Bruce Chatwin, 'The Songlines'
In: map. London: Institute of International Visual Arts, 1996, 1-15.
Bruce Chatwin
'A song', he said, 'was both map and direction-finder.
Providing you knew the song, you would always find your way
across the country.'
'And would a man on "Walkabout" always be travelling
down one of the Songlines?'
'In the old days, yes,' he agreed. 'Nowadays, they go by
train or car.'
'Suppose the man strayed from his Songline?'
'He was trespassing. He might get speared for it.'
'But as long as he struck to the track, he'd always find people
who shared his Dreaming? Who were, in fact, his brothers?'
'Yes'
'From whom he could expect hospitality?'
'And vice versa.'
'So song is a kind of passport and meal-ticket?'
'Again, it's more complicated'
In theory, at least, the whole of Australia could be read as
a musical score. There was hardly a rock or a creek in the
country that could not or had not been sung. One should
perhaps visualize the Songlines as a spaghetti of Iliads
and Odysseys, writhing this way and that, in which every
'episode' was readable in terms of geology.