@BOBDYLAN AT MADRID (7-06-2023) AND CHÂTEAU LA COSTE ("RAIL CAR", 25-05-2024) (II)

@BOBDYLAN AT MADRID 7-06-2023 (II, "PLAYBOYS & PLAYGIRLS" (DYLAN); THE COWARD & THE HERO (THOREAU)): Oh, ye playboys and playgirls  Ain’t a-gonna run my world   Ain’t a-gonna run my world  Ain’t a-gonna run my world  Ye playboys and playg...

 (A MIRACLE SEEMS: POETS MAY BE BORN AND SING IN OUR DAY, IN THE PRESIDENCY OF JOE BIDEN)

They say ev'rything can be replaced,
Yet ev'ry distance is not near.
So I remember ev'ry face
Of ev'ry man who put me here.

Dicen que todo puede ser reemplazado

Pero cualquier distancia es suficiente

Por ello recuerdo cada rostro

De todos los que me trajeron aquí 

( "I shall be released")

Bob Dylan has unveiled his largest sculpture to date at Château La Coste in Provence, France. Rail Car, the new site-specific ironwork sculpture, has been created for permanent installation in the Château’s outdoor art estate, to be displayed alongside works by leading contemporary artists and architects such as Louise Bourgeois, Ai Weiwei, Tracy Emin and Tadao Ando. 

Rail Car - an immersive, ironwork freight car installation set on train tracks – engages prominent motifs in Dylan’s art, as well as relating to aspects of his past. As Dylan describes in his Chronicles: Volume One, 'I’d seen and heard trains from my earliest childhood days and the sight and sound of them always made me feel secure. The big boxcars, the iron ore cars, freight cars, passenger trains, Pullman cars. There was no place you could go in my hometown without at least some part of the day having to stop at intersections and wait for the long trains to pass.'

The repurposed freight car that Dylan has integrated into the sculpture is a WIIX 723 double-door boxcar used to transport paper rolls for Willamette Industries, a timber and paper company based in Oregon. Work began on Rail Car in the summer of 2019, involving engineering teams in both France and the United States. The artwork was first created in Los Angeles, then disassembled, crated and shipped to France to be installed onsite at Château La Coste.

'The car has been placed in the most magical setting on the old Roman road that meanders through the forest here [at Château La Coste]. It is incredibly moving that Bob personally chose the location for his masterpiece to be on this trail that was trodden for hundreds of years by weary travellers. When I first met him in Los Angeles something obviously clicked – perhaps it was because both of us love the unique Provencal landscape – or Bob wouldn’t have embarked on his incredible journey to create Rail Car. Since his piece is all about travel, Rail Car miraculously fuses road and rail into one.'

Paddy McKillen, Founder and Owner, Château La Coste.

The unveiling of Rail Car coincides with an exhibition featuring 23 of Dylan’s paintings, entitled Drawn Blank in Provence, running until  7 November in Château La Coste’s Renzo Piano-designed art gallery.

And hark! here comes the cattle-train bearing the cattle of a thousand hills, sheepcots, stables, and cow-yards in the air, drovers with their sticks, and shepherd boys in the midst of their flocks, all but the mountain pastures, whirled along like leaves blown from the mountains by the September gales. The air is filled with the bleating of calves and sheep, and the hustling of oxen, as if a pastoral valley were going by

Y ESCUCHAD. AQUÍ VIENE EL TREN DEL GANADO CON LAS RESES DE MIL COLINAS, APRISCOS, ESTABLOS Y CAÑADAS POR EL AIRE, ARRIEROS CON SUS VARAS Y JÓVENES PASTORES EN MEDIO DE SUS REBAÑOS, TODO SALVO LOS PASTOS MONTAÑOSOS, ARREMOLINADOS COMO HOJAS TRAÍDAS DESDE LAS MONTAÑAS POR LOS VENDAVALES DE SEPTIEMBRE.

(...)

But the bell rings, and I must get off the track and let the cars go by:

PERO LA CAMPANA SUENA Y DEBO APARTARME DE LA VÍA Y DEJAR PASO A LOS VAGONES:

What's the railroad to me?

I never go to see Where it ends .

it fills a few hollows,

And makes banks for the swallows,

It sets the sand a-blowing,

And the blackberries a-growing,

QUÉ ME IMPORTA LA VÍA

NUNCA VOY A VER 

DÓNDE TERMINA

LLENA ALGUNOS AGUJEROS

Y HACE TALUDES PARA LAS GOLONDRINAS

LEVANTA LA ARENA QUE VUELA

Y LOS ARÁNDANOS QUE CRECEN

“We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us. Did you ever think what those sleepers are that underlie the railroad?  Each one is a man, an Irishman, or a Yankee man. The rails are laid on them, and they are covered with sand, and the cars run smoothly over them. They are sound sleepers, I assure you. And every few years a new lot is laid down and run over; so that, if some have the pleasure of riding on a rail, others have the misfortune to be ridden upon.” 

— Henry David Thoreau, “Where I lived and What I Lived For,” 

Walden

 Our most serious problem, perhaps, is that we have become a nation of fantasists. 

WENDELL BERRY