I can’t lie to you: I had high hopes that a substantial change would occur in us after the eclipse, as I suspect that only a force outside our dynamics could change us as a society. But nothing happened; the old mechanian prophecy was simply fulfilled and, for once, we all did something at the same time. The Sun didn’t share the share percentage with us the next day, but we most likely surpassed the audience of all the World Cups, European Championships, and Eurovision festivals combined.
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I already confessed that I didn’t look directly at the eclipse, except briefly out of the corner of my eye. I was more interested in observing around and checking if the event changed us. It’s also true that I enjoy looking where others don’t. When I went to listen to Mahler’s Fifth at the Palau, I only looked at the inverted vault. And whenever I go to see fireworks, I focus on the illuminated faces watching the pyrotechnics.
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In the past, a solar eclipse announced a war, but today we have them everywhere
Be that as it may, almost all of us saw the eclipse, face to face or delayed. Apparently, since 1912, a total solar eclipse like this hadn’t been seen on the Peninsula. More than a hundred years of waiting to have generated as individuals nothing more than a beautiful memory. This deeply saddens me. Perhaps it didn’t change us fundamentally because in the past a solar eclipse of these characteristics announced a war, but since today we have them everywhere… Or the arrival of an epidemic, and since we come from where we come from… Or even the death of a king! And we, who have the emeritus in Abu Dhabi, neither feel nor suffer.
We lacked magic. The only unreal thing was that Bonnie Tyler died a month before. It reminded me of Tejero’s death on February 25. Or the strange case of the death on July 4 of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Animals, on the other hand, did comply. They noticed the darkness and went to sleep – not like me, who take seven melatonin gummies every night, exceeding the recommended daily dose by 600%, with eyes wide open.
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Since I already suspected it was very likely that we wouldn’t wake up the next day with a new common consciousness, I went to see Cecilia’s Ecce homo in Borja, taking advantage of the trip to the foothills of Mount Moncayo to see the eclipse. What a universal piece of art. I stared at it intently intending to have it engraved on my retina and then project that divine face all over the world, like in the poster of Being John Malkovich or the tenth season of Curb Your Enthusiasm. But that didn’t happen either.
Since from now until we all die we only have one or two similar eclipses left, depending on our age, I propose that the Chinese artist Cai Guo-qiang, whom I had the pleasure of meeting at the Babell literature festival in Porto, provoke a solar eclipse with drones every five years. I don’t think we’ll notice the difference. And that way we avoid all pregnant women having children with cleft lips or an entire civilization going extinct. After all, a pixel or a beam of sunlight is probably the same to us.
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