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# Some things are beyond words (and pictures, and video)
- URL: https://www.reviewertoo.com/some-things-are-beyond-words-and-pictures-and-video/
- Published: 2026-08-17T15:00:19.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-17T15:00:19.000Z
- Description: Sometimes you just have to be there
- Author: Elise Cutts
- Tags: Science Communication, Space, Earth

Last week on Wednesday, I cowered in a tiny patch of shade behind the crumbling wall of a graveyard outside the tiny Spanish hamlet of Fuentetoba and waited for the sun to go out.

I was there for the sky, for the eclipse. But in the hours before it began, I was glued to my phone: panning around Google Maps, consulting a shade map to be sure the sun wasn't going to set on us before totality, looking up when to expect animals to start acting funny, and panic-Googling everything I could about eye safety and the ISO 12312-2 Standard for solar viewers after I looked at the Sun through eclipse glasses for the first time and felt like I'd done something verboten. 

Once the moon started to nibble on the sun (and that is it what it looked like at first), my phone went in my pocket and didn't come back out. My eyes were on the sky, on the dry fields and hills around me, and on the dozen or so locals who'd pulled up next to the graveyard to enjoy the eclipse from their lawn chairs over snacks and glasses of wine. I wasn't sure what to expect, but it was cool. Fun. Interesting. Exciting. I was having a good time. I was a bit nervous, too. Everyone I know who'd seen one had told me that a total solar eclipse is something otherworldly and indescribable — and that I *absolutely* had to get as close as possible to "the line" of points where totality lasts longest. But up until totality, if I was being honest with myself, my own eclipse experience was closer to "oh neat" than "oh my God." 

Then the sun went black, and tears flowed.

As someone who writes for a living, there's something bitter about admitting that I witnessed something so meaningful to me that I am absolutely incapable of describing in language. But I just can't find the words for that total solar eclipse. I could try. People do try. The best I can do is say that it was overwhelming; I felt like I was watching the apocalypse, but in a good way.

Before the eclipse, a friend asked me if I'd take pictures for her. I didn't try, but even if I'd had the right gear for a good shot, a picture wouldn't do much better than words. Nor would a video. I wondered, writing this, if paintings, drawings, or animation might do better. I looked, and while there are some beautiful artistic depictions of eclipses, they're just not the same. A picture is worth a thousand words, but that's no help when no number of words is worth anything at all. 

What does this have to do with science, or science communication?

Both science and communication are about distilling the world into information that can be transferred from one human brain to another. Language, mathematics, art, scientific theories. It's all about compression. But some knowledge can't be compressed. That's why it's such a problem when that one grad student who perfected the black magic of getting the fussy lab equipment to run finally graduates, and why reading about fantastic faraway places is more likely to stoke your desire to see them for yourself than to sate it. 

For those of us who deal in the creation and distribution of compressed realities, I think it's important to be aware of just how much we have to throw out. When I write long magazine stories, I interview between 5-10 experts on average, typically for an hour each. From each of those interviews, maybe one or two quotes end up in the final draft (though of course, interviews do a lot more to shape stories than just provide quotes). So much gets left out. And a conversation is a compression already. If you're a scientist trying to explain your work to a layperson, remember that they've never been in your lab. They haven't smelled the formaldehyde or peered through the microscope or dusted the chalk from their fingers. The day to day work of research is not a total solar eclipse — nothing is. But there's so much that can't be shared, except by helping others experience it for themselves. 

No links or commentary this week. I'm still on vacation, technically. The newsletter will return to its normal style next week.

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