The idea I worked with was simple: it’s the experience of having caught glimpse of something radiantly beautiful and losing it. This is also the kind of concept that cannot be dissociated from that of grief and mocking insanity. Because there’s that moment of mind-fracturing uncanniness when you feel that the White Lodge is about to become its opposite. It’s the moment when the beautiful music slows down, becomes distorted, and downright menacing. This is similar to a cinematic device where a certain scene appears as welcoming and enchanting—until the lighting changes and you suddenly see how dreary it really is and has been all along.
Of course I also want to think that it is the image—or the promise—that guided Laura through the blackest woods and the heaviest narcotic daze.
