Summer 2018

cities:

I’m currently reading Diane Ackerman’s Natural History of the Senses which, next to Mandy Aftel’s Fragrant may contain my favorite writings about scent to date. Both these authors talk about scent and perfumery with such passion and elucidation, one forgets smell is the one sense that can only be described by reference to the others. Also in rotation is Luca Turin’s Folio (2003-2014), a compilation of perfume reviews that first saw the light of day on the pages of Swiss magazine NZZ Folio. This compilation is a bit of a treasure trove for the traveling sensualist, as Turin is a polymath with the kaleidoscopic cultural subconscious that comes from living across multiple geographies for years and years, nose in everything good.

Having traveled plenty through 2017, and already having visited Japan this spring, it’s likely that my lofty dreams of revisiting Milos, Greece will be pushed off to another year. Visions of the sea, the rough outline of the landscape’s scents perch themselves on the edge of memory, demanding attention as the crispness of their image dulls with time. As such I’ve been thinking about how to represent my time there through scent. A rough accord could contain beeswax, frankincense, myrrh, tarragon, a rock dust note, some musk. There would need to be a feeling of soft luminosity and dry earth.

I’ve seen mention of rock and sand accords in a few perfumes, one of them being El Cosmico by D.S. & Durga, and am endlessly curious about how they are achieved. A rock, not having a smell of its own at room temperature, would only smell if it’s been saturated by something with an odor, and probably I could only rely on contextual notes to suggest a rock. Thoughtful traces of dirt notes (geosmin or vetiver), bird poop (seaweed absolute? ambergris? castoreum?), and starched wood (sandalwood, cedarwood), then, might conjure the image of an oceanic rock.

Also useful, I imagine, is the naive willingness to macerate just about any object in perfumer’s alcohol to see what smell comes off of it over time, as I did before I knew anything about aromachemicals and essential oils. In my stock is a two ounce Boston bottle labeled “Sea anemone on rock/grey rock, 8-9/2014″ which does exactly what it says on the tin. It smells exactly like crushed sea rock, with a diffusive mineral quality and a vague animal sweetness. With the consistency and longevity of water, this won’t do for an actual accord, but one of these days it might be the much needed wild card to add flourish and something a bit weird to a finished perfume.