Ella Rose Muse: the story: Grapes and Ferrets

Thursday 13 December 2012

Grapes and Ferrets

...And here are some actual modelling shots again!

These were taken by Vincent Rijs in Amsterdam. I think they have a very Dutch feel to them!

I very much hope to work with Vincent again during my trip to Amsterdam in June 2013. After that hefty travel retrospective in the last blog post, it's time to look forward. I've recently updated the travel/schedule page on this blog (see the tab at the top). I'll be in Brussels in February, Scotland in May, Vienna, Prague, Berlin (and northern Germany) and Holland in June, and South Germany (Black Forest/Bavaria/Baden-Wurttemberg) and probably Zurich in July. I hope to visit Paris sometime in March or early April.

(Interlude: this is all assuming the world won't end on the 21st. That said, anyone who's anyone surely knows that the Mayans only predicted the end of a cycle and the start of a new one, a shift in human understanding and an apocalypse only in those 'end of an era' terms; and whatever repercussions will be involved are supposed to occur in the surrounding days, months or even years. :-) From what I've read (and I bought a book on the Mayans last year so that visiting the pyramids would be more fun), they never actually claimed that the world will end on that date; they are only aligning meaning with astronomical fact, as was their way of doing things. Gotta say though, the parties in Mexico at the ancient Mayan sites around now must be brilliant.)

I will also be travelling for shoots around England as well as obviously being available locally in the south/midlands, but really this depends as always on people getting in touch with me to make the bookings that kick start arrangements. :-) At the moment I'd like to schedule in a few more mini-trips of 1-3 days in various places around England, for early-mid 2013, and possibly with a few studio days in the mix, but I won't know where to visit if you don't let me know! Email me at ellarosemuse@live.co.uk and I'll do my best to make a shoot happen!

Below is a poster for Vincent Rijs exhibition, running this month in Amsterdam.

Walter De La Mare, 'The Listeners'

‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller,

Knocking on the moonlit door;

And his horse in the silence champed the grasses

Of the forest’s ferny floor:

And a bird flew up out of the turret,

Above the Traveller’s head:

And he smote upon the door again a second time;

‘Is there anybody there?’ he said.

But no one descended to the Traveller;

No head from the leaf-fringed sill

Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,

Where he stood perplexed and still.

But only a host of phantom listeners

That dwelt in the lone house then

Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight

To that voice from the world of men:

Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,

That goes down to the empty hall,

Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken

By the lonely Traveller’s call.

And he felt in his heart their strangeness,

Their stillness answering his cry,

While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,

’Neath the starred and leafy sky;

For he suddenly smote on the door, even

Louder, and lifted his head:—

‘Tell them I came, and no one answered,

That I kept my word,’ he said.

Never the least stir made the listeners,

Though every word he spake

Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house

From the one man left awake:

Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,

And the sound of iron on stone,

And how the silence surged softly backward,

When the plunging hoofs were gone.

Natasha Khan/Bat for Lashes, 'Horse and I'

Got woken in the night,
by a mystic golden light.
My head soaked in river water.
I had been dressed in a coat of armor. They called
a horse out of the woodland.
"Take her there, through the desert shores."
They sang to me, "This is yours to wear.
You're the chosen one, there's no turning back now."

The smell of redwood giants.
The banquet for the shadows.
Horse and I, we're dancers in the dark.
Came upon the headdress.
It was gilded, dark and golden.
The children sang.
I was so afraid I took it to my head and prayed.
They sang to me, "This is yours to wear. You're the chosen one, there's no turning back."
They sang to me, "This is yours to wear. You're the chosen one, there's no turning back."

Mark Doty, 'A Display of Mackerel'

They lie in parallel rows,

on ice, head to tail,

each a foot of luminosity

barred with black bands,

which divide the scales’

radiant sections

like seams of lead

in a Tiffany window.

Iridescent, watery

prismatics: think abalone,

the wildly rainbowed

mirror of a soapbubble sphere,

think sun on gasoline.

Splendor, and splendor,

and not a one in any way

distinguished from the other

—nothing about them

of individuality. Instead

they’re all exact expressions

of the one soul,

each a perfect fulfilment

of heaven’s template,

mackerel essence. As if,

after a lifetime arriving

at this enameling, the jeweler’s

made uncountable examples,

each as intricate

in its oily fabulation

as the one before

Suppose we could iridesce,

like these, and lose ourselves

entirely in the universe

of shimmer—would you want

to be yourself only,

unduplicatable, doomed

to be lost? They’d prefer,

plainly, to be flashing participants,

multitudinous. Even now

they seem to be bolting

forward, heedless of stasis.

They don’t care they’re dead

and nearly frozen,

just as, presumably,

they didn’t care that they were living:

all, all for all,

the rainbowed school

and its acres of brilliant classrooms,

in which no verb is singular,

or every one is. How happy they seem,

even on ice, to be together, selfless,

which is the price of gleaming.

Kate Clanchy, 'Poem for a Man with No Sense of Smell'

This is simply to inform you:

that the thickest line in the kink of my hand
smells like the feel of an old school desk,
the deep carved names worn sleek with sweat;

that beneath the spray of my expensive scent
my armpits sound a bass note strong
as the boom of a palm on a kettle drum;

that the wet flush of my fear is sharp
as the taste of an iron pipe, midwinter,
on a child's hot tongue; and that sometimes,

in a breeze, the delicate hairs on the nape
of my neck, just where you might bend
your head, might hesitate and brush your lips,

hold a scent frail and precise as a fleet
of tiny origami ships, just setting out to sea.

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Thursday 13 December 2012

Grapes and Ferrets