Madrileño Morning, cont'd

I haven't been doing a very good job of writing here recently, so I'd forgotten all about the Madrileño morning photos. Here is the information on that, as I wrote the day I took the pictures (see previous post called Madrileño morning):

I am seated on the sunny patio of a café. It is 9 o'clock on a Saturday morning. I am mainly alone in the café, and the street is quiet but for a group of young Madrilenos (likely just a tad older than me) who clearly have yet to go home from their night-long fiesta. It is also clear from the volume of their voices, their stumbling, their raucous laughter and the large glass bottles of beer they carry that they are quite drunk. I am annoyed by them and want them to go home, or at the very least just to go away.

But they don't go away. They talk and laugh and drink and suddenly one of the young men begins to sing. His voice is acrylic and strong and resonates off the tiled square, off the walls of the buildings and sends chills down my spine. Soon, two bald, pot-bellied men come to the windows of their apartments several stories above the square to listen, leaning on their elbows as they watch the singer. He is singing some kind of flamenco song, but he isn't exactly singing--he is forcing those strident, melancolic notes out from the bottom of his chest. They are beautiful, but sound very painful, as if they are beating their way out of him. From where I sit, I can see his face redden and his chest heave with the effort of his song. The young man's song is something about a girl named Lucia, her eyes, the moon and the singer's heart. The street is filled with nothing but the sound of this young man's exquisite plea to Lucia for several long and lovely minutes.

His friends had all been gathered tightly around him as he sang, but one of the girls begins to do a flamenco dance at a little distance from the group. She raises her arms delicately over her head and stamps her feet to the rhythm of her friend's voice. After a moment she stumbles and falls over, scraping her hand, and they seem to remember all at once that they are drunk and without sleep. The music and dancing stops, they trip and meander their way out of the square and down the street and as I watch the impromptu concert grow smaller in the distance I think to myself, "what a wonderful way for me to begin a Saturday morning."