A PSYCHOLOGICAL DETECTIVE INTERNET NOVEL

:)

I am not David Lynch even though I have been cutting my own hair to look like his since I was 15. I’m just a guy who got another idea for his internet novel this morning. Some of the movie Inland Empire is about a haunted movie script. The script in the movie itself is haunted and as the film progresses, some audience members might think Inland Empire itself is haunted. And some audience members will say that David Lynch’s work is meaningless post-modern junk, and others might catch feelings of odd familiarity. Some people might change their behavior after a nightmare. Some people don’t remember any of their dreams. What if my internet novel is a detective story. What if it’s a psychological detective story where I write articles and stories and I analyze them too. And I tell you that my analysis is a defense against the truth of the real meaning. And I invite you to analyze alongside me. And what if I gave you incorrect analyses on purpose. And your detective role became analyzing the analysis to find the real meaning. And I’m simultaneously an unreliable narrator and candid and clear and forthright and there’s no way my analyses could be wrong. And so even though I tell you that I am an unreliable narrator who has been cutting his own hair since he was 15, you feel like you have been getting to know me over time because it takes years and years to write my internet novel and we grow up alongside one another and you trust me and I tell you the truth all the time and I reveal so much that there’s no way I would lie to you on purpose. And then I tell you that even if I were lying on purpose, there is a thread trailing behind you inside a labyrinth and you can just follow it home. (Didn’t this guy make a painting of Ariadne and a bull and a labyrinth? That was months ago. Unrelated. He’s an unreliable narrator.)

And then there are a couple of things that could be happening with my internet novel. Like how Inland Empire might be haunted, what if my internet novel is itself an infohazard because instead of me being an unreliable narrator, you actually begin to question your own internal narration. Because my analyses definitely are not wrong and my psychological insight is so penetrative that you’re like there’s no way this guy could be an unreliable narrator. And you go insane because I am not an unreliable narrator even though I told you I am an unreliable narrator, you think I have all the answers. That would be pretty good. If that happens, it’s an accident, I swear. (Do you believe me?) And then there’s another thing that my internet novel might be and it’s a mirror of a, and may God forgive me for saying this, toxic parasocial relationship. It’s a mirror of a relationship where the guy tells the girl upfront on the first date that he is trouble and not to be trusted and she loves him and immediately falls in love with him because he is so handsome and charming and every woman he meets is putty in his hands and after they’ve lived together for years and she has changed so much for him and offered so much of herself he just one day disappears and he is, to himself, totally justified because, after all, he told her that he was trouble and not to be trusted the first day they met. Maybe that’s actually what my internet novel is.

My internet novel might be an infohazard detective story written by an unreliable narrator or it might be an allegorical toxic parasocial relationship mirroring every woman’s experience with a handsome narcissist. Wouldn’t that be cool if that’s what it is. But that can’t be what it is because that’s my analysis and my analysis will be a defense against my own conscious understanding of the real interpretation. But this guy also just said that maybe he would offer analysis that he knows is incorrect on purpose to throw the audience off his track (he’s in the audience too, by the way, he reads his own work to analyze, he has published an article analyzing one of his own paintings) but, let’s be honest: is that even possible? In order to offer an incorrect analysis, he would have to know the correct analysis. Does that even exist. Are David Lynch’s movies just post-modern junk? Well, he also said he’s an unreliable narrator and we should take him at his word, so that way there isn’t even any analysis to make, it is what it is, he’s an unreliable narrator and when he says that he is offering incorrect analyses we can safely assume they are actually correct because he wants to give incorrect analyses and analyses are defenses against the truth so in trying to lie he will actually be telling the truth. Has this guy actually been cutting his own hair since he was 15. It tracks pretty well with his other stuff, I could see it. That’s probably true. Dude is obviously obsessive and neurotic and he would without a doubt be the sort of guy who cuts his own hair. So if that’s true then is he an unreliable narrator? He walked right in and told the truth.

Do you want to move in together?