Capt. Marc, veteran of multiple ocean crossings, and instructional pro, invites you to join him for lessons and/or excursions under sail. By special arrangement only.
S/V Songline - What’s in a Name?
We bought our J/42 in 1998 for the express purpose of going on an extended cruise. She came to us with the name J’taime. It was a catchy play on the J-Boat “J” thing, but when I thought about our boat name being hailed in international waters, I was concerned. It seemed to me that hailing “I love you, I love you, I love you” was a bit too reminiscent of Pepe Lepew, the Warner Bros. amorous skunk. Under pressure to complete our documentation, we decided to rename our boat Songline—a reference to Bruce Chatwin’s book, “Songlines”, in which which he rhapsodizes about the nomadic nature of the human soul. During conversations with other cruisers, we were often asked if we were in the music business. “Sure” I’d answer. So it goes…
Imagine the creation of the world as the aboriginal peoples conceive it. A creature, not yet fully human but no longer animal, awakens. The substance of things “out there” exists but is as yet unknown. As these newly awakened beings begin to move about in the world they sing it into consciousness, naming all of the things that they encounter and weaving them together into a rhythmic and tonal narrative. Each of these beings travels and acts along lines that are similar to those of others, but never exactly the 
same. And when they interact with one another, each is singing his or her songline. The objects of their communication vary — rivers crossed, mountains climbed, strangers met and friends made — but the rhythmic and tonal elements of each one’s songline embodies the whole of his or her unique creative experience. In singing to and with one another, improvisations lend ever-increasing complexity to the body of songlines — harmonies, riffs, and rhythmic variations. The singing never stops and the world is forever emerging, newly created between person and person, between parent and child, between community and community, and from generation to generation, and so forth for a long as humans walk about in the world.
Chatwin reflects upon all of this and rhapsodizes about the nomadic nature of human beings. We must travel and act in the world or the wellspring of our songlines dries up. If we allow our songline to turn in upon itself, deriving only from a closed circle of friends, or worse yet, from our own reflections, it becomes a dead thing — like a favorite song played one too many times on our Sony Walkman. I often think about how different this “primitive” vision of creation differs form the “modern” Western version in which some father figure, some “higher intelligence” brings the world into existence by decree. Rather than singing, we consume ourselves in perpetual conflict over whose explanation of the world is most true.
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