Recently I visited Larrakia Country, Darwin, to fulfil a dream I’ve had for awhile – to meet some of the authors of Songspirals: Sharing Women’s Wisdom of Country through Songlines. I’ve mentioned this wonderful book before, because it is a key inspiration on the work I do now: creating opportunities for people to experience deep, embodied connection to the animate and imaginal worlds. All my courses raise funds for the Yolngu community where the authors live, to support cultural maintenance: keeping the songs alive and sung. So it was wonderful to finally meet a couple of the women I’d be in touch with over the years. I met up with Djawundil at the Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair, a thrumming gathering of many of the best artists and artworks in Australia. Some of Djawundil’s relatives were performing their dances, so we sat together and watched for awhile. I also had lunch with Sarah Wright, one of the academic collaborators and co-writers of Songspirals, a humble and lovely woman. It was great to be able to share with her some of the co-becoming processes of our writing courses – she was intrigued and moved by the description of what we do. She spoke of how long it has taken to be able to bring Songspirals into the world, the importance of a long process of trust and respect. They’ve been collaborating for 20 years now! She made the comment that, in her experience, Yolngu are able to live deeply in connection with everything around them, to live in the imaginal realm permanently. Sarah’s experience was that the Yolngu were able to impart that experience to their collaborators gradually through their long process of listening. This connected way of being is of course innate to their culture, and part of my academic research has been how Aboriginal people have sought to communicate their knowledge to settler culture. Miriam Rose Ungurmerr spoke of it as ‘dadirri, deep listening, the greatest gift we can give to our fellow Australians’. This is a level of generosity almost unfathomable, yet it also makes sense. They know they need to bring everyone in ‘under the law of the land’ as Tyson Yunkaporta put it, if we are to protect the earth. To support this, and to further this, their project, is what I seek to do in my small way. The women were in Darwin for an event they were collaborating on: an extraordinary production based on the Songspirals book: theatre in the round, a circle of audience around the dancers, with incredible video projections as well as recordings of the voices of the women keening, crying milkarri. I was lucky enough to experience it too, and it felt like a true honour. The feeling was of being invited to attend a sacred ceremony. They hope to bring the production to other parts of Australia – if you ever hear of it, make sure you go! At an artist talk I attended they spoke of how the men sing, and the women keen, the Songspirals. Women’s work is to cry, to open the heart, to break it and then mend it with the magic of tears, the salt water that is akin to the oceans that swell around their homeland. I’m so glad to have had this chance to foster these relationships, and I feel grateful to be able to ‘pay the rent’ in such a meaningful way through fundraising through my courses. If you’re interested in attending, you could check out my events page and see when I have one coming up. |
