Oh Mary Don't You Weep

I struggled for a while to connect personally with this song so my visual response began pretty abstractly. I tried for some time to pull my own meaning out of the piece in relation to the song and decided that the song was about ascension, not only in the Biblical sense but also in the sense of present (during the period of the song's origin) physical and cultural bondage. The orange blot floating in the blue seemed to represent this for me. 

I later added the trees, which I was conflicted about in hindsight but I will try to explain their significance. The proverbial "pines" which recur in American folk music often seem to refer to a place of darkness or mystery, abstractly speaking. This aligns with the perception of nature and the undeveloped landscape which was prevalent during this period in American history (we have recently been discussing in my History of American Landscape Architecture). Thus the pines represent, broadly, a place of darkness, and the wash represents the ascension from that place. 

Leadbelly's In the Pines

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MkfTYPmLlA

Bill Monroe (the version I learned): 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1_pfC-q7T0

Leadbelly's Lyrics:

Black girl, black Girl, dont lie to me

Tell me where did you sleep last night?
In the pines, In the pines, Where the sun never shine
I shivered the whole night through.

Black girl, black girl, where will you go
Im going where the cold wind blows
In the pines, In the pines, Where the sun never shine
I will shiver the whole night through.

Black girl, black Girl, dont lie to me
Tell me where did you sleep last night?
In the pines, In the pines, Where the sun never shine
I shivered the whole night through.

My Husband was a Railroad man
Killed a mile and a half from here
His head, was found, In a drivers wheel
And his body hasn't never been found.

Black girl, black girl, where will you go
Im going where the cold wind blows
You called me weak, and you called me the most
You called rita, bring me back home.

Bill Monroe's Lyrics

The longest train I ever saw
Went down that Georgia line
The engine passed at six o'clock
And the cab passed by at nine

In the pines, in the pines
Where the sun never shines
And we shiver when the cold wind blows

I asked my captain for the time of day
He said he throwed his watch away
A long steel rail and a short cross tie
I'm on my way back home

Little girl, little girl, what have I done
That makes you treat me so
You caused me to weep, you caused me to mourn
You caused me to leave my home

My father was an engineer
Died a mile out of town
His head was found in the driving gear
But his body was never found