Hello!

The impetus for this project was my summer as a scorekeeper for the adult recreation softball leagues in my hometown of Santa Rosa, California. I had spent the previous year away at college, reading headlines from home about school lockdowns, student arrests, and juvenile murder cases. And then I came home, wracked with confusion, insecurity, and inhibiting indecision from a taxing first year in college, and saw both difference and unity at the softball fields in a way I’d never seen before in my city. Homesickness, depression, and pain all whirled together during the day, but the evenings at the softball fields were always peaceful.

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I entered the University of Michigan last year as a Clarinet Performance major, continuing a long track from a musical family upbringing through intense engagement later in teen years. As I started applying for colleges, I knew of the endless exciting opportunities to explore the world in other academic settings, but music was so fully a part of my life as I finished high school, and I did not want to change that just yet. My first year was filled with excitement, inspiration and growth. I practiced long hours, went to countless concerts, and soaked up valuable ensemble experiences, all while making some space for pursuing other subjects and passions. Back home after my first year, that all fell apart. I was dogged by a deep depression, spending many days in a haze, unable to do anything. My musical and personal identity lay crumbled on the wavering backdrop of my life. Amidst those endlessly gray days, the softball fields kept me afloat.

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Regardless of how I was feeling or how the day had gone, I drove to the softball fields for the evening. I prepared the fields under perfect, late-afternoon light, already awakening my mind a bit, and then sat down for the games chatting with family members in the bleachers, checking in with the umpire for anything I could do to help, and generally helping everything go smoothly. The games awakened my senses and I felt especially aware and observant. 

 

On coming back to Michigan, I partially exited the music school, and delved into more academic classes. An Anthropology class introduced me to the concept of ethnography being an investigation of oneself as much as a subject. I saw that in my memories of the softball fields, where my heightened awareness had turned into crystalline memories, both of others and myself.

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As I thought about all the individual characters of the fields, I examined my own biases and preconceptions. As I thought about different experiences of Santa Rosa, I reflected on my own childhood and adolescence. As I remembered the wild arcs of life different people would tell me about, I gained some comfort in my own uncertainty. The trouble with that constant interrelation is that I really don’t know who I am, and consequently I really don’t know what this project is. My writing brain hesitates over using so many blatant to be verbs in one sentence, but the totality of identity calls for that; I know various nuts and bolts about who I am and I have all the memories from the fields, but tying that together only happens with time. And just as I have not found who I am this semester, I have not completely found what this project is. 

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I started this project with uncertainty, knowing all the interesting directions I could follow, but overwhelmed with having to choose. I started with small steps, just writing my memories of the softball fields and of Santa Rosa as a whole. Then I had a music phase, where I wrote small pieces of music for each character, and endeavored to write motifs for the broad societal themes of the stories. At one point, I even thought I would write an opera about it all. That eventually faded. Then I entered a frustrated, satirical era, focusing on the disconnect between the advertised glamor of Santa Rosa as a Wine Country joy with the disparate reality of a conflict-filled city. I wrote a mock travel review of the city and took great pleasure in marking through it with a red pen to reproach the uneducated, idyllic vision of the city. Eventually, I reigned that in too. 

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An investigative journalism phase followed, where I spent hours in the library going through city budgets from the past 20 years. I relished the aura of a hard working journalist combing through deep records to find “what they don’t want you to know.” I got the furthest with this focus, and I did discover a lot that enhanced my understanding of the city. The inspiration for the podcast format of my final project reflects this journalistic approach. But after all the glory of trying to find my own discoveries, much of my content for the podcast ended up as a synthesis of the consistencies and discrepancies of various proudly released city documents and other reporting from the Press Democrat, Santa Rosa’s wonderful newspaper.

 

My semester followed a very similar path. I started out cautiously, just trying to reintegrate myself back to a consistent daily life, while also expanding out of the music school. I did have various music-heavy phases, falling back into a lifetime source of joy, purpose, and expression. But, while not a lifetime feature, limitation had nonetheless become a trademark of music for me, and freedom from that was often only possible through less music, rather than more healthy music. But that wasn’t always great either, and I got into some impatient, pithy states throughout the semester, frustrated with true change’s insistence on time passing. Creativity mostly left me, only coming out in very blocky doodles during a lecture, or cynical takes on current events. 

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One positive development of branching out of the music school was joining The Michigan Daily. I entered into a wonderful, inspiring group of people as a copy editor, and dove into journalism as a vital expression of perspective. The celebration of perspective especially dovetailed with the softball project, where I had been seeking more than anything to give my perspective. But the more I’ve tried to produce a polished fully realized project, the more I’ve realized that I don’t know what I’m giving my perspective on. At different times, it’s been public funding, Santa Rosa history, migrant worker abuse, parks and recreation departments, police reform, the joy of human interaction, and many others. 

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In the end, it turned into a partly ironic theme: unity. After all the confusion of throwing around contrasting threads, I tied it all together through talking about unity. It’s a bit like the age-old trick of throwing all your spare food into a pot and making a stew. If you want to try a bit of my Santa Rosa Softball Stew, you can enter the website here. 

 

But really what I want you to know is that it’s not close to a finished project. As a person, I’m most at peace when I accept that I’m young and don’t have to know who I am or what I am – even older people don’t always know that. This project has been a living being just like that. It’s felt incredible at some points, and completely terrible at others. It deals with complicated problems and real people and true trauma and impactful decisions and so much more. To address that with full grace would take far more care than I have knowledge to give after one semester of work. 

 

So just as with myself, I end at peace with accepting that this is what I have right now.