Artist’s Statement: Cancer can make you keen on time. How much time we have left is a hypothetical until it becomes a clinical. My cancer trundled in on little Panzer tracks invading my body. I’m okay now, but the experience forced me to take a look at my creative life and reflect back on any unfinished business. “Miles to go before Austin and me…sleep,” is that unfinished business from over 40 years ago.
I started shooting a documentary (my first) in 1977 while a teenager growing up in Idaho. I never finished the film and it has haunted me ever since. This poem is a testament to the Time Tunnel that exists in all of us. What if we could go back in time and find that unforgiving ending that has lingered for decades? That is what I accomplished with the completion of this film about the town mystery man…Austin.
Austin was the reason I became a storyteller. In every life there is an Austin. I encourage you all to go back in time and fix what needs fixing. Finish what needs finishing. Become a fellow time traveler like your life depended on it, because…it does.
