Ella Rose Muse: the story: Foreign Sands

Wednesday, 19 November 2014

Foreign Sands

Bonjour!

Hope all your autumns are thriving.

Things I've been up to recently:

- Being in love with Vienna, and then Venice (shots to show soon and I think you'll like them!)
- Making beetroot and walnut explosions.
- Reading my poetry at a festival that also hosted Carol Ann Duffy (GCSE English 'my love is an onion' poet laureate extraordinaire!) among other talented writers - an explosively exciting way to kick-start my new writing project which is coming more into focus this winter. ('Explosively exciting'? Don't worry, my poetry is better than that.)
- Acting and dancing in a couple of scenes in Pride & Prejudice & Zombies (new feature film which, to me, sounds utterly ridiculous, but it was a LOT of fun and has a great cast!!)
- Being sort-of-visible in Downton Abbey's last episode on Sunday... Haha. I am hopeful that the scene I was more prominent in will be shown in the Christmas Special!!!
- Lots of lovely local-ish shoots and frolics in front of lenses. Same old good stuff!
- Tango-ing, waltz-ing and quick-stepping.

I've also had a little urge to put together my 'dream 2015 travel hit/wish list', so thought I'd copy it here, in case anyone wants to book me in any relevant place, or keep a mental note that I'll be gradually getting organised with flights, etc... It's not comprehensive, but also it's not likely I'll do it ALL - but I have a feeling I'll do the majority, to be honest. Aren't your twenties for gallavanting, if you can, and the thirties for being more stable? That's my thinking, for now, seeing as my thirties still feel (possibly wrongly...) a million miles away (and not to pretend I won't want to travel when I'm grown up enough to be a thirty-year-old anyway). So here are some potential highlights:

2015 IDEAS

Australia
Japan
Colombia/South America

Copenhagen
Sweden
Istanbul, Turkey
Iceland
Budapest
Berlin
Prague
Paris
Barcelona

Vancouver
Toronto
New York

And here are some images taken in the Netherlands (see, I told you the list wasn't comprehensive - will almost certainly be there in April/May/June too - I LOVE Amsterdam), by Martin Krans, who was a pleasure to shoot with. I really enjoyed this location and we had lots of fun exploring it!

(If you've ever worked with me and feel inclined to show me some of the results I may not have seen, please do send them my way. I'm always really excited to see new/old creations!)

And a stormy colour shot I love - look at that deep, raked-by-the-wind sand!

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, 19 November 2014

Foreign Sands