SONG & PLACES | Reflection

I suppose I cannot avoid writing this post anymore. This is the last one in this series but hopefully not the last one I will ever compose.

We are expected to write about this course of Songs & Places and what it means to us. Well, to be quite frank, this course means everything to me. It was a purging I never expected to have and a cleansing that was more than necessary, and it makes me terribly sad to see it come to an end. In a way this final post frightens me because I am afraid that with its final words, my journey of transformation will be over and I am not ready to for it to cease.

My journey began a few weeks before I joined the class. I was sitting in my architecture review jotting down notes from comments my professor gave when I suddenly became very aware of myself and my surroundings. I looked down to my sketchbook and saw words upon words, hardly a single sketch from any of the projects thus presented. In that instance I looked out the bay windows and saw the campanile and I reflected my place in this campus.

Here I was, supposedly learning line weights and about creating space, when there were students writing, learning, asking questions, discovering answers…existing. I did not feel like I was existing and in fact I actually felt quit the opposite. Fingers felt foreign, thoughts always questioned my worth, body just kept deteriorating. I was finding it so hard to simply be alive and this studio class was worsening the situation.

This was not what I expected coming to college. This was not the place I expected to be. I wanted to be reading and trying to solve problems and be surrounded by books, not computer screens of 3D modeling. I did not come to this place to throw my sleep, health, money, and sanity away just to learn line weights.

Nothing mattered to me anymore. I did not care whether or not I was skilled at the work I did, it made me feel less human than I already felt and one Wednesday morning in the early hour of 2 or 3am, after working unproductively for several hours to currently find myself hunched over making a site model, I dropped everything. Maybe it was because I reached my point of exhaustion, or more likely because the numbness that was steadily creeping suddenly took hold of my body and my fingers could no longer function, but it did not matter. I stopped working and stayed awake all morning waiting for the advising office to open at 10am to walk in and say that I refused to live in Hell and wanted my sleep, health, and sanity back (money was always a lost cause).

At that point I was hovering in nothingness. No ground felt like mine to walk on - I felt very much alone and extremely out place and out of mind.

But I still sent that email asking to be admitted into Visual Studies 185X, this course of Songs & Places. I guess my desperation was alarming enough to allow my admittance, but no one at the time, not even myself, would know how much of a savior this small act would be.

Thursday night: 6pm. My feet had apparently found their way to the classroom. Holding my artwork firmly in my hands, I waited nervously to go inside. Helen and her art were the first people I met. I say people because her work was as much of a living human creature as you and me. That was my first impression of the class and it was striking.

From sheer exhaustion I feel asleep in the class. The class was 4 hours long and I had not slept in who knows how long (I would later find out that it would take a semester the least to restore my body to its original state after two years of studio). During the moments my consciousness returned to me I awoke to people singing. Let me tell you that I was terrified. Who were these creatures, what were they doing? They all seemed so nice and friendly, but they were not the people I knew from studio. These were strangers and that night I abhorred everyone (me included). When the class ended I rushed out, ran back up to studio, and nearly cried.

"I had left architecture for this?!" My heart felt sick, thinking that I had made a terrible mistake; but it was all denial. I would not come to look forward to the class until a little while later, however.

I kept trying to make 3-dimenstional work and found myself hating it each time until I was told I had not produced my kind of work yet. My kind of work? Confused, I tried to understand the statement until I realized the reasoning behind it. To aid the decision to admit me into the course, I sent 4 different artworks done by me, none of which, by the way, were 3-dimenstional. They were color pencil drawings and paintings.

So I tried my hand again at something I thought I would never return to. It was the week of Leadbelly and I remember the joy of painting again. After that I never stopped painting and my feet found their place on the ground.

I went walking on this ground, started taking notes and writing down whatever came from my heart and mind. I started singing again. I would sing the songs to myself over and over again, falling in love with the feeling of my voice calming my soul. I fell in love with my hands that wanted to do justice to each song and artist it chose.

They were not always easy to paint and understand - some songs were puzzles within puzzles to figure out. Somewhere along the week of studying Woody Guthrie was when I began to really understand the correlation between songs and places. It was the places themselves that drew out the songs and the songs that verified and told the stories of those places. Throughout my life I traveled very little, but I visited more places in this class that before in the 20 years of my life. This is meant both figuratively and literally.

Traveling from the east coast westward in the songbooks, I traveled a great deal within myself as well. The songs taught me what it meant to be human, my fellow students taught me what it meant to be human, my artwork taught me what it meant to be human.

I am not sure if it is evident or not, but I struggle a tremendous deal with the notion of what it means to really be human. I try to calculate my existence and reason the purpose of my living in this world. As embarrassing as it is to admit this, I have to say that at times, I wish to be able to just be, to breathe without having to prove why I should.

It was one of Baylor's own songs that made me realize how very much alive I am but how constrained I  have kept myself.

The title of my blog was originally the.black.lamb, a reflection of what I felt, what I thought was, what I only knew; but after his song, I asked myself "what reflects my very much alive existence?"

And the answer?

Seeping Ink

Just like the songs we sang, the places we visited, the stories we told, the tales we learned, I am always growing and expanding; ink seeping further and further into the chipboard that I have grown so fond of painting on.

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, and goodnight. The sun sets on this journey of ours, but it will rise again.

It always does.

With much love and thanks,

Arami Matevosyan

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WEEK 12 | Sailors - The Hog-Eye Man

What a scandal! The Hog-Eye Man stood out from the list of songs and enchanted me with its catchy lyrics and energetic tone. I found myself humming the tune and envisioned a melody that resembled the movement of a galloping horse.

Putting all that aside, the imagery in this song depicts a shocking tale (well, at least one that was shocking at the time it was originally sung). Upon first glance, the term "hog-eye" appears vague and suggestive of an ambiguous man that comes to visit Sally Jane in the garden. Who is this hog-eye man and why does the narrator have such disdain for him?

The general definition of Hog Eye is a barge in a canal and "navvy" is likened to mean someone who navigates. This focuses the story around a man who navigates the barges that go to San Francisco. If the narrator alludes to going off to Sally Jane and "a hog-eye," his tone of voice suggests that he is off to take care of business with this hog-eye. Perhaps seamen were not welcomed ashore by people or were not desirable mates for families with young ladies; or maybe this particular seaman was just an individual to be weary of. The latter interpretation sounds more likely than the former.

Therefore we must consider what kind of man would strike controversy if he were to meet up with a young woman and what actions he would take that would give the song its saucy melody. To address the second question first, the actions would most obviously allude to a sexual nature. This is evident in the lyrics referring to Sally, whose hair is loose and hanging to her knees, shelling peas in the garden while the hog-eye is sitting on her knees.

Then we focus on the identity of the hog-eye: who is this man? Needless to say, I conducted a great effort to research this topic and from my findings I conclude that the hog-eye freed to in this song is a black man. Thus, the controversy would be a reference to an interracial relationship.

Go fetch me down my ridin' cane,

For I'm goin' to see my darlin' Jane

And a hog-eye, 

Railroad navvy with his hog eye,

Row ashore with a hog-eye,

Oh, she wants a hog-eye man

Oh the hog-eye men are all the go 

When they come down to San Francisco

Now it's who's been here since I've been gone,

A railroad navvy with his sea boots on

Oh Sally in the garden pickin' peas,

Her golden hair hangin' down to her knees

Oh Sally in the garden, shellin' peas, 

With her young hog-eye all a-sittin'on her knees

Oh a hog-eye ship and a hog-eye crew,

A hog-eye mate and skipper too

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The blonde hair represents Sally Jane, the black strand of hair represents the black man, the weaving of the blonde and black hair alludes to their relationship, and the pea flower - reminiscent of the peas Sally was shelling in the garden - indicates the insemination or blossoming of their relationship.

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WEEK 11 | City Blues: Chicago - Long Distance Call

It seemed that quite a few of the people in the class considered Long Distance Call to be more of a sweet song, a song that expressed the difficulties of having a long distance relationship and the importance of communicating with each other; but I did not see it that way. In fact, I did not think the song was sweet at all. It was very humanizing, expressing the basic need of reassurance, something - a bit of hope - to cling on to, when talking to someone who has meaning to you. This man just wanted his attention, his love, to be reciprocated but instead

it was met with "another mule kickin' in your stall." 

Unaware of the meaning that the last line of the lyrics, I assumed that that the phrase had something to do with the woman talking with another man. After I looked up the meaning, the tone of the song shifted quite a bit.

 

<< "another mule kickin' in your stall" = your significant other is having sex with someone else; being cheated on >>

This bothered me. This whole song bothered me. I could relate to the man and yet his foolish hopes enraged me. The overall feeling of the song reminded me of my past long distance relationship.

Those few phone calls you get mean everything and nothing at the same time. Talking on the phone exhausts me, I try to avoid it as much as possible. Love wanes when the person on the other line does not seem to reciprocate your interest. It was just too many memories, lost

dreams and hopes, and so much time wasted on a call that probably meant close to nothing in the grander scheme of things. I am not sure where this rant is taking me but it is brewing a foul reminder of why I felt so trapped by a single phone call.

My idea for the song was to represent a call in which the receiver hangs up on the caller and lets the phone just drop, alluding to the phrase "dropped call." The flowers growing out of the speaker end of the phone are broken in the

stems, indicating that the callers sweet words and promises where broken by the receiver's reluctance to accept them. And lastly, the accident that probably made the biggest statement on the painting were my fingerprints. The wash I initially laid had not dried completely when I decided to handle it, leaving finger prints everywhere. Immediately it struck me that my fingerprints could be interpreted as the dirty fingerprints of the man that was touching the woman all over.

In the end, the piece came together, but the tone that I wanted to represent was not as poignant, dark, and repulsive as I wanted it to be. It was caught in limbo of my fancy turning to brighter colors but my intentions retaining the overall form of the images I wanted to be represented. It is ironic, though. I am as disappointed and repulsed by my rendition of the song as the song itself. Maybe it was not my skill that lacked in this painting but my disgust that overpowered my capability of making it a stronger piece. The feeling I register when looking at my work is the

same as the feeling I register when listening to Long Distance Call: I no longer give a damn.

Hear my phone ringing

Sound like a long distance call
Hear my phone keep ringing
Sound like a long distance call
When I picked up my receiver
The party said 
"Another mule kickin' in your stall"