Ella Rose Muse: the story: Busy Bees and Alien Zebras

Wednesday, 4 April 2012

Busy Bees and Alien Zebras

I've had a mad little day so far today, writing all morning then busy organising everything in the entire world ever (aka up and coming modelling trips to Germany, Holland, Scotland and now Dublin, since my postponed trip seems to have resurrected itself!). Flippin' 'eck, I feel like I spend most of my life on skyscanner.net. (In related news I am now the proud owner of a 4-wheel-drive suitcase, which means I will swivel marvellously through airports, in theory, and not get grumpy.) Off to zumba later (after a quick phone call later about another Paris visit that's happening in June... I know, I'm just showing off now) and have also managed to get in an enquiry about a local life drawing class I'm thinking of trying out. I didn't get to study art at school, since it clashed with music on the timetable, but I've always found drawing really relaxing on the rare occasion I've had a go. I wonder if I'd be any good at it - I really have no idea and could almost definitely be terrible, but I used to enjoy it a lot and I think it would be really fun to try. I've also never ever modelled for a life drawing class, only one-to-one when it comes to traditional-media artists, so it will be interesting to see what it all feels like.

Anyway, I modelled again for the brilliantly inventive Colin again recently. We had lots of fun trying out various projector themes on me. (I've written about his methods previously here.) I also suggested during the shoot that we try movement/motion blur, something I don't think Colin had really worked on before, and it produced some really really cool (and surprising) effects, we thought, and required the invention of an alien zebra dance which amused me greatly. You feel off in your own world a bit when modelling for these projections; everything seems pitch black or blinding; with the heater on loudly as well, communication between photographer and model isn't the easiest! Maybe I'll be able to show some more movement-y ones at some point, but anyway, here are some good 'uns to be getting on with! Thanks Colin!

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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Wednesday, 4 April 2012

Busy Bees and Alien Zebras