Ella Rose Muse: the story: 2014

Tuesday, 30 December 2014

What a Wonderful Year! Presenting: 2014

It's New Years Eve tomorrow and I have a feeling I might not be able to get on the computer much in between seeing friends and celebrating (not that NYE is that big a deal to me; I'm one of those people who comes up with resolutions almost every week, so what's a few more to add to the list?!), so I thought I'd get this blog post in early!

I was originally going to publish my travel schedule for the next 12 months and talk about a few things I'm doing next year, but first, I want to look back!

So... Without further delay, here's a post I've come to very much enjoy compiling at the end of each year: my run down of highlights from this blog over the last twelve months. (2013 highlights here & 2012 highlights here.)

Get your remaining Christmas chocolates to hand (I highly favour ferrero rochers, personally), and any leftover mulled wine, and get comfy...

Presenting 2014:

From 'The Far Flinging Ocean' - image by Zoe Wiseman, taken in Australia

From 'Iceland' - image by Alex Ingram, taken at the incredible Geysir there:

From 'Smoke and Mesh' - image by Bjorn Hansen, taken in Sydney:

From 'Baby it's cold outside' - image by Chris Lloyd, taken at Eye For An Image Studio, Oxfordshire:

From 'Gilded Mirrors and Stuffed Moose: Chanticleer Brides 25th Anniversary Collection' - image by Chris Hanley, taken in Somerset:

From 'Mellifluous Monochrome' - image by Malvin Jan Dyb, taken in Norway:

From 'Rainforest Revisited' - image by Dave Aharonian, taken in Canada:

From 'Curved Skies Down Under' - image by Jim Furness, taken in Australia (with Ivory Flame & Anoush Anou):

From 'The Moon' - image by ManCave, taken in West Berkshire:

From 'Birthdays - Soft Dances in a Room of Grey' - image by Mark Bigelow, taken at Studio Blanco:

From 'An Italian Garden' - image by Herb Nestler, taken in Tuscany (with Valentina Feula):

From 'Pearls, Fleurs & Luminance' - image by Bjorn Hansen, taken in Sydney:

From 'White, Yellow, Red & Blue' - image by Kev Bretts, taken in my (now famous) Oxfordshire bluebell patch:

From 'Closure; unfinished business' - image by Nigel Barklie, taken at Studio Blanco:

From '; also, weather' - image by Brian Connor, taken in Australia:

From 'Traveller' - image by Phil Chaplin, taken in Australia:

From 'Glimpses' - image by Alan Horten, taken at Paul's Studio, Reading:

From 'Sculpture' - bronze sculpture by Andrew Freidin:

From 'Black Feet & Metal' - image by Barend Jan de Jong, taken in Rotterdam, Netherlands:

From 'Tryst' - image by Malvin Jan Dyb, taken in Norway:

From 'Sunswept Sisters' - image by Mel Brackstone, taken in Australia (with Anoush Anou):

From 'Into the Deep' - image by Clayton Bastiani, taken on the Isle of Wight:

From 'Electric Blue, rain, shapes; Workshop and London Exhibition' - image by Eric Kellerman, taken in Holland:

From 'Catchlight in Belfast' - image by Ross McKelvey, taken in Belfast:

From 'A Rainbow' - image by Jeremy Howitt, taken in Oxford:

From 'Pink Venus' - image by Samuel Somers, taken in Belgium:

From 'Marian' - image by Jeff Wilson, taken in Oxfordshire:

From 'Norway Part 1 - Arctic Winds, Rainbows & Midnight Sun' - image by Hakon Gronning, taken in Norway:

From 'I must be a mermaid' - image by Hakon Gronning, taken in NOrway:

From 'Fruit, Fog & Romantic Pleasure' - image by ManCave (with Joel Hicks), taken in West Berkshire:

From 'Les Coquelicots dans La Pluie' - image by Don McCrae, taken in France:

From 'Den Haag' - image by Hans Miller, taken in the Netherlands:

From 'Paride' - image by Paride Ostierna, taken in Luton:

From 'Romantische' - image by Jeff Wilson, taken in Oxfordshire:

From 'Life from Ash' - image by Martin Krans, taken in Holland:

From 'Wheat, White & Apples' - image by Karen Jones, taken in Oxfordshire:

From 'She wore Blue...' - image by Luc Bollen, taken in Belgium:

From 'Pedal Boats & Bikinis' - image by Gary Sandy, taken in Southampton:

From 'Leonides the Lion Head' - image by David Ferris, taken in Australia:

From 'Europe' - image by Thomas Bichler, taken in Germany:

From 'Tags' - image by Stephen Bassett, taken in Belfast:

(Also, my dog... Sorry):

From 'The Wool Company' - image by Sarah @ The Wool Company, taken in Cornwall:

From 'Arbroath - Tayport' - image by Jim Furness, taken in Scotland:

From 'Sunday Medley' - image by Ken Pegg, taken in Dorset:

From 'Scandinavia' - image by Mads Erik Husdal, taken in Norway:

From 'A Certain Darkness is Needed to See The Stars' - image by Luc Bollen, taken in Brussels:

From 'A Blush of Wildlife' - image by Hugh Alison, taken in Wales:

From 'How to....' - image by Karen Jones, taken in France:

From 'Foreign Sands' - image by Martin Krans, taken in Holland:

From 'Oblique Strategies' - image by Matt McCosh, taken in the Midlands:

From 'Portents with Paride' - image by Paride Ostierna, taken in Oxford:

From 'Sunshine & Water' - image by Tom McArthur, taken in Portugal:

From 'Sunshine & Water' - image by Carl Grim, taken in Portugal:

From 'Fires Beneath her Feet' - image by Adrian Spencer, taken in Oxfordshire (wearing Clessidra designs):

From 'Primary Love' - image by CocTales Photography, taken in London:

..................................................................................................................................................

And, finally, as a little preview of what comes next (as I did sort of promise it in the last post), here's one by Jeremy Howitt from our recent jaunt to Venice!

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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Tuesday, 30 December 2014

What a Wonderful Year! Presenting: 2014