Original subtitles

Y'all know I love a really good story.

And today we are working with a piece of wood

that if it could talk would tell a world of stories.

I have a slab of cedar from the property of Rowan Oak

located in Oxford, Mississippi,

which is the home of Nobel Prize winner,

Pulitzer Prize winner,

poet laureate, William Faulkner.

I have been saving this piece,

waiting for a project that was worthy

of the provenance of this piece of wood carries.

And today I have that project.

I have another writer coming to town,

another Mississippi son,

my good friend, Wright Thompson.

His name is Wright.

I mean, you can't get any more right than that.

Wright Thompson is a senior writer for ESPN.

You read his stories on Michael Jordan,

Tiger Woods, Lionel Messi.

He's written for ESPN's 30 for 30 series

and his books, The Cost of These Dreams

and Pappyland became New York Times bestsellers.

And I cry in almost all of his stories.

It's really good writing.

We are building a writing desk

from Faulkner's cedar.

And then we're gonna donate it

to the creative writing department

up at Ole Miss, my alma mater.

Just think of the stories

this piece of furniture could tell.

Think of the stories that it will tell,

think of the stories that will be written

at this desk for years to come.

- Brother. - What's up man?

WWT.

- This is my workout, CrossFit. - Yeah.

Come on, man. So good to see you.

- How are you? - Man, I'm doing very good.

- How are the girls? - The girls are great.

When I was leaving today and I'm like,

"Daddy's gonna try not to cut his hand off."

There you go. So, have you never done

any kind of woodworking?

I've never built a single thing in my life.

But you're... I mean,

you're from a Delta farming family.

That doesn't mean I know anything about tools.

I'm very excited to do this because,

one, to hang out with an old friend but,

two, like I wanna learn some stuff.

We're going to. I'm gonna teach you some stuff.

- It's gonna be cool. - All right, what are we doing?

We are going to build a writing desk.

- Okay. - So, here's what I'm thinking.

If you were looking down at the top of this desk,

you'd have four squares.

So for our legs, we're gonna use

pencil post table legs

because this is what I use to write with.

We will have skirts on four sides of the table.

But then around the bottom, we will have stretchers

that are only on three sides,

so that you can sit at the desk

without hitting your feet on anything.

And then for the top we will have a tenon

that will go into our cedar.

We will take a wedge that we will drive in

from the top and it causes that split to open up,

which then tightens onto the cedar top.

Are you excited about the cedar?

I'm so pumped. I can't believe this is real.

You and I have been talking about this piece of wood

- for a long time. - Yes. Let's go look at it.

All right. I gotta see this.

Wow.

Do you hear the heavenly choir?

This piece of wood had some very high stakes.

A friend of mine called me he was contracted

by the university to take down all the trees

that have to come down on campus.

He said I've gotten a slab of cedar

and I said, yeah bring 'em.

Just the fact that it came from William Faulkner's yard,

I was like stunned.

I'm a big believer that wood

carries the life force in it.

You know, I have knives made from the barn on the farm

where my dad grew up.

What is it about Southerners

and our sentimentality to, I mean, everything?

I mean, it's the thing that I think Faulkner wrote

about most, which is the idea that there is this past

that is slipping through your hands very quickly.

If you drive around here,

the nostalgia is thick.

So much of the ideas behind his work

lives in the fact that we are taking something old

and dead and making it new and alive.

Where do you write?

I have a table made out of wood

from an old house that collapsed in Clarksdale,

where I'm from.

And it's beautiful and it's cypress.

You know, I think that even when we leave

where we're from, you wanna carry pieces of it with you.

We're gonna donate this back to the university

and so there is like this sense of a circle there

where hopefully this will introduce someone else

- to Faulkner. - One of the things I remember

from being in college and trying to learn

how to write is how hard it is to believe in yourself.

And so any sort of knowledge

that it has been done from here,

therefore I can do it, I find to be really powerful.

So, the biggest problem with this piece of wood...

- Yeah. - ...is that it is the only piece that I have.

- So, don't mess it up. - So, what's they say,

you know, measure once cut twice?

We say measure once, cuss twice.

Well, I got the cussing down.

If we mess this up, then we're gonna be doing

a lot more than cussing twice.

We also... Oh, for the base,

we're gonna use oak from campus.

All right, I love an Ole Miss oak.

So, you need these.

Baa, da-daa, da-da.

I feel very good.

So our first step

to actually building our desk

- is to make the legs. - Got it.

So this is our jointer.

And so when we run this oak across here,

it'll do two things. One, it will take

all the roughness out of this board.

- Yeah. - And two, it'll give us

- a perfect square edge. - Okay.

So, I'mma do the first pass.

- Feel that. - Oh, yeah.

You still have some rough.

There you go.

You're doing great.

- I'm building! - You're doing it!

This is great.

Let's square it up.

Now, we're going to actually cut

the octagon shape on our table saw.

If you take a square and you cut

the four corners at 45 degrees,

you have an octagon, sort of like a pencil.

And so we need 45-degree angles?

- That's right. - All right.

- Look at you. - I'm paying attention.

So we're at zero, and we're going to adjust

- our blade to 45 degrees. - Okay.

Come on.

- Yes. - There it is.

That's so good. That's so pleasing.

If it's 44.9 I don't think psychologically

I could've ever recovered.

So to go from the Columbia Missourian,

and then you are writing for ESPN.

I mean, it's really absurd.

I have the best job in the world.

Like, I've gotten to do some really cool stuff,

because, the Cricket World Cup in India comes to mind.

When I think about being a kid in Clarksdale, Mississippi,

if you would have asked me to draw up the dream scenario

of here are the places you're gonna go

and here are the people you're gonna meet

and here are the ways

in which those influences

can come home with you

and sort of shape your life.

I couldn't have made it up.

I feel deeply, sincerely grateful.

So, how did you know you wanted to be a writer?

I didn't even know it was a job

where you could fly around the country and talk

to people and write down what they said

and then go write about it.

And so like the fact that that was a job,

totally blew my mind.

It was very clear.

This was what I wanted to do.

But then why sports?

Well, I was randomly assigned to sports

- at the college newspaper. - Ah.

We got sent to go cover the Super Bowl.

And I guess the NFL didn't know we were a student paper.

But they just sent us these credentials.

And we're like, you know, we're going to the Super Bowl,

we got invited to all these fancy parties.

We had to go buy sport coats.

You know, most people were, like, geeking out

about the athletes, but we were all geeking out

about the sports writers.

I mean, I love writing about athletes,

because the psychological cost

of doing this very important personal thing

in public is tremendous.

I mean, you sort of shouldn't be able to watch it.

- Yeah. - You know, like those athletes

who are just laying it all out there.

This is our bandsaw.

The beautiful thing about this saw

is that you can do awkward cuts.

You can move things around

while you're cutting on that blade.

So, this is the final piece to our pencil post legs.

Got it.

What we will start with is a 3x3 post.

And we'll take that from a grip

so that it cuts a perfect corner off of it.

We'll do that on all four corners so in the end,

we will have an octagon and it'll mimic the shape

of a pencil.

I think sports are one of those rare things

that allow us to teach our children

who we are and where we're from.

It is a common language

that people can speak to each other

across generational divides.

I mean, I love looking around our tent

at The Grove and seeing my dad's brothers,

and then my mom, and a friend from out-of-town.

Is that you create this community.

It is the family that isn't technically family.

I love walking by somebody way out of context.

I just did it out in San Francisco.

You're just walking past somebody

if they have an Ole Miss thing on.

I'll get even with them and just go, "Hotty Toddy."

- Yeah. And... - And by the time they turn around,

- you're gone. - Yes. But it's that connection.

Something about connecting you

to the people who are gone.

And connecting you to the people

who will live on after you is, like,

really at the beating heart

of why any of this stuff matters.

I wanted the legs to be symbolic.

And so, making pencil post legs,

it's gonna be really cool.

We're building a giant pencil.

It's like a magic trick to me that you turned

that piece of wood into that.

You turned it into that.

Uh, you know what? Let's generously say we.

We're gonna finish these

and then we're gonna work on our desktop.

Awesome. Let's do it.

All right.

Hey, do you get nervous?

Do I get nervous?

Uh, on this piece, yes.

If I'm writing a story, I can just delete it

and start over. This feels permanent.

This is permanent. This is social media.

Like, you put it out there if you mess up...

Rarely do I have something where I have one shot at it.

There's a lot of pressure with this build.

We're working with a piece of wood from Faulkner's yard.

And cedar is my least favorite piece of wood to work with.

Think about that.

It is so soft

that you have to be very precise

with your cuts because it is unforgiving.

If you mess up, you have ruined the board.

So, this is a mortising machine.

- Okay. - And it cuts a square hole.

- Okay. - And it's drilling out

all of the excess, but then, this is a square chisel.

- So its shaving... - Got it.

...a whole square.

So, we're gonna do four square holes.

- Yeah. - And the top of our leg

- is square. - Oh, that's...

So, that's gonna go up through the... Okay.

Oh, so you really have to get this right.

All right, here we go.

This slab of cedar, it's not every day

you come across something like this.

This is a very important piece of wood for me

and for our shop. And so we're gonna be

very careful with it.

I don't want to damage the cedar.

Man, I gotta tell you, this is no joke.

We're gonna make very few cuts to the wood.

We are going to make four mortises.

And that's it.

Are you okay with me doing all of this?

I wouldn't touch this thing for a million dollars.

Okay.

There's not going to be any hand tooling

going on with this piece.

By doing it on a machine and locking it into place,

it allows very little room for error.

I don't wanna risk damaging this piece of wood.

Look at that.

- Okay. So Lionel Messi. - Yeah.

The story about you going to his hometown.

- Yeah. - In South America?

Rosario, Argentina, which I love.

And he's not celebrated there.

No. And it's very much because people from Barcelona,

where he moved when he was 13,

view him as being from Argentina.

People from Argentina view him as being from Barcelona,

but he's in the middle of those two worlds,

and doesn't really have a home anywhere

and is very much searching for one.

- And that's... - That became the story.

- Home is a... - It's most of what I write about.

- Most of what you write. - I mean, I'm interested

in those things. People writing about the place

where they're from and trying to sort it out.

I mean, it's the thing I like to read most.

Yeah, it's fascinating.

- We got our legs. - Yup.

All right. We've got our mortises done.

Now we're gonna cut our through tenons,

that's the piece that is gonna come up

through those square holes that we've got.

That would drop the other thing? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay? We're just gonna cut in

to the line all the way around.

And then we're gonna take it and cut in.

Basically we are just going to make

- a smaller square. - Got it.

So these are split through tenons,

meaning they will go through the wood

that we are joining it to,

and they are split so that we can drive

a wedge in there that will shim it

and make it tighter.

That's very pleasing.

All right, you're up.

I'm honestly never done this in my shop,

it's one of my favorite techniques,

but I've just never had the opportunity to do it.

So now once this comes up through our desktop,

we'll drive a wedge in there,

- and cause that to spread. - All right, cool.

- Three more of those. Let's go make a table. - Okay.

So, these slabs are from Ole Miss,

and that's what we're gonna use

- to make our skirts. - What is a skirt?

This is what goes between the legs

- from the top. - Got it.

I have a little bit of a design feature.

And that is a bead.

Is that like beadboard walls?

- Yes, that is exactly... - Okay.

- See? - See, I know what that is.

That's pleasing.

All right, so now, this piece will then go.

Oh, that's gonna be really good-looking.

All right, let's go finish making our skirts.

And I'll cut the tenons and then we'll assemble the base.

- Okay, cool. - All right?

Yup, let's do it.

All right. We got all the pieces for our base.

We're going to take our skirts and our stretchers.

We're gonna assemble this bad boy.

So you have spent time with Jordan.

- Yeah. - What is that like?

He's Michael Jordan.

But the fact that he's Michael Jordan

wears off pretty quickly and he's just a guy.

We're sitting around telling jokes, smoking cigars.

He has... As you can imagine, really good cigars.

- I'm sure. - And we watch basketball.

And it was interesting, because he had

a really sophisticated scouting report

about LeBron James, uh, he'd be watching

and be like, "He's going left."

And then he, you know. So, it became immediately

clear to me that this dude is sitting at home,

mentally preparing for games that he won't ever play.

- Gosh. - You know, and he talked

really eloquently about, I spent my whole life

turning myself into this weapon.

And now all of those traits

that I worked so hard to nurture,

and develop, and protect,

not only are they useless to me now,

but they are actually the things

that are keeping me from enjoying any of this.

You know, he was Mike Jordan in high school.

He didn't become Michael Jordan

until he got famous.

He is very aware that Mike Jordan

from Wilmington, North Carolina is dead

and that Michael Jordan killed him.

Now let's talk about Tiger Woods,

greatest ever to play the game, maybe?

I don't know, golf.

I think he is, especially coming back.

He won that last Masters

for an audience of two, because his kids

had never seen him be Tiger Woods.

Gosh.

So that scene on that green,

I thought was really emotional.

To be the greatest of all time.

But, like, he has nurtured that

at the expense of many other things.

Like I thought that was really interesting about him.

So how long had you worked at ESPN

before you put together The Cost of These Dreams?

Probably 12 years.

And what was the inspiration behind,

you know what, I'm gonna put all this together

- into a book. - Oh, I mean,

some of it is just sheer hubris.

As a writer, the idea that somebody might collect

your stories in a book,

that's in the Library of Congress

that feels more permanent than a magazine,

which people can put in bird cages.

It sounds crazy, but it made it feel

like all of it had been for something.

The first time I held it was surprisingly emotional.

Do you feel like you've had to sacrifice?

You know, For The Cost of These Dreams?

Well, I mean, look, time.

But, you know, I go to work every day

and do something super interesting

that I'm very happy about.

This looks like a table for the first time.

- It's super pleasing. - So for... Yeah,

this is the first time that it actually

- looks like... - Because I was like

we're just sort of doing stuff to wood.

- We're building stuff. - Totally building stuff.

Totally building stuff.

All right, watch the sawhorses.

Yup.

Here we go. Moment of truth.

This is six or seven years

dreaming of this moment.

I have no business even being anywhere near this.

I'm nervous about anyone even being, like,

this dude thinks he should be even associated

with William Faulkner.

So I'm already imagining the ways

in which I look like an idiot.

Through tenon is a type of joinery

that actually comes through the piece of wood

that it is joined to,

you see it on the other side.

It is a beautiful way to join furniture together.

Do you think the next great American novel

- will be written on this? - God, I hope not.

I'd be super angry if my contribution

to American literature was I built a desk

for somebody who wrote something great, maybe.

Okay.

It totally worked.

So this is the last step. This is the piece

that as we drive it in there,

it's going to spread that joint,

and get it tight. And that's what we want.

And then we've made a table.

We've made a writing desk.

- A writing desk. - A writing desk,

made by a writer, named Wright from wood,

from a writer's yard,

for the creative writing department.

- Correct. - All right,

let's drive this thing.

Do you wanna glue or do you wanna hammer?

I definitely wanna hammer.

- Pappyland. - Oh, yeah,

the fact that you liked it

and don't drink is the first time

I really thought, "We might actually have something here."

This is a bourbon book that's barely about bourbon.

My wife makes fun of me and says

its "Eat, Pray, Love for dads."

So there are other things you wanna write about?

I wanna be able to follow the things

that I'm interested in.

I think that's how you stay fresh,

you know, you have to refill the tank,

like, this, this day is actually been really great,

because, you know, I learn a new vocabulary,

I meet a bunch of people. I mean, you can't

just keep working and spending

all of that creative capital.

You have to be out there trying to do things

that replenish it.

When you look down at the desktop,

you get to the functionality of having this desk

that is assembled, that is sturdy,

that you can pick up and carry.

But you also get the form,

the beauty of all the wood

working together to make something beautiful for your eyes.

- This is a really great day. - Isn't this awesome?

You know, I really appreciate it.

This is really fun.

That's not going anywhere.

The last step will be we will spray the base

and the top with a lacquer finish.

It's gonna be a beautiful piece of furniture.

Let's carry it over here, and we'll sand a little bit,

put the final cut on, okay?

I'm honestly really sad that this was no longer

gonna be in the shop.

But this is a writing desk

made from William Faulkner's tree.

Kind of only has one place it could go,

and that's the University of Mississippi.

Right here. This is the final step.

- Do you wanna spray? - You spray first

- and I'll watch you. - Okay.

The last step is gonna be a sprayed on lacquer finish,

which will be picture perfect.

- You wanna try it? - Yeah.

So you're gonna start and kind of overlap every time.

Just like you're mowing the yard.

Come all the way off, and then come back.

That is really pretty.

And we're gonna let this dry a little bit.

We'll load it up.

I hope the university is gonna be proud of it.

- God, this is exciting. - I know. It's pretty good.

Faulkner grew up in Oxford,

just a few blocks from the University of Mississippi.

He never moved away. He lived there.

That was his home his whole life.

When he became successful, he bought Rowan Oak,

that is where he wrote his masterpieces.

He... I mean, literally where he wrote them.

He wrote it on the walls of his home, okay?

The property that Rowan Oak sits on,

there are cedar trees everywhere.

The driveway is lined with cedars.

This place carries something with it.

That obviously inspired Faulkner

and has inspired writers for decades,

since he passed.

So this is like a legit creative writing program.

No, it's one of the best in the country.

Ole Miss, that just so happens to be my alma mater.

- Hotty Toddy. - Hotty Toddy!

This is homecoming.

I love Ole Miss. I love Oxford.

I loved my time there.

I took so many classes in this building.

Did you pass any of them?

Erin and I got married at the building next door.

Our wedding pictures were taken

right outside this building.

Not just that, the memories that I have,

I mean, this is where I met my buddy Josh.

This is where I met Mallorie.

This is where we started our adult lives,

so to be able to go back,

and to be able to donate something that I built,

and then also for this slab of wood

to return to Oxford.

That's...

I mean, you can't write that.

- Hey, guys. - Hey.

Here it is. Oh, my gosh.

We totally built you a table.

- Hi, I'm Wright. Nice to see you. - I'm Matt, what's going on?

- Aimee Nance! - So good to see you.

All right. Oh, it's so good to see you.

What do you all teach?

I teach poetry and nature writing.

Yeah. And I do fiction and literature.

Okay. Okay. I took a poetry class.

- Okay. Just one. - Only one.

Well, we're excited to see it and we've got

the perfect place for it, I think.

- The Hannaford Room. - Okay. Let's do it.

All right. Here we go.

Hey, guys.

Shh, I think it's like a Library.

Don't mind us,

just your friendly neighborhood

furniture delivery guys.

So are you all English students or...

- MFA. - MFA.

- MFA students? - Yeah. We only take four poets,

and four fiction writers from the planet.

So when I say they're the cream of the crop,

they're the cream of the crop.

I couldn't have gotten into it.

I mean, I write about dudes who play football,

like, this is a very difficult thing to do.

Are we ready to see this thing?

- Yeah. Let's see this thing. - Yes. I can't wait.

- I've been dying for this. - Hmm?

Here we go. One, two, three.

Wow.

Oh, my God. Beautiful.

This is cedar from William Faulkner's

house Rowan Oak.

And the skirt is white oak

- from Ole Miss, correct? - Yeah.

This is called a split tenon.

- So there are no nails... - Wow.

- ...metal of any kind. - From the moment

this piece of wood came into my shop,

I said it either needs to be some sort of desk.

So to be able to do it and do it

with one of my all-time favorite writers,

and then to be able to give it back to the university,

it's very full circle. I really like that.

We have built some fascinating things

in our shop. But this piece,

it's kind of a masterpiece.

I'm really proud of it.

I think this is gonna be a fantastic addition

to the room. It seems really in keeping

with the spirit of the program.

We certainly, you know, really value

our literary history here.

That's a big part of the draw.

And it just looks like a nice place to sit

and, you know, get something down on paper.

When I was in Nigeria, I used to read Faulkner,

and now we have a piece of him to write on.

Yeah. It's very inspiring for me.

You hope that we're creating something

with the lineage and hopefully

that there will be a long line of writers

who have written on this desk.

Gone on to great things.

I could just stand around writers all day

and listen to you all talk about my furniture.

I hope that this desk inspires them

to actually sit down and take that first step.

Do the work. Write that story.

This is a powerful piece of furniture.

Ooh, maybe a little bit intimidating.