How This Started
It was the summer of 2021. A friend and I were at a major league baseball game. We had laughed and cheered through innings; as well as sang and played along with events on the Jumbotron. It was right at dusk, a beautiful evening.
Our attention was drawn once again to the big screen.
On it is a World War II veteran, sitting in a wheelchair, looking at the camera. He is surrounded by his family. The announcer says the man’s name, rank, tour of duty.
The stadium roars its deafening approval. We all get to our feet. The man’s eyes fill with tears. He is visibly moved. At the sight of it, the crowd is audibly moved, only growing louder and only cheering longer.
Watching him, celebrating him, I could not help but think of the kid he must have been back then, during the war. How this day and this moment had certainly never been guaranteed… or even likely imagined. As a moment of culmination in his journey, I felt distinctly grateful to bear witness to it.
So many of us are searching for our purpose. If we are fortunate and aware, we sometimes see glimpses of it along the way. Instances when we know exactly what we were meant to do, where we are meant to stand, exactly what the universe wants of us, exactly how we can help. Sometimes in extraordinary ways; more often in smaller, less noticeable ways.
On that evening in 2021 I remember recognizing with certainty my purpose in that moment was simply to bear witness. Nothing more than to stand in observation of this man, of his life; to have met him at that point on that road with thousands of others to celebrate and acknowledge what an achievement a lifetime can be. In recognition of how we are all pushed and pulled by energies, by circumstances, by time. That sometimes all the universe asks of us is that we show up and pay attention, if only so we can go forward to tell the stories of what we have witnessed.
It was not long after that evening when a friend began sharing different types of music with me. I had in recent years started listening to only very specific genres of music: very similar melodies, usually upbeat. Life was good, but also challenging, busy. I had no time for the more eclectic musical explorations I had leisured through as a kid. This friend, completely unintentionally, reminded me of a younger version of myself.
Life went on. The world changed. There were moments of personal evolution. Some things broke, many things grew stronger. As life moves along we collect pieces and ideas, learn lessons, not really knowing how it might all fit until it suddenly does.
Fast forward to mid March 2022.
I was on my way to visit the same friend I had gone to the baseball game with. It is a rather long drive. I found myself thinking about the website a colleague of mine had made in support of Ukraine, a place he had lived part time for the past 12 years. From there I began thinking of the Ukrainian and Russians I had worked with on my most recent previous project. Then of the news, which had been filled with images of defiant Ukrainians since the end of February. A defiant, unified majority of the world in fact.
The song streaming on the radio happened to fit those mental images. I was reminded of mixtapes I used to make for my friends as a kid. Just CDs back then. But it made me wonder if we could today take moments—images, videos—from around the world, set them to music and just share them. Just another way to summarize, bear witness, and possibly start to process these events happening all over the globe.
Mixtapes from Earth.