the end of fragrance?

Is it the end of fragrance? Does social distancing stretch the molecular cone of influence that perfumes and allied fragrances emanate? Will future fragrantial formulas need more potency to pierce, ever so gently and invisibly, the social distance bubble? And will new, stronger fragrantical formulations disturb the infinitely delicate harmony that fragrance chords thrive on?

Weighty questions, on International Fragrance Day no less.

And indeed what are the ends of fragrance? Why do we adorn ourselves in such evocative olfactory raiment? To what ends, what purposes?

The coronavirus moment gives us a perfumed pause to ponder answers to these unanswerable questions.

The bride throws the bouquet. The bouquet is caught. The bouquet is portentous, a sign suggesting love and marriage, says the tradition. And what of our personal bouquets, tossed by any one of us at any point on the gender spectrum? What are we to make of our fragrance bouquet?

What do I expect from wearing my signature chords, my inimitable and idiosyncratic bouquet of arranged self scent, sprayed-on or rolled-on eau de parfum or cologne or eau de toilette (typically Tom Ford, if you must know)? Do I expect a compliment, a stranger's jolt of je ne sais quoi, a passport to Dallianceville or amorous abandon? Whatever I have expected or will expect is nuanced by the strictures of social distancing, at least for now.

Picture this: a terminally ill patient in hospice. Her matted hair. His swarthy face, beard growth of five days. Her chipped, unpainted nails. He petitions the volunteer to comb his hair, to shave him. She asks for a perm, gets her nails done. Why? They ain't going nowhere, as Bob Dylan put it. 

It's for dignity. Aesthetics. Pride of ownership. Something incalculable, more solemn or sacred, having no word in our vernacular.

And the same with fragrance.

She puts it on. Wears her favorite, most alluring fragrance. She is quarantined, lives alone, will not leave the house today.

He does the same. He is running low on his favorite fragrance. He applies it anyway, judiciously and jubilantly. Self-isolation permits this. Demands it.

In fragrante delicto.

handling industrially

The sign on the white work van in the parking lot said "Industrial Handling" in black letters. Duly noted. I entered the Shopping Temple (i.e., mall) at the Lord & Taylor entrance and strolled through the aisles, passing through invisible clouds of fragrances pour homme, pour femme, pour vous, pour moi, pour anyone. Without being asked for a passport or visa, I passed from the spice-, herb-, mineral-, and floral-infused fragrance domains into a new country, The Land of Emollients. Behold a liquid arsenal of softening secrete agents; salves, balms, potions, lotions, creams. A festival of mollificaring, appeasing, pacifying, soothing. Just the word, emollient, softening its surrounding syllables. A haven of healing for those of us marred by Industrial Handling. Those of us man[gender-neutral]handled, scarred, scratched, or atrophied into scaly, itchy Walking Wounded. We the thick-skinned survivors of industrial-scale emotional, perhaps even physical, handling, more accurately, mishandling. We the escapees out from under the thumb of verbal racks and industrial-strength conveyors of caustic charm. And who among us has not qualified at one time or another as a candidate for  the Legion de Malhonneur? Sure, maybe we naively or hopefully enlisted for our manufactured misery. Some of us stumbled into the 55-gallon drum of acidic animosity or arid indifference, slowly leaking. So be it. We paid the cost of Industrial Handling, didn't we? A cost too dear. But for now we welcome with open arms (and hands, legs, faces, necks, you-name-it) every variety, brand, and concoction of moisturizing healing; every texture, thickness, consistency, and volume of unguent; all and every extreme unction, to anoint our sickness. And theirs, too; the Industrial Handlers. I stopped. I asked two ladies in waiting at the counter in The Land of Emollients for a sample. Your most excellent and edifying elixir, please. They knew right away. No hesitation or forethought. This is it. The taller of the two Emollient Ambassadors (she with chestnut hair and deep brown eyes) placed a small tube, 0.5 oz. / 15 g, in my left hand. I curled my fingers around the tube, made a slight bow, and turned around. I exited the store. The white work van was gone. Frisson accomplished. 

The Clementine Chronicles, continued

Murder on the Disorient Express

Dramatis Personae:

OldWhiteGuy stereotypical converted-loft dweller, goatee-adorned; spectacles-wearer; enough head hair to comb except on the sides owing to stylist's shorning the week preceding; 5'10"; 169 pounds; blue jeans; blue T-shirt; blue-green-purple flannel shirt not tucked in; fragrance: Luna Rossa by Prada; Euphoria by Calvin Klein deodorant; unshaven for several days

Three Ravens pecking at unseen morsels on the roadway or bickering on the chain-link fence or telephone wires

DismemberedClementine* Jackson Pollocked (except for color; goldenrod-clementine-flesh yellow-orange backgrounded by burnt umber wetted, ergo Mark Rothko'ed except for the scatteredness; picture a spherical descent bursting onto the concrete, tossed from an upper-story window; motive and perp, unknown) into 22 segments and/or fragments of said segments, on the sidewalk [see below] by the side exit of the brick former knitting mill; a splayed and still glistening ink-blottish stain artistically placed on the snow-bereft sidewalk as a place setting or as a result of the Capital Citrus Murder (CCM)
*cf. The Laughorist blog post of 2 December 2018

DismemberedClementine Peeled Skin (absent, nowhere to be seen; unknown if peeled in one fell swoop or not)

DeadFish (scales on; head attached; accusatory cyclops-ish eye; absent corpse, nowhere to be seen; cf. The Laughorist blog post of 2 February 2019)

62.8 CCM Suspects (40 apartments, average of 1.5 residents in each minus 1.0 LaughoristDweller [a.k.a. OldWhiteGuy], plus 3.8 happenstance, random street-cred pedestrians) 

Ghosts of Bob Marley & The Wailers

Scene 1: 

Enter OldWhiteGuy, exits building, turns right, spots DismemberedClementine (rest in pieces, R.I.P.), halts, retreats, pivots left, inspects crime scene, counts segments, makes mental notes, turns right again, walks on ice- and snow-ridden sidewalk to car

OldWhiteGuy (posing as Hamlet Lear) (sotto voce): "The play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the skin!"

Enter Ghosts of Bob Marley & The Wailers singing: "One love, one heart... Let's get together and feel all right... Hear the children cryin'; give thanks and praise to the Lord ... Is there a place for the hopeless sinner who has hurt all mankind just to save his soul? One love, one heart ... Let's get together and feel all right!"

Exeunt Omnes

the human brand

What are you wearing

It's waterproof, windproof, too

No, what are you wearing

Yeah, no, the jacket, my gloves, the scarf

No, really, tell me

Do you like it

Yes, sort of, yes

Ombre Spicebox Rouge Rogue

Really

Really

Is it showing

What do mean

Can you tell

I can tell

Can I try it

Sure, did you shower

Your deodorant

HideNSeek

Makes scents to me

What about body odor

Mine

What about it

Yours, your body double

My doubled body

Yes, that

Dusk grapefruit coffee ginger seasalt lemon rose vanilla smoke maple clementine

No, not quite

Oak bergamot verbena tobacco dawn nutmeg black pepper sandalwood cardamom ocean

Hardly

Rosewood agarwood orange blossom sage pimento musk orris cacao mancera twilight almond

Not at all

Pekoe cactus pine sugar fern noon mint fog anise river pistachio gardenia cherry

More like it

Maybe

Top notes

Subtle

Yet bold

A statement

More like a hymn

Pour homme

Or femme

Finis

Fine

the notable sauvage

Does etymology determine destiny? 

I have taken a liking to the new fragrance Sauvage by Dior. I sampled it at Lord & Taylor, where I've gotten friendly with Gaylord, at the men's fragrance counter. After wearing (does one truly "wear" a fragrance? Or does it wear you? Isn't more like you unwear it, one molecule at a time?) sample spritzes, I received favorable responses from strangers and familiars alike, as in: "Oh. What is that you're wearing?" Or, "You smell nice." Or, "I like it. It's you." Admittedly, my coltish impatience sometimes takes the impolitic form of forwardly inquiring, "How do you like the way I smell?" which defeats the whole notion of pheromone subtlety or sophistication. Oh well. So be it. C'est moi. Noblesse oblige.  

Sauvage is described by its makers as "[a]t once refined yet untamed," along with a lush landscape of other-wordly flowers and forests and fauna (such as wolves in the night). As with wines or coffees or teas, fragrances embrace arcane and evocative vernaculars. As a copywriter, I would love the daunting challenge of bringing a fragrance to life by a marriage of word and image. Anyway, it's too late for that. The folks at Dior have already delivered a scintillating bouquet of sensual syllables and smoldering images.

Before I go any further, allow me this disclaimer: Dior didn't put me up to this. I'm not in the habit of crafting product endorsements. Dior isn't paying me. They've never heard of me. But it's my story. I needed and wanted something to write about, and this is what popped into my head via my personal olfactory highway.

Wearing the fragrance prompted me to look up the French word "sauvage" and to meander etymologically, which I like to do, as you know, if you've ever read anything at all here.

I discovered "sauvage" is employed in the wine business. But that's not what drew me to it. I further learned that adjectives such as wild, untamed, natural, earthy, unspoiled, fierce, ferocious, indomitable, valiant, sylvan, primitive, unauthorized, and savage emanate from this word's web of wonder and enchantment. You can imagine why the copywriters and perfume artisans might applaud the allure of these words as they adhere to and then float off of the printed page or webpage -- most importantly, if these words, and unnameable others, transmit pulsing hums of desire to anyone under their invisible halo.

Would knowing the etymology of sauvage all by itself lead me to it, even absent its aromas?

I don't know. I'm not out of the woods yet on that one. 

Cries and Whispers of the Herd

Well, I was aurally browsing with my XM satellite radio and settled on the BBC World Service's Culture Shock program (or progamme, if you prefer, mate).

Good show, guv'nor.

I heard an entertaining yet Brave-New-World-ish interview with a fellow from North Carolina expounding on the virtues of scent marketing via his firm ScentAir, as I naughtily mused to myself: "Would the interviewer please be so horrifically naughty as to ask blatantly about the ScentAir availability of the human equivalent of what I saw my dog do a few hours ago while encountering another canine, sniff-sniff?"

Then an engaging and thought-provoking chat with Mark Earls, linked a few words preceding to his own blog, author of Herd: How To Change Mass Behaviour by Harnessing Our True Nature. (Presumably, the American edition will be about mass behavior.) Among other things, the Duke of Earls spoke in the BBC interview of humans as "we creatures," which got me thinking about my sloppy blogging habits (i.e., the poor grades I deserve for my discourteous lack of blog-comment reciprocity), the "we" nature of blogging itself (despite blogging's radically ephemeral nature), and the challenges this concept poses for an avowed solipsist. But, deep down, and across and above, I believe we are indeed "we creatures," we the people. Curiously, Earls and the BBC's Tim Marlow noted how Western and Northern European society drifted from "we" to "I" several hundred years ago (the Enlightenment? the Reformation?), but the rest of the world still believes in "we" (or us, grammatically). I suppose all that -- Excuse me: We (the royal we) suppose all that is a bit of an oversimplification. And that also gives us the chance to voice the subjective view that most people misuse the word simplistic.

So then I browsed the BBC's World Service site and discovered Ingmar Bergman has died.

The BBC reported that:

British film director Ken Russell told the BBC: "He [Bergman] could hardly bear to watch his own movies, apparently they made him so miserable," he said. "To have done 50 films with such a variety of misery is quite an achievement."

Bergman had five marriages and eight children, and his work often explored the tensions between married couples.

But Bergman confessed in 2004 that he could not bear to watch his own films because they made him depressed.

"I become so jittery and ready to cry... and miserable," he said. "I think it's awful," he said in a rare interview on Swedish TV.

See, I'll bet Ingmar Bergman didn't comment on any other blogs either.

Or even read his own, if he had one. It would make him too miserable (to read his own, not yours, or yours, or yours either).

That's my excuse (I mean rationalization) (I mean rationale).

Yeah. Sure.