How to Explore the Songlines of Gaia.
Telling Stories as My Mind Walks in Gaia’s Footsteps.
Genesis.
I published “The Technology of Songlines” in December 2020 based on a challenge from Desiree Driesenaar: “write about my approach to technology that supports life. Technology that only has health for humans and the planet at its core”.
The story was written from an engineering perspective. In subsequent writings about Songlines and Gaia, I promoted climate action, devised ethical IT applications and planned some pilot community projects. The pandemic put a stop to my activities.
Pandemic lockdowns affected my life in expected ways such as loss of work, cancelled speaking opportunities and travel restrictions, but perversely it opened up new avenues in my thinking. I merged my developing thoughts on Gaia and spirituality into a holistic approach that I now call “Gaian Thinking”. I am broadly in tune with the philosophy of Gaianism.
Gaian Thinking is not easily described, it has to be experienced. At best my story is an outline of thoughts and directions. No doubt there are worthy songlines to tread and equally there are broken songlines in my thoughts. Every day it seems I mentally stumble over formless songline possibilities.
Please give me feedback, the more questions I have, the better my thinking and I hope the better your reading experience through my explanations.
Gaia and Songlines.
The essence of Gaia is connectedness. James Lovelock states Gaia’s goal as “to regulate the planet’s surface conditions so as always to be as favourable as possible for contemporary life”. We now find ourselves in the situation that, through our own actions, we are responsible for preventing Gaia from effectively regulating the Earth’s environment. The result is accelerated global warming: bushfires, floods and, extinctions.
I wanted a thinking framework to guide my analysis of the interactions between documented Gaian eco-systems, such as the Great Barrier Reef. Fortuitously, I came across Lynne Kelly’s 2017 book “The Memory Code” that described how cultural memory was passed down through countless generations of indigenous Australians through intensive memory training and dissemination techniques called Songlines. The Songline became the basis for my thinking framework.
A Songline is literally a path in the landscape linking sacred locations (see diagram below). Songlines are bound to the progression of seasons. Tribal elders carefully co-ordinate the timing of travels between sites to ensure correct timing of ritual performances. Elders perform the rituals in recitation, song and dance: they literally sing the landscape.
The term “ritual” in the context of a songline has no religious connotation, rather it stresses the careful repetition of time honoured performances. Equally, the term “sacred site” should be understood as nothing more than an honoured and revered location of special cultural significance. The performance order of a Songline’s rituals is dictated by a site’s location, since the tribe must walk between locations.
Distinctive landscape features and presence of animals at each ritual site act as memory cues for rituals. Australian Aboriginals also make use of rock art, bark paintings and carvings to act as memory aids.
Songline knowledge has been restricted and carefully managed by generations of elders to ensure accurate repetition. As an example, David Attenborough in his 2015 documentary of the Great Barrier Reef tells of songlines describing the formation of the reef some 12,000 years ago. Scientific evidence supports the events narrated in these songlines that were passed down through the ancestors of the tribes still inhabiting the Queensland area. In fact, Songlines have accurately preserved the knowledge of the Aboriginal culture spanning some 65,000 years. It is the oldest continuous living culture on Earth.
Songlines are an elegant way of thinking about knowledge, connections and relationships over time. I have adopted this songline thinking to my spiritual development and understanding of Gaia.
My Zen Garden as an Aid to Gaian Thinking.
I use the concept of the Zen garden as a concrete, tactile way of visualising the ideas and relationships in Gaia. Given that my Zen Garden is in my loungeroom, I had to adapt to the constraints of space. I started from Lynne Kelly conceptualisation of Stonehenge as a series of linked songline performance spaces.
Dolmens are considered Neolithic tombs. However, there remains much that is unknown about them. I think they could have been places of reverence and songline performance spaces for passing down cultural knowledge, much like Stonehenge. So, I use my model (pictured) of a Dolmen as the performance space for an idea that is a focus of my analysis. I add shapes (pebbles) for related ideas and use a brush to shape relationships in the sand. The sun plays the crucial part of time as the beam through the blinds traverses the sand. Think of the movement of the beam of light as the tribe walking between sacred sites. The light also creates areas of dark and light in the sand with highlights from quartz crystals.
I developed my story on my vanilla vine and interactions with the LED lighting system using Gaian Thinking, although admittedly the vine was a brushed line in the Zen Garden’s sand.
Imagination runs riot!
Conclusion.
Thinking is a never ending songline. One thought leads to another and then doubles back creating patterns of relationships over time. These memory techniques in my story allow me to trace and develop thoughts. I must admit it doesn’t stop me forgetting to buy things when I go shopping or being late for dinner.
Nevertheless it’s fun. Blessed be.
