Sing your knowledge.

A quick review of Songlines; the power and the promise. By Lynne Kelly and Margo Neale

review by Duncan Farquhar

Songlines are Australian Aboriginal maps of ‘country’ and often ‘totems’ (borrungur in Noongar) expressed in song (and other artforms - dance, painting) that are memory aids, survival kits and law built from a relationship with nature.

Having read Bruce Chatwin's 1987 book, 'The Songlines' I was excited to approach this new 2020 treatment of the subject, especially after a rave review of the National Museum of Australia exhibition now showing in Perth from Phillip Adams on his radio show 'Late Night Live'

Lynn Kelly taking a 'memory and neurological' view was a different perspective from Chatwin's highly insightful but British, outsider perspective. However particularly helpful for me was Margo Neale's insider, Aboriginal perspective as she introduced the seven sisters stories and the artists involved in the exhibition.

A new term for me 'entorhinal grid cells' as the positioning system, encoding a cognitive representation of physical space. The idea that this is a deeply evolved, powerful knowledge architecture is very interesting. A system that ancient Greek and Roman orators tapped into with 'memory palace' techniques to massively expand their memory.

The invitation to participate in constructing a 'third archive' combining techniques of the Songlines with modern technologies is a profound idea. For me, I approach songlines as an outsider not knowing what stories I might be permitted to hear. I also approach them knowing that they are a rich law of how to relate to the landscape, other species and one another. A lore that will be lost and quickly fade into the past; to our peril.

This invitation is something I would love to take up with you the 'ecoconnected' community. The idea would be to write a song or do some art about your species and where it lives. The map, the spacial aspect, of doing this I think will be a very strong memory cue. Weaving in features that relate to your own life could be fun too; or a lesson from how your species is dealing with challenges and changes in its world. I tend to stop short of encouraging people to 'become' their species. Indigenous cultures do sometimes go there.

So overall should you read these books about Songlines? They are important ideas, well presented in three different ways in two different books. I aim to read things like this to help give resources to the ecoconnected community. I would rather see you spend this time doing some art/music with your own species and then going to the exhibition. Then compare what you find in your work with other songlines https://songlines.nma.gov.au/

I would hope this would help you understand and use songlines in your own knowledge architecture.

Then maybe read the books and share how we might do this better.