ABSTRACT
In 2005 I was making a film with a community theatre group in Bristol. We had to film one of the performers, J., getting off the train at his local rail station. That done, we drove to the local community centre to meet the rest of the group. As we motored, J., who was brought up in the area, started to tell us about the places we were passing. He rattled off facts at an amazing speed but had to break off from what he was telling us about each place to start telling us about the next and the next, as they came upon us, pell mell, at 30 miles per hour. We ended up with a dizzying array of half-finished facts and stories told at triple the normal speed of speech. As we were listening, I remembered a story told by Bruce Chatwin (1988:292) about an Aboriginal travelling companion whose ‘lips moved at the speed of a ventriloquist’s and, through them, came a rustle: the sound of wind through branches …. Limpy had learnt his Native Cat couplets for walking pace, at four miles an hour, and we were travelling at twenty-five’. Aboriginal peoples bring their land and themselves into existence by sing-walking their songlines. J. was attempting something similar and we were also travelling too fast for him to give us the details. This kind of recounting can only be properly done at a walking pace. Travelling faster we lose the ability to tell it all because as we begin, other memories surface, we make further connections to things forgotten. This prompted me to think about the stories we miss, the intricate and intimate details that are glossed over in our hurry to get to our destination. Walking affords us an opportunity to look around, making connections to our past traces and forgotten narratives, our buried songlines, thereby restitching our attachments and engagements to our surroundings.
