Del Duomo Cathedral March 11, 2004

Saturday March 13, 2004 Milan-New York

I don’t know if it was the choice of songs that made performing on Thursday so difficult, or the creeping cold of the marbled walls of the cathedral, which was quiet numbing, but by the time I got to the second song which was “Pilgrimage”, I was feeing a strange growing sensation of fear in my body, which affected my voice. My voice began to shake noticeably and I couldn’t get it to stop. I did what I always do if I feel things going awry on stage – I look at the audience and try to feel the connection to them, look at their eyes, but this time I could barely see the beginning of the 4,000 assembled people in the dark.

Not only that but when I looked upwards as I often do during any performance, I saw the suspended figure of Jesus Christ on the cross, illuminated and hanging there in the dark. I felt very fragile and very judged, in a sense. Later I thought about how a gig like this is so odd in terms of the timing – coming not when I am fit and have been touring a lot but when I have been home, doing business and looking after Ruby.

So from this ordinary existence I am summoned forth by a impish priest from Milan to sing the most intimate songs of my whole life. Not the entertaining songs that people know me for, but the really difficult ones, the summations of my spiritual existence on earth so far.

Pilgrimage is about finding my father, among other things and singing it in that atmosphere made me feel fragile and stretched to my limits, physically – the high notes are very high and sustained, and I could barely control the wobbling. I came off stage feeling humbled and very, very human.

I fared a little better with Caspar Hauser’s song, which I did play live for a while. My voice had finally stopped shaking….

Beforehand I was wondering what does on wear to a show like this one? What will make a statement in a Gothic cathedral of that size?

Should I wear a ballgown? Should I try to match the mise-en-scene by wearing something Gothic like Amy Lee from Evanescence? Something floor length and black with religious jewelry? I remembered from my previous time singing there how cold it is. It’s colder inside than out. The marble retains the chill and sustains it some how. What would Patti Smith wear?

So I wore a gold Catherine Malandrino blouse with a silk undershirt beneath it, brown suede pants, wool socks, boots, a cardigan sweater, a jacket over all of that, and most of the time what Jeremy Morrison used to call “The Super Shawl”, a huge brown blanket of sorts. A choker at my neck of brown velvet and yellow stones. I may as well have been naked for all the “statement” I felt it made.

The statement was really the event itself and my lyrics and musical presence, and the tapes by Mark Wallinger, who in real life is a mischievous looking Englishman who somehow retains the aura of a schoolboy. The evening was full of disturbing images, beginning with the “opening words” read by a woman who had been a dancer from Pakistan. Her husband had thrown lye in her face during a domestic dispute. She came to Italy in 2000 as a refugee. In the darkness of the cathedral you could see she was still lithe and graceful, and then suddenly her two eyes looking out of a welter of what had once been her features.

[Next: Joe's Pub - New York, NY - June 1, 2004 ]