Thank You Note to Reverie au Jardin

Since I was epistolary with Denyse, how about I give the same consideration to Andy Tauer's Reverie au Jardin?

Dear Reverie,


I was commenting on another blog the other day, and came across someone else referring to vetiver bundles being sold to "refresh" drawers, particularly in the heat.  By "drawers," I understood them to mean dresser drawers, though with that bunch, you can never be too certain.  On review, however, I feel fairly certain they were referring to a bureau and storage.  REGARDLESS, this was a new something for me, and of course immediately reminded me of the lavender wands I both make and purchase ready made for uses including closets and drawers.  (By which I mean rather small alcoves for storage and the things you pull out from a bureau.  The thought of a lavender wand in my knickers is, well, not even risque, just somewhat or rather uncomfortable.)


I think I rambled again.  Sorry.


So, with this association between vetiver and lavender established via someone else's drawers, and the context of the initial discussion (perfume, natch), my thinkings quickly went to the idea of vetiver and lavender as hot weather nicelies in perfume.  And I immediately went to you, Reverie, the perfume that doesn't hide lavender in syrup, or bury it in a stew of incense.  Your lavender is honest, true--vera indeed.  You are the lavender I find in my garden, that wafts up whenever I brush against those simultaneously soft and nubby stems; you are the lavender that snaps my senses into focus.  You know, in aromatherapy, lavender is listed as having both "calming" and a "stimulating" properties, which seems to be just, well, daft.  But it's true.  Part of it is the amount, part of it is the context.


You, Reverie, are the lavender that sharpens my senses.  But you don't make me hyper; you must somehow hide your calming side, putting it into play without ever letting me know.


These are things you already knew.  I've said them before.  But here is what is new, why I write today:


You are fabulous in the heat.


It is the sharp, somewhat herbal aspect to you that works as vetiver does.  Levelly tenacious, without asserting yourself to the point of obnoxiousness.  And you know what?  There's something easy about our familiarity.  Vetiver is still a guest--a guest that is becoming a friend, mind you--but lavender is family.  Or maybe an old friend.  The best thing is, you aren't boring...there's no way you could be, with your adamant refusal to be anything but your vegetal self.  You aren't boring, but underneath that potentially challenging exterior, you are...known.


And, you devil...you helped me through yesterday's heat and humidity, and you were STILL there, in intermittent puffs, as I worked in the garden this morning.  Clever.


I'm going to let my perfume peeps know about this hot weather trick of yours, if you don't mind.  I think everybody should spend a hot day with you, at least once.  


Yours, as always.
SS

What form of art is perfume?

One of the things that has fascinated me about perfume since I first fell down the rabbit hole is the notion of an associated language.  Most art forms have an attendant vocabulary -- what is this "fade out" (unique to vision + time art), this "ellipsis of time" (shared between motion picture and text, presented differently mechanically, yet leading to the same assumption), this "gesture" (a term heard relating to acting and to visual arts, but which can diverge quite a bit from their overlapping meaning).  When I started paying attention to perfume, and to people who wrote about it, you could almost see the reaching for ways to communicate the olfactory experience.  There was the concrete ("notes,"), the experiential metaphor (the makes me feel like path, which can lead you to some purple prose), the parallel metaphor (trying to equate a perfume with a piece of music, for example).  The parallel metaphor seemed to swim in the same pool of exploration as the attempts to explain what the experience of perfume is.

In 2-D visual art, you have lines and relationships and color and "gesture" and such to communicate a representation.

In prose, you have vocabulary and turn of phrase and arrangement of plot and information you choose to leave in or out, assembled in linear time, to communicate an experience.

In music, you have tonal quality and a choice of pitch scaffolds (scales of various sorts) to hang notes presented in linear time, and a choice of one note or many at any given moment on that line, and a choice of voices (generated by humans, or instruments, or what have you) singly or in combination at any given moment on that line, which can be arranged into motifs which are repeated and varied or abandoned or not.

In film, a visual frame (which can present the {illusion of} motion, or a static image) and a soundtrack are assembled in linear time, and make use of how objects are placed in the frame, gesture, movement, dialogue, ambient sound, color, ellipses, etc.  Or not.

In dance, you have a three dimensional frame, the movement through which, as well as the gestures of the dancers themselves, is presented in linear time, usually along with a soundtrack.  Styles of gesture are recognized ("ballet," "tango," "jazz"), punctuation of time is integral.  As it is with music and film and textual narrative, natch.  But here, the punctuation is not disconnected from the body creating the expression.  The body is the punctuation.  Perhaps that's why I missed saying it before?

In theater, you have a three dimensional frame in which you place objects and people through which you move characters and sound and other elements over linear time.

In perfume, what do you have?

First of all, you have sensory input to a receptor that is not employed in any other of the traditional "fine arts."  Your nose, natch.  Forms and mechanics of reception are important.  Entire schools of criticism have developed around reception being The Thing that is important in understanding, particularly when it comes to art.

But since the ragged assembly of art forms and how they are expressed I offered focuses on what is presented, let's attempt to speak to that.

In perfume, you have the presentation of different notes (the smell of x), in different voices, arranged singly or in multiples, over the course of linear time.

It seems so simple.  But really, should those notes be expressed by their cognate in reality?  I.e., should we say cinnamon, or the word for the molecule that when bound in a given fashion, is the thing which lands in your nose and makes you think "cinnamon"?  What if it smells like a cognate, but is lab created?  I.e., peach or Persicol?

Can we tease out the difference between a "chord" and an "accord"?  As in, is there a difference in simply assembling given notes because a perfumer likes the effect of them sharing the same space in the same time from a perfumer assembling notes and creating a resulting effect that is uniquely identifiable and more than simply the sum of its parts?  When we here a C minor 7th, do we hear the individual notes, or the mood?  Does it depend on where the root is located?  Will the language here get confusing?

**
Anyway, I think like this.  I haven't yet wrapped my head around it all in a way that I am comfortable with.  And I think that is partly because the community is still very much in the process of locating a definition, and a language.  All languages, of course, are always being shaped to one extent or another.  But this one is kinda being birthed as a golem:  fully present, but still in need of shaping.

*
Andy Tauer offers a lovely vision of what he sees the art of perfume.  He refers to perfume as an "immersive sculpture."  Apparently, this phrase is now part of the Tauer text...on PR materials, his new packaging, and will appear soon on the website and blog.  He offered a brief post two days ago about it, framing the concept within an interviewer's request to explain "what is immersive sculpture?"

He uses the immersive sculpture idea to suggest mutable three-dimensionality, and the idea that it is a form the wearer/receiver inhabits.

Andy's found a way to weave reception right into the concept, a way which won't let you ignore it.

I'm intrigued.

I'm still plugging away with my cognates, of course (I lean toward music and film), but the empty areas are kind of cocking an eyebrow over there and saying "you have to pay attention."

I am.

L'air du Desert Morocain

Okay, on this one I have to skip the traditional approaches, either in my own or more traditional perfume writing.

I smell L'Air du Desert Morocain and I smell my grandfather's hands. I remember the look, smell, and atmosphere of the corner of their family room by the fireplace which had the door to the garage/basement stairs, and I smell his woodshop. I am in a whirl of memories, and yet laser focused all at once. This perfume doesn't smell like my grandfather, or remind me of him; this smell puts me back there, in that house, smelling those hands which smelled like the freshly cut wood from his band saw, like something from his basement was left inside the cedar chest he made me, like I am inside that house that he built and I've been left alone and I am having another one of those "I'll never forget this particular moment" experiences.

I know Andy Tauer imagined himself in a Moroccan desert. I'm in a house in the woods nearly on top of the 45th parallel; there was a fire in the fireplace last night, fresh wood on the hearth ready to burn, the knotty pine panelling on the walls is 1/2" thick, my grandfather's "coveralls" are hanging on a hook in the hallway waiting for spring and the garden, and I'm waiting for the grown-ups to call me to dinner.

It's not the trip Andy intended, but I'm incredibly grateful to be given it.

Vetiver!

There's a very vetiver karma in the air for me this fall. I've been faithfully entering draws to win samples since crossing into this West Wing* of perfume, but have not been selected for anything. Until this month, when both Ayala Sender of Ayala Morel Perfumes and Helg of Perfume Shrine drew my name for...vetiver scents!

So, here are initial impressions of Ayala Moriel's Vetiver Racinettes and Andy Tauer's Vetiver Dance.

First of all, there's no denying the vetiver in either. But the Tauer dances in the light of the sun, while the Moriel pulses in the shade of the forest. (Ah, let the perfume talk begin....)

Vetiver Dance has a somewhat aldehydic feeling, and does indeed do a light-footed "dance" in the upper portion of your nose. A hint of something sweet, yet totally grounded by the vetiver. This to me is a new realm of green, which bridges the span between the (somewhat medicinal) grass of vetiver and bubbles of an aldehyde, with whatever simple syrup holds them together.

Vetiver Racinettes is something else entirely. Whereas Vetiver Dance is going to have you feeling all clean and sparkly, Vetiver Racinettes will set you down in the humus under the ferns, give you a bracing whiff of vetiver, and wash it down with one of the roots under the dirt--sasparilla!! It's the craziest thing; like someone mixed the syrup for a homemade root beer with this thick earthed vetiver, and stroked it onto your skin.

It's funny. I had received the Ayala sample first, and used it a couple of times--once in the midst of my flu-cold, when I hoped it would somehow bring comfort/relief. And, it did. But it didn't engage me as a perfume...until I tried the Tauer, just today. While there is a faint hint of something detergent-like in the Tauer (give me time, I'll nail it down--and it nearly disappears after the opening), I immediately took a shining to it. And smelling it gave me a deeper appreciation of what the Racinettes was accomplishing. In the same way I am happy to have multiple incarnations of my beloved iris, I am pleased to have both of these vetivers on hand.


*That's not a White House, but a "Dark Shadows" reference...ah, the days of youth, walking home for lunch, finding my Mom watching Barnabas Collins and ironing.