Vatican Flag at St. Patrick’s
The scene inside St. Patrick’s Cathedral this afternoon was hectic, even electric, in anticipation of the Pope’s visit tomorrow. I will stay away from this. It’s cool he’s going to be here but I’m not all that religious, and I just don’t care much for mega-events that make me feel like one insignificant speck of humanity among countless billions. And these days so much needless security intrudes on things.
Probably the biggest single event I attended was Pavarotti at Central Park. My mother came up to New York from Florida to see him. Somehow the estimated half million people who turned out for that free concert did not make me feel claustrophobic or like I was drowning. The crowd was flat on the ground, as far as the eye could see, and not rising up in bleacher seats.
But events like Paul McCartney at Giants Stadium, Bob Dylan at Woodstock (Bethel Arts Center), even a Yankees game at the old Yankee Stadium made me feel insignificant, like a fraction of one in an infinite herd.
Others regard their attendance at these events as badges of honor. I can understand where that comes from but it gets damn boring listening to someone rattle off a list of every concert he’s attended, broken down by performers, by venue, by whether or not it rained.
I met a guy like that on the bus back from Woodstock. He had seen Bob Dylan some 40 times at venues ranging from huge arenas to state fairgrounds. I honestly did not care but nevertheless I could not help but be impressed by the sincerity of his pride as he boasted long into the night about his concert-going pedigree.
The pope is not Bob Dylan (and vice versa), of course, though the latter once had an audience with Pope John Paul II where, unbelievably to me, he sang “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door,” a song about a police officer on his death bed who is as interested in the safe keeping of his gun as in his own demise.
It’s a wonderful song, and as one of Dylan’s most popular tunes I guess it makes sense to use that in front of a papal audience of 200,000.
But he had a chance to bring something like “Every Grain of Sand” to that audience, too, a song of more direct religious import that might even have given the Pope a thing or two to think about. The usually curmudgeonly contrarian chose the song that gave him the most coverage, and when I first heard of it I thought it was a joke.
I saw Pope John Paul II’s left arm and part of his face when he passed by in a limo on Madison Avenue. It was a rainy night, and on account of that relatively few people were out waiting to see him.
