By the Australian aboriginals there is a temporal dimension, which is suspended between the present and the mythical time of the creation, during which the ancestors have expressed (=created) everything through songs, gestures, words. The aboriginals retrace the ways of the mythical beings - the ancient “Ways of the Songs”, which are visible only to their eyes - repeating the words and the sounds of the ancestors who, during interminable travels through an empty desert continent, made the world exist by singing it. Every stone, every source, every water point, spot of eucalyptuses, represents a concrete trace of a sacred drama: the all continent can be read like a musical score. Things only exist when they are perceived and named. Still today, every baby inherits one section of song for birth’s right. Its strophes are an inalienable private property and they delimit its territory. It has the right to lend them along one “way of the song” and to acquire the right of passage from its neighbors, receiving aid and hospitality. The man who leaves in walkabout (the ritual travel) walks and sings the strophes of its ancestors, without changing neither a word, neither a note. In this way he re-creates the Created. By naming it, he makes the world exist, naming it, he orients himself in the world.what is a walkabout?
By the Australian aboriginals there is a temporal dimension, which is suspended between the present and the mythical time of the creation, during which the ancestors have expressed (=created) everything through songs, gestures, words. The aboriginals retrace the ways of the mythical beings - the ancient “Ways of the Songs”, which are visible only to their eyes - repeating the words and the sounds of the ancestors who, during interminable travels through an empty desert continent, made the world exist by singing it. Every stone, every source, every water point, spot of eucalyptuses, represents a concrete trace of a sacred drama: the all continent can be read like a musical score. Things only exist when they are perceived and named. Still today, every baby inherits one section of song for birth’s right. Its strophes are an inalienable private property and they delimit its territory. It has the right to lend them along one “way of the song” and to acquire the right of passage from its neighbors, receiving aid and hospitality. The man who leaves in walkabout (the ritual travel) walks and sings the strophes of its ancestors, without changing neither a word, neither a note. In this way he re-creates the Created. By naming it, he makes the world exist, naming it, he orients himself in the world.
