¡flamenco!

Like I was saying...while we were in Sevilla, we went to see a flamenco performance.

At around nine, we left our hotel, crossed the bridge over a sparkling river, and wandered through the narrow streets of Sevilla until we reached a small, intimate restaurant with a worn wooden stage.

I sat two feet away from the stage
and drank orange juice out of a crystal goblet.

The lights dimmed and 

for that one hour, every soul in the room 

breathed 

flamenco
one heartbeat at a time.

Flamenco is

pain and passion, hope and despair.

It's the cry of a people, 

compressed into the trembling confines of poetry.

It's real, 

and maybe that's why so many people think

it's beautiful.

And when you leave, you smile

and talk

and think

until soon all you remember

but can't forget

is that for that one hour

you might have caught a glimpse

of what it means...

But what it is 

still escapes me.

First picture: restaurant where we watched the performance.
Second picture: view of the stage from where I was sitting. 

Here's a flamenco poem (what the singers sing), written by Federico Garcia Lorca, the second most famous writer in Spain (after Cervantes).

LA SOLEA

Vestida con mantos negros

piensa que el mundo es chiquito

y el corazón es inmenso.

Vestida con mantos negros.

Piensa que el suspiro tierno

y el grito, desaparecen

en la corriente del viento.

Vestida con mantos negros.

Se dejó el balcón abierto

y el alba por el balcón

desembocó todo el cielo.

¡Ay yayayayay,

que vestida con mantos negros!

Here's what the first verse means, in English.


Draped in black
She thinks that the world is small
and the heart is immense...

And so on. 

Beautiful.