So, tonight at 11:10ish PM EST, I clicked the "send" button that turned in the final assignment to be completed in my four years here at Williams.
This was pretty exciting, and my first order of business was very clear, to listen to "Freebird."
After my last final of my freshman fall, I came home to my room, sat down, and listened to Freebird from start to finish. This episode sort of established the song as something particularly special (not that it wasn't already). It served as a chance to sit down and recover for a solid 9 minutes and 8 seconds. After the end of the spring semester, I did the same thing. This time, it signaled the coming of summer.
Once I had established this ritual, I made a point to never listen to Freebird outside of this context, in an effort to somehow keep it sacred or something.
Sophmore year I vividly recall finishing my Physics 142 exam in the physics 203 classroom (it didn't go well), then biking home as fast as possible, and hitting the play button on my computer, since I had set up the song before leaving for the test. I played it really loudly and was able to navigate around the floor while still hearing it, so that represented a bit of locational freedom.
Junior year I kept the tradition (ritual?) alive, and still managed to avoid the song outside of exam periods.
Tonight, as my final assignment (a paper about the economics of the Chinese auto market) drew closer to completion, I realized that my streak could be in danger. My past 7 semesters had each ended with me finishing a final exam, heading straight home, and listening to Freebird. Now I was sitting in the computer lab, attaching the paper to an email to my professor, and getting ready to click "send."
Then, I clicked it. I had my headphones on, listening to other music, and decided that now I would just find a copy of Freebird (sung by Lynard Skynard of course) and listen to it in the computer lab. A couple of Google searches turned up empty and I was getting slightly worried. Then, I found the Wikipedia entry. It is fairly complete (see it
here), and had some links to other sources. At the very end of the article, I found what I had always been looking for. It was a link to the Google video entry of Lynard Skynard performing live at the Oakland Coliseum on June 4th, 1977. Watch it
here.
The video is 12 minutes and 4 seconds, and perfectly captures everything about the song I had been experiencing for four years. Well, kind of. I mean it basically looked like a bunch of hippies sort of swaying for a while, and then going crazy at about the 5 minute mark, but the main idea was that it showed that it was a song that could affect people. The fact that it is a live performance, plus the addition of the video footage made this final listening experience a perfect finale to my years of doing lots of work at Williams. I sat there at the computer and enjoyed myself for the full 12 minutes, and was able to leave the library knowing I had stayed true to the perhaps not-so-silly ritual of confirming to myself that I was once again, free as a bird now.
