My boss Turner decided to build a memory palace for the wedding of J & T, which occurred a few weeks ago.
A memory palace is an imaginary palace that the great epic bards of yore would construct in their minds to help them remember their hours-long epic poems. Each room corresponded to an event in the poem and as they walked their palaces in their minds, they could recall each part of the poems.
The bride, T, studied memory palaces when she was an architecture student of Turner's, and so in honor of her Turner decided to make one real. He plucked a framing model of a barn from the model graveyard here in our office. The model graveyard is simply a pile of discarded architectural models that Turner simply never had the heart to throw away. The graveyard is many years old, and I think that diamonds are forming at the bottom of the pile due to the immense heat and pressure caused by the weight of the models above.
Anyway, we cloaked the palace/barn in strips of black tissue paper, so when a candle was lit inside, it would flutter and glow. So this represented T, the bride, who is mysterious and exotic, dressed always in flowing black skirts and scarves.
Then he built a pond out of two by fours and plywood, which was about five feet long by two feet wide and filled with water about two inches deep. It was wider than two feet at one end where he built a ramp which was the beach, and at the narrow end he built a pier, which was the start of the journey.
Okay, got that so far? The pier is the start and the palace is the end.
Then we got a putt-putt boat, which is an antique-y type tin toy, which is a real but very simple steam engine powered by a small candle, serindipidously named "The Pursuit". In the boat sits J, the groom, a tiny tin fellow who steers the boat with fire leaping from his loins. His loins are really just where the candle is placed to make the boat run, but you can see already the imagery of the whole scene. Perfect for a wedding night.
J must navigate the pond in his bumbling little boat, skirting obstacles and various symbols of the former single lives of both himself and his bride, and make his way to her, T, the mysterious memory palace on the other side of the pond. We made a lighthouse with a candle in the top warning of the rocks below, and an enormous smokestack with a Cuckoo cuckoo firecracker spouting showers of flames out the top, and the Miss Bellows Falls Diner, from T's hometown, which is another model plucked from the graveyard. Sprinkled amongst them all are various of Turner's hovering creatures. Those are the little buildings with wings that you can see in some of the photos.
J's was not the only boat, there were three others putting around the pond, beaching themselves or nudging J off course, and of course, we studded the whole thing with fireworks. All kinds, sparklers, spinners, singing frogs, everything. Very fertile imagery here, what with the shooting rockets and burning loins and enormous smokestacks and the fumbling in the dark of the little boat aiming desperately for the welcoming doors of the palace. Literal fireworks. It was completely incredible.
We took it for a test run the night before the wedding. Have a look:
here's the pier with a hovering creature:
here's the lighthouse, boat and diner:
here's another view:
here's the lighthouse with rocks and the memory palace, to the right, with its doors open:
J reaching his destination:
The palace itself:
It was nothing more than a watery little scene lit by candles and sparklers, but somehow it transcended itself into the best thing I have seen ever.
