The pulling power of seriously good art

I have only been to Paris once.  I was 13, spoke no French, and it was dreary, dark winter.  I don't remember much other than the stuffy metro and visiting La Musee Picasso with my mother.  O the wonder of being surrounded by all those paintings and sculptures and drawings and bits of paper - wonderful objects that I had only previously seen in books!  We went to bigger museums too, but Picasso was special.


Since falling down the rabbit hole, I've contracted a serious longing to visit a certain boutique - a longing only sharpened by this article .  *Sigh!*  I suspect I'll be finding reasons to "pass through" Paris in the near future...

Photo 1 from picasso-paris.videomuseum.fr; photo 2 from www.vogue.com.

Figs, finally

I don't generally like sweet fragrances.  For a long time I thought gourmand perfumes – especially the ‘sweet and fruity’ ones – were out of my reach.    I have tried to like Angel, Lolita Lempicka (including Si and L), and Il Profumo Chocolat Frais, but they remind me of Neapolitan ice cream, over-ripe mangoes, cotton candy, sickly sweet dates and figs...foods that I was supposed to like as a kid and didn’t.  Remember those?

Then I met Kadota.  Sweet and figgy, and yet I kept sniffing my wrist and experiencing vague cravings.  This is how I wish figs tasted.  Creamy smoothness underlaying a leafy green and spicy zing.  After a few hours, the cream departs, leaving a turmeric-laced spice that, at least on my skin, seems to be the trademark of a Michael Storer fragrance.

Last weekend I visited Crescendo in Revelstoke, BC.  It may well be that boutiques specializing in balsamics and oils are old hat elsewhere, but it was new to me!  I picked up a couple of bottles of their Fig-Chili Balsamic Crème, which shares many good qualities with Kadota, and has me wondering whether there is a place in my heart, after all, for figs.

Notes: Photo is my own.  I purchased my a sample of Kadota from www.michaelstorer.com .  Michael doesn't charge for postage to Canada - a courtesy that I greatly appreciate!

Turin

An interesting article on smell, quantum physics, and Luca Turin...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12827893

Scents of Home: Cedar and Shiseido Zen

Way back when, I used to bemoan not belonging anywhere - the common lament of supposed "third culture kids."  Whatever.  At some point you've got to accept it, right?  Now I just feel fortunate to have several different homes in the world, of which the Pacific Northwest is one.  When I think of this particular home, I think of fog, rain, bull kelp, dense rainforest, the grassy rolling hills of the interior, steep mountains.  Joni Mitchell evoked the coast well,

It was just the Arbutus rustling
And the bumping of the logs
As the moon swept down black water
Like an empty spotlight

Near Tofino, BC.  Image from here.

Arbutus, Douglas Fir, Lodgepole Pine, Giant Cedar, Larch.  Whether valued as an industry or as environmental treasures, trees and wood are part of life here.  One of my British relatives, upon visiting us in the 'new world', commented on the ephemerality of our towns, our homes.  "Everything is made out of wood.  I can't believe it will last!"  When I was little and my parents were busily building their boat (more on that in some future post), the smell of wood was everywhere.  Shavings of yellow cedar curled from Dad's plane as he smoothed panels for the ceiling and walls.  The rich aroma of teak dust emanated from Mum's sanding block.

If you ever have the opportunity to visit the Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver, you will see a display of bentwood cedar boxes, standing before some partial totem poles.  To me they still seem somehow alive, as if a group of villagers might come along at any moment to reclaim them, to return them to their rightful place on a stormy stretch of beach somewhere on the coast.  As a child I read M. Wylie Blanchett's book about her summer sailing trips along the BC coast in the 1920s and 30s, in which she described anchoring near deserted villages, and seeing wooden boxes containing the remains of ancestors suspended from the branches of fir trees.  I wish I could have seen that.

In university, my first field project took me and several fellow students to a rural community in the Pacific Northwest.  A community leader billeted us in his longhouse.  As the name implies, this was a long building, a cavernous structure with no windows, bare inside except for the kitchen, the bleechers around the edges of the interior, a smooth earth floor, and a huge central fire pit.  We slept on the bleechers, near the fire.  The whole place smelt comfortingly of raw wood and smoke.  It was dark, warm, and comforting, like a giant's womb.  In winter, huge spirit dances were held in there, and the place pulsed with drums and the deep emotion of hundreds of dancers, singers and their families.  It was a magical, mysterious place.

Naturally I love the smell of wood, especially cedar, and associate it with comfort, warmth, and safety.   I seek out woody notes in perfumery.  Years ago I found some incense that smelled exactly like the cedar of the longhouse summer - of salty wood, smoke, and dried fish and venison.  I wish I still had it!  In perfume, I particularly enjoy the cedar note in the old Shiseido Zen.  Smelling this evokes the interior of a dry, spicy bentwood cedar box.  The new formulation of Zen (sold in the cube) is cleaner, more floral, smoother, with a large dose of what smells to me like sandalwood.  It is probably more wearable, but it bears little resemblance to the original, and I am not so fond of it.  For some reason the Shiseido counters in my area only sell the old version as an eau de cologne, at Christmas.  I don't own any yet, but I want to.

Image from www.sca.shiseido.com.

Not everyone likes cedar - as mentioned by here.  I feel similarly ambivalent about certain heavy musks...I try to like them, but it is a struggle.

What are your favourite wood notes?  Any suggestions?

For reviews of Zen, you may wish to go to the Non Blonde (here) and Yesterday's (here).

On Memory, Forgetting and L'Heure Bleue

On summer afternoons when I was a little girl, my grandmother - Nanna - would take me to the Pacific National Exhibition in Vancouver.   She would buy sweets for us to share, I'd ride the bump 'em cars, and then we'd tour the craft and flower exhibits.   I don’t recall much other than the general atmosphere and the pleasure of being alone with Nanna.  I do, however, remember what we didn't do.  Nanna always steered away from the livestock exhibits.  When I asked why, she said she didn’t like the smell.  I thought she just disliked the reek of animal dung - though this seemed odd, since she had grown up on a farm.  Later I learned that the livestock area was where she and the rest of the Nikkei population of Vancouver were detained during the War, before being sent to the internment camps.

A Nikkei woman in Kaslo, BC

When I was fifteen, I interviewed my Nikkei grandparents about their experiences of wartime for a high school project.  They took my questions seriously, answering in quiet voices while I took notes at the kitchen table.   It was the sort of discussion with elders that you know is rare and special, even while it’s happening.   It was the only time I heard them talk specifically about that time in their lives.  I don't think they enjoyed telling me, but they wanted me to know.

I recently came across an article by an historian named Monica Wehner, about a community's memories of a traumatic event.  Most of us are familiar with the idea that retrieving repressed memories has psychotherapeutic value; but what interested me was Wehner's argument for forgetting as a “creative and productive process, allowing the self to get on with life, and not get bogged down with its miseries, madness or distraction.”  Looked at this way, dwelling on sensory memories can be particularly debilitating because they are difficult to over-write, and may potentially fragment a person’s control over his or her own order and sense of self:  

“It is as if sensory memories hover just beneath the surface of consciousness – primary, like a reflex action – and are less likely to by corrupted by retranscription.”

My grandmother lived through some dark times, including being disowned and interned by her own country; yet she is, and has mostly been, a cheerful, practical, and charming person.  I don’t doubt her ability to recall her worst experiences in detail, but on a daily basis she refuses to dwell on things that make her unhappy.   As already noted, she doesn't like heavily animalic scents.  She does, however love flowers - so much so that she has been known to acquire them by almost any means.  Her ikebana arrangements are elegant and calm.  In fact, that is how I have come to love iris and chrysanthemums.  

Not one of Nanna's actual creations, but a classical design that she has done.

This week I received a sample of L’Heure Bleue.  This has been a difficult one.  When I smelled it for the first time I was taken aback: besides the unmistakable iris, there was a clammy whiff of clay, like a damp garden at dusk.  That night, my dreams were disturbed. 

In late afternoon, descending a mountain pass shrouded in mist and melting snow, with rain whipping the grey highway and black fir trees standing sentinel, L’Heure Bleue returned.   I had just spent a lovely day with friends, but now a soft melancholy crept in, one which long experience has taught me not to welcome, lest it stay too long, unearthing old hurts that I prefer to put behind me.    

Guerlain markets L’Heure Bleue as an expression of the time between star-set and sunrise.  In terms of evocative power this perfume is incredibly successful.  The liminal time between sleep and waking is exactly where it took me.  Unfortunately,  this twilight is for me intensely sad, and I am not sure that my nose will allow me to revise this response.  

For now I will set L’Heure Bleue aside in favour of sensory memories that let me get on with, you know, life!  I still love iris flowers, and would love to find an iris fragrance that I can enjoy wearing.   Acqua di Parma Iris Nobile is mighty impressive, but I prefer sniffing it in a bottle to actually wearing it.  I wanted to like Prada’s Infusion, but it wasn't quite right.  Suzanne’s review of Iris Ukiyoe has inspired me to look for it on my next trip to civilization, and she has also suggested FM Iris Poudre and Hiris - thank you!  Any other suggestions?

For serious reviews of L'Heure Bleue, try Bois de Jasmin, here and here.  

[Update:  After posting this I realized...iris...duh...I love Dior Homme!  But you can never have too many favourites.]
  

Notes:  Photos 1 and 3 in this post are from www.virtualmuseum.ca - "Aya's Story" - virtual exhibit; Photo 2 is from www.stranges.com.  The quoted article is Wehner, Monica (2002) “Typologies of Memory and Forgetting among the Expatriates in Rabaul”  Journal of Pacific History 37(1): 57-73.

Tropical Florals on a Friday Night in Pakistan, including Michael Storer's Stephanie and Yvette

Snowbells appeared in my yard this week, and all over town leaf buds are pushing out their shiny noses. This is the first time I have experienced a real winter in several years, and it reminds me of how attuned one becomes to the seasons here.  By the end of February I was yearning for steaming, sunny days, lush vegetation, and poincianas that grow as trees, not sad little runts in pots.

I've never been a fan of romance novels, but I'm all for other forms of escape.  Bundled up in layers of wool, I sniffed through the tropical fragrances in my perfume collection and dreamed myself back to a Friday night in Pakistan, sliding along the highway beneath the Margalla Hills, the hot breeze flowing through the my friend A--'s jeep.

Her radio pounds out Amr Diab, Junoon, old Bon Jovi - a perennial favourite in Pakistan, along with Guns 'n' Roses and Pink Floyd - the music of nostalgia, of the heady, liberal time before things Went Wrong.  More than once a Pakistani friend has hummed to a pop song from the 80s and sighed over how his/her mother used to wear miniskirts to work, back in the day.  We try to imagine this happening now, without success.   Now almost everyone wears shalwar qameez in public.  Who wants to deal with veiled strangers hissing haram (shame) at you on the street?

Back in the jeep, we reach an intersection.  A young man in pads down the rows of cars, shouldering a pole laden with delicately strung jasmine blossoms.  We know him by sight, and call out.   His face breaks into a smile.  My friend asks after his family, and he tells us about his sister, who is doing well at school (mashallah!); his brother, who is getting married (inshallah...); his parents' health, which is good (alhamdolillah!).  We each buy a jasmine strand (overpaying, of course, for school fees and wedding expenses) and loop them around our wrists.  The fragrance blooms in the heat.  We're almost drunk on it by the time we reach the party and down our first illicit drink.

If there exists a perfume that encapsulates Friday night in Islamabad, Lahore, or Karachi, it will be redolent of humid jasmine and buttery tuberose.  The sensual, meaty, spicy white florals should float above sweet smoke, bootlegged whiskey, sandalwood and coconut oil.  It will be a slightly suggestive and flashy scent - opulence is style here - yet simple and friendly.  These are cities where neighbours greet each other on street corners and gossip over chai, coo at babies and newlyweds, and distribute tooth-achingly sweet cakes to celebrate good fortune.

If I were a perfumer, I'd pour myself into conjuring up this potion.  Tom Ford's Velvet Gardenia and Serge Lutens' A la Nuit come close, but they are too sophisticated (much as I adore them).  My personal favourite is to layer two of Michael Storer's creations: spicy gardenia Stephanie over the adults-only maraschino that is Yvette.

You might say that it's unconscionable to talk of something as elite and unnecessary as perfume in the same breath as Pakistan, where there is so much violence and need.  But scent is an art there, and perfume, in the forms of flowers, oils and incense, is everywhere.  Even on a street corner on a Friday night.  So much gets written about Pakistan that is alien and frightening, that I fear that the rest of the world forgets to also think of it as a place where people love and have fun and experience joy.  So for tonight I'll don some Stephanie and Yvette, and think good, steamy thoughts.

Dusk over the Margalla Hills, Islamabad

Note: I purchased all the samples mentioned in this post.  Photo of Islamabad is mine; photo of jasmine flowers courtesy 
Webshots.  Michael Storer's perfumes are available online, at www.michaelstorer.com.  

Spice Box

The bottle wasn't cute, or even interesting.  In fact, it was was old-fashioned, and looked uncomfortably out of place amongst the little herd of smooth Pleasures flankers.  The rusty-red-and-gold looked like something I would have found on the dressing table of one of my mother's friends in the early 1980s.  The sort of treasure I would have discovered in a quiet bedroom, while the grownups talked and made spaghetti and played Carly Simon on the stereo.

I spray a scent strip, and the rest of the dressing table comes into focus:  a copy of Jonathan Livingston Seagull (unread) and an Penguin Anthology of Persian love poems (dogeared); an empty coffee mug with a zodiac sign on it; brass bangles and sandalwood beads that I rub in my hands and inhale; an empty Rizla packet flecked with threads of sweet tobacco and greenery.  I uncap the bottle and aim the atomiser at my wrist.  No one will notice, surely...

Now my 8 year-old self is crouched in the ensuite bathroom, furiously scrubbing, the scalding water causing the fragrance to bloom magnificently,  filling the room with cinnamon, cloves, mandarin oranges, citron, sandalwood, patchouli...the huge, symphonic notes clamour around me like competing violins.  I am fascinated in spite of myself.  And I'm going to be in so much trouble.  They won't even notice that I painted my toenails Dusty Rose.

I had never smelled Cinnabar until today, but I am struck by its nostalgic aspect.  Luckily this is only a fantasy quality for me -  real olfactory memories of childhood sneakery have put me off some classics for life - Opium, Tea Rose, L'Air du Temps, Evening in Paris, Poison.   I am still haunted by a sillage monster that I cannot yet name, but which I will recognize should we ever cross paths again.  I secretly think it is called Freesia Phew!  (The child in me hasn't smelled Dzing! but is highly skeptical.)

Cinnabar is not particularly refined, but it is striking, and wonderfully warm.  It smells of the time in which it was made, a rarity in this age of reformulation.  I only learned of Cinnabar's historical place in the shadow of Opium while writing this post, and do not care one whit, given my aforementioned aversion.  I can't imagine wearing Cinnabar as an everyday scent, but a tissue of it in my sleeve on a cold night or a dreary day...it's just right.

I tiptoe past the master bedroom where
My mother reads her magazines
I hear her call sweet dreams
But I forget how to dream...

A Distant Episode: Serge Lutens Amber Sultan

For the past month or so, my bedtime reading has been an anthology by Paul Bowles.  This is probably unwise, since for me Bowles' stories are little nightmares, in which my worst fears about traveling actually happen.  His fiction sometimes seems more believable than the 'true' tales of horror that abound amongst expats in marginal places ("did you hear about the Kiwi bloke who went clubbing last week?  The one who was killed in his apartment. Yeah, we met him at that UN party..."), because the prose is so  unsentimental.   The stories terrify by showing the inescapable positionality of the individual traveller - the conceit, the ignorance, the privilege, the isolation, the vulnerability.   No one is innocent.  Or safe.

After all this time, you'd think I would be a seasoned nomad.  Most of the time, I do consider myself to be reasonably experienced...until suddenly I'm cornered and wondering, like the Professor in A Distant Episode, "Is this a situation or a predicament?"  In those moments, reduced to childish confusion, my atheist self turns to God - "Please, please, please let me get through this" - for it can see clearly that there is a real chance that I won't.

Let's go back to Bowles' protagonist in A Distant Episode.  Prim, pedantic, and overconfident about his cultural competence, the Professor (we never learn his name) returns to a small town in Morocco to continue his research on Maghrebin dialects.  His confidence rests in no small part on his friendship with a cafe owner in the town, with whom he corresponded for a year after his last research trip.  Already, the Professor has erred - there has been no letter from the cafe owner in two years.  Why not?  In any case, the Professor arrives.  He leaves his bags at a cheap, slovenly hotel and heads to the cafe.  He strolls in, past the main seating area and heads for a table in the back room.  Second error.  The cafe has a new owner.  A waiter appears, to whom the Professor speaks, in elaborately correct dialect.  The waiter refuses to acknowledge the Professor's linguistic skills, and answers in bad French...  Each little mistake builds upon the last.  Soon the Professor has allowed himself to be led out into the darkness by the waiter, now an untrustworthy guide, and finds himself on the edge of town, above a steep track.

Standing there at the edge of the abyss which at each moment looked deeper, with the dark face of the qaouji framed in its moonlit burnoose close to his own face, the Professor asked himself exactly what he felt.  Indignation, curiosity, fear, perhaps, but most of all relief and hope that this was not a trick...

If you've ever landed at an airport in an unstable country, where you knew no-one and found yourself immediately accosted by aggressive touts (one of whom you were obliged to follow), you will have experienced the Professor's anxiety and annoyance.  Which brings me to Serge Lutens' Ambre Sultan.

Vanessa over at Scent of the Day recently wrote that Ambre Sultan was the fragrance that ignited her serious interest in the world of perfume.  I ordered a sample from The Perfumed Court after reading her review (so thanks, Vanessa :)).   The package arrived; I sat down in my cozy northern living room, prised the stopper off that precious little vial, and...

...was immediately transported back to Bamako-Senou International Airport, in Mali, two years earlier.  I was one a handful of passengers to get off the plane, which was continuing to Cotonou.  Emerging from the arrivals hall, where I had just cleared one hurdle (visa), I faced another: what now?  I had flown in to attend Le Festival au Desert, and had purchased my festival ticket through a somewhat vague website (no credit card facility; payment in Euros).  Was someone coming to meet me?  Or not?  I tried to look purposeful, but the teenage taxi touts descended anyway.  We dutifully fought our little skirmish.  "Madame!  Vous avez besoin d'un taxi!  Un guide!  Je vous amene au bureau d'echange!"  "Non, merci quand meme.  Laissez-moi tranquille, p'tits..."  Luckily they weren't as tenacious as others I've faced.  The heat enervated us all.

Just as I was beginning to feel truly anxious a slight young man  appeared.  He said he was from the tour company and would take me to the hotel as soon as I paid for the package tour...USD 700, please.  He had no company ID.  My interior monologue reasoned furiously.  He had a certain presence.  A nice manner.  He spoke quietly, without urgency.  He met my eye.  He was well-dressed.  If this was a con, it was a very good one.  And Bamako didn't strike me so far (I'd only seen the airport) as a place that attracted enough tourists to spawn truly superior con artists.  Lagos it was not.  The airport was nearly deserted, and didn't look like it ever got busy.  I paid him.

Moctar turned out to be a thoughtful Touareg man who shepherded me around the arid, decaying sprawl of Bamako with irreproachable courtesy.  Red dust permeated everything; the decrepit taxis crawled around or fell into the potholes; men pissed on the side of the road; music spilled from every corner, and women strode elegantly along the avenues in beautiful waxed-cotton gowns.  Compared to the huge, intimidating city in East Africa where I was living at the time, Bamako seemed otherworldly.  I loved it.

None of the bank machines worked, and the bureaux d'echange would not exchange my USD for francs, so after nightfall Moctar took me to see a Touareg cousin.   My cash was whisked away, a tiny cup of tea placed in my hand.  The cousins began a lively conversation about drought conditions and the Malian economy.  I did my best to keep up.  Presently a roll of francs arrived that was so thick it would not fit in my pocket.  The next morning I flew to Timbuktu, and travelled onwards to the festival.

Ambre Sultan smells of that desert, of undulating sand so parched under the pitiless sky that it invades and burns your nostrils.  The amber resin reminds me of the spindly little trees that sprouted out of the sand and stone, shading the hauty camels and their regal Touareg owners.  It recalls the absolute absence of water.  Ambre Sultan is a beautiful creation, but it is not necessarily kind.  At its edges perch dark notes, like the servants of the Touareg, whom I saw but never got to speak to.   It is sleek and elegant, but you cannot know how it will treat you until you spray it on your skin, knowing it might claw you down.  When I first tried it, an ammoniac note crawled along beneath the amber, daring me to inhale deeply and take the consequences.

I am not sure I am ready wear this fragrance yet, but I'm enchanted by it.  I believe that in time I will grow to love it.  Over time, it melds beautifully with warm skin scent.   Technically adept reviewers describe it as linear, but I find it slightly different each time I try it, and wonder if this has to do with the properties of amber.

Encountering that which is radically different and difficult to know scares and thrills me.  It's when you're standing there, not really knowing what's going on or what you ought to do, whether you're in a situation or a predicament, that you find out who you really are.

Photos: my own.
I apologize for the lack of French accents.  I haven't figured out how to put them in yet.