Angelo Badalamenti has died. I’ve been trying to figure out what to say and I just don’t know what would be right. Everything feels inadequate. So please forgive me if this is too much or too little. It’s just what I have to say right now.

I heard the music of Twin Peaks before I ever saw the show. My mom and stepdad took me on a trip to Wisconsin from Springfield and let me buy one tape from Venture to listen to on the trip. My friend’s older brother had told me Twin Peaks was cool and I wanted to be cool so I bought the soundtrack and listened to it almost ceaselessly the entire trip. I looked at the warped pictures in the artwork. The ominous phrase “IN A TOWN LIKE TWIN PEAKS NO ONE IS INNOCENT”. I studied every aspect of its liner notes looking for clues. It is for this reason that it was integral for me to release my own Twin Peaks record on cassette.

I remember seeing part of the pilot when it aired. It was just a moment of Bobby and Mike barking at James in their cells and I was interested but I was only 9 and figured I’d get in trouble for watching it.

When I got home I was so excited to rent it from Blockbuster [not realizing this was the wrong order to watch]. And then there I was. In David Lynch’s world, but every bit as much Angelo’s and every bit more my own.

The theme to Fire Walk With Me is like a doorway I can open any time. I press play and it simply appears. I was 13 when I bought that tape. I used to disappear into this music and my imagination and it’s power has only grown for me.

Badalamenti was, to me, as much the author of Twin Peaks as David Lynch and Mark Frost. And so it is with most of his work. His signature is so unique that it fundamentally alters and elevates what it comes in contact with, and does so with subtlety and grace. Just think of how wildly dynamic the scores to Blue Velvet, Wild At Heart, Mulholland Drive, and The Straight Story are and yet they all distinctly bare his mark.

Now we are living in a future that I knew would come but didn’t want to consider. For me Angelo Badalamenti’s absence is like the moon deciding to vanish. How could it happen? How can something to vital just end? And I suppose the answer is that it doesn’t end. 

I feel glad that he seemed to have an understanding in his lifetime of the impact, if not the scope, that his work has had.

Just as I’ll always remember discovering Badalamenti during that foggy week on a trip to Wisconsin, I’ll never forget when I found out that he had died, yesterday in a Portuguese shopping mall while running errands. I ordered a coffee and then had to sit down. My first impulse was to deny how sad I was, thinking of people’s corny celebrity death reactions on social media, but this isn’t that. I just wanted to be still and observe the moment, absurd as it felt in Porto’s Alameda Shopping complex, with its decidedly uninspiring musical accompaniment.

Now that I’ve had a day to think, I believe it may be best not to interpret this as a loss but as his final act. The part of the show where the encore is over and it’s time for us as listeners to stand and applaud. 

I intend to applaud his work without end, by continuing to listen and fall in love with it, by sharing it with others, and through its influence on my own work and life.

To my friends who feel this loss the way I do, I would encourage you to do three things:

1.) Dig deeper into Angelo’s catalog to explore the margins of your favorite tracks for something you haven’t heard yet or haven’t heard in a while.

2.) Try to remember something about the way his music made you feel when you first heard it; whether that was recently or a long time ago.

3.) Reach out to someone you know who shared his music with you or who just gets it like you do, whoever that is.

Thank you for listening.

– Daniel Knox 💔 ▵▵

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