Grace Notes @ Snarkattack

What a bad time to develop a new addiction, but I’m going to blame it on my recent interpersonal failings. If said dickwad is reading this, you know who you are!

Instead of drowning my sorrows in alcohol, instead I turn to fragrance oils.

Groan, it was 3am and for some reason the blog server isn’t loading. No fun when all I want to do is wax lyrical about my new, burgeoning obsession. Yes, I’ve already stated reason for developing obsession. You can’t jolly well play MtG by yourself, can you? And my cousin warns me that World of Warcraft is majorly addictive. Hmm. Could be cheaper in the long run…maybe.

I have two friends who are serious fragrance mavens, one of whom is acquainted with Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab. I’ve always liked the website and their influences because of their obvious enjoyment of European modernism and decadence. Thoughts that spring to mind are the fecal-smelling Parisian slums at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (pick up almost any Zola novel for some juicy descriptions); Huysmans’ protagonist in Au rebours (roughly translated into English as Against the grain) wondering why the hell his tortoise with the jewel-encrusted shell collapses to death (like, duh!); and the man I personally see as responsible for the birth of literary modernism Monsieur Charles Baudelaire promenading down the (left, definitely…) bank of the Seine – with pet lobster in tow, leashed. Those are some of the ‘greatest hits’ of Euro literary modernism.

The site also has reproductions of Aubrey Beardsley’s prints, which always reminds me of the eternally witty Oscar Wilde. Yeah, yeah, it’s all excuses I’m sure to legitimise another way for me to waste my (limited) money.

But what is it about fragrances that engage the other senses so? It just seems to lend itself to synaesthesia more, as Mister smarty-pants Rimbaud has already informed us. I can’t find the poem in question where each vowel is attached to a colour because Wikipedia is being disgustingly uncooperative! Grr. I love it how pre-1990s non-academic references of any kind would never touch upon Rimbaud’s love affair with (Paul) Verlaine. Big deal, men having the hots for other men. Whatever. I think it must’ve been rip-roaringly romantic, except for that part where Verlaine shot Rimbaud through the wrist… I guess when you’re famous they call those things crimes of passion (if you’re not, then you’re just looked upon as mentally unstable and find your fairweather friends staying far away as possible).

I haven’t read anywhere near as much Rimbaud as I should’ve…still battling through Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal and Apollinaire’s Alcools. Sigh. En francais, of course.

I’ve broken my BPAL virginity upon the receiving of a wonderful gift! I was thrilled to bits to learn that I received some ‘imps’ in the mail - this is what BPAL calls their fragrance oil-filled sample vials, for some reason. I think it’s delightful.

The one I chose to wear for the first time ever was La Belle au Bois Dormant (’the beautiful lady in the sleeping woods’). I chose it because it reminded me of the title of Ravel’s soulful composition Pavane pour une infante défunte (’pavane for a dead princess’). It really is a gorgeous piece, but very sad, wistful.

This is what BPAL has to say about La Belle au Bois Dormant:

The Sleeping Beauty. A gentle, lovely scent, slightly soporific, but beautiful in its quiet repose. Plumeria and white pear, Damascus rose, tuberose, magnolia and evening dew.

I think ralenth might like this one, though probably better to try once warmer weather is back.

I’ve also found a magnificent use for the curious passport-sized notebook cicconeyouth sent me; I fear she may have to keep me supplied with them too! It’s going to be my fragrance journal.

I love it lots.

As to the fragrance and its conjuring of other sensory delights, perhaps this article has come to a very good conclusion though it is specific to a fragrance supposedly like that of Marie Antoinette’s:

Like Coppola (in her recent film Marie Antoinette), Kurkdjian says he intended the perfume to be “a key to help people understand what the era was like”.

But to do so, he realised, would require a degree of artistic licence since a 100-percent faithful recreation would be too cloying for modern tastes.

“When it comes to visual arts or music, people can adapt to things coming from a different context. But with smell there is a physical barrier.”

“People then didn’t wash as often as we do. They ate gamey meat that we would now find repulsive — it was a completely different smell environment.”

“I didn’t want people to think it smelled bad, so I lightened up the head of the perfume — by adding a touch of bergamot. But I didn’t take anything away.”

So there you go, fragrance really can take you to different places thanks to olfactory sense. Even more fitting that I should have a fragrance passport to record my journeys. It more than momentarily takes my mind off those silly, nagging ickies floating around in my head.