Do overs, awakenings, and fresh whallomps

It's happened a few times in the past week.  Been plonked down into a fresh look at things, musical style.

The other evening, walking out of a restaurant, hearing The Beatles "The End," right as the "...and in the end..." began.  This morning, hearing Bach "Air" Orchestral Suite #3.

I cried.  Both times.

At this point, what you might like to know about me is whether or not I am a weeper.  Of people who know me, the answer would vary.  Some know me as a rather emotional sort (what was someone said...a "raw nerve"?)  Others think of me as the ultimate Stay Calm and Carry On sort (what did someone else say..."all head, no heart"?)  The truth encompasses both.  But this is not about my personal truth.

Because this isn't about whether or not I'm an emotional nutcase, or the descendent of that guy who fainted when he heard the first chord of "Rite of Spring."  (Is that the story?  Somebody remind me what I'm thinking of.)  What this is about is the astounding power of the human mind to find itself looking at something familiar, familiar to the point of having background noise, a cliche, dismissed, even...and discovering that for some reason, it still has the power to whammy.

When it comes to music, I find this power can be experienced three ways:

1) It's as if I never heard it before, and am back to something raw and primary;
2) It's as if I never heard it this way before, that somehow the life I've lived since first being introduced has circled me around to some sort of fresh yet now full of depth of understanding "a-ha";
3) I am sitting inside a collection of musicians playing a piece and the literal physical experience of the music (oh, those thrumming vibrations, ohhh, those harmonics, oh, the way we're playing together and the way this line is coming together) turns into an emotional/psychological reverberation that is raw, primary, and ahhhh aha all at once.

There are other arts, other life experiences that can be familiar and yet gob-smackingly profound.  To Kill a Mockingbird.  The opening to Wings of Desire, or the scene in Murnau's Sunrise where the husband realizes he really does love his wife.  One human quietly reaching for another's hand, no eye contact required.  The smell of lilacs in the spring. Feeling the breeze across the lake on your bare skin. Calvin & Hobbes.  Toast.

**
This phenomenon I am trying to grasp is not to be confused with the concept of a do-over, which anybody who has spent time in playground games or sandlot sports well knows.  Something goes awry, and the gathered throng has a sort of collective ruling that, yes, somehow Universal Force was unjust or somebody acted against an unwritten but understood rule or the neighbor's dog grabbing the ball and running back home justifies something that is neither an erasure nor an elision of time,  but a second attempt, with the first being struck from the record.  A la "the jury will disregard those remarks."

**
Nor is this to be confused with an awakening, where you feel like for the first time you are fully able to apply your senses and understand something, realizing you never really got it before.  Granted, there is a kinship between an awakening and the second of my conditions, wherein you have a fresh and fuller or different view/experience.  But in an awakening, you realize you never got it before.  In a fresh whallomp, you realize you are getting it again--perhaps with a new angle--but still with that knowledge that you have been in that spot before.  And that you have been given the gift of the whallomp without taking away the gift of your past.

Fresh whallomps require the simultaneous knowledge of prior and current, even as the current seems entirely new.

In perfume parlance, my recent happy dance with Mitsouko was an awakening.  My relationship with Chamade or Bois Blond or No. 19 involves fresh whallomps.

**
I love being whallomped.  Okay, so maybe not always right as it is occurring, seeing I prefer being reserved when in the company of strangers, and having tears descend out of the blue in what might seem to be an inexplicable and alarmingly precipitous way makes me at least as uncomfortable as any casual observer might be.  But I love that humans have this gift, this gift to both have a past and a powerful present that all at once suggests the ability to relish beauty and the opportunity for renewal, to adjust and/or amend our understandings.

Which I've obviously been tracing as a principle in my perfume journey.  But is best recognized as a theme in my general journey.  I hope that you have it in yours.

I'm still trying to come up with a good word for what I am trying to describe here. Rounded up and being held in the corral for consideration are gems and commoners such as gobsmacked, surprised, astonished, ambushed, thunderstruck, overwhelmed, awed.  Thunderstruck and gobsmacked keep rising to the top, but how to get in the sense of wonder and awe?  It's a "fresh whallomp" for posting purposes, but if you have ideas, please share.  Along with steering me toward the dude who fainted at the beauty of a single chord.

Figs, wanted and unwanted

Another post reviewing the oddities of scent and mind.

There is an outfit by the name of Upper Canada soap company, and I am about to write about one and only one product of theirs, and I am not going to be happy about it.  Not because it did not perform as it should--it certainly did--nor because it did not smell as advertised.  That it did, too.

It's just that nobody warned me dish soap could smell like perfume.  That's right, folks; we're going on an inverse to the usual trope you'll find in perfume chat.  My issue was not that a perfume smelled like soap.  My issue was that a (dish) soap smelled like perfume.

Aldehydic perfume.

Perhaps you've not been here often, or perhaps I've somehow gently phrased and backed into my thoughts on aldehydes enough that it my come as some surprise to you that this should be an issue for me.  But trust me, I rarely like bubbles in my nose unless they are gen-you-wine bubbles from a semi-dry sparkling wine or in a perfectly drawn bath.  If I find the smell of perfume accosting me in my dish pan, tormenting me with every scrub of a pot, every swish of a dish, well...I am Not Happy.

Add in to that my vein of frugality that says "this stuff is working perfectly well and clearly does the job you asked it to do and nobody is really going to say thank you to a gift of used dish soap so you'd better suck it up and use the resource" and you end up with a rather displeased dishwasher.

Did I mention that the dish soap also performed so well the generous sized bottle lasted and lasted?  Thank you, Upper Canada, for manufacturing such an efficacious product.

(Thank you, wonderfully robust English language, for offering me an honest word of praise that allows me to say something so close to "effing" at the same time.  ALDEHYDES, I tell you!!!)

My bottle is finally, FINALLY, gone.

I have now moved on to Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day dish soap, Basil scent.  Riddle me this, Batman:  Why would a candy version of basil, something that I might find cloying in a perfume, please me so much in my kitchen sink?  Does it benefit from being held against the aldehydic terror perfumey fig that was the Upper Canada offering?

Am I okay with candy in the kitchen, but not perfume?  It is true; I never like to spray perfume in the kitchen, not even when I have my hot mitts (as in my eager hands, not my protective gear) on a fresh package from the mail that I know contains the latest something....

Sorry, Upper Canada.  I promise I will try another offering.  After all, I can see that on a value per penny basis, yours is a good choice.  I also see that no online source offers the fig scent, so maybe there's a reason I found my bottle at the closeout store.

Wash on.

***
Don't feel too sorry for me.  There is such a thing as a happy fig.

As it turns out, it's not a perfume, either.

images, including bite mark, author's own

DSH Celadon: L'Heure Verte

Last summer, a very generous friend in perfume surprised me with a beautiful little bottle. I had no idea what was inside...and as curious as I was about the contents, I was enchanted by the potion's presentation. No clues... Beaux Arts, said the label... its appearance reminded me quite a bit of a couple of vintage Coty minis I have (L'Aimant and L'Origan). I became distracted just by the bottle. What a beautiful little something, my eyes said.

My nose did not yet know.

I dabbed some on, and was immediately happy. Neither clean nor green, but not far from either, it started off bright and cheerful but not in a high voice. Not long after, it moved on into other territory. Other territory meaning at first it introduced a bit more depth, then left the light for the opaque depths, molting the brightness nearly entirely. It became...powdery, a bit, but that's not quite right. Denser. Hints of richness, but easily breathed through. I'm thinking of a fog that isn't oppressive.

When I tried it again today, it was those things, with a big "a-ha!" as the drydown proceeded. It is the feeling of L'Heure Bleue (and some of its descendents), if blue was green. There's a certain palpable element to the space the scent inhabits. You can kind of taste it, kind of feel it...whereas in Bleu, that piece is violet-ish perhaps melancholy perhaps the trailing denouement of a happy story arc, here in Celadon the miasma breathes in green with cheer dominating the pondering.

Both are scents that make me daydream, and continually (if often absentmindedly) return to my wrist for a gentle huff, which keeps the creative thought zone gently humming. Celadon has a bit more lift, L'Heure Bleue a bit more transport. I'm happy to ride with either...both are a bit of a magic carpet for me.

Celadon is from Dawn Spencer Hurwitz' Beaux Arts "aroma color" collection. See her website here.

"Delivery Systems" -- Lentisque

In my household, we have a kind of running joke:  Bread, potatoes, pancakes, waffles...all delicious...but often, as prepared, they end up being "butterfat delivery systems."  How would you like your butter today, goes the gag...carried by whole wheat or sourdough?  Waffle or pancake? Perhaps on a baked potato?

This approach works for other forms of dairy fat, too.  For example... half & half is delicious when you spike it with some coffee.  (Sugar optional.)

Such are examples of gustatory delivery systems in my house.  And such was the joke I thought of when taking a hit on my left wrist this morning, which sports 06130 Lentisque today.  Officially described as an "homage to the pistachio tree," and listed by Helg as one of her perfumes of spring, I am also connecting it to a perfume of spring.  Apres L'Ondee.  But why?

Heliotropin.

I think I might be crazy.  But...an hour into it, I huff, and sure enough, I smell...L'Heure Bleu Apres L'Ondee heliotropin.  Hmmph. 

Mind you, I like it.  And this is my concern.  Is my nose just manufacturing my experience, or my brain mixing the signal?  Do I like heliotropin so much, my body is willing to cross the wires so that  Lentisque, Ambret Seeds, Jasmine, Melon, Oris(Iris), Turkish Rose Absolute, Musk, Haitain Vetiver oli, Voluptuous Amber  /whatever ingredients are really there organize themselves to register as heliotropin?  Am I missing something?  Could the ambrette be evoking this reaction?  After all, it is not flat out L'Heure Bleu I am feeling here.  Just a haunting.

(Maybe my body is just being very smart; research has shown that the aroma of heliotropin reduces anxiety.)

Whatever is "true" here, I know that I am enjoying Lentisque.  I'm just a little too distracted by this "am I smelling what I think I am?" thing to give it a full and fair description.  I'll return to Lentisque, and attempts to describe it...but for now, am enjoying it as a medium-light vaguely green heliotropin delivery system.

Kind of like taking your half & half with moderate amounts of coffee and a light hit of sugar, or your butter on a fresh baked slice of medium bodied vaguely whole grain blend.