The Hammock Papers: Bruce Chatwin, The Songlines

29 January 2009

Bruce Chatwin, The Songlines

On this, my second snow-day in a row, I have spent the greater part of the day drinking tea, listening to Mozart and Django, and reading Bruce Chatwin's, The Songlines.

What a great read. The book is Chatwin's account of his travels into the Australian Outback (not the meat shack) to learn the meaning of the Aboriginal's ancient "Dreaming-tracks."

dreamtime.net.au describes them ...
Dreaming-tracks trace the creative journey of the Spirit Ancestors as they formed the land and laid down the Law. Dreaming tracks are sometimes called songlines. They record the travels of the Spirit Ancestors who "sung up" the country into life. It is believed that performing the right songs and ceremonies at points along the Dreaming track gives people direct access to the Dreaming. The Dreaming tells of the journey of Ancestral Beings who created the natural world. The Dreaming is infinite and links the past with the present to determine the future. It is the natural world, especially the land or county to which a person belongs, which provides the link between the people and The Dreaming.

I am fascinated by tales of trekkers. I am very fortunate to have a few friends who have traveled extensively and they patiently indulge me with their stories. In The Songlines, at the end of chapter 30, Chatwin contemplates man's desire to roam...

Read the excerpt from The Songlines here.

Subsequent pages in chapter 30 contain quotes Chatwin collected within the pages of his vrai moleskine. I will post these in future entries of HP.

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WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL