"I believe in fairy tales. They are the basis of all our performance of
storytelling and film-making - when we twist the real events of the
world into something that offers us hope - and I believe in that."
Once upon a time, I made a box.
I spent all of my spring break planning, cutting, nailing, sanding, and making this creation. It was a box to hold the most precious set of stories in my possession.
All eleven hours and twenty glorious minutes of the Lord of the Rings extended editions.
A good three weeks before I could even start, I took an hour-long trip to the hardware store to see what I could obtain with my limited amount of green paper. I came back with a list of everything I needed, its price, and about thirty pictures of different items. All so that I had a tangible reference as I was building this box in my mind.
I spent two days planning the build. Countless pages of my yellow notebook filled with different dimensions, different looks, completely difference boxes, as I tried to figure out how it was going to work.
Another day was used building a 3D mock-up out of paper. All to reassure myself that my glorious stories would fight snugly inside.
The rest of the week was spent transferring this creation in my head, into my hands. I built it and made a mistake in my planning. I spent another couple of hours trying to figure out how I was going to hide my mistakes.
I took my time and fixed my crimes.
I cut the lid from the rest of the box. Then I stained it a beautiful shade of brown. Exactly how I wanted it to look. I put the bronze coverings on the corners of the box, I attached the lid using bronze hinges. I lined the inside of the box with green felt, the bright, forest green, contrasts with the deep brown.
To put it simply, it was
stunning.
What next, you ask?
Well I took the next logical step.
I beat the
ever-loving snot out of it.
I took a baseball bat, some nails, pieces of scrap wood, and went to town on it. Banged it, scratched it, scoured it, burnt it, rolled it down a gravel hill, I did everything I could to make it look like it had been through hell and back again.
I remember my mom being aghast when she walked outside during this time of great torment for my recent creation. I'm simple terms she asked, "Why?"
I didn't have a real answer then, but I do now.
"After that I will have finished. And then, maybe then, I'll have achieved the end of this exercise, but really if we're all going to be honest with ourselves, I have to admit, that achieving the end of the exercise, was never the point of the exercise to begin with." - Adam Savage
The point of putting my blood sweat, and tears into this box wasn't to have a box to guard my treasured stories, the point was to tell a story in and of itself.
I want people to walk into my room, look at my creation and go, "What happened to that?"
I wanted to make a story, that holds stories, that can tell a story of its own.
I love stories so much that I wanted to craft my own.
I remember very vividly the first time I watched the three Lord of the Rings films. It was over a span of two days, a Friday and a Saturday, that I did this. And I'm not ashamed to admit, that at the end of Return of the King, I bawled my eyes out.
I had gone on a journey with these hobbits. An emotional journey which I had never experienced.
It was that moment, which made me realize the power of storytelling.
And it was that moment which made me realize I wanted to tell my own stories.
It came full circle. From the fourteen year old boy, inspired by the story of two hobbits carrying a precious ring, to the seventeen year old boy inspired to tell his own story of a box, holding his most precious stories.
