Ella Rose Muse: the story: Tribal Blues

Monday 4 March 2013

Tribal Blues

Hi everyone! It's been such a busy few weeks for me, as always. Pretty much every minute is accounted for (in theory) and various and diverse goals are getting closed in on, with lots of fun being had along the way as these goals are things are all about what I want and love. I'm such a disciplined hermit, at the moment, and love it! My sociable time is currently carefully rationed out into Tues, Weds and Thursdays (friends and dance classes/rehearsals) mostly... And it feels good!

I've also had some hugely exciting family news recently (I'm going to be an auntie!!!!!!), while recent small pleasures have included dairy milk fruit & nut, and smugness at having a car with an anti-hijack mode, since after getting in my car to drive home at 4am after a night out on Sat, a drunkard decided he definitely, 100% without a doubt was going to have a lift from me 'just a few blocks' and promptly started pulling at my car doors (passenger side) in an aggressive craze. I had hesitated, until then, trying to assess if he was a threat or just a man in need... But yeah... My hand slammed down on the central locking button so fast as he lurched towards the car door, he just couldn't understand why the doors weren't opening. I'm not totally sure who won that race anyway, so I just thank the fact that my car only opens my driver door when I enter it unless I press the button twice. Ha!

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Interlude: Here's some classic Erykah Badu:

And here's a beautiful, sultry song by India Arie (singer of the more recent 'I am not my hair'), whose first album 'Acoustic Soul' I listened to roughly 5000 times about 10 years ago, especially this song, 'Brown Skin'. The whole album is stunningly beautiful.

And to finish off my little trio of smooth-jazz interruption, this killer love poem by Jill Scott was an old favourite, track numero 3 on the album. (And she was brilliant live!):

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(I'm sorry, I don't know what's happening here... This is not a music blog. I get distracted...)

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(The stars mean something new is about to happen.)

.................OK, here are two new photos of me, taken by the very creative Rayment Kirby in Sussex, where I'll be again at the end of May. I really love this first one.

I have so many more new images to show as always, but I'm being minimal and just putting two out there today.

In other news, I'm thinking of going to Borneo!

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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Monday 4 March 2013

Tribal Blues