Ella Rose Muse: the story: Modern Day Dramas!

Sunday, 12 August 2012

Modern Day Dramas!

Hello everyone! Hope you're all doing well and enjoying the summer (if you're in this hemisphere) and Olympic showdown, wherever you are! I've been watching it on and off - SO inspiring to see people with dedication and talent and determination to work hard be rewarded - it's not often that happens in our society on such a big scale. Looking forward to the closing ceremony tonight as I absolutely loved the opening one. Let's hope Icke and co are wrong about the satanic occult/illuminati hocus pocus going on behind the scenes and it's all good fun... *nervous*! My boyfriend is working at the NBA house, finishing today, so hello to you!

It's been a whole week since I've updated this blog, which is a bit unheard of as loyal followers will know. I've just been SO busy and that's been compounded by computer, internet, browser and phone upheavals all happening at once. I am now thoroughly part of the modern world thanks to my little brother, who has built me a new computer (I now have to get to grips with the concept of 'clouds', google chrome, magic servers in the sky... all that stuff. Seriously, it is actual magic to me, I don't understand any of it). A couple of days ago I was set up with a new computer and phone on the same day and literally felt like I needed a lie down. I had to go and sit outside in the garden for a while and sip tea. This new-fangled technology is making my head spin. I will see how I go for a week or so but I might have to plead surrender and request for myself a good old-fashioned microsoft office installation so that I don't have to get my head around the idea of my novel floating around cyberspace as a 'google doc' when it could just be snuggled safely on my desktop. Apparently it will sync itself to my laptop when I take that around on travel/trips. And don't get my started on google chrome... I move my mouse to one corner and the entire screen changes before my eyes. I have a virus protection software thing that now talks to me (I am under strict instructions to thank it out loud each time it announces its success; I would have done that anyway of course, much like the conversations I have with my sat nav.) And my mouse is wireless. My brother looked at me pitifully when I told him I was proud of the fact that I don't have twitter, and actually don't even know what twitter looks like, as I've never seen the website. No FOMO here. That said, once I'm set up with technology I'm pretty good at using it as I'm quite intuitive and technology is obviously made to BE intuitive these days; I just don't understand how any of it works. And that's fine really, I think.

OK, anyway, so all in all I am now back on top of communication and able to respond to all sorts of nice emails, etc., which is well, nice! :-)

And here are some more shots from Britalicus, made up in Scotland. Love the drama in these!

(Look! There are 4 of me! Magic! :-) )

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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Sunday, 12 August 2012

Modern Day Dramas!