Sailor songs

In his article 'Envoi,' Griel Marcus describes folk songs and cowboy songs as seeming like they've been "sung forever" -- many cowhand and sailor songs sound this way to me, but not the one I chose for my art piece this week.

I made a comic strip based directly on the song 'The Flying Cloud' precisely because of what is sung and how dated it is. The song is about a man's who starts out as a young innocent sailor and ends up locked in prison for piracy. In between, he works on a slave ship, which he describes in sad detail. In the final verse he regrets becoming a pirate and warns other young men, but there's no warning about getting involved in the slave trade, even though it seems like that started the whole thing. It's just overlooked as a place where he might have went wrong. I doubt that this song is sung much today. It's a sad song because wherever the man turns, he fails to find any satisfaction, or stay out of trouble. But to me, hearing the song today with little connection to that time, it's also a bit funny and ironic.

I'm content for this piece to be humorous and detached, not personal and deeply emotional. It's not a song I feel much personal attachment to, I just want to bring out this contradiction in the drawing. However, I've been thinking about ways to do a better job of telling the story in my drawing. I've added a pirate flag to one of the ships, hoping that might help, but it's still missing some elements that would make the story funnier. I think if I really wanted to do this justice I would make it 4 or 5 pages longer.

It's a strange note to end the semester on, but no work is ever really done, so I think it's appropriate.