Eye of a hurricane, listen to yourself churn...

On moving, the Aurora, Colorado shooting, and DSH Perfumes Vanille Botanique

Dear reader:

This is a three-part post. It is long. (What can I say? I missed you!)  Feel free to skip ahead to the perfume if you want. Everyone else, hang on, and remember: keep your arms and legs inside the car at all time. <g>

Part One: On Moving.

That's great! It starts with an earth quake, birds and snakes and airplanes. Lenny Bruce is not afraid.
~ "It's The End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)," R.E.M.

My old original LC mail box!
Goodbye forever!

Rejoice and glad tidings, for I have a place to live! For those of you who know nothing about the Portland real estate market, let me tell you a harrowing tale of a town where young people come to retire, no one wants to buy, and the rental market is a brutal, awful place. Luckily, David and I found a lovely house with a week to spare. We have to be off campus on August 1, so we are in the midst of a massive move. Like everything else in the new economy, we found the house through friends, and we are living with friends because (1) he's starting school so we could use the rental discount, and (2) after being in a fishbowl, we would probably die if suddenly we were locked in a room with just each other day in, day out after a decade of constant visits from friends. We need some transition time.

We are moving into a lovely one and a half story. We have a deck. We have fruit trees (green apple, plum). We have a fireplace, dishwasher, and a clothes washer/dryer of our own. There are flowerbeds for me to plant and walls for me to decorate and at the holidays, I can actually put up decorations people can see. I will finally be able to get a welcome mat.

Moving is tiring...

Group house or not, I feel awfully grown-up all the sudden. FN1. It's not quite how I imagined my life as a kid. I mean, I remember my parents when they were my age, and I am still a lot less 'grown-up' than they were at the time. But I'm a lot happier and my life is full of good friends and laughter and love, so as far as I'm concerned, I ended up in a much better place than the place I thought I wanted to be.

Hmmmm. I believe there's an Amanda Palmer song in there somewhere. FN2. That's appropriate, since I saw her last weekend. It was a small venue show to raise money Literacy Bridge, an organization that provides a "talking book" to help spread educational programming in Africa (best practices for pre/post-natal care, subsistence farming, etc.). The whole thing was terrific, especially the cause involved. The tickets were a belated birthday present from El Hubs, and it was a great night/gift and our local friends, The Doubleclicks, were the opener.

Part Two: On The Aurora, Colorado shooting.

"Sometimes I feel like I can't even sing. I'm very scared for this world."
~ "You are Everything," R.E.M.

Before I get to the perfume in this post (and yes, I'll eventually get there), I wanted to say a few words about the Aurora, Colorado shootings. I bring this up in part because Amanda talked about it a lot at the show, and also because I'd be thinking about it regardless.

Depending on how you count, this is the fifth, sixth, or hundred and twelfth mass shooting since Columbine. FN3. FN4. I know we spend a lot of time on the "why?," but if we are trying to figure out what makes someone crazy and destructive, while that question is worth exploring, it is probably besides the point. There have always been and will always be crazy people, destructive people, people who are not satisfied with killing themselves and want to take others with them. Why would they hurt others and/or hurt themselves? There are socio-cultural debates about the state of mental health care, hopelessness and disconnection in the digital millennium, and the fetishization of violence that we could talk about for hours. Me? I just keep hearing, "I Don't Like Mondays" in my head. Stupid, but true.

Ukuleles save lives!

We keep asking these questions because we all want answers. We want a solution, something that makes us feel safer and helps the world make a little more sense. We want to feel like there is something we can do, actively do, that gives us back our power over the insanity of the world. I get that, too. I feel it as much as the next person.

The question is: what concrete thing can you and I do to make a difference?

When you sit and ask yourself, "Why is this happening so much now? Why is the impact so much larger now than when people went crazy in the past?", I think we all have to own the fact that the proliferation of guns, specifically automatic and semi-automatic guns, is 80% of the answer. I'm not saying someone can't do a lot of damage without one six round revolver, but if you want to know why the number of injured and dead keeps going up and up, I think we all see this is a huge part of the problem.

Now, I am not anti-gun. Yes, you read that right. Not against personal gun ownership. Given my general leftie swerve, this probably surprises many of you. Part of it is my upbringing, as I was raised in a world where every man I knew was a cop, or in the military or a sport hunter or a combination thereof. In my mind, it felt like gun ownership was something that came with adulthood, like getting a driver's license or drinking alcohol. Grown-ups had guns. All of them. FN5. My house came replete with a plethora of guns, including an AR-15, one other guns we know was used in Aurora.

This assault rifle, which had *no business* in my suburban home for a lot of reasons, was used throughout most of my life to prop up a fan next to my parents bed so the fan blew directly on my father while he slept. "Be careful getting out of bed on that side," they'd tell John and I, "there's a gun over there." John and I were raised with what I believe was a healthy if somewhat non-specific fear of guns, taught to think of them with the same kind of fear one treats a poisonous snake; it lives over there, stay away and don't even come close to it, it could kill you if you touch it.

The result of this upbringing is: I know how to shoot a gun. I do not own or carry one, but if I felt compelled to, I'd be fine with it. David doesn't have a gun, but it would not have been a barrier to our relationship if he had. Having a gun in a home doesn't scare me or worry me; I just don't really see the reason to have one. I don't need it for work, like most of the people I grew up with, and I'm not interested in sport hunting, like the rest of the people I grew up with, because I have other hobbies. In my mind, a gun is a tool for a specific purpose, and since my life does not contain such a purpose, it doesn't contain a gun. If that were to change, I'd be fine with it.

So when I tell you that the solution is the complete ban on the sale of some weapons to the general population, I need you to understand that it has nothing to do with me hating guns or wanting to take your guns. When I tell you that background checks and gun control laws and waiting periods are the key to a better world, it is not because I am some knee-jerk reactionary hater when it comes to guns. I just generally believe that it should not be easier for me to go buy a gun than it is to buy Sudafed. I believe those who have a documentable propensity toward violence or mental instability do not need 24/7 immediate access to fast-firing, high volume weaponry.

This doesn't seem like a political issue to me. It seems like common sense. It has become a political issue because gun manufacturers have a lot of money and they know how and where to spend it. We have ways to fight them, though. It's our vote. Politicians don't like being laid off any more than the next person. If you believe in gun control, tell you elected representatives that this issue matters to you and will be an issue you follow when it comes to their donations and voting record. You can find out who your reps are here (Fed and State), and check their voting records on any issue here (Fed) and get their record as it relates to gun control (and any other issue) through their organization report cards here. Your voice does matter, and let's face it: all the money in the world can't save a politician we choose not to vote for.

Though I don't think Jim Morrison meant it quite this way, I am reminded in this moment: "They've got the guns but we've got the numbers." Or, to put it another way, "I believe in peace, bitch." Thanks, Tori Amos. You always know how to say what I'm feeling with a twisted flair.

We need more gun control. More guns will not result in less violence. And for anyone who thinks armed civilians in the theatre could have stopped this incident, I will only note the following: 1. the theater had a sign up telling gun owners to leave their weapons in their cars, so any law abiding citizen would have been unarmed anyway; (2) two members of the military were shot and killed in the incident. All the training in the world, including how to avoid live fire, isn't going to save you in a crowded, smokey stampede; (3) even the best trained people will struggle with a surprise attack requiring a response that includes accurate shooting in a moving crowd in a smoke filled room. More guns would have meant more people shot. Again, we're not talking about rocket science. This isn't a movie; it's real life. Common sense says more shooters, no matter how well trained, experienced, and/or armed they were, would have meant more wounded, more dead.

The answer isn't more guns. It's fewer guns.

Well, that was decidedly non-perfumey, wasn't it? So let's talk about what I'm wearing right now.

Part Three: A Review of DSH Perfumes Vanille Botanique, aka "Dear gods in the ether, where have you been all my life?"

The world is collapsing around our ears. I turned up the radio but I can't hear it..."
~ "Radio Song," R.E.M.

As we make our move today, I am currently sporting Dawn Spencer Hurwitz's Vanille Botanique, a 100% botanical designed for Indiescents. DSH Perfumes describes it as:

Vanille Botanique is a luscious, balsamic vanilla in the classical style. A soft jasmine heart and bergamot top note balance and round out the bouquet. Such deliciousness! 

Top notes: Bergamot, Lemon, Rosewood (bois de rose)
Middle notes: Bulgarian Rose Absolute, French Beeswax, Grandiflorum Jasmine
Base notes: Australian Sandalwood, Buddahwood, Civet, Labdanum, Peru Balsam, Siam Benzoin, Tahitian Vanilla, Tolu Balsam, Vanilla Absolute

Indiescents' description adds the following: "Rich, decadent vintage style vanilla perfume; all botanical. Subtle citrus in the top, warm, sensuous florals mixed with rich gourmand notes in the heart and luxurious base of balsams, resins and of course vanilla."

So now we have the perfumer's description, some notes, and some ad copy, let's talk vanilla perfume for a second, shall we? Lots of houses make vanilla perfume. It's, ummmmm, how do I say this....abundant almost to the point of being unwieldy. People love the way baked goods and old books and sweet cocktails smell, and every tom, dick, and bath and body place in the mall will tell you that this or that vanilla is a well-paced selling standard for them. I think most fragrance and flavor companies would bear me out when I tell you that vanilla/vanillin, real or synthetic, is a primary note available in abundance.

Because of that, it's a crowded field out there -- good, bad, and ugly. So I'll tell you right now that are already a number of good vanillas to be had. My personal favs are, in no particular order: Annick Goutal Vanille Exquise, Atelier Cologne Vanille Incenseé, Guerlain Spiritueuse Double Vanille, L'Artisan Vanilia. I am happy to report Dawn Spencer Hurwitz has once again found a way to seperate me from my hard earned dough with Vanille Botanique, which will round out my All-Time, Top Five Des(se)rt Island vanilla scents. Releasing at Number Five, with a bullet.

Why am I so quick to proclaims its supremacy? In keeping with the theme, here are my top five reasons.

1. Vanille Botanique is so warm! Vanille Botanique is almost a hot scent on my skin. It works the way I'd expect a hot pepper taste to translate into perfume. It rises in smexy wafts from my arm in a way that is decidedly unfoodie. I bet it's the civet in the base that's making me feel all ha-cha-cha about it, but about a half hour in -- wow, do I want to have sex wearing this perfume. (There, I said it). It smells the way I'd write a scene with people licking vanilla frosting off each other. I know, I know. You're taken aback by my frank dirtiness, but there it is. What can I say? I learned it by reading you, Chandler Burr.

Spray sample from Indiescents.
GET ONE TODAY!

2. Vanille Botanique is strong. I mean this in a good way. Not like, "Hi, I'm here to knock you down with my perfume," but more, "Who was that masked woman leaving a terrific scent wake behind her!?!" When it comes to Vanille Botanique, a little dab (or spray) will do you; the scent keeps blooming. Vanille Botanique is a scent that will love you for a long time (seriously, why am I being so dirty!?!), and for me that makes the price point totally worth it. I'll buy a bottle and it will last me forever. FN6.

3. In no way does Vanille Botanique smell fake. There are so many vanillas out there that smell like cleaner, or bathroom spray, or cheap candle, or floor wax. This is definitively not one of them. It smells beautifully natural, and if you were trying to sell me on the differences/purposes/superiority of pure botanicals, this would be a good scent to point to.

4. Vanille  Botanique is vanilla, yes, but so much more. It's not foodie. I can't believe it is so strongly vanilla and I do not get food at all. No candy, no cocktail, no baked goods. It's -- dare I say it? -- floral, but without being very green, like L'Artisan Vanilia is. The opening is lemons and roses and vanilla bean pod skins, not something to put into food and drink. It is more something I'd expect to get from a beautiful floral centerpiece. The middle is dry and light, without being angular and open like Vanille Incenseé. Some aspects as almost...I don't want to say soapy because it has potentially negative connotations, but yes, soapy. This is not the vanilla of your local bakery or your mom's kitchen, and even if you think it is, I challenge you to smell deeper, because there is simply something more about Vanille Botanique.

5. Vanille Botanique is the vanilla you've been searching for. If you're one of those people who always tries a vanilla, especially ones that get continually high praise, and think, "This is close to what I want, but not exactly what I was looking for," I bet this is your huckleberry. It is just so damned beautiful that I keep thinking, "How did I not know I wanted this?" But that's the truth. As someone who loves vanillas and tries them at all price points and in lots of forms, I didn't even know vanilla could smell like this -- dirty and hot and sexy, of earth and sweat and skin and very much alive. Perfume is amazing that way, isn't it?  You think you know what there is to know about a thing and then, bam! A whole new world opens up.

Bottom line? Get some DSH Perfumes Vanille Botanique. It's terrific.

Five Nods. No question.

Vanille Botanique sells from Indiescents at 30ml for $130.00. You can also get samples there. You can also go straight to DSH Perfumes, where the scent is available as a body wash, shea butter body cream, body lotion, massage oil, a water-based spray concentrate, and in a couple of EdP sizes.

Want more? Try....
~ a review from Perfume Pharmer
~ a review from *jen at This Blog Really Stinks!
~ a review from CaFleureBon
~ a review from Victoria at EauMG
~ a review from Trish Vawter in The Perfume Magazine

______________________
F1. Also all our roommates are 26 or older, so this isn't your typical college-aged group house.

FN2. Video of said song...





FN3. I seriously do not understand how people can remember Columbine, Virgina Tech, Congresswoman Giffords, and Batman, but somehow forget that time a woman-hating lunatic used three guns to shoot up an LA Fitness in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I think it is because only three people died and nine were wounded, because otherwise it was an equally terrifying attack on a benign public location where people generally do not expect to be attacked and believe they are safe. Also, the shooter killed himself, so there was no meal of a trial for the 24-hour news cycle to feed on. But seriously? Dude killed several women and would have killed several more because 1. he was crazy, and 2. he couldn't get laid. (No, really. That's the reason. He said so in videos and letters.) In my mind, this is also a huge tragedy.

FN4. The cynical feminist in me requires I also tell you that part of me believes the reason no one cares about this shooting was because it was a clear example of misogyny, and no one in America cares about that, because our society is perfectly fine with hatred and violence against women, even when it costs women their lives. She needs to say that, just for the record.

FN5. Don't ask me how it escaped my attention that few women I knew had guns. They all knew how to shoot them and had access to them in their homes, so I guess I always felt like they 'had guns' in the same way that two people sharing a car both 'have a car.'

FN6. Incidentally, I will say that I find this almost universally true with my DSH perfumes. They have great longevity and good sillage and I have never regretted a single purchase, which is impressive since I went nuts during the site redesign sale and now have about 12 different scents in roller form.

All photos were taken by me. The video belongs to Amanda Palmer.

The Will of Instinct.

On Amanda Palmer, Nirvana, and the Language of Violence in Popular Culture

**TRIGGER WARNING.**

This is not about perfume. No, this is about AMANDA FUCKING PALMER (aka AFP), and intimate violence and sex/gender politics.

I remember the first time I heard Nirvana’s “Polly.” I was, I don’t know, fourteen, I think, but already deeply familiar with the idea of being trapped in a cage by someone violent who thought they loved you. FN1. I remember having a visceral and negative reaction to “Polly” in the same way I had negative reactions to the fetus tree imagery in “Heart Shaped Box.” I remember thinking at the time that Kurt was an angry dude who did not like women, and who seemed to blame his feelings of inadequacy as a man not on patriarchy and misogyny, but on the women in his life and at large. I distinctly remember having an argument with a boy I was dating over this feeling and being completely without the language I needed to express my reactions to some of Nirvana’s work, particularly “Polly,” in a coherent way.

Let me say that I know very little about the Patron Saint of Grunge. I haven’t bothered to study him. So when I talk about all this, I’m not talking about Kurt, the man, or Kurt, the artist’s intent made real. FN2. FN3. I’m talking about how I, as a young abused girl without the language or strength to describe what was happening to me, had been happening to me, was continuing to happen to me, seemingly with the world’ s knowledge, permission, and tacit approval, felt about his work in the moment.

To me, Kurt seemed angry, and the angry in his music appealed to me. The chords that struck me as wrong, however, were the thinly veiled digs at women, the idea that women were a “tar pit traps” or leeches, sucking the life out of otherwise good men, as if women are the enemy and not the trap of rigid gender/sex roles. It’s the same gut level reaction I have to a lot of Kerouac’s work. Any time I hear the words, “pretty girls make graves,” I want to punch someone in the face.

It’s possible that Cobain, and Kerouac before him, meant to put a spotlight on the ways misogynists justify their wholesale use and abuse of women rather than representing a position the artists themselves held. Certainly the history of the song’s origins provided by Nirvana’s surviving members seems to imply Kurt was more interested in understanding the psychology of someone who brutalizes another person at the intersections of sex, violence, and control than identifying with them.

Who Killed Laura Palmer?
"All you good people..."

The problem with this kind of approach to feminist critique of violence is that the work sits out there afterward, speaking for itself, without a narrator standing by to anchor it in context. It finds its way into the bedrooms of girls like me who hear it and only hear  the world’s (at the time) most popular band reveling in a kind of sadism she is beginning to know personally. I was that girl, the girl who hears the words and thinks to herself, “Is this how the whole world is? Is no one stopping what is happening to me because the things my abuser tells me are true, and this is just the natural order of things?” No amount of in-depth documentary histories or "VH1 Behind the Music" interviews or tell-all biographies will ever change the visceral experience of hearing "Polly" and thinking, “I am trapped, just like her. I’m going to die here. I’ll never get out.”

That is why I am so GLAD there are women out there like AMANDA FUCKING PALMER who take work like this, reframing and reclaiming it to show how terrifying and violent and awful and tragic and sickening and inhumane the ideas lurking beneath the riff are,  no matter how they are intended by the artist to be taken by the listener. Much like Tori Amos’ chilling rendition of Eminem’s “ ’97 Bonnie & Clyde”, AFP’s newly released video for her cover of “Polly” is heartbreaking and so resonant with real life that it took me less than one minute to find multiple examples of the ‘fictional’ events in the video happening to women here in the first world in the last two to three days. FN3. FN4.

You can see the video here, in all its disturbing and terrifying realness.

I sobbed when I finished AFP's video the first time through because all I could think was, “This is what I’ve always imagined feeling/happening when I heard this song.” Polly, the caged bird/girl, attempts to appease until she can be free, focusing on nothing but surviving one more moment.  She is like an amalgam of Twin Peaks’ Laura Palmer and Waldo, the caged Myna bird who is one of the only witnesses to Laura's kidnapping.  Both Laura and Waldo end up dead, sacrificed on an altar of patriarchal culture that still believes women can be kept like pets, treated like animals, and are worth nothing more than their purity, their womb, and their service to male pleasure.

The difference between the “Polly” story in my head and AFP’s video is this: I never imagined Polly escaping, never thought a woman like Amanda would be there to save her if she tried. I cried in part because it was a better ending than I ever imagined for Polly, and I am grateful to Amanda Palmer for giving it to me, new salve for an old wound.

Laura: The Will of Instinct.

There is one line from “Polly” that chills me to the bone because it has always rung entirely true for me: “It amazes me, the will of instinct.” The Will of Instinct. The drive and desire to survive, to move on, heartbeat to heartbeat, waiting for one chance out between two worlds, Madonna or Whore, life as a victim or death. The Will of Instinct. To keep going, to keep pushing, to never give up or slow down or give in, to have any sense of self-worth or pride or strength to fight after another brutal day.

The Will of Instinct.

I admire the generations of intimate violence survivors who have stood up and continue to stand up and fight for their lives and their humanity for so many reasons, but most of all, I admire that they keep fighting. And I admire awesome feminists like Amanda FUCKING Palmer for taking the language of the abuser hiding in our culture as entertainment and focusing our attention on it, showing it in all its horrifying and terrible truth.
_________________
FN1. To be perfectly clear, because I think clarity is important, I can only partially identify with the personal experience of this story.  I am a child survivor of domestic violence and have personally experienced being held against my will while my life was repeatedly threatened. I am not a rape or molestation survivor, though I have experienced enough forcible sexual contact in my life to give me the tiniest silver of a fraction of understanding of what the survivors I do advocacy work for have been through. I have known and loved many survivors, though, and I have lived with them through the aftermath.  I can tell you it is brutal and awful and can destroy a life, and every person who survives to go on and thrive and be good and decent is a testiment to human resilence.

FN2. There are clearly feminists who think Kurt is awesome and had a ‘feminist world view.’ The line that kills me in this article, btw, is

Many of the women interviewed initially found “Rape Me” an unsettling song, but eventually came around to seeing it as Cobain’s clumsy but well-intentioned attempt to incorporate feminist theory into his worldview.

Riiiight. Those feminists just needed to get to know Kurt personally and/or transcend their personal, visceral reactions to his songs to see that his works were absolutely intended to be feminist. I must have missed that memo while someone was beating the crap out of me.

FN3. Okay, no. The thing that kills me most is the ACTUAL ARTICLE TITLE. "Nirvana's Secret Feminism." Wow! How progressive! You're a secret feminist. Does that come with a decoder ring and spy magnifying glass?

FN3. I actually wrote an entire paper about the Tori Amos cover in college I had so much to say about, so I won't go into it in depth here. To keep this short, let me say  I acknowledge “’97 Bonnie and Clyde” differs from “Polly” in a number of ways, the most important being that Eminem was actually expressing a desire to kill his (ex)wife. Whether Cobain intended to exercise internal demons through verse or to spotlight systematic violence against women is something only he would know, though it seems he intended the later, making the intent of his work more closely aligned with Amos and Palmer than with Mr. Mathers, even if it ultimately fails to translate to into that kind of critique in the form it was recorded and presented by Cobain himself.

FN4. And let me point out, these are just the stories that make it into the newspapers and AP wire and only represent a tiny fraction of the women being kidnapped, raped, and murdered all around the world as a matter of course, for war, for male pleasure, for male power, and for profit.