passes. So, if the Lizard Man were dragging his heels across the salt-pans of Lake Eyre, you could expect a succession of long flats, like Chopin’s ‘Funeral March.’ If he were skipping up and down the MacDonnel escarpments, you’d have a series of arpeggios and glissandos, like Liszt’s ‘Hungarian Rhapsodies.’ ”
“So a musical phrase is a map reference?”
“Music is a memory bank for finding one’s way about the world.”
This was vintage ratbaggery, of the sort spoofed by Steven Spielberg in Raiders of the Lost Ark , where Belloq, the French archaeologist, calls the ark of the covenant “a radio for talking to God.” Chatwin’s informants, including Arkady, were the first to tell him he misunderstood most of what they told him and exaggerated the rest. But by then The Songlines was a best-seller, particularly among the “desert-loving English.” At the 1987 Adelaide Festival of Arts, I ran into London literary agent Pat Kavanagh and her husband, novelist Julian Barnes. Pale-faced but resolute, they were headed for Alice Springs, and thence into the wilderness, seeking Chatwin’s musical route to revelation. Hopefully, someone in “the Alice” dissuaded them and they ended their visit in the air-conditioned comfort of a four-star hotel.
Chapter 13
Power Walks
Vanity made the Revolution. Liberty was just a pretext.
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE
C hatwin wasn’t entirely wrong. Walks can both symbolize and communicate.
Politicians know the symbolic value of the walk. Julius Caesar, by crossing the Rubicon, hardly more than a creek, committed himself to toppling the established order. The Rubicon marked the border of Italy, and any general who crossed it at the head of his army was regarded as being in revolt against the state. Ironically, nobody now knows where the Rubicon was. It has become the idea of a river, like the Fleet that used to run through medieval London, the Tank Stream that served Australia’s first settlers, and the Los Angeles River, now reduced to an occasional dribble down the middle of those enormous concrete culverts that deal with storm runoff and provide useful locations for movie car chases.
Map of Paris at the time of the 1789 Revolution
Like these rivers, the walk in political life exists more as a symbol than a fact. In most democratic parliaments, rival parties are ranged on opposites sides of the chamber, and changing sides is called “crossing the floor”—a short stroll, but metaphoric. In such gestures, brevity is an advantage. The Italian dictator Benito Mussolini seized power in the 1922 March on Rome, for which the Fascisti converged on the capital, scaring the government into capitulation. But il Duce himself barely put foot to pavement. He let his people do the walking and only joined for the last few blocks, so as to look fresh and resolute for the press.
Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the Revolution, 1830
Since nobody walks like the French, they are the people who have raised the political walk to near perfection. Before the Revolution of 1789, the inhabitants of Paris, when they wished to protest the latest excess of the aristocracy, walked the ten miles to Versailles and shook the railings until Louis and Marie-Antoinette took notice. Today, they’re less inclined to hit the bricks with such vigor and instead stage what’s called a manifestation—manif for short—or, as we would say, a demonstration.
Manifs are a feature of life in Paris, particularly when the weather is good and the chattering classes fancy a stroll with some friends. Most bring their kids and a picnic. The level of violence is low, to the point of barely existing, since everyone understands the real impact will be made on the evening TV news. By agreement with the city authorities, manifs keep clear of the main thoroughfares, at least once the journalists have got their shots of a boulevard thronged with protestors. Guided into one of the more roomy
“So a musical phrase is a map reference?”
“Music is a memory bank for finding one’s way about the world.”
This was vintage ratbaggery, of the sort spoofed by Steven Spielberg in Raiders of the Lost Ark , where Belloq, the French archaeologist, calls the ark of the covenant “a radio for talking to God.” Chatwin’s informants, including Arkady, were the first to tell him he misunderstood most of what they told him and exaggerated the rest. But by then The Songlines was a best-seller, particularly among the “desert-loving English.” At the 1987 Adelaide Festival of Arts, I ran into London literary agent Pat Kavanagh and her husband, novelist Julian Barnes. Pale-faced but resolute, they were headed for Alice Springs, and thence into the wilderness, seeking Chatwin’s musical route to revelation. Hopefully, someone in “the Alice” dissuaded them and they ended their visit in the air-conditioned comfort of a four-star hotel.
Chapter 13
Power Walks
Vanity made the Revolution. Liberty was just a pretext.
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE
C hatwin wasn’t entirely wrong. Walks can both symbolize and communicate.
Politicians know the symbolic value of the walk. Julius Caesar, by crossing the Rubicon, hardly more than a creek, committed himself to toppling the established order. The Rubicon marked the border of Italy, and any general who crossed it at the head of his army was regarded as being in revolt against the state. Ironically, nobody now knows where the Rubicon was. It has become the idea of a river, like the Fleet that used to run through medieval London, the Tank Stream that served Australia’s first settlers, and the Los Angeles River, now reduced to an occasional dribble down the middle of those enormous concrete culverts that deal with storm runoff and provide useful locations for movie car chases.
Map of Paris at the time of the 1789 Revolution
Like these rivers, the walk in political life exists more as a symbol than a fact. In most democratic parliaments, rival parties are ranged on opposites sides of the chamber, and changing sides is called “crossing the floor”—a short stroll, but metaphoric. In such gestures, brevity is an advantage. The Italian dictator Benito Mussolini seized power in the 1922 March on Rome, for which the Fascisti converged on the capital, scaring the government into capitulation. But il Duce himself barely put foot to pavement. He let his people do the walking and only joined for the last few blocks, so as to look fresh and resolute for the press.
Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the Revolution, 1830
Since nobody walks like the French, they are the people who have raised the political walk to near perfection. Before the Revolution of 1789, the inhabitants of Paris, when they wished to protest the latest excess of the aristocracy, walked the ten miles to Versailles and shook the railings until Louis and Marie-Antoinette took notice. Today, they’re less inclined to hit the bricks with such vigor and instead stage what’s called a manifestation—manif for short—or, as we would say, a demonstration.
Manifs are a feature of life in Paris, particularly when the weather is good and the chattering classes fancy a stroll with some friends. Most bring their kids and a picnic. The level of violence is low, to the point of barely existing, since everyone understands the real impact will be made on the evening TV news. By agreement with the city authorities, manifs keep clear of the main thoroughfares, at least once the journalists have got their shots of a boulevard thronged with protestors. Guided into one of the more roomy
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