Over the lilies there that wave and weep above a nameless grave!

Esscentual Alchemy Moon Valley

Dear reader:

Happy All Hallow's Eve! Today is the day that all things spooky, scary, eerie, unsettling, and otherworldly come out and have a heyday. And while we're celebrating the unexplained mysteries of the world, let's talk some more about about primordial scents, particularly those that celebrate the mystery of the unseen, shall we?

Today we reach Day Four of Six in our exploration of the Primordial Scent Project: Air Scents. As befits our holiday, I bring you a dark and lovely perfume for this, the Day of the Dead. Esscentual Alchemy Moon Valley, created by Amanda Feeley, is a natural perfume that...

...opens with a hint of the dew that falls at night. Following with a fresh heirloom muskmelon scent, and exotic herbs. Mouthwateringly enticing. Next comes the smell of well-travelled luggage, that has seen alluring, glamourous, and out of the way ports of call, and has stood the test of time, and the rigors of the journey. Ends with a spicy dry down 

Perfume Ingredients: Vetiver, Antique Oakmoss, Hyrax, Orris, Jasmine Grandiflorum, Lilac, Tuberose, Carnation, Peach Accord, Virginia Cedar, Heliotrope Accord

The first time I tried Moon Valley, it reminded me of standing on my front porch on the first real night of winter, wisps of cold night air bringing me the mixed scents of fireplace and woodstove fires inside homes all over the neighborhood, people burning up the night to warm themselves. The smoke snap freezes in tiny crystals that float, unseen, toward me, each one a tiny orb carrying a view into the lives of others, like the floating bubbles of dreams in Jim Henson's '80s classic Labyrinth. FN1.  That smell is one of my favorite winter smells, and it is always best the first night of every season.

The second time I tried Moon Valley, I thought of death. Specifically, I thought of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Valley of Unrest."

Now each visitor shall confess
The sad valley’s restlessness.
Nothing there is motionless—
Nothing save the airs that brood
Over the magic solitude.

The third and final try before I ran out of perfume because I liked it so much, what I thought of constantly was the smell of cracking a fresh package of bleached white lined paper, taking out a sheet, and writing on it in a rich, thick, black blue ink with a fountain pen. Heavy words flow from that pen, words of sorrow or ending or resolution.

Overall, this scent is air meets darkness. It is a kind of liquid night, dry and bitter. Is it wrong to say this is, for me, the perfect perfume for a winter funeral? It is. It is rich and lovely and foreboding. I'd recommend it for Halloween, but this scent lacks the candied fun of children trick or treating. This is the real stuff of spirits, mean and serious, not in the modern torture-porn horror way, but in the way the classic Mexican surrealist film The Exterminating Angel is deeply unsettling without any of the gore that seems to be required today. FN1.

Musically speaking? I can think of no better music than this:


The scent reminds me most closely of INeKE's Evening Edged in Gold, but less fruity or sweet. This is darker, earthier, and more, well, primordial. Less pretty, more...guttural. It comes from a place somewhere in the core of the self. Fundamental. The Quintessence, if you will.

Moon Valley is available direct from the perfumer. You can buy samples for $5, 5ml EdP for $22, and the perfume in 1oz spray for $115, 1/3oz gift presentation for $150.

You can buy the entire Primordial Scent Project: Air Set for $28.00 here.

For more reviews of the Primordial Scent Project: Air Scents, try: Perfume-Smellin' Things; The Perfume Critic; John Reasinger, writing for Perfume Pharmer; Indieperfumes; Donna Hathaway, writing for Perfumer Pharmer.

_____________________________

FN1. The film is available for watch for free on Hulu and I recommend it highly to any of my readers who like art films.  Directed by Luis Buñue, it is considered one of the top twenty films in all of Mexican cinema. Without going too much away, I think is a deeply interesting exploration of group psychology and human beings ability to create hell here on earth that likely exceeds anything we'd have to fear is a traditional hell.

FN2.  P.S. How GREAT is this cover of "As The World Falls Down"? Allow me to answer for you. Really f-ing great.


All photos taken by me, copyright 2012. All rights reserved.

Of cloudless climes and starry skies...

Neil Morris Fragrances Spirit of Air

Once upon a time I had an enormous crush on a woman because she always smelled good.

Don't get me wrong. She was a generally lovely woman. Attractive, funny, good-hearted, bright minded, sweet. There was a lot to like about her. But at the time, what I liked about her was that she smelled so good.

The best thing about it was she didn't smell good because of a particular shampoo or perfume or body wash. She wasn't really into fragrance. She didn't consistently use particular hair and body products. She just smelled good. It wasn't her clothes of soap or hair spray.  It was her. The essence of her. She carried this loveliness around her like an aura, floating in the air around her, a cloud of beauty. Like the famous Lord Byron poem, she walked in beauty.

I never could properly describe her scent, but I still remember her loveliness. Though we were never more than friends, I will always remember her and the way her scent made her that much more beautiful.

And speaking of the air of beauty, let's talk about our third Primordial Scent Project: Air Set offering, shall we?

Neil Morris Fragrances Spirit Of Air is described as

part of a quartet of perfumes honoring the 4 elements. This scent is the second in Morris' series, after Spirit of Water. Spirit Of Air has notes of "Lemon Verbena, Linden Blossom, Plum Blossom, Lily of the Valley, Sunflower, Light Musk, White Amber, Ozone Notes.

This is a lovely, gently sweet floral. In a world of artful takes on air, this is very wearable, which is quite an accomplishment. Sometimes scent is art and sometimes scent is accent and occasionally, very occasionally, you find a scent that works as both. If Spirit of Air is an essence of air, it is the essence of air captured in the hair of your beloved, the way it smells when you bury your face against their head or at the nape of the neck.

This air is the air of romance.  It reminds me of that lovely woman, whom I assume is still out there, somewhere.  I have no doubt that where she walks, she takes that inherent beauty with her, not unlike this scent.

To purchase, go directly to the Neil Morris Fragrances site, choose any of the Vault fragrances and then request Spirit of Air at checkout. And if you're interested, don't delay. Until November 5, Neil Morris Fragrances are available at 10% off and free shopping for orders over $70.00.

You can buy the entire Primordial Scent Project: Air Set for $28.00 here.

For more reviews of the Primordial Scent Project: Air Scents, try: Perfume-Smellin' Things; The Perfume Critic; John Reasinger, writing for Perfume Pharmer; Indieperfumes; Donna Hathaway, writing for Perfumer Pharmer.

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
~ "She Walks in Beauty," Lord Byron


Photo of perfume taken by me.  Photo of woman walking courtesy of the Library of Congress, all rights reserved.

Moment of Inspiration: Privilege of Being

Dear reader:

If you come here often, you know me pretty well now, after a fashion. Certainly you know many of my passions. After all, this has largely become the place for my passion: this cool white imagined room in my head, where I keep the things I treasure: bits of conversations; snatches of music floating by; the impressionist fiction arising unbidden from a particular scent; a really important memory. You know, if you come here, that I love, in no particular order: road trips, rain, perfume, music, books. BUt there are others I don't talk about often or at all: boxes of nail polishes that shimmer in a multitude of hues; the ways leaves change color in fall so that I take hundreds of pictures that are never as good as the ones in my mind; the ocean, always and often foremost, the ocean.

Here's another: poetry. I love poetry. I have so many books of poetry, so many favorite poems I've read again and again. I particularly like modern American poetry. I have a few books of modern poetry, mostly anthologies, that I've purchased several times, when I couldn't find the original copy or was worried the original was out of print and I wouldn't even find another. And because I like you, dear reader, and because I only very recently moved into a place where I could open ten years of boxes and look at all my books and I'm excited to have ready access to all those books at once, I have a little gift for you. I'm going to begin sharing a few of my favorites with you, along with some random things I string together with them...songs and memories and...things, just things. Things that create the full experience of the poem for me.

I hope you like it.

.  .  .  .  . 

Privilege of Being by Robert Hass

Many are making love. Up above, the angels
in the unshaken ether and crystal
of human longing
are braiding one another’s hair, which is
strawberry blond
and the texture of cold rivers. They glance
down from time to time at the awkward ecstasy—
it must look to them like featherless birds
splashing in the spring puddle of a bed—
and then one woman, she is about to come,
peels back the man’s shut eyelids and says,
look at me, and he does. Or is it the man
tugging the curtain rope in that dark theater?
Anyway, they do, they look at each other;
two beings with evolved eyes, rapacious,
startled, connected at the belly
in an unbelievably sweet
lubricious glue, stare at each other,
and the angels are desolate. They hate it. They
shudder pathetically
like lithographs of Victorian beggars
with perfect features and alabaster
skin hawking rags
in the lewd alleys of the novel.
All of creation is offended by this distress.
It is like the keening sound
the moon makes sometimes,
rising. The lovers especially cannot bear it,
it fills them with unspeakable sadness, so that
they close their eyes again and hold
each other, each
feeling the mortal singularity of the body
they have enchanted out of death
for an hour or so,
and one day, running at sunset, the woman
says to the man,
I woke up feeling so sad this morning
because I realized
that you could not, as much as I love you,
dear heart, cure my loneliness,
wherewith she touched his cheek to reassure him
that she did not mean to hurt him with this truth.
And the man is not hurt exactly,
he understands that life has limits, that people
die young, fail at love,
fail of their ambitions. He runs beside
her, he thinks
of the sadness they have gasped and crooned
their way out of
coming, clutching each other with old, invented
forms of grace and clumsy gratitude, ready
to be alone again, or dissatisfied, or merely
companionable like the couples
on the summer beach
reading magazine articles about intimacy
between the sexes
to themselves, and to each other,
and to the immense, illiterate, consoling angels.

from Human Wishes, 1989 

_____

From left to right, top to bottom: By Kilian A Taste of Heaven; Weeping Angel, Spring Grove Cemetery & Arboretum;  Golden Eagle Feathers; Atelier Cologne Grand Neroli; Grey Goose Feathers; Holding Hands; Oregon Coast; Ineke Floral Curiosities Perfume Angels Trumpet; Steller's Sea Eagle Head Feathers.

The Legend of Chanel No. 5

Chanel No. 5 is a staple of perfumery. In fact, it is THE staple. The world could end tomorrow and in 1,000 years aliens could land on earth and they would still know that Chanel No. 5 was a cultural icon. So I wasn't surprised when I was flipping through a favorite book of poetry I find fifteen years ago, New American Poets of the '90s, the following poem in honor of that one and only iconic scent, and I thought I'd share it with you.

Chanel No. 5
by: Chase Twitchell

Life had become a sort of gorgeous elegy,
intimate with things about to be lost.

The waiter's hand on the wineglass
seemed an intermediary flame,

the atoms rampart inside it,

though it moved slowly
and hesitated slightly
before it was withdrawn

as if it meant to ask
whether anything more was wanted.

Abstracted by the static of the surf,

I dined alone, the beach hotel
half-empty in the off-season,

the honeymooning couple
at the table next to mine

caressing with their voices
the still-folded map of their future,

their two armies still in reserve,

the flowers massed between them
a flimsy barricade
against their wakening grief.

The long pin of her corsage
pierced the thin silk on her breast:
white flower, green leaf, black dress.

In her perfume I smelled
the residue of all their recent happiness,
a sweetness corrupted by the sea, and yet

she wore it innocently, that target.

It was a fledgling bitterness I caught
off a shred of air that had touched her dress
as she rose to follow her husband-mystery.

The little emblem inside the flame,
the male and female become one,

was blackening back in their room

overlooking the sea, but before they
hurried back to it, she looked at me,
and, as if to innoculate herself against me,

inclined her head to smell her own gardenia.

Of White Flowers & Supple Fruit: The Joys of Spring

Serge Lutens Nuit de Cellophane

In many ways, I feel like the late comer to the perfume ball on this one. Serge Lutens newest addition, Nuit de Cellophane, has been reviewed all over the place. But let us begin at the beginning, with the words Serge Lutens offers by way of description for Nuit de Cellophane:

As the night unfolds, it reveals a cluster of heavenly bodies.
The velvet pirouette of moths fluttering around glowing lanterns.
Creatures of darkness, crickets and other dwellers of the shadows lying undercover, transmit their requests.
-Excuse me, miss? Could you wrap that please?
-Is it a gift, sir?
-Indeed it is, a gift for you.

What that is intended to tell you about a perfume named “a plastic wrapped night,” I do not know. Upon announcing the addition to the Serge Lutens stable, there was a great deal of who-ha over the name. Folks aplenty spent a lot of time trying to figure out what kind of scents this name was supposed to evoke in the mind’s eye. Some of the best name-gaming can be found over at Perfume Shrine. Despite the quirky name, however, reviews of Nuit de Cellophane have been mixed, with some reviewers lamenting its plain/obvious/inoffensiveness, wondering “where is the signature weird we have come to know, love, and expect from Serge Lutens?”

I, however, will not lament Serge Lutens choice to make something generally considered as more “marketable” or “mainstream.” I figure, times being what they are, who am I to judge a manufacturer for throwing in a little bit of normal along with a whole lot of strange? Plus, while I recognize that certain perfumers build a name for them for creating along specific lines (e.g. CB and his ultra realism), I hold with the tenant that any olfactory artist should be able to create any item of beauty, even if it smells kind of like every other beautiful thing around that year. There’s always room to do the standard just differently enough to create a new perfection or interpretation. Nuit de Cellophane is exactly that.

While the notes listed for Nuit de Cellophane include jasmine, osmanthus, carnation, lily, muscs, almond, wood, and honey, on me the initial application is all white flowers and old fashioned soap with a little bit of fruit-like sweetness, which others peg as apricot. The lily and jasmine are especially prominent upfront. It’s possible the fruit note I’m smelling is the “honey” note Luckyscent refers to in its description, but it doesn’t seem strong enough or distinct enough to me for honey. I like the sweet bit though, because it is sweeter than a lot of big white flower scents on me (I’m thinking Kai, specifically) but not so sweet as to be sickening, like dousing oneself in canned fruit salad syrup. It also doesn’t knock you down with its size, which is nice for a white flowers fragrance. It’s not big in that way that so many white flowers are, over powering and loud. This is more realistic. The experience is less like shoving your face full on into a blooming flowering tree, and more like gently sniffing at a well-made bouquet. On dry down, the carnation comes through a little stronger, further sweetening the mixture.

On the whole, Nuits de Cellophane is a very lovely white flower and fruit mixture. Will I be running right out to buy it? No. It’s pretty, but doesn’t grab me in a way that screams, “I must have it!” I do, however, know lots of people who would feel that way about such a well-made, pretty fragrance. And make no mistake, this is well made, like all Lutens fragrances. Rather than lob together a lot of white flower scents so one smells like a blaring, overcrowded, and undergroomed flower garden, bottle it up, and call it good, there was a great deal of intentionality in creating Nuits de Cellophane. I realize that, in the world of perfume reviews, saying “white flowers and fruit” isn’t as detailed a response as one might need to discern Nuits de Cellophane from the vast number of similar scents, but that apricot note really separates this one out from the pack. If you normally think, when smelling white flowers, “Gee I wish this was a little sweeter,” try this one. It might be for you. Certainly it is a lovely invocation of all that sweet Spring implies: the blooming of flowers, supple fruit, and new beginnings.

Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.
Robert Frost, "A Prayer for Spring"

To read any of the whole laundry list of other lovely reviews for this Nuits de Cellophane by visiting...
~ Scented Salamander here.
~ Perfume Posse here.
~ 1000fragrances here.
~ I Smell, Therefore I Am here.
~Grain de Musc here.
~ Perfume Shrine review here.