Backstory shmackstory

After discussing the shrine interior with Dan I've come to realize that I don't feel any need to develop a backstory for the thing. Instead, I'm thinking of it from a certain artistic point of view. The shrine interior is about aging and layering, about how things take on different uses over time. What starts out one way turns into a shrine for dead children which turns into a shrine for Shirley Temple. I think art boxes, like Cornell boxes, derive their poetry not from their backstories but from the attention paid to the qualities of things. Shirley Temple's photo, if I do use it, comes not from any prescribed "meaning"--in fact, she's still alive. Rather, I keep thinking about her because her photo keeps staring at me from an old scrapbook I bought on Ebay.