Author's Note:
This piece was inspired by my time spent on my latest infatuation - the Lego Digital Designer. My first creation can be found in the Other Arts forum. Once again purely unedited - I'm very bad at self editing - so comments and edits are very much welcome and appreciated. Cheers.


I’ve had a fascination with Lego for as long as I can remember. Even to this day I still walk down the isles of the toy stores, gawking at the huge sets on display. I don’t really know what it is about it that I find so attractive. I love the art on the boxes displaying the models in action, I love peering into the ones that have the flip open preview lids to see the mass of various bricks hidden behind the clear plastic, I love the models that imitate existing iconic vehicles or structures, I love large scale models that have so much detail you’d take days to examine it all - I just plain love Legos.

It’s strange that I’ve developed such an obsession for something that I’ve spent so little time actually playing with. I never did get many Lego sets when I was a kid. I got a handful of small ones occasionally at Christmas but never the big ones because they were just way too expensive. I remember one of my cousins getting one of those big underwater models with all the cool clear blue plastic pieces and I was just overwhelmed with jealousy for days.

As much as I love the models designed by Lego, I’ve never once maintained a particular model the way Lego intended. I’d follow the instructions, build the model, display it for maybe a week, and then proceed to dismantle the thing and figure out ways of improving it in my own eyes. I’d combine pieces from other sets to make the model larger or cooler in whatever way I could and eventually the Legos would all end up in a huge basket as all Legos do eventually. Any real Lego enthusiast will tell you that.

And then there were the Technics pieces when Lego started introducing gears and axles and all sorts of other mechanisms. I remember this particular model of a dinosaur skeleton that was almost 2 feet tall when completed and had moving arms, feet and jaws. It even came with a little motor that connected to a wired controller which would help animate the beast. I could spend hours and hours just looking at those things. I knew I’d never own it thanks to the enormous price tag on the thing but it didn’t stop me from wishing.

I did own one or two Technics models and so, in my basket of multicoloured assorted bricks, I do have a bunch of gears and axles too.

And now, I got hold of the latest in my advancement of Lego technology - the Lego Digital Designer. I’ve always wanted to have a computer software to build Lego models simply because I never had enough bricks as a kid. And even when I did have enough bricks, they were all different colours and I never managed to get that sleek look that I saw on the boxes. This piece of software allowed me to build with as many bricks as I wanted, any colour I wanted, any size I wanted. It is incredibly fun.

This does bring me to an unimportant, yet interesting, quest for answers - what exactly is the appeal - to me in particular? I’ve got several different ideas.

Maybe it’s the whole concept of creative construction. The idea of building something grand and beautiful out of simple bricks. It does seem like a mirror of the world, reflecting how organisms are made out of smaller building blocks that science has revealed to us. Maybe it’s the fact that I can create things that resemble objects in reality (or fantasy for that matter) out of a mess of bricks that resemble nothing. Maybe it’s that famous idea of creating order out of chaos. Maybe it’s spiritual. I don’t think my six year old self is capable of thinking this deep. So maybe it isn’t.

Or perhaps it’s the engineering aspect of it. That does make sense in regards to my love for the Technics models. I loved using my small reserve of gears and axles to create actual working tools. I remember making an eggbeater, a working model of an elevator, a suspension system (the springs weren’t Lego of course), and all sorts of other engineering things. It was incredibly educational in a way. I learned about gear ratios and weights and resistances, years before learning about them in school. Perhaps it appeals to the inner inventor in me. But then again I’m a musician and clearly not an engineer so I may have missed the point entirely.

I used to think it was the physical act of attaching bricks together and physically building things that were tangible to the senses. But that doesn’t explain why I get just as much fun now playing Legos on my computer. Perhaps it’s about the finished product and admiring my handiwork. But once I’m done building I already move on to the next project. Perhaps then it’s back to the idea of the building process.

Perhaps it’s just all intertwined and there’s a little bit of all of that in my Lego found joy.

It’s amazing what this plastic brick has done to me. It’s been a decade and a half since my first Lego experience and I’ve only grown to love the toy more. This is one joy that will be as eternal as the bricks themselves.