Fata Morgana – A mirage on the horizon, or optical illusion, named for the sorceress Morgan Le Fay. The legends say the great witch would create illusions of land or a castle out on the horizon to lure sailors farther away from their homes and eventual death.

Terra Alta – High Land, or safety from the cataclysmic waves and floods, perhaps.

Sometimes a band name or album title gives away a sort of mission statement on the part of the group. The jury is out on this one. The music doesn’t quite form a solid, but it’s not exactly fluid or vaporous either. It exists somewhere in that liminal space of all matter, not one nor the other. It doesn’t occupy a space in time soundwise either. It’s very 1980s in some ways, yet not at all. Not all synth keys are created equal and there is a lot more substance to this than the 1980s Casio sound. It’s old and new at the same time. Again, a mirage, and maybe that’s what FATAMORGANA is about. It’s not important though.

Terra Alta also seems to be some kind of travelogue. The song-titles and lyrics are in Spanish, and my knowledge of foreign languages is fairly limited but enough comes through to understand that there is a conceptual interplay of the physical and mystical worlds, mountains, oceans, deserts etc. It’s rather a dark edge, and of course if you’ve been following even a little bit…

Time & Space are fucking with my head a bit this week anyway so that leaves me susceptible to the theme and mood here. It is, according to the calendar/clock on my laptop, Thursday morning but it feels like the fourth consecutive Monday with Friday very far away. That means washing up on the shores of a weekend at some point soon, unawares and unprepared. It’s probably best that I’m going back to the office soon. I don’t have enough face to face conversations these days and those that occur often catch me off guard. It’s time to re-acclimate to civilized society or it’s all going to be a rude awakening next month when it happens. It’s funny because I’d be just as happy to continue as it’s going but it’s probably not such a good thing overall.

I told someone the other night that I am often lonely, but found it hard to explain why it doesn’t really hurt. It’s more of a low-key sense of being very alone but there is no yearning or longing. It has struck me over the last year that loneliness only hurts if you’re struggling not to be alone, or if you’re desperately missing someone. If you’re not then it’s just a state of being and not a state of mind or spirit. There is a remarkably big difference. Every so often there is a painful jab like pulling a stiff muscle, but it doesn’t really last all that long. And I spend a lot of time immersed entirely in the five physical senses, which does open up the sixth. It’s meditative and peaceful.

Curious sensations… I sort of wish this had all happened years ago so I could have reached this place sooner, but I suspect I wasn’t ready and it would have been a much harder time.

Where is this place? I guess if we are to stick with the fata morgana idea, I am here for right now and I’m not chasing a mirage on the horizon.

Does that work for you?