Vespa Tunes XVIII: Il Treno Va, Paolo Conte, 1992

I’ve always loved a train ride. It’s something about the suspension of time: one is going somewhere, in itself an achievement, and is limited in what else can be achieved so I always feel there is a sort of licence to do nothing in particular. Looking out of the window is reward itself. I love the tangle of tracks and the backs of buildings, looking unguarded over all of those—surprisingly extensive—places between places that lurk in the middle of seemingly dense cities as one trundles out of major stations.

Freccerosse, and the exhilarating promise of train tracks which lead to Palermo and Paris; to Messina and Munich. Termini Station, Rome.

In Rome this distinction is particularly acute. There is a poignancy to the crumbling aqueducts cheek by jowl with unprepossessing apartment buildings, washing billowing valiantly from balconies.

Places between places: railway lines seen from the Ponte Casilino.

In a city which so proudly puts her best face forward it is but a hop, skip and a jump from the Trevi to the tangenziale, the elevated urban highway which bears witness to the ad hoc urban planning of the nineteen-seventies, and that temporal kaleidoscope is somehow fabulously disorienting.

Arriving at and leaving Venice by train over the lagoon is always, relentlessly, exotic.

And what soundtrack could possibly better than the gravelly melancholic tones of Paolo Conte? Now in his late eighties and one of the great Italian singer-songwriters amongst much else in a long and prolific career Paolo Conte is responsible (in part) for Azzurro, the great languid paean to the torpor of an Italian summer.

Dir che ti penso
è un controsenso
Perché sei sempre qui, sì
Tra le mie dita
Come la vita
Che in un sorriso vivi

To say that I think of you

Is a contradiction

Because you’re always here, yes

Between my fingers

Like life

Which you live in a smile

Il treno va
Scomparirà
Sulle sue ruote rotonde
Dietro alle nuvole bionde

The train goes

It’ll disappear

On its round wheels

Behind the pale clouds

Io sono qua
Rimango qua
In questa ruggine densa
Come qualcuno pensa a un treno

I’m here

Still here

In this dense rust

As some consider a train

Tu dove vai?
Con quei begli occhi che hai

Ritornerai?
Me l'hai promesso, lo sai

Where are you going?

With those beautiful eyes of yours

Will you come back?

You promised me, you know

Il treno va
Scomparirà
Dietro alle nuvole bionde
Sulle sue ruote rotonde, ormai

The train goes

It’ll disappear

Behind the pale clouds

On its round wheels, by now

Tu dove vai?
Con quei begli occhi che hai

Ritornerai?
Me l'hai promesso, lo sai

Where are you going?

With those beautiful eyes of yours

Will you come back?

You promised me, you know

Il treno va
Scomparirà
Sulle sue ruote rotonde
Dietro alle nuvole bionde, ormai

The train goes

It’ll disappear

On its round wheels

Behind the pale clouds, by now