One Thousand Scents

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Thought Processes

I went to see the doctor today. He wants me to get an MRI on my leg to see if my medial lateral ligament is torn or merely strained. I'm thinking I won't. If he calls with an appointment tomorrow, I might, just to humour him, but the thing can't be torn, because it's healing almost as fast as Wolverine; I think I'll actually be back on my feet by the weekend.

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You may have noticed that I finally, at long last, have begun tagging my posts. This means that, when I'm finished at some undefined point in the near future, after you've read a posting you can read all the related ones--the same manufacturer, the same notes, the same idea, whatever I saw fit to group the scent under. I meant to do this a long time ago, but I didn't see how it could be done, until finally this morning I took a long hard look at the innards of Blogger and discovered that it was right in front of me all along: on the New Post page, you can apply labels to new posts, and on the Edit page, you can apply labels to one or more posts at one go. (I was looking for "tags", which is why I never noticed it. Me: not too bright sometimes.)

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You may also have noticed that I have started using Twitter, over there on the right side of the page. Because I'm sure you're all breathless with anticipation as to what I happen to have sloshed on my skin that very moment.

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An anonymous commenter said of Demeter Waffle Cone:

I didn't think this smelled like a waffle cone at all. It did smell of waffles, with a lot of buttery syrup.

Fair enough. To me it smelled very precisely like the kind of smell that ice-cream shops like to blow out the window to lure you in, that dense, crisp, vanilla-drenched bakery smell. My nose isn't everybody's nose, though, and if someone else smells breakfast waffles (which to me smell much lighter and eggier than waffle cones), then that's what they smell. If someone says that Joy smells like coffee grounds and bathroom soap, I'm going to wonder what's wrong with their nose, but if someone says a fragrance meant to smell like chocolate pudding smells like chocolate fudge, hey, that's close enough for me.

But then there are the in-betweens.

When I was writing about Bulgari Black last week, I naturally read what Perfumes: The Guide had to say about it, and I think that Luca Turin 1) has a much better nose than I do (probable) or 2) has access to detailed information about fragrance composition (a certainty) or 3) is just making stuff up (fairly likely), because he says that to him, Black has three disparate elements: sweet amber, green floral, and dry rubber.

The rubber we can all agree on, because it's so obvious and because Bulgari says it's there, but everything else in his opinion just escapes me. Is there really a Je Reviens floral note to Black? I've been wearing the stuff for years and I've never noticed it. And does Turin not perceive the smoke, which is very dramatic, and the vanilla, which is as plain as, well, the nose on your face? Or do they simply not matter to him in the grander scheme of things?

This, you see, is what art is all about. Interpretation.

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