Shaping Stories!
We all imagine we are Han. Some of us are Luke. The majority are 3PO.
I was five years old in 1977. My dad took me to see Star Wars at a movie theater a few minutes from where I live today. Not a huge multiplex, but a cutting edge 2-screen theater.
A few years later, there would be a line around the building for Jedi, but that Tuesday, it was a small crowd. We were there on a Tuesday because he had come to get me from school just before lunch.
I heard him tell the office lady, “I'm taking him to the dentist.”
I was not pleased about the dentist. No one told me it was time for that torture again. How pleased was I to learn it was a lie. A great lie. And I wonder how that moment intended for good shaped my little mind. Am I more willing to lie now because of it? Or is that my imagination?
In any case, who of us who were there in those days could ever forget John Williams score exploding onto screen as those first yellow letters crawled by:
“It is a period of civil war.”
Just a great opening line.
I've seen A New Hope hundreds of times in part or whole so who knows what I really remember from almost 5 decades ago. But it was enough to shape my life, like millions of others.
I've dreamed of space travel my whole life. New worlds, new civilizations, unexplored, untroubled. It likely started there.
I'm happy that so many enjoy Star Wars. I do wish it still had the mythic quality it once did instead of the more mundane product-of-the-week. But, I supposed that is the nature of modernity and our popular culture.
There's a great moment in Reign of Fire (2002 – McConaughey and Bale) when Christian Bale's character is storytelling to a group of children born and living in a post-apocalyptic world without movies or television or electronic media of any kind.
So, Bale borrows from his characters own childhood and relates the tale of Star Wars. I admire the idea that this myth can live beyond it's media conglomerate existence it has today.
In any case, May the 4th be with you.
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Thank you for coming here and walking through the garden of my mind. No day is as brilliant in its moment as it is gilded in memory. Embrace your experience and relish gorgeous recollection.
Into every life a little light will shine. Thank you for being my luminance in whatever capacity you may. Shine on, you brilliant souls!
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