Woodstock Lives: Crohn heads for California

She spearheaded a major funding drive for the concert and recording of the other film that will be screened, Speak to me of Love, Speak to me of Truth, featuring the Billy Harper quintet and 60 voices at St. Peter’s church (a.k.a the jazz church) in Manhattan. This performance was Harper’s attempt to codify the scat singing that is an ongoing part of communication among musicians and place it in a sacred context.

Crohn began to visit California three years ago, when he was working on a website for his extended family, making videos of the nine surviving cousins of his generation. One of them had dropped out of sight many years before, after a conflict with relatives, but Crohn tracked him down through the Internet. It turned out he lived in Marin County, on the California coast north of San Francisco.

“He was delighted to be contacted and to be filmed for the archives. He was 89 at the time,” recalls Crohn. “He suggested I stay with one of his daughters, who lived in San Geronimo, about a half hour away. After two weeks with her, her husband, and their then 13-year-old wunderkind son (during which time I also was filming Sangeeta), when I went to give them back the keys to their house, the mom said, ‘No, Burrill, those keys are yours forever.’”

As an only child who had never been exceptionally close to his parents or his East-Coast relatives, this experience of being embraced by family was life-changing. “It was like coming home,” says Crohn. “I wanted more of this form of love.”

Starting anew also offers the possibility of a life beyond filmmaking, which grows increasingly difficult to fund in the present economy. “It’s a young man’s game, carrying around heavy equipment, running around in the endless search for money,” says Crohn.

Another synchronicity occurred as he was making plans to finance his move through a proposed film project that fell through at the last moment. The next day, two friends announced that they had decided to give him a planned bequest instead of waiting for their deaths. The amount of the gift exactly matched what he had budgeted as profit from the canceled film.

Crohn’s not talking about what comes next after filmmaking. He’s anticipating the freedom to start over without the encumbrance of an identity already fixed in other people’s minds. Over a decade ago, he spent some time in Mexico and has never returned. “To this day,” he laughs, “people ask me, ‘So when are you leaving for San Miguel this year?’ Sometimes it’s good to step away from all that.”

A long-time sun-worshipper, Crohn cites the tall tees, blue skies, and endless beaches of Northern California as another motivator for the move. “See the weather today?” Crohn asks on a sunny fall afternoon, “that’s winter out there!”

Yet, he says, “There’s something bittersweet about leaving. I’ve been walking around marveling what a great town this is, with so much compressed in such a small area — people, places, restaurants, culture, and places of magic in nature, like Cooper Lake, which is as beautiful as any spot in the world. I’m also appreciating the various incarnations I’ve had here, the work, the friendships, the people and experiences you mature and change with.”

But his course is firmly set, at least for now. “They say once you sleep under Overlook you can never leave, so perhaps this is like some 35-year marriage, and I need a fling,” he muses, “and maybe I’ll be back someday. One never knows.”

Burrill Crohn’s documentaries Speak to me of Love, Speak to me of Truth and Playing with Parkinson’s will be screened on Saturday, October 26, at 8 p.m. at the Kleinert/James Center for the Arts, 36 Tinker Street, Woodstock. Suggested donation is $20, with proceeds going to the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research.