ARTUR JAROSINSKI, 1978-2011 Artur Jarosinski, a collector of Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen works died on August 21, 2011, aged 32. True artists like Bob Dylan are rare species. True fans are not easy to find either. To collect everything is a hell of the job. Bootlegs vary in quality so in order to get your hands on the best quality of recordings you have to listen to hours of concerts on end. There are countless memorabilia- t-shirts, posters, monographs, newspaper cuts, drawings, cartoons, even curios like a cup that was thrown from stage to the crowd. Collectors scramble for rare editions of albums with, say, Japanese version having one track added to the standard one issued in America and Europe. True fans want all the artifacts big and small. And, mind you, there is a mind-boggling technological development that inevitably make a fan's collection obsolete - bootleg tapes of yesterday become CDs and then turn into MP3s. Books get torn and frayed. Finally artists have an unnerving habit of occasional going on tour so that fans follow them around. And follow Bob Dylan Artur did, year in year out. That was life on the road for much of his youth. Monday -Berlin, Tuesday - Cologne, and so on. Venues, cities, climate zones and languages spoken would change but it slightly mattered. He was not there for the sight-seeing. There was sufficient excitement in concerts and concert-related activities. Night train or bus to get from one venue to the next. Hours of waiting at the entrance to get closest to stage when they open the gates. The hope to catch a glimpse of Dylan coming to soundcheck. And the magic moment when lights fide out… Everything had to be documented and filed. Each night, as Dylan played, Artur would write down in his little notebook the setlist (like a spy who writes coded messages to headquarters): H61R (for Highway 61 Revisited), LARS (Like a Rolling Stone) and so on. Artur was often the first to call Bob Links to pass the setlist to the global Dylan community. Let others know and share the emotions. In a way Artur came 40 years too late. Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen being clearly past their prime Artur entered a contest that was clearly handicapped. By the time Artur was born Dylan had managed to become a voice of his generation, be proclaimed a traitor and acquire a status of living legend again. Similarly all those Dylan collectors had already had established their own reputation, financial means and contacts. Artur seemed like a newcomer from nowhere (who among the crowd of bootleggers had heard of Eastern Europe?). He had his moments of doubt, of course. The Internet has its share of crooks, leeches, impostors and bigots. Bob Dylan is humiliated by the fact that he has fans in Poland, someone told him once. It wounded him deeply. And there is a strange case of the artist himself. Bob Dylan is not the type of an artist to chat, shake hands with you and ask if you want an autograph. He is immutable like some ancient god, inaccessible and distant. Once Artur was selected for rough aggressive questioning by some security entourage of Dylan. Why do you come to so many concerts? Can't you move somewhere towards the back of the crowd? As if he had been an assassin or a dangerous maniac. Maybe this was the primary reason why towards the end of his short life he moved away from Dylan towards Leonard Cohen. Some Dylan fatigue or weariness has set in. He had everything there was to collect anyway. You could wake him up in the middle of the night give him a date, say 5.5.76 or 7.8.98, and he would tell you what Dylan was doing on that day and - if there happened to be a concert - what was played on this particular date. Like a detective Artur would scour the lyrics for references to literary works, biblical allusions, hidden meanings and overlooked facts. People knew him, asked his advice, desired his attention. Is this outtake in circulation? Is this a master tape or just a miserable copy? He would settle disputes. This was his internet life. It would be hard to find a starker contrast between his internet status of a wiseman and real life figure. Gentle-mannered, slightly shy and cheerful Artur taught English to schoolchildren of Bochnia. He invented nursery rhymes based on Dylan songs. Imagine the amazement of kids coming for private lessons at the stacks of records and assorted dylanica cramped into a tiny room of the flat where he lived with his parents. Later on he moved to Wroclaw as a translator. Artur was a maverick. Many people did not understand his passion. (Maybe every collector is slightly misunderstood?) Bochnia, like many parts of southern Poland, is a curious blend between modernity and tradition. This is a sleepy former salt-mine town where older generation venerates John Paul II, cherishes family values and loves Polish folk music. These parts of Poland were a bulwark against communism but it somehow never came hand in hand with the Rolling Thunder Revue. The younger generation that does not remember communism inevitably slid into modern-era lowbrow entertainment. Bob Dylan has never attracted anybody's attention. Artur was alone in Bochnia. Kraków was a bit different, at least for a little while, when gloom of dictatorship turned into blossom of democracy. When Dylan came to the city in 1994 16-year-old Artur was there in an anonymous, rain-drenched crowd ready to skip the TV broadcast of World Champions final of Italy playing against Brazil. There was a craziness in this audience, megatons of pent-up energy. The Iron Curtain had just come down and people's hunger for rock music seemed insatiable. It would not last long. Soon the rock music came to be largely forgotten by those whose staple food became junk food of pop music. Artur stuck with healthy food of good music. Artur Jarosinski departed as he arrived, like a comet. He died in an accident on his way home after a concert. I wish Bob Dylan knew and heaved a sigh, because with every fan gone some of the artist is lost forever. Without fans there is no artist and Artur was one of the greatest of fans. Jakub Wisniewski December 2013
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