A Fata Morgana (Italian: [ˈfaːta morˈɡaːna]) is an unusual and complex form of superior mirage that is seen in a narrow band right above the horizon. It is the Italian name for the Arthurian sorceress Morgan le Fay, from a belief that these mirages, often seen in the Strait of Messina, were fairy castles in the air or false land created by her witchcraft to lure sailors to their deaths.
Although the term Fata Morgana is sometimes applied to other, more common kinds of mirages, the true Fata Morgana is different from both an ordinary superior mirage and an inferior mirage.
Fata Morgana mirages significantly distort the object or objects on which they are based, often such that the object is completely unrecognizable.
A Fata Morgana can be seen on land or at sea, in polar regions or in deserts. It can involve almost any kind of distant object, including boats, islands and the coastline.
A Fata Morgana is often rapidly changing. The mirage comprises several inverted (upside down) and erect (right side up) images that are stacked on top of one another. Fata Morgana mirages also show alternating compressed and stretched zones.
BLOGSERVATIONS. I knew something about mirages, but I thought they were those things in the desert, where you see water and palm trees on the horizon and by the time you run to them, they're gone. But the Fata Morgana, named after the sorceress Morgan Le Fay in the Arthurian legend, is something quite else. I seem to remember, in certain films, seeing something above the water, something weirdly shimmering that kept changing size and shape. It seemed to melt, stretch and reform like a strange liquid. Sometimes you could see through it. These things likely freaked out those sailors of antiquity, just as they freak out people today. Pirate ship? Imminent attack? One can see where they might be mistaken for a UFO.
A boat can suddenly project itself upward so that it appears to hang in the sky, morphing from an elongated shape to a blob to - nothing. The marine mirages make sense - sort of - because of all that reflection on the water. But what about the ones on land? Wikipedia tells me (and how can Wikipedia be wrong?) that a Fata Morgana can be almost anything: an island, a mountainside, a mountain GOAT if you could get a goat to hang upside-down. But how about whole cities? The photos from China appear to show tall buildings supended above the clouds, leading a lot of people to cry "photoshop!" Then how to explain the video of the same phenomenon? Who could have created that?
All this comes from the Land of the Strange, that country in which I am a cliffdweller or sharecropper or part-time lover. It's all very well to say "it's just a trick of light". Simple physics. Physics is a strange thing, however, and some time I'll post something about the overtone chanting of Tibetan monks, which is, quite literally, a chord coming from one person's throat. The way the sound leaps all over the musical spectrum is downright spooky, and seems impossible. Do we believe our eyes, and if we don't, what do we rely on? Physics? Upside-down boats (or goats), or castles in the air? And did anyone in that eerie floating city in China happen to look down?
The best, if not the only, version of this song. Johnny Cash wrote the tune, and Dylan the lyrics (can't you tell?). I had this album in the late '60s and wore the grooves off it, but seeing this video is startling and makes the experience much more real and vivid. Cash had never done any serious time, but he managed to create the impression that he had. His was an outlaw's soul, and these men knew it.
One of my all-time favorite numbers from the early-talkie musicals. The choreography is extremely odd! These dancers lack the grace I see in my three dancing granddaughters. Their "splits" are more like thuds, and those pompoms. . . oh well, this is definitely a period piece. This has just resurfaced on YouTube after disappearing (copyright issues, probably) for several years.
(I rediscovered these recordings a little while ago, then realized I'd already done a post on them. Well, if Ican stand to hear them again, so can you!)
There's not much to say about singing like this - not even words to describe it, but I'll try. Most of these are "vanity" recordings, kind of like self-published books, and thus are a whole new definition of awfulness. But at some point, these people must have thought they could sing. Who told them that? Whoever it was should be incarcerated. At very least, there should be a stiff fine.
Ah! Emanuele Bucalo. You may ask - who is he? You will know even less about him after you hear this. But I will say, it's funny. There used to be a Hanna-Barbera duck character named Yakky Doodle, and this is who he reminds me of. Not even as tuneful as Donald Duck.
Sirach Van Bodegraven is another infamously un-famous singer who deserved his reputation. He has a way of blundering through the classics in hell-bent fashion, singing so badly that it's often hard to tell what the hell the song is supposed to be. Here he eviscerates Vesti la Giubba from Pagliacci with true operatic gusto. Or is it gutso?
Encore, encore! To thunderous applause (or is that a thunderstorm? Can't tell, my ears just went blank), Sirach treats us to his inimitable rendition of that other opera standard, Nessun Dorma. This is only marginally worse than listening to those fat adolescent boys in spandex body suits butcher it on America's Got Talent. Note to the audience: LOUD singing isn't GOOD singing.
Now, here we have "The Highest Voice". That is the title of the video, so that is what I am going to call it. It is the highest voice, I suppose, if screeching at the top of your lungs and "sort of" hitting the note counts. I had to read the YouTube description to find out who this was. It's Susie Summers! Sounds like someone from a Gidget movie, or maybe one of those dolls with hair you can pull out of its head so it reaches the floor. Anyway, Susie Summers is singing The Doll Song (appropriate!) by Offenbach, whom I don't believe for a minute wrote it the way she is singing it.
Adele's Laughing Song! But we're not laughing.
Thomas Burns may just be the Michelangelo of bad singing. The piano introduction seems to be preparing us for singing that is romantic and tinged with melancholy, and instead we get a constipated Elmer Fudd. I have heard that Burns was a close friend of that other scion of bad singing, Florence Foster Jenkins (badly portrayed by Meryl Streep, whose performing is now so weighed down by mannerisms that she looks like a candidate for Dr. Nowzardan). Maybe not, though - I think he was just added on to a CD of Jenkins' recordings to pad it out a bit. Florence only recorded a dozen or so arias, or perhaps the others just exploded into bits. When Burns sings, "O, Margarita", though. . . do I even need to finish that sentiment?
I shouldn't include this one, and I feel a little ashamed of myself, but here it is anyway because it is just so horrendous. It's not just bad singing - it's drunk singing, from a soprano who should know better. What's both touching and cringeworthy about it is how the tenor just keeps on valiantly singing, not trying to carry her but just keep his head barely above water. What else can he do - escort her off the stage? Really, someone should have, if only for her own sake. I had to look up her name - she's a well-known singer, when sober, with the incredible handle of Dragana Jugovic del Monaco. Yikes!
Natalie de Andrade. I can't find out anything about her. Obviously she must have performed somewhere, or her puss wouldn't be plastered on this programmy-looking thing. But she is awful. Simply awful. This sounds like a rehearsal, but of what, I can't say.
I have some serious issues with the two people who came to my door on a freezing-cold evening, right at supper hour, and said, "Thanks for coming to the door! We're collecting for UNICEF!" I said, "We don't give at the door", and closed it. But of course, being a good Canadian who had politeness jackhammered into her as a child, I felt "bad" as I went back to my already-getting-cold dinner. But I didn't want to stand there shuffling from foot to foot while they gave their spiel and I fished around for some money to get this transaction over with.
I think door-to-door donation is a VERY bad idea in this age of widespread fraud, even if charities actually still do it, because I've heard stories that they won't even take your cash now and want your credit card info (! How dumb do they think I am?), or will only sign you up for monthly donations. I'm not against that, in fact we already do it from the security of our PayPal account. Certainly it feels safer than handing your money over to "someone" who says he's from UNICEF.
It's hard enough to overcome a highly-warranted suspicion about people holding their hands out in the dark, especially when you've been trying to de-stress with your loved ones at the dinner table. But that leads to another question. Since when is this still OK during COVID? How easy is it to stay six feet apart when handing someone a wad of cash? What are the regulations now, and who has the extra money to spare when businesses are failing all over the place? Yes, I know kids overseas have it even worse, but is it helpful to remind me of that as I stand there wondering if I can even afford to give them anything?
In addition to all this unpleasantness at dinnertime, I don't honestly want a person I don't know coming to my door unless it is some sort of real emergency. Bill and I recently made a pact: the ONLY business we do at the door now is Girl Guide cookies. (BTW, there used to be someone who came around every year with no affiliation at all, saying he was collecting money to buy milk for homeless mothers. I think it went straight into his pocket. If he comes around again, I'll tell him my daughter is a TV reporter who's doing a story on donation fraud, and watch him skedaddle away from my doorway forever.)
My favorite version of our national anthem. Even without words, it expresses so much about what it is to be Canadian - with breathtaking glimpses, lightning edits, a glorious chorus - and even a puck drop at the end! I can't get through this without tears.
Anyone who follows this blog (and, admittedly, that would be mostly me) will notice I come around to certain subjects on a cyclic basis. Having heard and been completely entranced by Bob Dylan's latest album, recorded when he was 79 years old and apparently in yet another flowering of his startling lyric genius, I'm now in a Dylanish, Bobbyish phase once again.
I have my favorites, but because he has written so many hundreds of songs it's hard to pick just one, or even just a dozen. I became attached to one of his earlier albums, Desire, in part because of the unusual violin stylings of Scarlet Rivera, but largely because of some truly kick-ass songs. It isn't Dylan at his best, but it's a more relaxed and self-revealing Dylan than most, with some memorable and sweetly pining love songs. One More Cup of Coffee stands out for its breathtakingly succinct language:
Your sister tells the future, like your mother and yourself
You never learned to read and write, there's no books upon your shelf
And your pleasure knows no limits, your voice is like a meadowlark
But your heart is like an ocean, mysterious and dark
One more cup of coffee for the road
One more cup of coffee 'fore I go
To the valley below.
How Dylan can cram an entire biography, not to mention a family history, into a few deft lines is completely beyond me - but that's genius for you. You can't define it, but you know when you are in its presence.
But while wandering around inside this one-of-my-many-favorite Dylan albums, I rediscovered a tender love ballad called Oh, Sister - and remembered that this song led to a famous, if not infamous, musical feud.
It was obvious to anyone who knew the situation that Oh, Sister was written - not for, but AT Joan Baez, expressing some obvious hurt and self-pity for having been "wronged" by someone he felt so close to that they could have been (ick!) brother and sister. Dylan doesn't have a sister, and it's kind of evident by these sentiments. But it's also pretty manipulative stuff, and as usual with Dylan, you kind of have to pull it apart to really get at it.
Oh, Sister Bob Dylan
Oh, sister, when I come to lie in your arms You should not treat me like a stranger Our Father would not like the way that you act And you must realize the danger
Oh, sister, am I not a brother to you And one deserving of affection And is our purpose not the same on this earth To love and follow his direction
We grew up together From the cradle to the grave We died and were reborn And then mysteriously saved
Oh, sister, when I come to knock on your door Don't turn away, you'll create sorrow Time is an ocean but it ends at the shore You may not see me tomorrow
Oh, sister - where do we start? This is a really short song, but as usual, it's packed with megatons of import. The first couple of lines aren't just reproachful: they actually contain the word "should", as if he has the right to dictate how she feels about him. From the erotic reference to lying in her arms (which can also be seen as a mother thing), he quickly segues to "Our Father", as if he's suddenly saying the Lord's Prayer. Dylan's entrenched religiosity can be a real ambush which is difficult to endure right in the middle of a supposed love song.
And as for the line "realize the danger" - of what? Even if we don't go there, we find in the next stanza that he thinks he's "deserving of affection", which she is obviously withholding. He also jumps the gun on not only HIS, but HER purpose here on earth, assuring her (and assuming) that he knows more about it than she does, though it's doubtful he ever asked.
"We grew up together/From the cradle to the grave" - well, it WAS the '60s, wasn't it, and they were in a kind of glamourous blaze of folkie love, but that "cradle to the grave" bit also seems to jump the gun. Not only are they not dead yet, they're still only in their thirties. And all that died-and-reborn stuff is a little heavy for a love ballad. Dylan is still hiding behind his heavy-handed Christianity - but wait, this was BEFORE all that happened! The symptoms of the disease were already there: self-righteousness mascarading as piety.
The last verse is deceptively beautiful, but similarly "loaded": if she dares turn him away, she's going to "create sorrow" - not just for him, but for both of them, if not the whole world. Ahem! "You may not see me tomorrow" sounds almost like a threat. Is he going to die or what? Come on, Bob, make it clear.
The funny and really Dylan-ish thing about this song is that, when you hear him sing it, it sounds sweetly sentimental, full of lyricism and longing, not the piece of subversive abuse that it truly is. Dylan manipulated Baez like a yo-yo for years, jerking the string just as she was getting over him (see the truly incredible Diamonds and Rust, the only song she ever wrote which was a worthy adversary of the Dylan one-two punch). She STILL isn't over him, if a recent PBS special is any indication - she goes all dewy-eyed and then even apologizes for his cruelty to her, saying she just didn't understand back then what he was all about. (As if he wasn't busy telling her that, not to mention what SHE was all about.)
But at the time, some time in the '70s, Baez's reaction to Oh, Sister was one of white-hot fury. Dylan had the effrontery to keep his marriage to Sara Lowndes a secret, not just from the whole world but from the woman he supposedly cherished as a soul mate. Baez didn't even know about Sara until she heard Bob was sick, popped in to see him, and his wife, who happened to be a dark-eyed fashion model, opened the door. It was one of the worst betrayals in popular music history, and the song is one long vomit of the toxins his deception created.
I had trouble even posting it here because it seethed and fumed and even spewed vitriol. Because Baez is Baez and unable to cram all this into one line like "you'd know what a drag it is to see you", it goes on for verses and verses. I watch true crime shows, though I probably shouldn't, and when someone is stabbed to death, they are always stabbed 47 times, and it always turns out to be a family member or spouse. It's called "overkill", something that can only be perpetrated by someone with intense feelings for the victim.
The opposite of love isn't hate. It's indifference. Baez takes a lot of verses to purge herself, is as nasty as she knows how to be, and even uses a refrain (take it easy, but take it) that comes directly out of a Woody Guthrie song.
I do wonder, if Dylan paid any attention to this at the time, how much it affected him. Though I always saw something one-sided in their immortal Darby-and-Joan (or Bonnie and Clyde) connection, Dylan rhapsodized about Baez during an interminable acceptance speech he gave for some award or other a few years ago. Who knows what THAT was about. He talked for half an hour, when it's more normal for him to just take the award and run.
This never gets resolved.
Dylan will turn 80 in a couple of months - yes, eighty freaking years old, and Baez might be there already. Dylan has suddenly hit the jackpot - AGAIN - proving he has more creative lives than a wildcat (bobcat?), and isn't finished with us yet. Are these two extremely old people still attached by some freakish umbilical cord born of history, twins like Castor and Pollux (excuse me, I've been listening to Dylan's latest album and it's chock-a-block with mythology)? Or did they just get thrown together by a simple twist of fate?
Oh, Brother! Joan Baez
You've got eyes like Jesus But you speak with a viper's tongue We were just sitting around on earth Where the hell did you come from? With your lady dressed in deerskin And an amazing way about her When are you going to realize That you just can't live without her?
Take it easy Take it light But take it
Your lady gets her power From the goddess and the stars You get yours from the trees and the brooks And a little from life on Mars And I've known you for a good long while And would you kindly tell me, mister How in the name of the Father and the Son Did I come to be your sister?
Take it easy Take it light But take it
You've done dirt to lifelong friends With little or no excuses Who endowed you with the crown To hand out these abuses? Your lady knows about these things But they don't put her under Me, I know about them, too And I react like thunder
Take it easy Take it light But take it
I know you are surrounded By parasites and sycophants When I come to see you I dose up on coagulants Because when you hurl that bowie knife It's going to be when my back is turned Doing some little deed for you And baby, will I get burned
Take it easy Take it light But take it
So little brother when you come To knock on my door I don't want to bring you down But I just went through the floor My love for you extends through life And I don't want to waste it But honey, what you've been dishing out You'd never want to taste it And if I had the nerve To either risk it or to break it I'd put our friendship on the line And show you how to take it
Take it easy Take it light But take it
SPECIAL BONUS RECORD. Like those cereal-box records I collected as a kid, I can't help but share the magic of this. It's just one of the songs on Dylan's latest album, Rough and Rowdy Ways, which is among the best he has ever done. Though it might be said the song is about Joan, I think it more likely that it's about his most faithful love: the love of his Saviour, his truest friend always, the Son of Man.
