The Songlines Quotes
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The Songlines Quotes
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“As a general rule of biology, migratory species are less 'aggressive' than sedentary ones.
There is one obvious reason why this should be so. The migration itself, like the pilgrimage, is the hard journey: a 'leveller' on which the 'fit' survive and stragglers fall by the wayside.
The journey thus pre-empts the need for hierarchies and shows of dominance. The 'dictators' of the animal kingdom are those who live in an ambience of plenty. The anarchists, as always, are the 'gentlemen of the road'.”
― The Songlines
There is one obvious reason why this should be so. The migration itself, like the pilgrimage, is the hard journey: a 'leveller' on which the 'fit' survive and stragglers fall by the wayside.
The journey thus pre-empts the need for hierarchies and shows of dominance. The 'dictators' of the animal kingdom are those who live in an ambience of plenty. The anarchists, as always, are the 'gentlemen of the road'.”
― The Songlines
“Sluggish and sedentary peoples, such as the Ancient Egyptians-- with their concept of an afterlife journey through the Field of Reeds-- project on to the next world the journeys they failed to make in this one.”
― The Songlines
― The Songlines
“If this were so; if the desert were 'home'; if our instincts were forged in the desert; to survive the rigours of the desert - then it is easier to understand why greener pastures pall on us; why possessions exhaust us, and why Pascal's imaginary man found his comfortable lodgings a prison.”
― The Songlines
― The Songlines
“A journey is a fragment of Hell.”
― The Songlines
― The Songlines
“Proust, more perspicaciously than any other writer, reminds us that the 'walks' of childhood form the raw material of our intelligence.”
― The Songlines
― The Songlines
“Pascal, in one of his gloomier pensées, gave it as his opinion that all our miseries stemmed from a single cause: our inability to remain quietly in a room. Why, he asked, must a man with sufficient to live on feel drawn to divert himself on long sea voyages? To dwell in another town? To go off in search of a peppercorn? Or go off to war and break skulls? Later, on further reflection, having discovered the cause of our misfortunes, he wished to understand the reason for them, he found one very good reason: namely, the natural unhappiness of our weak mortal condition; so unhappy that when we gave to it all our attention, nothing could console us. One thing alone could alleviate our despair, and that was ‘distraction’ (divertissement): yet this was the worst of our misfortunes, for in distraction we were prevented from thinking about ourselves and were gradually brought to ruin.”
― The Songlines
― The Songlines
“Life is a bridge. Cross over it, but build no house on it.”
― The Songlines
― The Songlines
“Sometimes, I overheard my aunts discussing these blighted destinies; and Aunt Ruth would hug me, as if to forestall my following in their footsteps. Yet, from the way she lingered over such words as 'Xanadu' or 'Samarkand' or the 'wine-dark sea,' I think she also felt the trouble of the 'wanderer in her soul.”
― The Songlines
― The Songlines
“Richard Lee calculated that a Bushman child will be carried a distance of 4,900 miles before he begins to walk on his own. Since, during this rhythmic phase, he will be forever naming the contents of his territory, it is impossible he will not become a poet.”
― The Songlines
― The Songlines
“The Bushmen, who walk distances across the Kalahari, have no idea of the soul's survival in another world. 'When we die, we die,' they say. 'The wind blows away our foot prints, and that is the end of us.'
Sluggish and sedentary peoples, such as the Ancient Egyptians – with their concept of an afterlife journey through the Field of Reeds – project on to the next world the journeys they failed to make in this one.”
― The Songlines
Sluggish and sedentary peoples, such as the Ancient Egyptians – with their concept of an afterlife journey through the Field of Reeds – project on to the next world the journeys they failed to make in this one.”
― The Songlines
“Poetry proper is never merely a higher mode (melos) of everyday language. It is rather the reverse: everyday language is a forgotten and therefore used-up poem, from which there hardly resounds a call any longer. Martin Heidegger, ‘Language”
― The Songlines
― The Songlines
“Above all, do not lose your desire to walk: every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness; I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it … but by sitting still, and the more one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill … Thus if one just keeps on walking, everything will be all right. Søren Kierkegaard, letter to Jette (1847)”
― The Songlines
― The Songlines
“Music’, said Arkady, ‘is a memory bank for finding one’s way about the world.”
― The Songlines
― The Songlines
“Coleridge once jotted in a notebook, 'The Prince of Darkness is a Gentleman.' What is so beguiling about a specialist predator is the idea of an intimacy with the Beast! For if, originally, there was one particular Beast, would we not want to fascinate him as he fascinated us? Would we not want to charm him, as the angels charmed the lions in Daniel's cell?”
― The Songlines
― The Songlines
“What am I doing here? Rimbaud writing home from Ethiopia”
― The Songlines
― The Songlines
“Fino a quando, Signore, fino a quando?... "Finché non siano devastate le città...". I Profeti confidavano in un Giorno della Restaurazione, in cui gli Ebrei sarebbero ritornati al frugale ascetismo della vita nomade.”
― The Songlines
― The Songlines
“Max Weber traces the origins of modern capitalism to certain Calvinists who, disregarding the parable of the camel and the eye of the needle, preach the doctrine of the just rewards of work. Yet the concept of shifting and increasing one's "wealth on the hoof" has a history as old as herding itself. Domesticated animals are "currency", "things that run", from the French courir. In fact almost all our monetary expressions - capital, stock, pecuniary, chattel, sterling - perhaps even the idea of "growth" itself - have their origins in the pastoral world.”
― The Songlines
― The Songlines
“Quali sono, quindi le prime impressioni che un bimbo nomade ha del mondo? Un capezzolo dondolante e una cascata d'oro.”
― The Songlines
― The Songlines
“Paddy Booz tells of meeting a Taoist Grand Master on the streets of a provincial Chinese city. The man was wearing his Grand Master’s blue robes and high hat. He and his young disciple had walked the length and breadth of China.
'But what', Paddy asked him, 'did you do during the Cultural Revolution?'
'I went for a walk in the Kun L’ung Mountains.”
― The Songlines
'But what', Paddy asked him, 'did you do during the Cultural Revolution?'
'I went for a walk in the Kun L’ung Mountains.”
― The Songlines
“I think I would be happy in that place I happen not to be, and this question of moving house is the subject of a perpetual dialogue I have with my soul. Baudelaire, ‘Any Where Out of this World!”
― The Songlines
― The Songlines
“[...] la selezione naturale ci ha foggiati - dalla struttura delle cellule cerebrali alla struttura dell'alluce - per una vita di viaggi stagionali a piedi in una torrida distesa di rovi o di deserto.
Se era così, se la "patria" era il deserto, se i nostri istinti si erano forgiati nel deserto, per sopravvivere ai suoi rigori - allora era facile capire perché i pascoli più verdi ci vengono a noia, perché le ricchezze ci logorano e perchè l'immaginario uomo di Pascal considerava i suoi confortevoli alloggi una prigione.”
― The Songlines
Se era così, se la "patria" era il deserto, se i nostri istinti si erano forgiati nel deserto, per sopravvivere ai suoi rigori - allora era facile capire perché i pascoli più verdi ci vengono a noia, perché le ricchezze ci logorano e perchè l'immaginario uomo di Pascal considerava i suoi confortevoli alloggi una prigione.”
― The Songlines
“Senza costrizione non si potrebbe fondare nessun insediamento. [...]”
― The Songlines
― The Songlines
“Un marabutto smise di pregare per interrogarmi.
"Esiste un popolo chiamato mericani?" chiese.
"Sì".
"Dicono che hanno visitato la luna".
"E' vero".
"Sono blasfemi".”
― The Songlines
"Esiste un popolo chiamato mericani?" chiese.
"Sì".
"Dicono che hanno visitato la luna".
"E' vero".
"Sono blasfemi".”
― The Songlines
“Al termine di una notte di luna un cane ulula e poi ammutolisce. La luce del fuoco tremola e la sentinella sbadiglia. Un uomo vecchissimo passa silenzioso davanti alle tende, e saggia il terreno con un bastone per accertarsi di non inciampare nelle corde tese. Poi prosegue. La sua gente si trasferisce in una regione più verde. Mosè si reca all'appuntamento con gli sciacalli e gli avvoltoi.”
― The Songlines
― The Songlines
“Our fatal flaw, or Fall, he insisted, was to have developed ‘artificial weapons’ instead of natural ones. As a species, we thus lacked the instinctive inhibitions which prevented the ‘professional carnivores’ from murdering their fellows.”
― The Songlines
― The Songlines
“Tengo una visión, la visión de que los Trazos de la Canción se despliegan a través de los continentes y los tiempos; de que los hombres han dejado un rastro de canción allí donde han pisado (canción de la cual podemos captar un eco de cuando en cuando), y de que estos rastros han de remontarse, en el tiempo y el espacio, hasta un rincón aislado de la sabana africana, donde el primer hombre abrió la boca para desafiar los terrores que lo rodeaban, y gritó la primera estrofa de la Canción del Mundo: «¡YO SOY!»”
― The Songlines
― The Songlines
“La historia de la mutación de Licaón en lobo me hizo remontar a un ventoso día de primavera en Arcadia cuando había visto, sobre el mismo casquete de piedra caliza del monte Licaón, una imagen del rey fiera agazapado. Leí la historia de Jacinto y Adonis; de Deucalión y el Diluvio; y de cómo «las cosas vivientes» fueron creadas a partir del tibio fango nilótico. Y, en razón de lo que ahora sabía acerca de los Trazos de la Canción, se me ocurrió pensar que tal vez toda la mitología clásica representaba los vestigios de un gigantesco «mapa de canciones»: que todas las idas y venidas de los dioses y las diosas, las cuevas y los manantiales sagrados, las esfinges y las quimeras, y todos los hombres y mujeres que se transformaron en ruiseñores o cuervos, en ecos o narcisos, en piedras o estrellas… todos ellos se podrían interpretar en términos de una geografía totémica.”
― The Songlines
― The Songlines
“There are two hotels in Djang: The Hotel Windsor and, across the street, the Hotel Anti-Windsor.”
― The Songlines
― The Songlines
“The stucco façade is painted a pale mint green with the words CHARM HOTEL in bold black letters. A leaking gutter pipe has washed away the letter C, so that it now reads...”
― The Songlines
― The Songlines