Black Lodge Noises
We were watching Something Wicked This Way Comes last night and, as Mr. Halloway entered the Dark Carnival, there was a crystalline tone that accompanied him. It was close enough to the sound heard in Twin Peaks' Black Lodge (well, the Red Room for purists out there) that Melissa commented on the similarity. Which got me thinking: is there a unspoken leitmotif for the presence of supernatural evil? Maybe not Evil, but rather Spirits Whom Do Not Have the Best Interests of Humanity In Mind. Or is there something imbedded in that note, some hidden message that has been encoded in such a way that we -- poor, slow bad listeners -- only hear the single note, but Agents of Darkness understand the complete transmission?
I need to sample this note, of course, and see what happens when you slow it down or play it backwards.
Much like the International Hand Signals of Imminent Danger, there should be International Lietmotifs of Nearby Danger. There probably are. We just don't think about them consciously; we just know -- lizard brain reactions -- when we hear them. The rattle on a rattlesnake, for instance. Anyone who has spent anytime in the desert knows that sound. Instinctively. The cough of a hunting leopard is probably another one. John Carpenter penned synthesizer music signals the approach of all sorts of bad things: washed up actors, poorly managed scripts, and atrocious dialogue. Of course, that isn't so much a lietmotif as it is an entire genre.