Ella Rose Muse: the story: The Moon

Friday, 14 February 2014

The Moon

Some romantic images for you on this disgustingly gusty, rainy day - these were taken by the excellent ManCave Studio (great name, hey?), with whom I'll be shooting again sometime soon-ish if we can get our diaries organised.

I'm also taking lots of bookings at the moment both here in the UK and in various places around Europe - looks like another busy year is in store for me. I'm always very happy to hear from anyone interested in having me model for them: ellarosemuse@live.co.uk (I get these urges to advertise myself when in 'organisation' mode; though I really wish I was more on top of emails at the moment; to anyone waiting for a reply, you won't need to wait much longer as I'm on to it over the next few days I promise!!)

I've been modelling for sculptors/painters a lot recently, and other highlights have included battling my way through trains, cancelled trains (which morphed into buses), boats and taxis to the Isle of Wight, to work with a very creative photographer who specialises in producing the images you see on the front covers of novels. All very exciting and I hope to be able to show you something in a couple of months or so. (And I'm absolutely not complaining about the state of the transport issues here in the UK at the moment; I can't imagine how horrible it must be for those really suffering with floods in the South West.)

I love the curve on the backdrop in the last one - looks like the moon. :-)

Also, I just have a tiny weeny rant I'd like to vent... Please oh please oh please, if you're a new model starting out in this world and want to give yourself a 'stage name' or pseudonym, please oh please check what names already exist and are in wide circulation on the internet. I have mentioned this before, but I'm getting a little fed up, to be honest, of the amount of models I see with painfully similar names to my own.

I'm not saying my name is wildly unique, but no one else was called it when I started (I checked, before I built my portfolio!!) and now there are countless variations of 'Rose's out there and even one model notably calling herself something just one letter different from 'Ella Rose'. Seriously, imitation is not necessarily flattering; sometimes it just looks silly, and causes all sorts of confusions online where messages are mis-sent to me (meant for her) or sent to her when they are meant for me. I am not the only model out there who has this happening; there are countless spin offs of my popular model friends, too. And I know I sound silly and petty even mentioning it, but it does seem such a shame and not at all helpful to those people who become confused about who, exactly, they are contacting. What's wrong with being as unique as we can each be? :-)

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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Friday, 14 February 2014

The Moon