I finished reading a book today called The Songlines. Written by Bruce Chatwin, it describes his trip to Australia to learn about the Aboriginal cultures of the continent. The work, a mixture of travel memoir, fiction and philosophy, is based on an actual trip he took a couple years before his death in 1989. It details Chatwin's travels on the continent as he tries to understand the “songlines.”

The songlines are the fundamental element of the Aboriginal creation stories. At the beginning of time, the “Dreamtime”, the Ancestors created themselves out of clay and began to wander across the earth, singing out the names of everything they saw—animals, plants, rocks and streams—thus defining their existence.

The paths that the Ancestors traveled on as they sang are known as songlines (or dream-tracks), and the songs are passed down from generation to generation. When an aboriginal goes ‘walkabout’, he follows the original songline that his ancestors did. The songs are always sung in exactly the same way, as a way of maintaining the creation. If a wanderer remembers his song and does not deviate from its path, he can never get lost. The melodies along each line are constant from one end of the continent to the other. They are transferred across boundaries where one clan’s territory ends and another’s begins. The melody stays the same, even as the words would change. In addition to maintaining the creation, the songlines also act as trading routes among the clans.

According to Seth Godin, “art” is a gift that you give to someone that causes something in them to change. An artist, therefore is someone with the ability and willingness to create such a gift. An artist actively seeks not only to share part of himself, but he does it with a purpose. An artist wants to share his own emotions, but if these do not have an effect on others, it is nothing more than yelling in the proverbial forest where no one can hear the sound of a tree falling. It is only talking to hear himself talk. While this can be therapeutic, it is narcissistic and is not art. Art must be received by others if it is to be called art.

Seth Godin wrote about this in his book Linchpin, and while the book’s organization is not very good, the content resonated with me like few other books have (Shop Class as Soulcraft is another recent read that I would recommend). In fact the book gave me the encouragement to start this blog. I know that the blog has a long way to go before it is where I want it to be, but this is going to be one of the mediums I use for my art. For now, I want to use it to give you a better feel for what China is like (and later, wherever I land). Maybe it will help you see something in a different light. I hope it at least makes you laugh once in a while. Whatever it ends up being, I assure you that it will continue to grow and change. Norman Bodek, a friend and philosopher (among other things), always says that “all we can do is put our energy into something and see where it takes us. the most important thing is to keep growing.” And so I grow, as does this blog.