los fuegos del apóstol
Magic surprise Spain post!
I mean like, no joke, I never finished my Spain posts cause I was busy as fuck. But then you know as I was getting to the last few (this one and one last one that idk when I'll post) it just felt so like, heavy. Like the experience that I'm about to attempt to document was really profound for me and writing about it is ... intense. Then there's also the nostalgic part of me that hangs onto these memories and it feels very final to write about it and file it away like it's really in the past, even though it was like fucking nine months ago lol. It was just really special and important to me and I don't know if I can truly put it into words. But I'll try, here we go.
SO OKAY FIRST OF ALL. Since Spain is like super Catholic they celebrate Saints' Days, and since I've mentioned St. James is interred in the cathedral in Santiago, St. James Day is like this big fucking deal. But it's also Día Nacional de Galicia and it's a national holiday, and it was set to St. James Day because Santiago is the capital of Galicia. And basically my professor plans the entire trip around this. She grew up in Galicia so she knows where it's at and it was totally deliberate for us all to end the trip on this note.
I mentioned in some other Spain entries that I'd gotten sick at one point and this was the last day of me feeling lousy. We had off from school cause of the holiday but there had been a trip to the art museum earlier in the day and I was all grumpy and butthurt cause I didn't feel up to going and that was something I'd really liked to have seen. And also idk the general grumpiness of being sick was agitating my anxiety and I was just feeling really fed up with humans and wanted to be alone. But my professor had told us that we should all go to the cathedral square for fireworks and a light show and that we should get there early to get a spot and I'd spent the whole trip looking forward to this so even though I felt like shit I still went out and grabbed a spot.
On the way to the cathedral I ran into my friends and they were heading back to the dorm to change and asked if I'd save a spot for them. I was so fucking grumpy idk what the fuck is wrong with my brain but I just really wanted to be alone and wanted them to leave me alone lol. So I just like put my headphones on and tried to enjoy myself while I was still alone before they got there. It was the all the parts of my brain that like to tell me that no one in my life really likes me so I then irrationally get mad at everyone for wasting my time lol. Whatever idk.
Anyway so one thing that was bugging me the whole trip was that I felt like I never really got good pictures of the cathedral in the way I wanted. A lot of it had to do with the fact that most of the time when I was out I wasn't lugging all my lenses with me and my 35 (which I use almost exclusively) is just too tight to get a good shot. Plus I'm really picky about having no humans in my photos and that just never really happened so yeah. But I was really prepared and determined to get good pictures of the light show/fireworks so DESPITE THE FACT THAT EVERYONE PROBABLY WOULD'VE THOUGHT TO GO SAVE A SPOT UP FRONT I went to the very BACK and found a nice spot right in the center so that I'd have an AWESOME VIEW. And everyone thought it was weird when they finally came and met up with me but when I explained they understood and had that "AWW YEAH KAYLA'S A PHOTOGRAPHER" epiphany that I'd elicited at least weekly on the trip. Lawlz I forgot what it was like to not hang out with other photographers all the time.
So like this was me trying to kill time before everyone got there to hang out with me, they were soundchecking and stuff. CHECK OUT MY AWESOME VIEW THAT I GOT BY SITTING IN THE BACK!
Click to viewI also mentioned in another entry that for a week around the holiday there's a huge festival and they'd filled the park and my campus around the dorm with a ton of vendor tables and bandstands and food and the carnival and it was so cool. So on the way there I'd bought myself a fucking sweet headband with a rubber duck on it. And when everyone showed up to sit with me I was still feeling weirdly angry and alienated until I remembered to show everyone my headband and somehow the mystical power of ducks instantly cheered me up and I was fine for the rest of the day.
AND THEN JUST, YEAH, COMMENCE HOURS OF SITTING AROUND WAITING FOR THIS SHOW. It gets dark so late there that they didn't start until like 11 or something so we sat around for like four or five hours. We killed time by playing with my camera and reading a play. We were supposed to read "Blood Wedding" for our English class and Joshua had it in his bag so we were taking turns reading it out loud to each other and it was HYSTERICAL LOL. I wish I'd gotten the really good parts on video but I suck, whoops. But I was totally pissing my pants and the Spanish people around us thought we were funny haha.
Andrea's the best, she makes me fucking die LOL.
SO THEN WE WERE LIKE LAWLZ WE SHOULD GET PROFESSOR ERIKSON, HE'LL BE SO HAPPY THAT WE'RE DOING OUR HOMEWORK. So we spotted our professors somewhere and someone went to go get him LOL.
But then he was like, all old and wanted to go back to his lawn chair LOL. But Alexis & Josh were great together.
AND THEN I JUST HAVE THIS ONE OTHER VIDEO that I made cause it was starting to get dark and the place was starting to get fucking packed and I was just like HOLY SHIT LOOK HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE HERE.
Also for the record, at one point, Brendan & I went on a FALAFEL RUN because again like I've mentioned, I was basically sustained by falafel for most of my trip because it was close and delicious and they served it with fries and yogurt sauce and beer and it was something that I trusted to be vegetarian lol.
But we also were buying beers because we were like IT WOULD BE SO AWESOME TO BE INEBRIATED FOR THIS FUCKIN LIGHT SHOW but we weren't sure if we were allowed to bring liquor into the square cause there were security checkpoints and we didn't want to waste money if it was gonna get confiscated so we were able to get in a few beers instead lol. And then right as the show was about to start I slammed mine to at least have a bit of a buzz cause light shows and fireworks are awesome when you aren't sober lol.
At first the warmup came on and it was kinda like what I'd seen them doing the night before EXCEPT THEY WERE PLAYING LIKE THIS AWESOME WEIRD MUSIC? Like Lana Del Ray? And I was like "wow wtf is going on, who are these awesome city planners?!" And btw I started super loving that song Summertime Sadness and now every time I hear it I just instantly want to bawl my fucking eyes out thinking about Spain and thinking about this light show and omfg omfg omfg omfg omfg I just fucking lose it. ;.;
So basically I was just there like "Wow this is really fucking awesome" but still just having no fucking idea what my eyes were about to endure. BECAUSE OKAY LISTEN.
To me? When I heard there was going to be a "light show" I pictured like, IDK, A METALLICA CONCERT. Like a cheesy laser light show. You know, I just didn't know any better. HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO FUCKING KNOW.
When the show actually started, I decided I was going to record the beginning just cause videos are fun and whatever. But it so thoroughly blew my fucking mind and was not at all what the fuck I expected that I couldn't put the camera down and I wound up recording it until my card filled. I kind of just planted my arms over my chest and kept the camera there because I didn't want to see it through my camera instead of with my eyes, so I just like held it there and gawked and omg.
So I'm coming out of the cut for a minute to post the video because it was so fucking incredible and I think it's so worth watching. When I got home I made everyone I know watch it and I would watch it over and over and over and just drown in it because omg my heart.
The thing that affected me the most was that I'm used to tourism being stigmatized and annoying, especially in New York, the way natives are jaded against tourists and the like. And my whole time in Spain, as much as I was loving it and as much as I was so spiritually present the entire time, I was also struggling with the frustration of being in a group of obnoxious teenagers and the shame of being out in public with horrible loud American kids. And when I saw this, I felt like Santiago was opening its arms for us. It was the last week of my trip and the first time I really felt welcome in Spain and I felt like Santiago wanted us to be there. It was directed towards the pilgrims that walk the Camino but I also felt like in my own way I'd also made a pilgrimage and I'd come a really long way to be there and I was learning and accepting really wonderful things about myself and my soul in the process.
And also just, as an artist I was so floored. I can't just assume this about everyone else I was with, but somehow I felt like they didn't understand it the way I did. Like I was in so much awe at how much work went into these projections because I learn about stuff like this in school and have worked with projections myself, but not on anything near this scale. I was just in complete awe.
I was gawking, probably with my mouth open, for the first minute, and when the music kicked in and you could see all the cogs in the building I immediately just burst into fucking tears and spent the next fifteen minutes fucking bawling all over myself. It's hard to sum up and put into words; all I can say is that this fucking lightshow was like the sum of my entire trip and everything that I went through to get there and it was just really profoundly emotional for me.
I hadn't intended to record the whole thing so I ran out of space and missed the last couple minutes, so if you're curious to see the end try here.
I wish my video actually did it justice, I wish you could understand what it actually looked like, how fucking huge it was looming over us, how it was so loud my pants were vibrating like a concert. It was so incredible.
After that I took photos for a while but then the fireworks started and they were so fucking awesommmmmmme. Like fucking epic, like I'll never be impressed by fireworks ever again. I kind of scrambled to delete some other videos off my camera, like I remember I had a couple more of us fucking around before the show started, one that I'd done of the light tests from the park the night before. Blah, whatever.
I just had to get a bit of the fireworks, even if it was a few seconds.
And then I made this one, too, because I kept telling Mike about how it was really Celtic and bagpipey up in Galicia and so they were playing this really badass bagpipe music and I just really wished my brother was there with me to see it.
Anyway after the show was over we sort of floated away in the crowd in a weird state of bliss and went to go fucking partyyyyy. Our favorite bar (the one with the Eraserhead poster) was behind the cathedral so we went over there and proceeded to get completely shitfaced LOL. This funny thing happened on the way there, we were walking next to the cathedral in this gigantic crowd of all the people trying to leave, and Brendan f-bombed and someone was like "BRENDAN DONT SAY FUCK IN FRONT OF THE CHURCH" and these two people next to us go to each other "Did you hear that?" "That was funny." lawlz we got used to being the only English speakers all around whoops hah.
I wish I had more photos of us dicking around partying but again I'd eaten up my memory card so I only got to get in a few pictures. I think they're funny though.
This was the one night of the whole trip that I really went out and got fucking plastered with everyone haha. I was glad I saved it for a special occasion and I also felt like I had this post-coital spiritual energy going on, like I'd just had this amazing experience and so much tension and negativity had been removed from me and I was so totally okay with being around people and drinking and having a great time.
The new CUNY kids were out and we found them so after a while it became this quest to show them around to our favorite spots, since they'd just gotten to Santiago and we were about to leave. It went well for a while. We took them to the club we'd been to a bunch of times (Sant-Yago) and then to the bar MoMo's. The new kids didn't understand the whole THE NIGHTLIFE DOESN'T WARM UP UNTIL LIKE 2AM HERE thing lol so they were starting to get impatient and pissy and I was like OKAY I'VE HAD ENOUGH and decided I wanted to leave.
This funny thing had happened every time I'd attempted to go out (or even when I hadn't gone I'd hear about it the next day) that every time a group of us went out, it eventually ended in someone crying or screaming or some type of drama, and a lot of paranoid babying which lead to people getting pissed off. Por ejemplo: One person would want to stay out when everyone wanted to go home, someone would be like "omg, you're too drunk, we're in a foreign country, you have to come with us" and the person would be like "omg leave me the fuck alone i'm not a baby" etc etc etc. So it was funny watching Brendan get a little cautious with me because I was hammered and I had to be like "LOOK BABY I'M LIKE 24 YEARS OLD DON'T WORRY ABOUT IT."
He decided to come home with me though and I don't know if it was because he was making sure I'd be okay or if he actually just wanted to go home. It was funny cause this was right as everyone was starting to hit the cry-or-fight time of night and I was like FUCK THIS I'M OUT BYE GUYS and I had to tell Brendan "Look Brendan, I'm not into the drama, I'm an adult, I just wanna have some fun, I'm fun when I'm drunk, I won't yell at you!!!" So he came with me. It was also ironic because I noticed that the whole time we were there I was like the only person of our little group of friends that felt really comfortable getting around the city and I learned my way around really fast, so how ironic that Brendan was accompanying me home to make sure I'd be okay and that, even though I was fuckin sloshed, I still knew my way back in a precise way.
We cut through the park because we wanted to see the carnival, and the ferris wheel was at the top of the hill and we wanted to walk up and look at it. I remember it being kind of balmy out and that I was a winded mess trying to get up the hill while staggering drunk, and that Brendan and I were clutching at each other and making the big wondrous drunk eyes at all the bright flashing lights lmfao.
I don't want to suck my own dick about it or anything but I'm such a veteran drunk photog that it's no big deal for me to shoot on various amounts of alcohol. I do it at shows a lot because bands like to buy me beers to thank me haha, and I'm often seen with a beer in one hand and my camera in the other, especially because I can do all the manual adjustments one-handed lawlz. So basically I was all drunk and giddy and there were PRETTY LIGHTS so I made Brendan pose for me haha.
I also took photos of the road up to the dorm with the concerts going on, so awesome.
BUT THEN SHORTLY AFTER THE CONCERT PICTURE we're going down the stairs to yknow get home, and even though it's the holiday and a bazillion people are in the park hanging out and attending the carnival (even though it was like 4am at this point lol) THEY STILL LOCKED THE PARK GATES AT SUNDOWN EXCUSE ME WHAT THE HELL.
But we could like SEE the dorm so instead of walking all the way back up the hill and exiting the other side of the park and walking all the way around again we just decided to escape by jumping the fence, which was quite a scene since we were both like way too hammered to be jumping wrought iron park fences LOL!!! But we managed.
On the way in we ran into one of the dumb obnoxious girls and she wasn't having a good time at all so I was like, haha. Then the next morning she saw me and made this comment like "how are you feeling?" like implying that I would be hungover as fuck but I was like "No lol I'm an adult I don't get hangovers, thanks for asking."
Cause you know, none of my experiences in Spain were complete without the bitterness of dealing with fucking morons and Long Island brats the whole time.
But seriously yeah. That was that. It was incredible and perfect and just so fucking wonderful. It was such an important night for me and it was so much fun and thinking back on it makes me so happy and emotional. :*)
Anyway here's pictures now. I think I explained everything in the entry so you should understand what they're all of. A lot of them are like, almost exactly the same, but when I had been resizing all of them I was just over excited and wanted to post EVERYTHINNNNNG.
p.s. this basically sums up my trip to Spain: