Caravan (13) End-June 1967

 

   Rick has come round and announced I can go back down to the basement this evening to hear them play. We´re sitting outside the caravan, on a blanket spread out on the floor. Whilst we drink our coffee he tells me about the traditional Irish and Scottish songs they’re working with along with a few from the vast American repertoire – which includes Canada he emphasizes – and he´s telling me how he flips out adding a bass line to melodies which may be hundreds of years old whilst Dylan tries out arrangements which not everyone finds easy to follow. I let him talk, as if I didn´t already know a large part of what he was telling me just from listening through the open windows of the basement.

      - Sometimes Dylan feels like trying out his 12-string acoustic or letting Richard add random percussion or use his Rickenbacker lap steel, which sounds goddamn good. Oh, by the way, on the subject of guitars, Bob didn´t believe me the other day when I told him you had a Salvador Ibáñez. He thought we had made it up. He said it couldn´t be an original, that if it was, you wouldn´t have it lying around in your caravan which half the time you leave open. And, you know what? When he says stuff like that it makes me think… I can´t imagine him talking like that a couple of years ago. It seems to me that time is making him distrustful, I don´t know…

     - Well, if what you say is true, he must have his reasons, don´t you think?, I say half-respectful half-smiling.

     - I suppose so…

       Rick replies without looking at me. He´s picked off a branch from one of the elm trees, and is drawing something in the damp earth. We join in a reflective silence for a long while until suddenly I hear myself say:

      - Hey! I have an idea! How about I bring my Ibáñez down to the basement this evening?

      - Fucking great! - Rick´s laughter lights up his eyes -, I can´t wait to see Dylan and Robbie’s faces! Got to go, talk later, I need to go down to town to buy some stocks. See you !

      He leaps up and runs off towards one of the cars parked outside the front of the pink house. He´s left the elm stick on the blanket. Next to it, etched in the earth, is a picture of a boat carrying an octahedron, a diamond as big as a whale.