyone and No One.
    Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Ltd, 1969. 59, 234.

    Dostoevsky, Fyodor. The Brothers Karamazov. New York: Random House, Inc., 1996. 733.

    Aristotle. Aristotle’s Poetics: Translated and with a Commentary by George Whalley. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1997. 69, 73, 99.











    - double-spaced version:

    “Silencio”—An Original Essay



    Mulholland Drive. I’ve never been able to entirely comprehend this film, although it’s one

    of my favourite movies and I’ve watched it countless times. Its last spoken word—“Silencio”

    (Lynch, 2001)—uttered by a strange blue-haired female being, is somehow supposed to put a

    conclusion to the tragic mystery. What follows is my attempt to make sense of what is almost

    universally regarded as an enigmatic, inscrutable, and nebulous work of art.


    First, before I plunge headfirst into the murky waters of attempting to understand the

    unfathomable, let me say that one of the elements of the movie that I like the most is the score by

    Angelo Badalamenti, especially the “Love Theme” which is in the key of A minor. Since I often

    appreciate music more than film, it means a lot to me that the score should be the film’s worthy

    equal. Yet without David Lynch’s obsessive-compulsive tendencies and creative genius there

    would be no story and plot. The film Mulholland Drive has all the elements of a

    groundbreaking metaphysical masterpiece, in addition to revealing the beauty of what some

    might perceive to be ugly or mundane. It is a drama that encompasses a variety of diverse genres

    and themes—tragedy, mystery, Hollywood, doomed love, surrealism, murder, the American

    Dream, etc. The film Mulholland Drive can be understood and perceived from several

    perspectives, some of which include the philosophical, the psychological, and the literary or

    dramatic.


    The first scene of the movie appears to consist of random people dancing or jitterbugging to

    swing music, and rapidly alternating and swapping dance partners. This establishes one of the

    themes of the movie in relation to the fluidity (and illusion) of identity: In particular, names, as

    well as roles, are subject to transmutation. The film Mulholland Drive may teach that there

    exists a fundamental essence of human nature in the majority of people regardless of the form,

    expression, or identity (or lack thereof) this humanity may take. Nevertheless, the film doesn’t

    shy away from revealing and shedding light on the potential destructiveness and

    depersonalization of an “inhuman, dehumanized world”. (Nietzsche, 59). The world of

    Mulholland Drive may not be of our world, yet its characters are striving and struggling for

    meaning, purpose, friendship, love, intimacy, success, self-preservation, survival, and truth just

    as much as the inhabitants of our reality are. As a result of a car crash, the female brunette

    character—who later on becomes and is revealed to be the inamorata of the blonde protagonist—

    consequently loses her memory and identity, and in desperation cries, “I don’t know who I am!”

    (Lynch, 2001). Who has never felt lost in the labyrinth of humanity’s relentless, ineluctable, and

    everlasting search for identity?


    In a later pivotal scene of the movie, Betty (the protagonist) and Rita (which is the

    name the brunette has adopted in the first half of the movie) take a cab to what externally appears

    to be an abandoned and hidden place—“Club Silencio”. (Lynch, 2001). Upon arriving, the

    cinematography and camera action imbues the otherwise trashy grey urban megalopolitan

    downtown lot with a certain urgent and numinous surrealism, beauty even. Once the two female

    characters enter, the viewer must adjust to the dissonance or discrepancy of the exterior of the

    building in contrast to its high-class interior. Inside the theatre, there’s an eerie presentation, a

    man speaking in the role of a Magician, the sound of musical instruments, and all of this set

    against a backdrop of red curtains reminiscent of that of David Lynch’s TV series Twin

    Peaks
    . In the movie Mulholland Drive, the “Club Silencio” serves as a mystical centre

    and doorway between worlds and parallel realities without actually providing direct bridges

    between said worlds. Rita is compelled to visit this location after repeating Spanish phrases like

    “Silencio” and “No hay banda” (Lynch, 2001) in her sleep, as if her subconscious, the collective

    unconscious, or someone’s sorcery or dark sinister influence is speaking through her. Prior to

    this, they had discovered a dead body, which unbeknownst to both of them, was the corpse of the

    Betty from a parallel reality in which she’s called Diane. I believe the two characters are

    searching for the truth, which they can never fully integrate into consciousness.



    It’s also my opinion that one can correlate the scene involving the Magician with the concept of

    the eternal return. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche, Zarathustra’s animals

    say, “ ‘Everything goes, everything returns; the wheel of existence rolls for ever. Everything

    dies, everything blossoms anew; the year of existence runs on for ever.” (Nietzsche, 234). In

    Mulholland Drive the Magician says, “It’s all recorded. No hay banda! It is all . . . a tape.”

    (Lynch, 2001). As he motions with his hands you hear the sound of the trumpet, which someone

    had also pretended to play in order to emphasize that there is a recording yet no band or

    instruments actually playing. In conclusion he says, “It is . . . an illusion.” (Lynch, 2001). The

    idea that beneath our perception of reality lies a valley comprising of an infinite number of

    striations that symbolize parallel planes of existence or altered states of consciousness, as well as

    the universal patterns and repetitions that underlie existence, is neither new nor original.

    Nevertheless, its presentation in the film is. In Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel The Brothers

    Karamazov
    , The Devil suggests that “ . . . our present earth may have been repeated a billion

    times . . . and the same sequence may have been repeated endlessly . . .” (Dostoevsky, 733). The

    “tape recording” (Lynch, 2001) can seemingly go on forever; whereas the objects and people are

    ephemeral, transitory, and ever-changing, while subsisting on the same basic blueprint or

    formula. Like light refracted through a prism, our world in its multifarious divisions and

    oppositions derives from a single source. Nevertheless, much like the eternal “tape recording”,

    there exists an objective timeless element—immune to subjective shifts in culture—which

    dictates what is salutary, salubrious, and healthful, what is not, and what can easily be both

    depending on the individuals’ natures and their underlying patterns.



    In the second opening scene of the film, we observe a limousine driving through Mulholland

    Drive. In it we see the brunette, and when the limousine suddenly stops, she asks, “What are you

    doing? We don’t stop here.” (Lynch, 2001). We can assume that the brunette knows her identity

    in this incarnation, and just when one of the men in the front of the limousine is about to kill her,

    a speeding car full of wild screaming youths crashes into them. The brunette is the sole survivor,

    and descends the hill, without her memories, into the city which is to be greeted by Betty’s

    arrival as a friendly ingénue the following morning. This is Betty’s idealized world. Yet in the

    more dysphoric dystopian reality, the blonde protagonist Betty is called Diane, and is invited by

    the successful and callous Camilla, the brunette—with her memories and identity intact in this

    scenario—to her abode near Mulholland Drive. As the blonde protagonist in the form of Diane is

    being driven in the limousine, it also comes to a sudden stop, and she also asks, “What are you

    doing? We don’t stop here.” (Lynch, 2001). The following scene which is accompanied by

    beautiful music depicts Camilla taking Diane by the hand as they ascend the hill together. In

    Diane’s idealized rose-coloured reality in which she is Betty, the amnesic Rita—who is actually

    Camilla in the more depressing loveless reality—suddenly recalls the name Diane Selwyn whose

    decomposing corpse they discover in a townhouse. Yet they’re not aware of this. Betty doesn’t

    know that the dead Diane is herself from a convergent reality. And neither does Rita.


    Near the end of the Club Silencio scene, we are confronted by a Spanish version of Roy

    Orbison’s song “Crying” which is being sung by a woman who ends up collapsing on stage as

    the recording continues. I don’t believe this scene alludes to lip-syncing as much as it alludes to

    the immortality of music which outlasts the fallen star. If anything, the vocalist, who is portrayed

    belting out the song with such virtuosity, bravado and emotion, seems to presage singers like

    Amy Winehouse in regards to appearance, talent, and tragic fate. The movie harks back to an era

    in American popular culture and music that Amy Winehouse idealized. As the song is playing

    under the guise of a brilliant performance, Betty and Rita are overcome by an (unconscious)

    feeling of loss and catharsis which translates into tears. Consciously, Betty and Rita may or may

    not have partial access to their original history, yet the fact that Diane Selwyn died seems to also

    have an effect on Betty, since she disappears once they return to the house with the blue box they

    discovered when they were at Club Silencio. This box contains the truth which comes at the

    price of lost love. The effect that Club Silencio and the song had on Betty and Rita was ineffable

    and could not be expressed into words, yet I feel that this excerpt from Thus Spoke

    Zarathustra
    can capture the true essence of this fleeting and evanescent anomaly:



    . . . are words and music not rainbows and seeming bridges between things eternally separated?

    ‘Every soul is a world of its own; for every soul every other soul is an afterworld.

    ‘Appearance lies most beautifully among the most alike; for the smallest gap is the most difficult

    to bridge. (Nietzsche, 234).



    What has always struck me about the movie is how prominently the yearnings, realizations,

    disappointments, and betrayals of romantic love figure in it. Yet who can find a form of romantic

    love that is healthy, vital, enduring, genuine, life-affirming, and frequently mirthful if one is

    insecure, insalubrious, deluded, or depressed? The characters of Mulholland Drive cannot find

    true lasting love because our world’s unpleasant truth is that romantic love can often be an

    illusion we cling to so we can escape the shadowy demons of our pasts. Who wants to explore

    the hidden motivations and depths of human destructiveness? Some of us who seek solace in

    romantic love or infatuation may often feel a sense of playing a programmed role of almost

    heroically epic proportions in the dazzling game and dance of life. We are validated in our

    stuntedness or mediocrity, and believe this to be the ultimate, ideal, and quite possibly only, way

    of life. We defeat ourselves by believing that we can’t find completion, happiness, freedom,

    self-discovery, emancipation, maturity, and independence without romantic and sexual love.


    In the film Mulholland Drive, the destinies of these two women (Betty/Diane and

    Rita/Camilla) are inextricably linked and intertwined. I believe that this movie has elements of

    tragedy in spite of its characters being fragmented and not sharply delineated. In Aristotle’s

    Poetics
    he says that “ . . . you can’t have a tragedy without an action (praxis), but you

    can have it without [clearly defined] characters.” (Aristotle, 73). In the end of the movie, Diane

    shoots herself after she has hired a hit man to kill Camilla. The agonizing guilt and the

    irreversibility of the “action” takes such a toll on Diane’s psyche that she can’t live with herself

    and the consequences. What a terrible turn of events—one that is unfortunately all too common

    in our world, and often enacted by those who are more brutal and violent than Diane, yet not less

    broken. I of course understand the dashed hopes and painful loss of a sudden break-up, which

    occurred with my first relationship, yet revenge is never a solution, and can only make things

    worse. The more one seeks to make up for what one lacks through a romantic relationship, and

    the more one entertains overly-idealistic illusions regarding a romantic relationship, the more

    one is bound to be bitterly disappointed and emotionally wounded. By writing and directing

    Mulholland Drive as a post-modern 21st century tragedy, David Lynch was able to depict

    “destructive or painful acts”(Aristotle, 69) via the visual medium of film and aided by a “plot” he

    “put together” so “that even without seeing [anything] a person who hears the events

    unfolding trembles and feels pity at what is happening . . .” (Aristotle, 99).


    In our modern world we are often so overwhelmed by the apparent absurdity of existence and the

    countless tragedies and calamities that humankind encounters, that we are often unable to detect

    any deeper meaning or pattern in the madness. Mulholland Drive is one of those rare gems

    that seems to reflect our most personal, cherished, or guarded dreams, nightmares, and

    experiences back to us in an atmosphere of varicoloured city lights, dark quiet urban deprivation

    and desperation, Kafkaesque bureaucracy, surveillance, Hollywood opulence, and apoplectic

    paroxysms of the passions. One cannot completely deny the id or instincts, nor can one

    completely embrace or be consumed by them without incurring grave consequences. The film

    Mulholland Drive encapsulates the euphoric magic and fearsome ravenous anguish of the

    simultaneously young and ancient, ever-renewing and dissipating, chimeric opiate of the

    masses—romantic love. One cannot instantly put an end (either through love or anything else) to

    all the suffering, pain, and Sturm und Drang in the world. Yet one can take a step back every

    once in awhile in order to take the time to listen to one’s inner voice and relax. This attempt can

    often be very challenging in and of itself. Maybe we’re afraid of surrendering our sense of self to

    the unlimited flow of the universe and the unconscious. Perhaps emptiness and loss need not

    always be negatives. Because in the vast expanse of interstellar space one can hear a voice gently

    whispering, “Silencio.”
    Last edited by HERO; 04-26-2014 at 11:22 AM.

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