The Songlines: Bruce Chatwin

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That, apparently, is what Songlines is about. It really is a rambling, discursive, ultimately brilliant exploration of territory, nomadism, and the the origin of violence in humans. Perhaps it is presumptuous, but I find it both entrancing and intriguing. While Chatwin repeatedly engages in pop-anthropology of dubious quality, he displays a breadth of imagination and a willingness to share it with the reader. Some may consider his views a little arrogant, but this does not detract from their scope. Chatwin, Bruce (2012), The Songlines, Random House, p.2, ISBN 978-1-4481-1302-6 , retrieved 29 July 2016 In The Irish Times, Julie Parsons, after consideration of the difficulties encountered by Chatwin—"born, raised and educated in the European tradition"—in apprehending the nature of the relationship between the Aborigines and the land on which they live, notes that as the reader follows his narrative, they "realise the impossibility of Chatwin's project. The written word cannot express this world", but the book is read nevertheless "with pleasure and fascination. We read it to learn how little we know." [4]

Indigenous songlines: a beautiful way to think about the Indigenous songlines: a beautiful way to think about the

Norris, Ray; Priscilla Norris; Cilla Norris (2009), Emu Dreaming: An Introduction to Australian Aboriginal Astronomy, Emu Dreaming, Bibcode: 2009edia.book.....N, ISBN 978-0-9806570-0-5 This is not the way that Chatwin describes the world—and not the way he experienced it. In his facts and in his fiction (he once observed that he didn’t think there was a distinction), the world is intricate but not opaque. Everything, from Aboriginal myths to childhood memories and adult encounters, is fixed, placed, and overdetermined. The connections between his darting brief images may be omitted, but they are not ambiguous, and the reader can only draw one conclusion from his parables. Chatwin does not second-guess himself and he does not expect the reader to second-guess him either.

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I'll confine this review to the last two objectives, which I'll try to discuss at a more abstract or conceptual level. I won't comment on any specific Songlines. A song was both map and direction-finder. Provided you knew the song, you could always find your way across [the] country... Chatwin describes his ultimate objective, "the question of questions" as "the nature of human restlessness". There is something else, though. “The days of the pontificateur are over,” he wrote in another letter, and Chatwin’s pontificating seems out of kilter with his subject. It turned out to be not possible to take the songlines out of the sacred, or the Aboriginal experience away from politics. The kind of breezy, apolitical, disinterested knowledge Chatwin prized– standing on the twin pillars of essential freedom and the primordial non-aggression of man– did not look so liberal in the context of a town built out of ongoing dispossession.

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Diana James, a senior researcher with the Australian National University’s Songlines of the Western Desert project, has spent decades in the continental centre talking to first peoples about their stories and songlines. Taçon, Paul (Spring 2005), "Chains of Connection", Griffith Review (9): 70–76, ISSN 1448-2924, archived from the original (PDF) on 30 September 2009 She was a critical force behind the Ngintaka project – an exhibition at the South Australian Museum and an associated book about a songline stretching across Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands told by Anangu Traditional Owners. The exhibition and the book became mired in controversy and legal action after a small group of APY traditional owners, including the well-known blind Indigenous activist Yami Lester, claimed they were not properly consulted and that cultural confidences were breached.It’s a practical thing for me. It’s in the little closet next to my mosquito net and my canteen. Just the essential things that I would need.