It was the last week of school. The upcoming Wednesday was the last day of classes. I had two dance classes: Advanced Technique and Advanced Reperoty and Performance and I had three academic classes: my senior seminar, Visuality and Ethnicity in Contemporary Art, Modern Art, and my pass/fail zero level Chemistry class that I needed to pass in order to graduate. [Did I mention it was my last semester of college?]
It was also the week following Ivie's weekend. For those who don't know Ivie's weekend is pretty much a four day excursion at Bowdoin [for others a week] into debauchery. You drink and drink and drink, morning, noon, and night from Thursday through Sunday. And if the weather is nice, [as it was this year] you do so on the quad with your nalgene full of liquor, your cooler, a moon bounce, some couches, and live performances. [this year we nabbed OK GO].
The Sunday following Ivie's I caught the flu. A bad case of it. Sucks for me. Fortunately it was the last week of classes so sleeping through many of my classes and work was ok. Unfortunately I had a 15-20 page paper due for my seminar and a final for my Modern Art class on that Weds when classes came to an end before Reading Period.
For my seminar we had to pick an artist and do an in depth paper on their works as well as a presentation for the class. It was not to be a biography piece, but, as stated before, and in depth look, an exploration if you will into the life, times, and works of the artist. I went with African American artist David Hammons. A visual/contemporary/performance artist whose works deals a lot with African Americans, their histories, and conditions and often utilizes found objects such as hair collected from barber shops in Harlem, empty night train bottles, and used, greased chicken bags. I had a ball diving into his creations and opinions on American life. Once I started typing, the idea of stretching his and my thoughts into 15-20 pages wasn't so scary as it was at the outset and things were okay. [As evidenced by the high grade I eventually recieved on the paper and in the class.] Check out some of his work here:
It also happened to be a week after the last dance show of my Bowdoin career. My Advanced Dance class did a moving 15 minute modern/contemporary piece set to four songs from The Rodeo Eroded album by the Tin Hat Trio. Seeing as how the it was only a week after the show I found myself stuck with the Tin Hat Trio's songs in my head quite often and listened to them quite a bit as I crafted my paper on David Hammons/studied for my Modern Art final/battled the flu.
One song from the album that stands out is one of the few with vocals titled Willow Weep For Me. It's a gorgeous orchestral number featuring sweeping vocals from none other than Willie Nelson. We had danced to it in class but I had no idea it was on the Tin Hat Trio's disc til I got my hands on a copy following the show. Immediately I knew I had a new favorite song and the one way to guarantee continued listening was to craft a playlist around it. I had the flu and was knee deep in art; It was on the brain like whoa, hence the title of the playlist:
David Hammons
1/Blue Veins/The Raconteurs
2/It's A Man's Man's World/James Brown
3/Willow Weep For Me/Tin Hat Trio feat Willie Nelson
4/Porcelain/Red Hot Chili Peppers
5/Ode To L.A./The Ravonettes feat. Ronnie Spector
6/Satisfied/Prince
7/Waves/The Elected
8/Subterranean Homesick Blues/Bob Dylan
9/Long Haired Child/Devendra Banhart
10/Gone/Kanye West feat. Consequence and Camron
11/29/Ryan Adams
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