On the heels of last week’s annular solar eclipse, I’m publishing this reflection on April’s total eclipse in the U.S.
The same way it’s boring to listen to someone describe a band you’re not interested in, most descriptions of eclipses leave something to be desired. It’s like, we get it, the sun gets blocked out for a few minutes, and it gets dark just like nighttime, and it’s supposedly incredible to see. But then you learn that eclipses actually happen a couple times a year at various points around the world, and it doesn’t feel quite so special. And you look at pictures and think okay, that’s cool and all, but it’s nothing mind-blowing. It’s just the moon in front of the sun, a grander-scale optical illusion than we typically see.
In the weeks leading up to the eclipse, it was almost overwhelming the amount of coverage and conversation about it. In Austin and surrounding areas, county governments issued a disaster declaration, hotels were at capacity, and traffic was unreal. It was the first total eclipse the city had seen in 600 years, and many people traveled here since we had the highest average of sunny days in April than anywhere else in the path of totality. A no-brainer. This spring was exceptionally beautiful, too, full of brisk mornings and highs of 75 and only occasional rain.
As it turned out, the day of the eclipse was almost fully overcast, one of the cloudiest days we’d had in a while. Talk about a cosmic joke.
Although I couldn’t really understand why people would travel from so far away for a few minutes of something you could see in pictures online, I was glad to live in the path of totality all the same and ordered some glasses online a few months before in a fit of proactivity, just in case the library ran out or some serious price gouging went on. In the end, I didn’t even use them because I took the day off of work to go to a matinee Vampire Weekend concert at an outdoor amphitheater, where they handed out glasses branded with the band’s logo.
Everything about the noon show was unbearably cute. Across the street from the venue, fans who either couldn’t get tickets or couldn’t or wouldn’t pay the exorbitant prices gathered on the rooftop of a parking garage to see and hear what they could. Little by little, the moon overtook the sun, with the sun trying on the moon’s positions for size: waning gibbous, waxing gibbous, waning crescent, waxing crescent.
It was almost sensory overload. The band singing on stage, fans shouting along to every song, the sun and moon and clouds above entwined in a celestial dance. You’d try to be present for the concert, but then the clouds would part and the people in front would turn around and put on their glasses and ooh and ahh and point to their companions, and so you would have to do the same before the clouds took over again, a race against the atmospheric clock.
Even though I resented their presence, the clouds covering the sun felt cool and magical, all wispy and moody. It made getting a glimpse of it super special and exciting, and when you would look back the next time you could mark the progress of the moon. Occasionally, there would be full coverage but then you’d look up and see these little slivers of silver sun poking out through the clouds and be reminded, oh yeah.
By the time the band took an intermission for totality, the entire sky was dark. Although I knew this would happen on a logistical level, it was totally different to experience it firsthand, darker than you can even comprehend. Everyone turned toward where we thought the sun was, still tucked away, and murmured about how the day felt like it was flipped upside down. I quietly howled, a soft little joke to my boyfriend, and a few moments later a bunch of people in the crowd followed suit, howling without abandon. No thought is original; people are just on different timelines.
We were all looking at clouds, clouds, and nothing more. Then suddenly — a glimpse of light, a break in the clouds, and the total effervescence of the moon covering the sun. Every single person, thousands of concert goers and dozens of staff and 100 or so watching from the parking garage, cheered with complete unselfconsciousness. I burst into tears. And then, just as suddenly as it appeared, the clouds covered it up again. In an act of hope, we watched for a few more minutes, but the sky gradually lightened and the band resumed playing and the sun never came out again.
It was, hands down, the most exciting thing I’ve ever been a part of.
The week before the eclipse, I’d read that the primary emotions people feel when they see one are total awe or primal fear. Mosquitos come out and street lamps light up and animals howl and fuck under totality. It flips your world upside down, complete darkness in the middle of the day. No wonder people theorized the world would end during it.
But total awe was exactly right. I felt completely tenderhearted in the aftermath, the way you feel after reading a great book or watching a film that really touches you, loving and amazed at this experience on this planet.
My hometown, over 1000 miles away, was also in the path of totality, and I was sharing a common experience with my family –– an experience as uncommon as a total eclipse in the continental US –– texting grainy, overexposed photos and videos. I was checking in with local friends, asking if they saw the glimpse and how they were feeling. One friend who saw the 2017 eclipse said she liked this one even better because of the cloud coverage and uncertainty of it all, and she echoed that people in a different part of town clapped and cheered when they saw it too. She said being a part of the monoculture made us all feel a sense of belonging and excitement, and I think that’s true. The only monoculture we really have these days is, like, presidential elections and those aren’t exactly known for breeding unity.
Maybe there’s a better way to describe it. My boyfriend jokes about being full on things other than food; the dog is full on cuddles when he leaves us to go to his bed, and I get full on gossip when dramatic things happen in public like the couple who drunkenly broke up on the patio of my favorite bar in front of a rapt audience. For a brief moment during the eclipse, I felt full in every fiber of my being. Full on nature and awe and, like many have pointed out, something bigger than myself or any human. But I think the aftereffects are just as important.
Toward the end of the set, Vampire Weekend did a jammy Grateful Dead cover, and their guitar tech played eclipse cornhole for gold nuggets for the crowd (at Coachella a week later, they brought out Paris Hilton and an Abraham Lincoln impersonator to play). Once he got a bag in, crew members tossed gold foil wrapped chocolate bars into the audience. The lucky ones, almost certainly superfans to have come to this special one-off show where many traveled from out of state, could have saved the chocolate for themselves, a memory they put on a shelf at home just for themselves. Instead, they broke off a piece and passed it down the aisle to the next person, a continuation of the moment in time when we were all in it together.
When I got home and saw pictures of people watching the eclipse in New York and other parts of the country, I got chills remembering it. It feels inadequate to say that you have to experience it to understand, since the majority of us will never see one in our lifetimes, but finding the words has proved illusive.
Maybe people who see the northern or southern lights regularly think I’m crazy, take it for granted, but there’s something about staring at the sky while it’s pitch black outside and seeing the clouds move, understanding something bigger than you will ever be is going on around you, sharing the moment with strangers who will never all be gathered together again, all wanting to see even a glimpse of this celestial event and hoping even though it seems like there is none, giving ourselves over to it, briefly wondering if we’re only into this because of all the hype and then there it is, blink-and-you-miss it: the moon covering the sun, a ring of light like a halo around it, a hug, a meeting between our planet’s two most important orbiting bodies. And then it’s gone. Like the end of a movie, the lights come back on gradually, and you take off your glasses and get on with the show.
This was written in the week following the eclipse. Since then, Ezra Koenig has chatted about his experience––on his 40th birthday––on Apple Music if any VW- or eclipse-heads are so inclined.