|
I came
out as a gay man rather late in my life - in my mid
to late 20's - in an era that was confronting both
AIDS, tens of thousands of deaths of young men from
the disease, and a still not very significant
acceptance of homosexuality by society.
I was very closeted and had not told anyone of my
homosexual feelings until my final years of college
when I came out to a professor whom I
trusted. From that point on, my life
had been in flux as I was dealing with the
prospects of being gay and what that would me on my
life afterwards.
Fast
forward to 1988 when I had had a revelation on St.
Patrick's Day that year and had attended my first
gay support group at a local Catholic Outreach
center at my university. It seems odd
now that a gay and lesbian support group could be
held at anything dealing with Catholics, but the
group was moderated by the local priest, Father
Francis, and my first exposure to the group proved
to be the turning point in my gay
life.
I
remember approaching the group with trepidation - I
was going to be with the first real gay people that
I knew and wasn't sure of even what gay people
looked like! Having managed
to get the courage to attend this first meeting, I
remember walking up the stairs of the porch and
opening the door and looking at the people who had
arrived early like me - and they were so
"normal" looking! I was
so taken aback that gay people could actually look
normal that I nearly turned around when I blurted
out "is this the gay support group?" and
Father Francis greeted me and asked me to come
inside. As the session progressed it
was clear that I was much like the rest of the
young men here - I wasn't swishy or effeminate and
neither were they. It was like a group
of my straight friends was here and the overall
feeling was quite electric. It
was the moment when I walked out that I realized
and accepted I was gay.
I
had decided after a few sessions that I wanted to
produce a video (one of my first) about my coming
out feelings and experiences and the segment you
are about to see was a portion of several that
dealt with various aspects of that coming
out. Overall, my experience was a
very heavy and dark one where I constantly was
second-guessing my sexuality and trying to hide it
fearing I'd become like the only other gay guys I
had know in school - really swishy, girly types of
guys who lisped.
In
this video below I decided to deal with segments of
my coming out - (1) dealing with a fear of
religious contempt - even though I wasn't
church-going, many of my friends were
fundamentalist Christians and I felt angst from
that - even as I tried religion to cure my feelings
at one point; (2) I had had a period where I was so
afraid of being gay that I had gone beyond
considering suicide - I was considering how to do
it (3) and then there was a new found feeling of
energy of looking forward to being in love with men
and a budding exploration of my sexual orientation
and feelings.
Since
the only computer I had at that time was a
Commodore 64, the graphics that I had used at the
beginning were from that machine though they
weren't part of the clip that I extracted
below. I had used two VCR's to make the
video - one being the master source - and the other
with the video in sequence - and then I used a
walkman type of audio source with a jack to add
music at the end. The video that was
produced by adding clips was removed from the
second VCR and put back in the source player and
the music was added during the rerecording of the
eventual final copy - so the quality was not real
clear but it was the best I could do at that time.
It
was always something in the back of my mind to redo
this video with better quality when I could but I
didn't want to destroy the original message - as
imperfect as it was, there was something about the
final product that was 90% of what I had wanted and
it was timed close enough to the music to be at
least illuminating with the message even given the
video's weaknesses. So here
it is in 2014 when I had some time to take a DVD of
the original movie and to convert it in my video
producing software and music from itunes and then I
went after the project in earnest - there were
issues with trying to match the video to the music
- the timings were not the same as the original so
I had to work out the differences and do some new
tricks - adding a clip or two here or there where
possible - slowing the video footage down where
possible to work it with the audio in pace - as
well as having to compensate for time lost as I
used fade transitions which ate video footage and
required more inserted footage not found in the
original. And even though the original
movie had nearly two hours of footage, most of the
footage that I had used appeared in the first 22
minutes of the movie so there wasn't much extra
footage I could pull from.
And
now I'll ask you to review the original video
(presented first) and then to view the remastered
one - please choose full-screen for this viewing -
you'll see so much more that you couldn't see in
the original!
|
