The film festival opening happened this week in Park City just as it has, once a year, every year since I moved to town in 1979. It wasn’t always called Sundance. It wasn’t always in January. It wasn’t always something that took over the town. It started in Salt Lake in the ’70s and made its way up the hill at the end of that decade. At one point it had the very cumbersome name of The U.S. Film and Video Festival. And I remember taking my young children to see a film called, maybe, “Homeland,” which as I recall included the actual birth of a cow and it seemed to last for hours without actual dialogue unless you counted the cow’s lowing in pain. It was graphic in terms of the birth. My adult children still laugh about how I may have scarred them for life watching that black-and-white (was it?) piece of art.
He was a familiar figure tall, thin and more recently with a shock white hair that had replaced the former thick crop of dark brown. A runner, mostly early mornings, for decades around Park City with a dog when he had one. Then without. He ran in those early morning hours before God got up or at least most of his neighbors. And he ran all the streets of Park City. Ran up the hills and down Main Street. Into precious pricey enclaves and familiar tired Old Town streets. He ran to meditate and understand. He tried to outrun his demons and his sorrow.
“If you want to understand quickly how we got here with democracy being threatened almost simultaneously around the globe,” writes columnist Teri Orr, “you need look no further than the palm of your hand.”
Park Record columnist Teri Orr.
I am Irish enough to know you open the front and back doors at New Year’s to let the old year out and welcome the new in. You clang pots to remove bad spirits who have taken up residence and you light candles to show good spirits the way in. I don’t think there is a single moment to do this where you shift the energy it only matters that you do it as one year is making way for the next. Like beating a rug or knocking a pillow to remove the dust and all manner of matter that might be stuck.