BIG THREE; or, GAYS IN SPACE

you are not a bad writer, or a bad photographer. there are some things that just elude words or resist being captured in photos. it doesn’t matter if people have written the descriptions or have the pictures to show. it doesn’t matter if you have written the description or have been shown the pictures. it’s possible, sure, that the problem is just the weight of the unwritten words piling up or that it was just something with your camera lens or with the flash. (sometimes.) but like those long vistas of the ocean or of the mountains that don’t even manage to convey that the ocean or the mountains are something large -- let alone spectacular or breathtaking -- no matter how much the experience of seeing the esperanza move off of calle pureza onto the bridge of triana might move you, don’t try to take a picture -- not even just of the heartwarming spectacle of the people filling the altozano at three in the morning -- because it won’t seem to manage.

the same will go for trying to describe the silent procession of jesus del gran poder across reyes catolicos and down the narrow street next to the burger king. your stomach full of churros and chocolate, you hear an intersection of seville in silence, and the superb irony of that portuguese remarking that this is the only time you’ll hear the spanish shut up is impossible to put into words. still, and even if the virgin of the macarena and the esperanza of triana have long eclipsed the christ in the story of the passion on the early morning streets of good friday in seville, most of the people are shut up as he passes. “the body of christ incarnate in the heart of the most beautiful city in the world.” you can say things like that when you’re an announcer for giralda tv and after several earlier processions have been cancelled due to rain and you’re waiting, as he was for the weather reports at ten and eleven, to find out if the big three might not make their penitence either. repeating that, however, will just make you sound like driveling trash.

mercury certainly took its sweet time coming back around to the side of reason, but by midnight on thursday the god that flies had finally deferred to the men crawling the earth under the shrines, and the skies were clear. triana wouldn’t have to wait another year.

they said, too, that the macarena was beautiful, that the songs they sang when she came out of the basilica at three and the ones they sang when she went back in almost twelve hours later sounded truly inspired, and that’s disappointing because you know that their descriptions are pale shades of the reality of what you missed. but you can’t see both the macarena and the esperanza leaving at the same time, and by the time the macarena was making her way back home, it was time to do the same. by the time the cab had dropped the group at the bottom of the macarena around six, the front of some other procession was already blocking the way to la campana, and who knew how long would have been the long way around to seeing the procession from the iglesia de los gitanos.

at least the way to the disco was still open -- and the disco too -- and there was just enough time left before the lights came on in the back. by the time, however, that the lights had been on for an hour outside it was definitely time to leave. lucky, too, that it was just before the front of the procession of the macarena blocked feria (although it was still hours before the virgin herself would pass). it’s not worth going to the trouble of trying to describe.

i was asleep when she finally made it home, but i doubt i could have made it very close to the basilica had i woken up even an hour earlier. and when i tried to show the ones who saw her how my night had been, somehow the esperanza and the gran poder had disappeared from all of my pictures and i was left sharing a camera full of the men in the crowd. but nothing doing. regrets are almost as worthless as explanations. the big three had stumbled back inside, and easter was over in seville. hope you got laid.