"We'll always have Paris"
Rick to Ilsa, "Casablanca" 1942
"While riding on a train goin' west I fell asleep for to take my rest.
I dreamed a dream and it made me sad,
Concerning myself and the first few friends I had. “
Bob Dylan , "Bob Dylan's' Dream" 1963
In the movie "Casablanca," Rick, with the faithful Sam beside him, paces the platform at the Paris train station as he waits for the beautiful Ilsa to join him, to leave before the Nazi army arrives, to escape from the dangers of occupation. The train is to take them away, to a young man and woman's dream future of passion and love. The train lurches forward; Rick still looks for her, hoping to see her running along the platform so he can reach out and swing her up onto the train, but Ilsa doesn't appear. They leave without her. Angry, betrayed, abandoned, embittered, Rick's life is changed forever.
In "Bob Dylan's Dream," the singer falls asleep in a train going west, and dreams about a simpler life with old friends, the warmth of companionship, and the sense of permanence he had with these friends. "We thought we could sit forever in fun, But our chances really was a million to one." And now the sweetness of youthful friendship is past, gone forever, lost. "We never thought we could get very old," he sings. Did any of us? And what of the future? Where is the train taking him?
Our house stood on a hill overlooking the CPR tracks. The train whistle blew a haunting sob as I lay in my crib in the dark, and in the morning as I spooned the porridge into my mouth, my head barely above the level of the table, it blew a friendly hello. It called out to me when I pulled my wagon or dug holes in the dirt with my little shovel.
The train was hope, great and wondrous mystery, my future calling out to me. At the age of four I'd sit on the swing that hung from the branch of a maple tree, imagining I was on my "honeymoon," on the train. Where did I get that idea? From a Saturday movie I'd seen with my parents, perhaps. My big sister asked me what a "honeymoon" was. I told her it was a trip you took on a train when you got married. She laughed at me.'
I stood at the gate and waved at the engineer every afternoon. Meeting him one day in town, I hid behind my mother's cotton skirt, too mortified to let him see my face. At the age of twenty, travelling with my young husband, I left my home on the prairies to attend university in the big city. I couldn't imagine what wonders I'd see.
Riding on a train, the past is like the rapidly disappearing images we see as we stare out the window. The future is too far ahead to see, around the corner, where the rails disappear over the horizon, out of sight.
The world would never be the same for Ilsa and Rick. Ilsa stood by her hero-husband, while Rick made a living running Rick's Café, a bar and casino where he would take anyone's money, regardless of their language or politics. Then they met again. Old wounds were reopened. There was a war going on now, and they had to see the war through to the end, doing whatever they could.
Afterwards, the world wasn't the same for anyone. There were new political alliances, and a new world power had arisen. Countries suffered under the crushing financial burdens of making war. Men and women tried to find their former way of life, but it was gone forever.
Dylan had left behind the stultifying atmosphere of the mid-western USA. He would develop his enormous talents and become the greatest songwriter the world has ever known. He would give energy to a movement that nobody could stop: the end of an unjust war, social justice, and generational upheaval.
In 1965, the CNR still had passenger trains with dining rooms. The uniformed conductors would call out the sittings for breakfast, lunch and dinner. We were seated at tables that were covered with heavy linen tablecloths. The napkins were starched white linen. The silver was polished and heavy. Waiters bowed, saying, "More butter, Madame?" ' 'Would you care for another roll?"
One of our companions was also travelling east to another year of university. He wore tailored pants and a tweed jacket, shirt, tie, well-polished shoes. As he sat smoking, his cigarette ashes fell to the floor beside his seat. A black, uniformed porter came past, stopped, looked at him and said, "A well-dressed gentleman like you should know better. " He reached over and flicked the ash off the young man's lapel. Mortified; we all were. It was a beginning, a hint of the social changes that were ahead.
I didn't know when I took that train in 1965 that I'd throw myself into an intoxicating world of sensuality, discover new ways of thinking, and challenge all my beliefs; that I'd divorce my childhood pal, break my heart trying to teach children in a callous school system, experiment with ways of living, have an amazing son, marry his father, and come to the western shore nine years later.
Rick had tricked Ilsa into leaving Casablanca with Victor Laszlo, her husband. Rick tells her, "We'll always have Paris." They are sacrificing their transient, insignificant, personal love for a higher cause, a world free from Nazi world domination. If she doesn't go with Victor Laszlo, he says, "you'll regret it. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life."
Bobby Zimmerman left Hibbing for New York, the big city. It was there he met with opportunities to become Bob Dylan. Regrets? Yes. He wishes, "that we could sit simply in that room once again." But he didn't go back. He didn't give up what he went east to find.
Me? I changed, too, and have no regrets. Nostalgia takes me back to that little house on the big prairie, to a place of safety and dreams. But to live is to change, or else we die. I'm still living and changing and thank that old train whistle for calling out to me in my little crib with promises of unseen sights and sounds.
Wooo-ooo-ooo.
Amber Harvey
Mayne Island
November 30, 2007