Hi everbody!
Okay. An ongoing question/discussion I have with my readers, and more so my yet to readers, is the concept of a "Songline."
Now, the book is not so metaphysical as this, nor is it a dry. But the concept relates to the book, and the book encapsulates the concept. . . . So, that said, here you are.
~
Songlines are about singing where you've been or creating a map with words. The literal concept of Songlines is to "sing the trail", to "sing the place", to recreate and remember the physical landscape in song. And, it should be noted, this doesn't just apply to a literal landscape. Since few of us rely on a literal landscape for our sustenance anymore this concept can be extended to any figurative landscape. We all yearn for a sense of place and this is one way to achieve it.
Songlines in Australia can extend thousands of miles. Aborigines can unerringly find their way across terrain unknown to them simply by knowing the land's song--the songline. The Navajo Deerway Chant is a healing ceremony based on a songline of a couple hundred miles which circles a particular valley in Arizona.
Ones immediate purpose of Songlines is to introduce them as a concept which sums up or encapsulates your particular experiences of a specific location. Using words and drummed "phrases," these Songlines are the equivalent of maps of experience which, whenever they are played and sung or said, will guide you back to and through the places you walked. They will return you to (or to you) the feelings and events you experienced each night. Like all maps, the more specific Songlines are, the more useful they'll be for you and others.
To create Songlines:
1. Take the time to recall the feelings specific to the particular places you've walked/frequented. Each environment is very different from any other. In order to create a Songline one must be aware of that difference.
2. Retrace the course of the travel in your mind, what you saw and felt what occurred, and what was heard .
3. Remember details such as the texture of the sand, the profile of the mesa you saw while walking along the arroyo, the chokecherry trees growing along the stream, etc.,etc.
4. Start attaching words to these images. As is often true in poetry, the fewer words it takes to describe and evoke your experience of place, the more powerful the description will be.
5. The final step is to fit the words of your memories and impressions into a "song."
Go take a walk around the block. Then come up with several images of that walk. Add what you hear and felt. Try to make them combinations of experience and details of place. What makes this block unique from other blocks? Begin putting your experiences into lines and verses that match the rhythms and patterns of your walk/block.
Creating Songlines isn't as hard as it might sound. Don't think about writing poetry, certainly don't think about making art. Do your composing in the peripheral state, the same state you used to recollect details, the same state you were in while dreaming.
The whole existence of Songlines is based on the fact that in the peripheral mind, there's little difference between what you see and what you feel, little difference between who you are and where you are.
Songlines were once common to all hunter-gatherers. All peoples who wandered needed these Land Songs. The Aboriginal peoples of Australia have undoubtedly created the most complex and comprehensive Songlines. They combine mythology with family and clan history and literally follow trade routes from one side of the Australian continent to the other, passing through as many as twenty different language groups. The common element of such a long song is the melody, and its melodies that literally hold the Australian continent and its people together. So important are Songlines to Aborigines that unsung land is dead land, and if a song is forgotten, any land which is no longer sung over, will die. To allow such a thing to occur is the worst possible crime for an Aborigine. To be able to sing a Songline indicates an historically unbroken, intimate knowledge of the land. In short, it marries people to place. This is called ownership.
________________________________________
Now, the book is not so metaphysical as this, nor is it a dry. But the concept relates to the book, and the book encapsulates the concept. . . . So, that said, here you are.
~
Songlines are about singing where you've been or creating a map with words. The literal concept of Songlines is to "sing the trail", to "sing the place", to recreate and remember the physical landscape in song. And, it should be noted, this doesn't just apply to a literal landscape. Since few of us rely on a literal landscape for our sustenance anymore this concept can be extended to any figurative landscape. We all yearn for a sense of place and this is one way to achieve it.
Songlines in Australia can extend thousands of miles. Aborigines can unerringly find their way across terrain unknown to them simply by knowing the land's song--the songline. The Navajo Deerway Chant is a healing ceremony based on a songline of a couple hundred miles which circles a particular valley in Arizona.
Ones immediate purpose of Songlines is to introduce them as a concept which sums up or encapsulates your particular experiences of a specific location. Using words and drummed "phrases," these Songlines are the equivalent of maps of experience which, whenever they are played and sung or said, will guide you back to and through the places you walked. They will return you to (or to you) the feelings and events you experienced each night. Like all maps, the more specific Songlines are, the more useful they'll be for you and others.
To create Songlines:
1. Take the time to recall the feelings specific to the particular places you've walked/frequented. Each environment is very different from any other. In order to create a Songline one must be aware of that difference.
2. Retrace the course of the travel in your mind, what you saw and felt what occurred, and what was heard .
3. Remember details such as the texture of the sand, the profile of the mesa you saw while walking along the arroyo, the chokecherry trees growing along the stream, etc.,etc.
4. Start attaching words to these images. As is often true in poetry, the fewer words it takes to describe and evoke your experience of place, the more powerful the description will be.
5. The final step is to fit the words of your memories and impressions into a "song."
Go take a walk around the block. Then come up with several images of that walk. Add what you hear and felt. Try to make them combinations of experience and details of place. What makes this block unique from other blocks? Begin putting your experiences into lines and verses that match the rhythms and patterns of your walk/block.
Creating Songlines isn't as hard as it might sound. Don't think about writing poetry, certainly don't think about making art. Do your composing in the peripheral state, the same state you used to recollect details, the same state you were in while dreaming.
The whole existence of Songlines is based on the fact that in the peripheral mind, there's little difference between what you see and what you feel, little difference between who you are and where you are.
Songlines were once common to all hunter-gatherers. All peoples who wandered needed these Land Songs. The Aboriginal peoples of Australia have undoubtedly created the most complex and comprehensive Songlines. They combine mythology with family and clan history and literally follow trade routes from one side of the Australian continent to the other, passing through as many as twenty different language groups. The common element of such a long song is the melody, and its melodies that literally hold the Australian continent and its people together. So important are Songlines to Aborigines that unsung land is dead land, and if a song is forgotten, any land which is no longer sung over, will die. To allow such a thing to occur is the worst possible crime for an Aborigine. To be able to sing a Songline indicates an historically unbroken, intimate knowledge of the land. In short, it marries people to place. This is called ownership.
________________________________________
In the Southwest, the Navajo are known for the lyrical beauty of their Songlines. The following lines are from a Bringing Home Ceremony.
I fly around the edge of Fluted Rock
Now I being Early Morning Boy, I walk around the edge
The Black Mountain, hogan at sky center, I walk around the edge
These being Wind People, young men, I walk around the edge
With the Sun being still there I encircle it, I walk around the edge
I walk around the edge, I walk around the edge, I walk around the edge.
~
The sum of a Songline when we write about a journey becomes our communal map of that journey, of the place and our experience of and in that place. Songlines reinforce our unity with the land, and express's the same oneness we experience while engaged in the peripheral mind.
~
Well, I hope that helps.
I fly around the edge of Fluted Rock
Now I being Early Morning Boy, I walk around the edge
The Black Mountain, hogan at sky center, I walk around the edge
These being Wind People, young men, I walk around the edge
With the Sun being still there I encircle it, I walk around the edge
I walk around the edge, I walk around the edge, I walk around the edge.
~
The sum of a Songline when we write about a journey becomes our communal map of that journey, of the place and our experience of and in that place. Songlines reinforce our unity with the land, and express's the same oneness we experience while engaged in the peripheral mind.
~
Well, I hope that helps.
D.C.
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