I don’t have it “all together.” I’ve not mapped out this video in advance. The raw tape was a High-8 video cassette. I sent it to Southtree and they digitized it and returned the media a couple of months later on a flash drive. If I'd read the previous sentence 30 years ago, in 1994, when the video was shot, I wouldn’t have had any idea what it meant.
But these videos carry volumes of meaning today. And countless close encounters. For me, with me. With my life. With the passions of my life, now and decades ago. Passions in the form of deep interests I held (and sometimes still hold, like UFOs.) Echoes of relationships past that were deeply meaningful to me. Even my crazy-to-the-bone love for cats is touched upon here. And, of course, the ripples cast from my big splash on TV, hosting a very popular show called Wild Chicago on WTTW back in the early 90s.
It was June 1994, two years after I’d left Wild Chicago. I left on my own accord at the height of the show’s popularity. (Its ratings continued to rise after my departure.) I was a couple of months out of a five-year relationship and I was treating myself to things I would enjoy doing, just because I wanted to. Like returning to The Rocky Mountain UFO Conference in Laramie Wyoming, the creation of Dr. Leo Sprinkle of the University of Wyoming. Dr. Sprinkle’s particular interest was in examining the experiences of people who claimed to have been “abducted” by extraterrestrials. This conference was created to give such people a safe place to share their harrowing stories without risk of being labeled insane.
How did I even know about this conference? From a story I’d read in The Atlantic in 1991, about a woman “experiencer” who went to the conference to check it out. Her account was deeply moving to me. To my knowledge, I’ve never been visited by “aliens” or spacemen from other planets. Nonetheless, I identified with much of what I read in the story. I think it had to do with the terrible experience of trying to tell someone about something you’ve gone through, or even something you’ve just thought about, and finding they don’t believe you. As a kid, I usually felt “on the outs.” I was the youngest child of three, 6 six years younger than my sister, 10 younger than my brother. It always seemed like there was a lot going on around me that I did not understand. Weird stuff. Even disturbing stuff. There were outbursts of anger, scary anger. Loud voices. Followed by quiet. Non-peaceful quiet. Like quiet before the storm. Maybe I just identified, as an adult, with the participants at the conference, in that we all had lived with uncertainty, and fear. Fear that you weren’t supposed to talk about or share with anyone.
I went to the conference in 1992 with my girlfriend “KR.” We took her car, and her video camera, and drove West. I’d just left Wild Chicago and had no idea what I was going to do with the rest of my life. There was something compelling about wanting to be with these folks who’d had close encounters with beings from worlds other than our own. So we went.
And then, in 1994, fresh from the breakup with KR, I wanted to go back. That’s the scenario behind this video. I turned 70 last March 15, and here I am watching myself at age 40. I hadn’t seen these images or heard these sounds in thirty years. What’s that like? Well, I honestly didn’t know what to do with this material when I first played it back. But it’s funny how what I shot is, in my mind today, worthy of piecing together into some kind of a story. The interview with Leela in the restaurant really didn’t go anywhere, but still, she did mention some fairly sensational things related to UFOs and “aliens.” And intercutting her with my monologues in the Park helped make her stuff play, and served to keep my confessions focused on the theme of close encounters. Which is where the sweet cat in the window came in, big time. The cat’s reflection in the window with the telephone line post in the foreground – gold! And innocent too, unaffected. I shot video of the cat because I loved the cat. I love all cats. And the dear creature was pawing the window, reaching out to me! Yes, I took that very personally. The cat loved me!
And, of course, the crowning touch was adding the moment from my wedding, the perfect answer to my video confessional of sadness, almost exactly two years after my Wyoming “walkabout.” Answered prayer.
And another fecund encounter with The One Continuous Take that is Life.
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