If "Twin Peaks" is the sound of sawing wood, then Julee Cruise is the sound of a breaking heart.
Working alongside David Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti for many years to help create the signature sound and overall tone of the original series that debuted in 1990, as well as the prequel film that followed in 1992, "Fire Walk with Me," and the cinematic return to "Twin Peaks" on Showtime in 2017, Cruise's voice is just as imperative of an ingredient as the owls and the sycamores themselves. When it was announced that she took her own life on June 9 after a long battle with depression and painful symptoms of lupus, fans of "Twin Peaks" and creators like Lynch who've known Cruise as the rare talent she was mourned her loss profoundly. If the town the show is set in were real and not just a mishmash of locations in and around Snoqualmie, Washington, the news of Cruise's passing would have shut down the Packard Sawmill. Hell, Catherine Martell might have pulled the lever herself; quieting the churning of the gears, stilling the saws, until the only sound left was a distant chirp from a bird outside, and the melody of a song that now only exists as a recording, or a memory.
