had a bunch of major life and career changes (housing situation, settled on a mostly okay Rx, stopped talk therapy, got a salaried position and some freelance gigs)
made a bunch of art/design things including window displays, some scenic things, several scent things; got paid for a few of them and felt negative about almost all of them
burned out by late October by worrying about simple professional and social events and never really recuperated either emotionally or in terms of allotting time to different things
got very “dead dove do not eat” about gender i guess
in 2019
no heels no collars or notched lapels no haircuts (no masters) but yes to florid touches (kwon levels of black eyeshadow, the return of the fruity floral)
less adrift time on social media: less time in general but more engagement or activity. less background noise, background radio, whatever: continue cultivating silence (three months ago the radio in my car went out: great)
more time outside
learn how to sleep on the little unfixable shitty things, both metaphorically and literally: the dripping faucet can’t be fixed without tearing out the wall, there will always be another mouse in the house, I did a ton of therapy to get to a pretty okay place so it’s time to lighten up/relax/enjoy the view
in 2018 media
American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace was probably my self-contained media of this year: lurid excess with a real, humiliated heart. The Favourite is probably a close second for similar reasons.
Hilda is my standout animation/children’s thing of the year – it has a Moomin-ness to it.
I spent too much time listening to: the scores to Annihilation, Phantom Thread, and
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford; Dirty Computer by Janelle Monae; cinema podcasts
Reading was a bad year for me, in that I did not do much. In terms of pieces I’m envious in terms of diction: the Elisa Gabbert piece on glaciers/bigness was a stand-out, as was her recommended author, Javier Marias’ Between Eternities and Other Writings, and there’s a piece in Helen McClory’s Mayhem and Death that reads like a folksong and/or a very old ghost story.
in the trigger warning section - 2018 media and a resolution
tove jansson, buster keaton,s. korean divers;kathy bates in ahs: apocalypse, ethan hawke as rev ernst toller in first reformed; v&a museum volunteers as phantom thread dressmakers, phoebe philo, milkmaid on experiment russian moose farm. no heels, no collars, some pockets, no lists.
a most capricorn birthday: pickled red onions with rosewater; going to the six-story driving range; sneaking away from my own party and coming back to find almost everyone had left, which was frankly a relief.
Slowly,and not linearly like a novel or an essay. Read one poem at a time, then close the anthology and let it speak to you. To me, poetry is also an exercice in humility, a non-cerebral task: quit your desire to immediately comprehend anything you read, feel it instead.
GOURMAND FLORAL: Bee’s Bliss by Sonoma Scent Studio
It’s Cyber Monday, so support your local/independent businesses. Sonoma Scent Studio has been shuttered since the beginning of 2018. Running a small business is difficult for any individual and running a small perfume business is almost impossible with tendinosis. When you’re purchasing artisan or independent perfumes, please remember that many (not all, but many) of these perfumers aren’t just blending fragrances, they’re also doing the work of the marketing team, the fulfillment and boxing and shipping and distribution team, the admin, and so on. It’s not per se better than the large-scale mainstream perfumes that are owned by LMVH, for example, but it’s important to recognize that there’s a difference. TL;DR: don’t be a jerk to your local indie perfumer: buy samples and be patient when they don’t have big-box-store-style shipping options.
Honey perfumes are gourmands perfumes: the scents of edible things like chocolate, vanilla, candy, butter. (Although fruits are edible they land in the fruity category of scent taxonomy; I think this is a rock versus stone distinction (fruits exist in the real world, gourmands are composed) and a longevity distinction (gourmand aromatic materials tend to last on the skin or scent strip much longer than fruity materials).) Most honey scents are just: honey. They may have an angle (clover honey, linden honey), but they tend to be just an interpretation of the thing. (Like Shutter!) If you have a distinguished nose (I don’t), you can apparently smell the terroir of natural honey aromatic material. A common component of honey perfumes, phenylacetic acid, undergoes a fascinating drydown where it smells like the burnt sugar and cream of creme brulee in the first initial seconds; then swerves into sweaty crotch or stinky feet or unwashed masculine junk, depending on whom you ask, for some thirty-odd minutes; then settles into a long-lasting powdery/crystallized honey scent.
To my (undistinguished) nose, Bee’s Bliss has it both ways: it gets the atmosphere of a bee making honey and it gets the crotch. My notes have its opening as a “wet (limpid!) liquid honey with wet florals / light, transparent, sheer, cool” and then “used bathroom with a powdery deodorizer on top” as a middle. There is a commonality in this and another extinct perfume called Tra La La that is “used portopotty but fancy.” The drydown has surprisingly light touch with the crystallized honey. If I were cynical but trying to be poetic I would say that this perfume has a broken heart; in plainer words, I think the bridge from the wet floral top notes to the powdery sugared base notes doesn’t work that well and it’s an interesting example of the materials not necessarily adding up to a cogent perfume experience.
If you
like this,
you should try: The Body Shop Honeymania (just light floral honey); Serge Lutens Miel de Bois (medium raunchy honey); Smell Bent Prairie Nymph (candy honey musk, nothing adventurous but by the oz it’s cheaper than most brands). Sixteen92 does limited edition perfumes that are mostly gourmands and often literature inspired; BPAL is one of the progenitors of the independent mostly gourmand “what if fanfiction but perfume” and have a number of honey scents, and they’re in the Valley!
Nuit de Bakelite is a green interpretation of a usually narcotic white floral tuberose.
Green florals are often “about” untouchable primness and order of a thing. Tuberoses are often “about” sex – you get all the verbiage around late night, sultry air, wet skin, et cetera. So, if NdB is sexy in the weird, elitist realm of perfumer’s language, it’s sexy in the way that that photograph of Catherine Denueve sitting on a stool wearing a ripped white silk blouse is sexy, or the way a black and white arrangment of books imperfectly lined up on a shelf is sexy, which is to say, sharp and jagged, a kintsugi kind of vibe, something broken and repaired. A contained things’ ability to be broken, its ability to be repaired and maybe-untouchable afterwards: the ouroboros of sexualized violence versus propriety. Problematic imagery for sure!
But green florals are also “about” newsness, and sharpness, and I personally think are the perfect if obvious thing to wear for the beginning of spring and fall. I like the interplay that galbanum (a bitter resin that smells like powdered cucumbers to the people I work with and has the texture of scratchy raw silk to me), which is often used as the structural base for green florals, has with the other notes. Nuit de Bakelite won the 2018 Art & Olfaction Award for best Artisan perfume.
If you like this,
you should try: Chanel no. 19 as many perfumers’ green floral standard; Jacomo Silences as “the greenest green”’; Andrea Maack Coven for the witchy green everyone was losing their minds over in 2013.
gourmand spicy - Cacao Azteque, Perris Monte Carlo
fruity musky - Womanity Pour Elles, Mugler
citrus woody spicy - Jungle Pour Homme, Kenzo
Slight revision to this because I was transcribing an interview with a perfume historian who has a much better take on the arc of green florals. In the post WWII era, green florals were created and popularized as youthful scents, almost contemporary to the development of youth culture. So the green florals that read as dowdy or prim now were read as young when they were put on the market.
Nuit de Bakelite is a green interpretation of a usually narcotic white floral tuberose.
Green florals are often “about” untouchable primness and order of a thing. Tuberoses are often “about” sex – you get all the verbiage around late night, sultry air, wet skin, et cetera. So, if NdB is sexy in the weird, elitist realm of perfumer’s language, it’s sexy in the way that that photograph of Catherine Denueve sitting on a stool wearing a ripped white silk blouse is sexy, or the way a black and white arrangment of books imperfectly lined up on a shelf is sexy, which is to say, sharp and jagged, a kintsugi kind of vibe, something broken and repaired. A contained things’ ability to be broken, its ability to be repaired and maybe-untouchable afterwards: the ouroboros of sexualized violence versus propriety. Problematic imagery for sure!
But green florals are also “about” newsness, and sharpness, and I personally think are the perfect if obvious thing to wear for the beginning of spring and fall. I like the interplay that galbanum (a bitter resin that smells like powdered cucumbers to the people I work with and has the texture of scratchy raw silk to me), which is often used as the structural base for green florals, has with the other notes. Nuit de Bakelite won the 2018 Art & Olfaction Award for best Artisan perfume.
If you like this,
you should try: Chanel no. 19 as many perfumers’ green floral standard; Jacomo Silences as “the greenest green”’; Andrea Maack Coven for the witchy green everyone was losing their minds over in 2013.
Basalmic is the “vanilla + spices + tree resins” fragrance family. It predates a lot of the modern scent categories, can be constructed entirely from natural materials, is often the foundation off which more complex and orchestral fragrances are based, is quite possibly a category of scent your grandmother or some other elderstateswoman in your past might have worn. It’s a smell that now has a built-in sense of ending.
Rouge Cardinal is old money and fits into my personal scent map as “waiting in the powder room at the ballet during intermission.” Every spring in Oakland, the Oakland Museum holds the White Elephant Sale, where a warehouse full of donations are picked through by artists, families, looky-loos, et cetera. Until recently it used to be the only time that that volume of white people were in Fruitvale, but gentrification has changed a lot about East Oakland. The WES has a rack in the women’s clothing section with the sign “Opera Wear” hanging off the front. Rouge Cardinal smells like this rack looks: palazzo pants in drifts of sheer, black chiffon, jewel-toned sequins in floral patterns stitched into black tulle, ruched velvet. Ornate, historied, the full weight of tradition.
If you like this, you should try: Shalimar Guerlain (the classic); Silver Iris Atelier Cologne (slightly rancid vintage lipstick).
Any introduction to perfumes needs a wildly literal, often synthetic-heavy, interpretation of modern life. Shutter recreates the smell of photo developing: the smell of a dark room, or a Polaroid turning, or a still-wet photostrip shooting out of a booth. Also, you are a photographer so will be able to determine the fragrance’s fidelity.
Xyrena is an LA-based fragrance house run, as far as I can tell, a former child star current WeHo bon vivant. The house specializes in catchy analogs of things in the real world: a milk & cookies scent inspired by Andy Kaufman; a series of cannabis scents; a pumpkin spice latte smell called Basic Bitch; a AOAwards finalist called Dark Ride that was inspired by the smell of riding through the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland. They are all sold in VHS jewel cases, by the way, in case you were curious about the brand’s commitment to schtick. The year that Dark Ride was shortlisted,
the brand owner showed up to the awards ceremony in a gold lamé short suit that I still think about sometimes.
If you like this, you should try: Odeur 53 Comme des Garcons (laundered air); Odeur 71 Comme des Garcons (hot dust on a light bulb, Xerox machine); Vio Volta DS & Durga (electric zapper + bug juice).
- Fantasy noir: Pour another one, Joe. My dragon left me for some clean-shaven cape-wearing foreign hero with an accent so thick you could hear the fake passport in his voice.
- Existential noir: these are mean streets to have an empty life in, kid. Thinkers nurse a hangover from their disgust of life for fifty years then roll over and die. This is how we run things in our city. Play it again, will you.
- Southern Gothic Noir: look at yourself, boy. They’ve got names for people who carry the Bible like that. They’ve got names for everything around here. And if you don’t get it the first time the walls will whisper it back to you.
– Noir Mythology: She was a priestess at some local temple. One of those temple only people who pray for a pint of bourbon and a life insurance go to. And she had a face that meant trouble, make no mistake. But not after Zeus turned her into a cow. Not after Zeus turned her into a cow.
- Noir meta-Shakespeare: Characters like us, Horatio. We weren’t born to grow old and mean. We faff around, we mix a stiff one, and then we die. But when we die, we die hard and we make sure we bring the whole damn city down with us.
- Noir Milton: Heaven looked high class from fifty feet away but from five feet away it looked like the kind of place meant to be seen from fifty feet away. Stay there long enough you get a double pint of Hell’s Bells. Real hell is my business now. Real hell is how I make my nickel.
- Noir William Blake: She was the sort of tiger a bishop would paint crosses on his front door against. You can’t tell anything from tigers like that. She could have had the sheriff in the back room. She could have been making millions. But you could tell she burned bright in all the right places. Oh, she burned bright all right.
- Noir Dylan Thomas: Alright, old man. Amateur hour is over. You go down kicking and screaming or you don’t go down at all, you get my meaning?
- Noir Keats: Outside, the Autumn smelled of politics: it asked only for the highest types of men and had nothing to offer them but bleating lambs and the song of crickets. The sort of autumn that shares his smokes and his wife with the maturing sun. “I don’t like Spring,” the kid said. “That’s all right, sonny boy. I ain’t selling it.”
- Noir Edgar Allan Poe: You could tell from the way he sauntered in the bird meant business. He had the kind of beak that could drive a nail through your forehead. Didn’t string more than two words together but he knew all the right ones all the same. He knew which ones stung. “I don’t want no birds in my room,” I said, loud enough for hell to hear. But birds like that don’t just scram. Birds like that stick to you like a bad divorce from a Hollywood diva.
