Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Sunday, February 7, 2010
The Benefits of Regret: Minor, Major, and Euphoric.
Regret is one of the most cloying, self-wounding sensations a person can experience. It can also be, if viewed with proper perspective, the most useful mechanism to achieve what you wish to achieve. I shall outline the benefits in three forms: Minor, Major, and Euphoric.
Regret lends you the experience and capacity to modify and improve your behaviour when faced with a scenario you regretted your actions upon before. This is because, in essence, regret is not hopeless - in order for it to be regret, in order for it to sting, there needs to be the sense that we could have done better. If someone unexpectedly shoots us and we fail to dodge the bullet, we do not regret this lack of skill because it is beyond our hypothetical means. However if someone throws a water balloon at us and we fail to dodge it we are afforded some measure of regret, as we have the notion that what transpired was avoidable. If viewed in this way, and then applied to a future hypothetical scenario, regret has the chance to metamorphose from a stolid, dour, emotional caterpillar to an optimistic butterfly. You didn't act within your capacity, it says, but you can. At it worst, you get stuck on the first part of that sentence. At its best, you discover the second.
Minor Benefit
In a sentence: you do the same thing better.
For example, you are running in a 10km race. Calculating your fitness, you figure you can run full speed for the last 400m only - any more and you risk not completing the race at all.
You run the race, and at the last 400m you run at your full capacity. You finish the race in 5th place - not terrible, but not what you thought you could do. Worse still, you look around at all the other runners - they are all at their limits, puffed and staggering. You are not. You have the unnerving thought that you could probably run further, for longer. You should have started your final spring far earlier, like 800m or so, and given it all you've got. You misjudged your own capacity, and as a result, you feel regret towards the scenario.
The next year you run the race again. Vowing to not make the same mistake, you increase what you view as your limit, and give it your all. You come in first, but more importantly, feel thoroughly breathless by the end.
This is the minor benefit of regret.
Major Benefit
After you finish the race you take the bus home. You sit in the back contemplating your mood - which you soon realise is too slippery to hold, so you simply sit and pay attention to the faces of those who enter and leave the bus. As you look at each, you start to imagine their lives. Eventually it's your stop, and you leave the bus. You arrive home. You take the letters out of your mailbox and hold them under your arm so you can carry your equipment as well - when you place them on the kitchen table, they are soaked in your sweat. You look at your name on one of these envelopes, typed in Times New Roman 10pt. You get out your mobile phone and call your boss to tell him you're quitting.
The major benefit of regret is that it affords us the capacity to not only reconsider how we approached one specific situation which we did not live up to our potential, but also to other neighbouring ones. If we feel regret over a race ran poorly due to misjudgments of our own toughness, this regret can be turned into the statement: "You know, you are tougher than you think you are."
If, in our working life, we have only ceased in not quitting our hated job due to the fear of how we will manage without it, and an absence of any confidence to grow and find a better job, then such a statement, torn from its initial roots but still beholding the same sentiment, can be the very impetus we need to give ourselves greater credit, and do what we truly desire.
Euphoric Benefit
The night you finish the race you barely sleep. This is made all the more distressing because you should be dog-tired due to the race, and your persistent waking energy serves to remind you of the mistake you have made. Not only did you not run hard enough, but really, you've never run hard enough. The feeling gnaws on you while the ear-splitting shriek of silence pushes you further and further into your own head.
Suddenly you sit up. Suddenly, it seems, you've had enough. But what do you do now, suddenly?
You find yourself running through the streets. You are in your pajamas and slippers, but you run surprisingly well all the same. The air is cold but its sharp tinge starts to give way to the warm sweat now dripping from your forehead. Finally, you reach your destination.
You forgo throwing tiny stones at your lovers window, realising it is not particularly hard to scale the vine covered wall and go up there yourself. Your hands and now slipper-less toes grip whatever it can as you climb - bumps and nobbles press your cold, bare skin, but you keep climbing. You reach the window, and jar it open.
Your lover sits up on their bed, somewhat terrified. You tell them, quickly, breahtlessly, that you were wrong, that you were only afraid, that you will marry them.
They switch the light on. You both blink. They ask you if you've gone insane. Yes, you tell them, but you still want them all the same.
The euphoric benefit of regret is that, in giving us these deeply negative feelings, it gives the potential of a torrent of motivation to never feel regret again. Of course you will feel regret again, since we are always less then perfect, and always make mistakes. But the euphoric benefit is a temporary surge to now do only what you truly desire. The minor benefit tells us that we can do the same situation better, the major benefit tells us we can do other parallel situations better - the euphoric makes no statements upon your own potential or upon any situation, it merely exclaims: "I don't want to feel like this!", and gives you the energy and the drive and the fearlessness to then live true to yourself. Because it is the vaguest, the euphoric benefit of regret is the riskiest, the least accurate, and the most insane. It is also the most fun.
Disclaimer
I am not suggesting at all that regret in itself is good for you. It merely, if viewed in a certain light, creates the potential to live your life truer to your own desires and less to your fears. I don't wish to write about what usually happens with regret, how we don't always pull these potentials from it, because, simply, you know what that feels like, I know what that feels like, we all know all too well what a useless caterpillar of regret can sometimes feel like, when we never let it crawl on, and pupate.
Disclaimer 2
Also, this only all works when we have the ability to accurately perceive our own capabilities - if we, to use the earlier example, forever believe we can dodge that bullet, then we will forever be disappointing ourselves. Unfortunately it is often in our lives where we are incapable of this. Regret, then only serves to drill us deeper into the ground.
Regret lends you the experience and capacity to modify and improve your behaviour when faced with a scenario you regretted your actions upon before. This is because, in essence, regret is not hopeless - in order for it to be regret, in order for it to sting, there needs to be the sense that we could have done better. If someone unexpectedly shoots us and we fail to dodge the bullet, we do not regret this lack of skill because it is beyond our hypothetical means. However if someone throws a water balloon at us and we fail to dodge it we are afforded some measure of regret, as we have the notion that what transpired was avoidable. If viewed in this way, and then applied to a future hypothetical scenario, regret has the chance to metamorphose from a stolid, dour, emotional caterpillar to an optimistic butterfly. You didn't act within your capacity, it says, but you can. At it worst, you get stuck on the first part of that sentence. At its best, you discover the second.
Minor Benefit
In a sentence: you do the same thing better.
For example, you are running in a 10km race. Calculating your fitness, you figure you can run full speed for the last 400m only - any more and you risk not completing the race at all.
You run the race, and at the last 400m you run at your full capacity. You finish the race in 5th place - not terrible, but not what you thought you could do. Worse still, you look around at all the other runners - they are all at their limits, puffed and staggering. You are not. You have the unnerving thought that you could probably run further, for longer. You should have started your final spring far earlier, like 800m or so, and given it all you've got. You misjudged your own capacity, and as a result, you feel regret towards the scenario.
The next year you run the race again. Vowing to not make the same mistake, you increase what you view as your limit, and give it your all. You come in first, but more importantly, feel thoroughly breathless by the end.
This is the minor benefit of regret.
Major Benefit
After you finish the race you take the bus home. You sit in the back contemplating your mood - which you soon realise is too slippery to hold, so you simply sit and pay attention to the faces of those who enter and leave the bus. As you look at each, you start to imagine their lives. Eventually it's your stop, and you leave the bus. You arrive home. You take the letters out of your mailbox and hold them under your arm so you can carry your equipment as well - when you place them on the kitchen table, they are soaked in your sweat. You look at your name on one of these envelopes, typed in Times New Roman 10pt. You get out your mobile phone and call your boss to tell him you're quitting.
The major benefit of regret is that it affords us the capacity to not only reconsider how we approached one specific situation which we did not live up to our potential, but also to other neighbouring ones. If we feel regret over a race ran poorly due to misjudgments of our own toughness, this regret can be turned into the statement: "You know, you are tougher than you think you are."
If, in our working life, we have only ceased in not quitting our hated job due to the fear of how we will manage without it, and an absence of any confidence to grow and find a better job, then such a statement, torn from its initial roots but still beholding the same sentiment, can be the very impetus we need to give ourselves greater credit, and do what we truly desire.
Euphoric Benefit
The night you finish the race you barely sleep. This is made all the more distressing because you should be dog-tired due to the race, and your persistent waking energy serves to remind you of the mistake you have made. Not only did you not run hard enough, but really, you've never run hard enough. The feeling gnaws on you while the ear-splitting shriek of silence pushes you further and further into your own head.
Suddenly you sit up. Suddenly, it seems, you've had enough. But what do you do now, suddenly?
You find yourself running through the streets. You are in your pajamas and slippers, but you run surprisingly well all the same. The air is cold but its sharp tinge starts to give way to the warm sweat now dripping from your forehead. Finally, you reach your destination.
You forgo throwing tiny stones at your lovers window, realising it is not particularly hard to scale the vine covered wall and go up there yourself. Your hands and now slipper-less toes grip whatever it can as you climb - bumps and nobbles press your cold, bare skin, but you keep climbing. You reach the window, and jar it open.
Your lover sits up on their bed, somewhat terrified. You tell them, quickly, breahtlessly, that you were wrong, that you were only afraid, that you will marry them.
They switch the light on. You both blink. They ask you if you've gone insane. Yes, you tell them, but you still want them all the same.
The euphoric benefit of regret is that, in giving us these deeply negative feelings, it gives the potential of a torrent of motivation to never feel regret again. Of course you will feel regret again, since we are always less then perfect, and always make mistakes. But the euphoric benefit is a temporary surge to now do only what you truly desire. The minor benefit tells us that we can do the same situation better, the major benefit tells us we can do other parallel situations better - the euphoric makes no statements upon your own potential or upon any situation, it merely exclaims: "I don't want to feel like this!", and gives you the energy and the drive and the fearlessness to then live true to yourself. Because it is the vaguest, the euphoric benefit of regret is the riskiest, the least accurate, and the most insane. It is also the most fun.
Disclaimer
I am not suggesting at all that regret in itself is good for you. It merely, if viewed in a certain light, creates the potential to live your life truer to your own desires and less to your fears. I don't wish to write about what usually happens with regret, how we don't always pull these potentials from it, because, simply, you know what that feels like, I know what that feels like, we all know all too well what a useless caterpillar of regret can sometimes feel like, when we never let it crawl on, and pupate.
Disclaimer 2
Also, this only all works when we have the ability to accurately perceive our own capabilities - if we, to use the earlier example, forever believe we can dodge that bullet, then we will forever be disappointing ourselves. Unfortunately it is often in our lives where we are incapable of this. Regret, then only serves to drill us deeper into the ground.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
John Varvatos, Essentric Molecule, and How I Got Into Perfume.
The first fragrance I ever bought was John Varvatos. For someone heavily into perfume now, to the point where I can identify the smells of individual chemical components in certain fragrances, this is a bit of an odd scent to choose, insofar as it’s so ordinary. It’s not particularly amazing, nor does it have ay cult following, nor is it particularly important. It’s nice – with non-offensive fruity top rush with a spicy hit, but smells a little cheap and needy. It’s unessential, I guess is what I’m getting at.
The story of how I came to own a bottle of John Varvatos, a perfume I am pretty indifferent to, is more interesting then the fragrance itself.
One night working in the bookshop, a day before Mother’s Day a few years ago, an attractive young woman approached the counter asking for recommendations. She was well spoken (if somewhat nervous) and sublimely pretty. She stole my heart in an instant – to the extent that one can have one's heart stolen by a customer when you work in retail (which is a lot – but you’ve probably forgotten them by the next day). She bought a safe gift, the transaction went through, and my romantic pessimism assumed I would never see her again. Sure enough, by the next day I had forgotten about her.
Jump ahead five months. In that time I had quit honours, decided I was never going to be a writer due to a lack of both drive and talent, decided I was going to become a brilliant and renowned product designer instead, and had my first and only panic attack, after a kiss attempt went rebuffed after a dull first date. I was in one of those empty parts of my life – having left one destination but not yet arrived at another, wandering through that desert at average speed in search of its end, its break into society, or at least an oasis. At this point, she came into work again. It took me a while to remember her, but I picked up on the nervous-yet-rehearsed way of speaking and the infallible posture. I decided, despite that recent panic attack, that I would ask her out on a date, lest I live to regret it. Thing is, I felt it unprofessional to do it with other customers around – so I devised a plan: if she came up to the counter while the store was empty, I would ask her out, plain and simple. If she did so while there were others around, I would pass on a charming note. I got writing on the note. This is what I came up with:
Hi – this is kind of lame and embarrassing, and I don’t like to do things in note form because it’s too indirect, but there are people around and it would be awkward, so: did you want to go out on a date sometime? I should let you know I am a frightfully un-cool man, but get to know me and you’ll discover that I’m actually wonderful.
- Kita, 04XX XXX XXX.
I left this for a while in my pocket, then impulsively tore it up and wrote another, less neurotic one:
A date sometime? – Kita, 04XX XXX XXX.
Thankfully, I tore this one up too, and she approached the counter alone, and I asked her out on a date, and, with visible glee and surprise on our faces, we exchanged numbers. Unprofessionally, I spent the rest of my shift texting her, and almost forgot to close the store. If anyone I work with is reading, let me state: I was young.
The date was curious. We flirted, but the conversation was terribly contrived – we were both clearly using up our ‘Things which would sound interesting on a first date’ lines. But we bumped arms affectionately as we walked, and followed up the coffee with a few drinks at the local.
In an odd moment, it was decided that we should air out anything the other should know – about our lives, and what the other might be getting into. I offered my troublesome relationship with my father, as well as my fairly long history of depression. She offered the death of her best friend, and her previous boyfriend, who had left her at the airport some 4 months earlier, who was a semi-succesful (and now much more successful) writer, and was due to land back in town in a few hours. She was picking him up from the airport. I must admit: she won that round.
We went back to her house. She invited me in for a hot chocolate. We sat on her kitchen floor because, apparently, this is what she always did. Her house was dimly lit and impeccably kept – it made my house look like some wretched sty. It was heavily ornate, with not a trace of dust on anything. After we finished our drinks, she took me into the bathroom to show me something which would, in retrospect, become a defining moment in my life – one of those points that don’t seem particularly important at the time, but later reveal their affect with the aid of distance. Eager to make myself appear to be some kind of designer hot-shot (despite knowing very little about design beyond what I imagined) I had talked about all the things I had been designing – several of which were perfume bottles. I liked the perfume bottle as a design object, because its required function is very little, and the vast majority of its purpose is of aesthetic communication. It was like the architecture of the hand-held world (the fact that many architects have designed perfume bottles seems to suggest a connection). With this in mind, she revealed to me her medicine cabinet – and behind its doors, rows and rows of perfume bottles. They were an odd collection of art nouveau crystal shapes and sly, modern rectangles with minimal prints. I can’t remember what they specifically were, but knowing what I know of perfume now, some looked Guerlian, and there was definitely some Chanel. I only smelled one: out of curiosity of what it would smell like on my skin, she sprayed a healthy dose of one on my left wrist. According to her, it smells differently, depending on the person. I remembered this fragrance: it was Molecule 01 by Essentric Molecule. I might have got the number wrong, but to be honest, apart from a few top notes, the Essentric Molecules are pretty much the same. It was a strange scent which to me, at first, smelled like freshly cut capsicum, which eventually turned into a dry, pencil shaving smell. It was a fragrance I would smell again and again, and eventually scrub off my repulsed arms some 10 months later.
If you’ve never smelt an Essentric Molecule fragrance then they’re difficult to describe. This is because they’re very minimalist compared to most modern perfumes, but their essential ingredient isn’t based on any smell you could recognize right off the bat – you would never say ‘Hey, they used grapefruit!’, or even ‘This smells like grandmothers!’. This is because their main ingredient is a fragrance chemical by the name of Iso E Super. Now you might actually know this smell – it’s in a lot of fragrances adding effects here and there and lending an almost sharp, almost grainy (but still so light it floats) wooden texture. This makes the fragrance almost post-modern, insofar as it’s a fragrance which pays tribute to the act of making fragrance in itself, by basing itself so heavily around this single, artificial note.
The effect of an Essentric Molecule fragrance is odd. At first, you wonder what it is – so familiar yet really undefinable without using works such as ‘like’ and ‘sorta’. It is woody, but not any kind of wood you’ve ever actually experienced – it’s a light, sandy coloured grain, a bit like balsa wood, but denser. Unlike most other fragrances though, this concept of “familiar but different” is so bizarre because it is constructed via so few elements – most perfumes work in another way: Comme Des Garcons 2, for example, smells like a “future flower”, a very beautiful, very Japanese, very technological, very refined flower, and it does this by mixing numerous florals together and also utilizing sumi ink, which lends it its alien charm. Essentric fragrances though have their alien quality via only one main note. As such, it is initially interesting, but ends up feeling flat very very quickly. At first it may even be beautiful, until you see it has no depth at all, and as the day goes on, and it stays on you powerfully (it is impossible to wash off), you start to spite it more and more, for essentially just singing the same note, over and over again.
Regardless of my less then stellar introduction to perfume, this was the point where I, for the first time in my life, started to think about perfume as an actual *thing*. She went on to light scented candles which smelt as fruity as they did waxy (though still very nice), and we sat in her living room. She played on her keyboard and I reclined on her sofa. After a while of not talking much, I started to wonder what I was doing there. I was certainly not going to make any kind of physical move: for one thing, she was off to pick up her ex-boyfriend in a very short time, and for another, I was afraid if I were rebuffed, like damned clockwork, I would have another panic attack. In retrospect, when we did talk, it was like we were trying our best to make it all seem meaningful and romantic. I played a very sweet act of a very sweet lad who was falling for a very sweet girl. Unfortunately, I fell for my own act.
The night finished, many hours after it had started, as she finally had to get ready to drive to the airport. We hugged tight, and she assured me she’d see me again soon. As I walked home in the cool spring air I texted her:
‘Bathed in your scent still, it is a warm walk home.’
I realize, only now as I write, that the vast majority of my romantic texts have been vastly unappreciated.
For the next few weeks, we would see each other here and there. She’d invite me around to her house, she introduced me to her friends, I introduced her to mine, we’d have drinks, and made CDs for each other. It felt like we were becoming some sort of couple – if I looked at it only on paper, and never felt the long silences in our conversations. At some point, I decided I needed to be wearing a fragrance. Since I was after a girl that was obsessed with smell, this was of utmost importance. With a spending limit of $150, I walked into town determined to not return home empty handed. My plan was simple: walk into an expensive menswear store, admit that I know nothing at all about fragrance, try everything, work by their suggestions, and but whatever came out on top. For the first time in my adult life, I asked for help in a clothing store, and abandoned all pretense of knowing what I was doing. I tried many, but they all smelled too alcoholic (this was because I was smelling them too quickly, and was not giving time for the most volatile of alcoholic smells to evaporate and reveal the actual perfume). This made choosing a perfume difficult, but eventually I came across one that the woman their noted their boss wore – it was thick, drippingly sweet and spicy. It was the exact opposite of what I wanted – I wanted something light and cutting – but perhaps simply bored or unenthused, I decided to buy it based on her recommendation and the fact I didn’t hate it. It was John Varvatos, and its empty bottle lies face down on top of my bookshelf. I would start to appreciate it more with time, and when, many months later, I opened it up to smell it again, I felt an intense rush back to the past, of me dousing myself in this stuff and walking over to her house, and I felt all the emotions again: the fear, the stress, the elation, and finally, the despair.
She went back to her much more successful writer boyfriend only a few weeks after that first date. She admitted this to me during a friend’s housewarming party I invited her to, shortly after I tried (and failed) to kiss her. I should have gotten angrier – asked her what she was doing with me then if she was still in love with him – indeed, was back with him, asked her, simply: what are you doing here, at this party, by my side? But I didn’t. Instead, I opted to forgive her right away, and tell her she bore no responsibility, and instead, for this reason, I was consumed by my own unhappiness. Eventually, with nothing to hold me back, this lead to despair. I still have trouble understanding why I got as bad as I did, but regardless of the reason pretty soon I hit the single darkest time of my life. Concerned friends were trying to pull me out here and there, but the real breakthrough would not happen till a few months later – seeing her again at an art show, and realising, as she talked quickly and nervously to me, how I imagined most of the things I liked about her, and ignored everything that I didn’t. She was still one of the prettiest women I had seen in my life, but, like most of the lines between us on that first date, it was, like an Essentric Molecule fragrance, mostly surface.
Eventually I forgot about her. Then one day I opened my envelope from luckscent.com to smell the samples I ordered that month. Among them was Essentric Molecule no.1, and it all, even just very briefly, came rushing back. I scrubbed my wrists under the bathroom facet till they were red and raw.
*
Despite it all though, I am eternally thankful I met her. Because of her I not only learnt so much, discovered so much about myself, I also discovered this strange perfume thing I devote so much of my time to now. If we ever see each other in the street (like we do a lot), and if either has the guts to stop and talk (like we never do), I must remember to thank her for this reason, and this reason alone.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Mystery Fragrance.
A woman came into work today wearing the most alluring thing I've ever smelt. It reminded me of lines of mid-morning sunlight cutting into a living room, and those floating specks of dust you see now illuminated, and of dry, unvarnished wooden floorboards, and of saliva and lips, and peeks of underwear under clothes, and of being 11 years old and in lust.
It had a very peculiar saliva-like note which seemed to come from a rotting rose or the like. It might have had a type musk I wasn't overly familiar with (it had that musk-y depth and texture). But it never felt like it was trying to be overtly sexual or even attractive - it didn't announce itself at all, only had a small sillage and stuck very close to the skin.
The most attractive people are those who seem not to see how attractive they really are - thereby, nothing they do is an act or pretence. Attractiveness is merely a casual by-product of their other traits, but one which does not concern or affect them. They are completely innocent to their own charms, and this blissful, un-cynical, unfamiliarity is just so intensely desirable. Because they don't see it themselves, we feel, perhaps a little arrogantly, that we then are privy to this area of their personality so intimate that they themselves do not have access to it. It intrigues without obtuseness. This is what this fragrance was.
I don't know what this fragrance was. I didn't ask her what it was.
You know why I didn't ask her what it was? Honestly? It was because I was afraid she wasn't wearing any fragrance at all, and it was merely her natural smell, and that would mean I would be completely and terrifyingly in love with this woman, this stranger, this person who I would never meet (or smell) again. Le sigh.
It had a very peculiar saliva-like note which seemed to come from a rotting rose or the like. It might have had a type musk I wasn't overly familiar with (it had that musk-y depth and texture). But it never felt like it was trying to be overtly sexual or even attractive - it didn't announce itself at all, only had a small sillage and stuck very close to the skin.
The most attractive people are those who seem not to see how attractive they really are - thereby, nothing they do is an act or pretence. Attractiveness is merely a casual by-product of their other traits, but one which does not concern or affect them. They are completely innocent to their own charms, and this blissful, un-cynical, unfamiliarity is just so intensely desirable. Because they don't see it themselves, we feel, perhaps a little arrogantly, that we then are privy to this area of their personality so intimate that they themselves do not have access to it. It intrigues without obtuseness. This is what this fragrance was.
I don't know what this fragrance was. I didn't ask her what it was.
You know why I didn't ask her what it was? Honestly? It was because I was afraid she wasn't wearing any fragrance at all, and it was merely her natural smell, and that would mean I would be completely and terrifyingly in love with this woman, this stranger, this person who I would never meet (or smell) again. Le sigh.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
My Year in Stars
I was going to write a long, personal account of my year - a kind of yearly wrap-up thing I like to do, but to be honest it's simply too personal and this isn't that kind of "Look at my life" kind of blog. This is done as a compromise which will mean little to me and even less to you.
January: ***
February: **
March: ****
April: ***
May: ***
June: ***
July: **
August: *
September: **
October: *****
November: *****
December: *****
No complaints, it ended well.
January: ***
February: **
March: ****
April: ***
May: ***
June: ***
July: **
August: *
September: **
October: *****
November: *****
December: *****
No complaints, it ended well.
Friday, December 11, 2009
Why I Hate Celebrity Fragrances on a Conceptual Level (c/w a short review of I Am King by Sean John).
Perfume counters in department stores are chaotic places come Christmas. Perfume is, perhaps better than anything else, adept at distilling an essence, and increasing its expanse and presence on demand. For this reason it is, in itself, held in small vials, which allow shop-keepers to place a lot together in a relatively small area (for the amount and range of products concerned). So, come Christmas, these aisles which are usually just right a fit for you and a few others, happy to sniff around, become cramped, frenzied affairs, with all manner of hands clamoring around and grabbing and spraying noxious odouers onto dripping strips of paper.
It was in this setting a few weeks ago that I spent some time going through and sampling whatever was in front of me – less intent on making a purchasing selection (I am currently and inarguably poor) and more intent on trying to grasp what each perfumer was trying to do with their perfumes, how they went about trying to do it, and to what extent they were successful. My perfumery knowledge is still largely amateur, but I thought it an interesting and engaging activity to do while I killed time before I went off to buy some shoes.
Some perfumes were clearer than others. Dirty English was obvious – it’s grimy, alcoholic smell communicated a kind of audacious disregard for cleanliness only seen amongst the vilest and most attractive of 60’s rockers. It was very soon unpalatable, my nose moving into sneezing fits to be rid of it. I tried the new scent my Issey Miyake, which was called A Scent By Issey Miyake, and encased in a kind of iconic reference to a perfume bottle, and found it a kind of excited, fresh, green scent which danced around a lot and then proceeded to go absolutely no where. But perhaps the scent itself was so post-modern that I didn’t understand its cleverness. I moved on. And then I hit upon this:
I have seen advertisements for Sean John’s “I Am King” pop up unhelpfully on my browser whilst attempting to read something else, and it featured the man dressed in a tuxedo, riding a jet ski, and some seemingly non-sequiter shots of some bronze shaded women lilting and wilting about in bikinis. Much like Sean John/P.Diddy/Puff Daddy’s entire career, the spot was tongue in cheek enough to shield him from a certain degree of scorn, but not tongue in cheek enough to actually be remotely interesting. It didn’t help that he used the most trite of all imagery – the James Bond scenario: the “meat-lovers pizza” of male fantasy, so utterly bereft of imagination or intrigue and catering for the largest, shallowest of puddles.
If you check the notes list on basenotes.com (which is very handy for these things), I Am King reveals a list which includes the following: French Berry, Mediterranean Water, Lemon Crème, Key Lime Pie. Let’s keep those four ingredients in mind, and for the sake of comparison, lets look at what basenotes.com lists as some of the notes of the previously reviewed Invasion Barbare by MDCI: Lavender, White Thyme, Bergamot, Violet Leaves.
So:
French Berry, Mediterranean Water, Lemon Crème, Key Lime Pie.
against
Lavender, White Thyme, Bergamot, Violet Leaves.
Can you see the difference? One of these fragrances is bullshitting you. Bullshit is very common in all forms of design, fragrance design not excluded, because it essentially very easy to do. To appreciate the aesthetic worth of anything designed you must be willing to take a certain leap of faith that the designer is affecting you as they intended to. Because these effects very easily slip below our conscious radar, which tries to justify to ourselves certain things for certain reasons (‘Of course this chair is a classic of modernism, I paid $4,000 for it’ the most usual excuse), bullshitting is so simple to get away with. Believe me, as a former A+ design student, I know this. But the designers of I Am King give themselves away with this completely ridiculous notes list. Key Lime Pie? Seriously? As a top note, it hits you as soon as you spray it on – this disgustingly false lime accord which smells almost like a stupidly sweet insect repellent. But more to the point – why? How on earth does Key Lime Pie work with anything else there? My housemate made a good point – it was like they called up Sean John and asked him what he wanted for his new fragrance. Looking around at the meal in front of him, he simply listed some of his favourite foods. This is a fragrance not only lost, but lost and panicking, terrified, with out a clue of where to go or what to do.
It also reveals my problem with celebrity fragrances. Because were this fragrance in any other bottle in any other name, nobody would buy it. But because it is attached to the success of Sean John and the stupidly large advertising campaign to go with it (also, I assume, pressure on retailers to stock it – as there was a full shelf with nothing but I Am King alone, whereas most fragrances stood on 1/8th of one), people will buy it. And within a capitalist society, where monetary success is the central motivation of companies, it will become a successful fragrance.
The problem is not that it has a celebrity attached to it and it is successful, nor am I suggesting that all celebrity fragrances are terrible - my problem is that they become successful for reasons other than the fragrance in itself. And for a fragrance – something that should be purely aesthetic and purely personal, this becomes something of a minor tragedy (and a major tragedy for the perfume industry), as it then allows people to make shitty, sub-standard products and get away with it because they have the right label, the right face, and throw around enough money. This happens enough, and soon the mainstream avenue is littered with this formula, as the motivation of economic success, now achievable without any kind of artistic success, is not enough to guarantee a product of any real discernible value.
This is how mediocrity reigns supreme: people let it. You should never buy a fragrance for anything but the way it smells. Otherwise you have to ask yourself: why am I really buying this? How empty is my life that I am forgoing what my senses say in favour of what the label says? You are essentially selling your sense of smell short.
Scent is the most personal of our sensual interaction with the world, and the least cerebral. To attach it to the entirely cerebral social construct of celebrity is to completely miss the point of a fragrance, and completely miss out on what makes them so wonderful: the lack of thought, the pure, unadulterated enjoyment.
It was in this setting a few weeks ago that I spent some time going through and sampling whatever was in front of me – less intent on making a purchasing selection (I am currently and inarguably poor) and more intent on trying to grasp what each perfumer was trying to do with their perfumes, how they went about trying to do it, and to what extent they were successful. My perfumery knowledge is still largely amateur, but I thought it an interesting and engaging activity to do while I killed time before I went off to buy some shoes.
Some perfumes were clearer than others. Dirty English was obvious – it’s grimy, alcoholic smell communicated a kind of audacious disregard for cleanliness only seen amongst the vilest and most attractive of 60’s rockers. It was very soon unpalatable, my nose moving into sneezing fits to be rid of it. I tried the new scent my Issey Miyake, which was called A Scent By Issey Miyake, and encased in a kind of iconic reference to a perfume bottle, and found it a kind of excited, fresh, green scent which danced around a lot and then proceeded to go absolutely no where. But perhaps the scent itself was so post-modern that I didn’t understand its cleverness. I moved on. And then I hit upon this:
I have seen advertisements for Sean John’s “I Am King” pop up unhelpfully on my browser whilst attempting to read something else, and it featured the man dressed in a tuxedo, riding a jet ski, and some seemingly non-sequiter shots of some bronze shaded women lilting and wilting about in bikinis. Much like Sean John/P.Diddy/Puff Daddy’s entire career, the spot was tongue in cheek enough to shield him from a certain degree of scorn, but not tongue in cheek enough to actually be remotely interesting. It didn’t help that he used the most trite of all imagery – the James Bond scenario: the “meat-lovers pizza” of male fantasy, so utterly bereft of imagination or intrigue and catering for the largest, shallowest of puddles.
If you check the notes list on basenotes.com (which is very handy for these things), I Am King reveals a list which includes the following: French Berry, Mediterranean Water, Lemon Crème, Key Lime Pie. Let’s keep those four ingredients in mind, and for the sake of comparison, lets look at what basenotes.com lists as some of the notes of the previously reviewed Invasion Barbare by MDCI: Lavender, White Thyme, Bergamot, Violet Leaves.
So:
French Berry, Mediterranean Water, Lemon Crème, Key Lime Pie.
against
Lavender, White Thyme, Bergamot, Violet Leaves.
Can you see the difference? One of these fragrances is bullshitting you. Bullshit is very common in all forms of design, fragrance design not excluded, because it essentially very easy to do. To appreciate the aesthetic worth of anything designed you must be willing to take a certain leap of faith that the designer is affecting you as they intended to. Because these effects very easily slip below our conscious radar, which tries to justify to ourselves certain things for certain reasons (‘Of course this chair is a classic of modernism, I paid $4,000 for it’ the most usual excuse), bullshitting is so simple to get away with. Believe me, as a former A+ design student, I know this. But the designers of I Am King give themselves away with this completely ridiculous notes list. Key Lime Pie? Seriously? As a top note, it hits you as soon as you spray it on – this disgustingly false lime accord which smells almost like a stupidly sweet insect repellent. But more to the point – why? How on earth does Key Lime Pie work with anything else there? My housemate made a good point – it was like they called up Sean John and asked him what he wanted for his new fragrance. Looking around at the meal in front of him, he simply listed some of his favourite foods. This is a fragrance not only lost, but lost and panicking, terrified, with out a clue of where to go or what to do.
It also reveals my problem with celebrity fragrances. Because were this fragrance in any other bottle in any other name, nobody would buy it. But because it is attached to the success of Sean John and the stupidly large advertising campaign to go with it (also, I assume, pressure on retailers to stock it – as there was a full shelf with nothing but I Am King alone, whereas most fragrances stood on 1/8th of one), people will buy it. And within a capitalist society, where monetary success is the central motivation of companies, it will become a successful fragrance.
The problem is not that it has a celebrity attached to it and it is successful, nor am I suggesting that all celebrity fragrances are terrible - my problem is that they become successful for reasons other than the fragrance in itself. And for a fragrance – something that should be purely aesthetic and purely personal, this becomes something of a minor tragedy (and a major tragedy for the perfume industry), as it then allows people to make shitty, sub-standard products and get away with it because they have the right label, the right face, and throw around enough money. This happens enough, and soon the mainstream avenue is littered with this formula, as the motivation of economic success, now achievable without any kind of artistic success, is not enough to guarantee a product of any real discernible value.
This is how mediocrity reigns supreme: people let it. You should never buy a fragrance for anything but the way it smells. Otherwise you have to ask yourself: why am I really buying this? How empty is my life that I am forgoing what my senses say in favour of what the label says? You are essentially selling your sense of smell short.
Scent is the most personal of our sensual interaction with the world, and the least cerebral. To attach it to the entirely cerebral social construct of celebrity is to completely miss the point of a fragrance, and completely miss out on what makes them so wonderful: the lack of thought, the pure, unadulterated enjoyment.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
What You Can Learn From: Running, pt 2.
I've been running regularly for more than a month now. The more I do it, the more I realise what of the activity can teach us and reveal to us about the rest of our difficulties in simply existing. Here are two more:
1. Running teaches you that there are times you must think and concentrate. And then there are times when you must not think at all. At certain points of a long run, you really have to be very very aware of the mechanics of your body - how your legs feel, how your feet are hitting the ground, whether the rhythm of your breathes are working, your level of hydration, etc. At these points, if you don't concentrate, one of a few things will happen - you will quickly fall out of breath, or you will twinge something in your leg, or you will pass out - either way, you will have to stop running.
But then there are other times in which it is the absolute worst thing to think to much. These are the points where the energy has drained from your leg muscles and it feels like your running on bone and elastic bands. There is nothing wrong with your technique, you are just at a tiring point - a point which, if you concentrate upon, will simply prolong the experience drastically. These are the times you simply need to switch off your mind and just exist.
A certain degree of quality of life can largely be summarized in this equation: there are times when you have to think, and there are times when you have to not think. Happiness is very dependent on knowing when these times are and acting accordingly.
2. Long distance running is an amazingly effective way to learn to love your body. I have had mixed feelings towards my body - a nude scene I did as a drama student stripped away any remaining superficial insecurities I had, but I had always felt an intense distrust towards my body's physical abilities (this is what happens when you are bad at sprt at school) (also, this is probably why I can't drive). Running, more than anything else, gives you a sense of trust. More than that though - it's fondness. Have you ever seen that episode of Top Gear where the three hosts drive across America in cheaply bought cars, having all kinds of crazy hijinks and adventures? Remember their derisory attitudes towards their vehicles at the beginning, and their sense of love towards them at the end? If we go through some kind of adversity, and overcome this, we feel an innate attachment to anything which followed us along that journey. Long distance running is essentially creating our own safe adversity which we can overcome, and our bodies, that which got us through it, become symbols of this dogged determination. When you run enough, your body goes from being your enemy to your ally - you realise that all your earlier spats were mere misunderstandings, and you really do see on the same page about a lot of things.
Perhaps most amazing though is the way our body's admitted foibles - our bad joints or lumpy bits - start to become points of endearment. This is when you truly begin to love your body, when you start to love the "negatives" as well. They symbolise the power and charm your body actually has - your feats and accomplishments become all the more amazing because they were done by a thoroughly imperfect being, and one that you then cannot hate - just as you could not hate a loyal butler who still climbed the stairs each morning to bring you your breakfast, despite having lost a leg in the war. These are points of imperfection and weakness which, because they have carried you through the triumph, are suddenly more endearing then you could imagine.
1. Running teaches you that there are times you must think and concentrate. And then there are times when you must not think at all. At certain points of a long run, you really have to be very very aware of the mechanics of your body - how your legs feel, how your feet are hitting the ground, whether the rhythm of your breathes are working, your level of hydration, etc. At these points, if you don't concentrate, one of a few things will happen - you will quickly fall out of breath, or you will twinge something in your leg, or you will pass out - either way, you will have to stop running.
But then there are other times in which it is the absolute worst thing to think to much. These are the points where the energy has drained from your leg muscles and it feels like your running on bone and elastic bands. There is nothing wrong with your technique, you are just at a tiring point - a point which, if you concentrate upon, will simply prolong the experience drastically. These are the times you simply need to switch off your mind and just exist.
A certain degree of quality of life can largely be summarized in this equation: there are times when you have to think, and there are times when you have to not think. Happiness is very dependent on knowing when these times are and acting accordingly.
2. Long distance running is an amazingly effective way to learn to love your body. I have had mixed feelings towards my body - a nude scene I did as a drama student stripped away any remaining superficial insecurities I had, but I had always felt an intense distrust towards my body's physical abilities (this is what happens when you are bad at sprt at school) (also, this is probably why I can't drive). Running, more than anything else, gives you a sense of trust. More than that though - it's fondness. Have you ever seen that episode of Top Gear where the three hosts drive across America in cheaply bought cars, having all kinds of crazy hijinks and adventures? Remember their derisory attitudes towards their vehicles at the beginning, and their sense of love towards them at the end? If we go through some kind of adversity, and overcome this, we feel an innate attachment to anything which followed us along that journey. Long distance running is essentially creating our own safe adversity which we can overcome, and our bodies, that which got us through it, become symbols of this dogged determination. When you run enough, your body goes from being your enemy to your ally - you realise that all your earlier spats were mere misunderstandings, and you really do see on the same page about a lot of things.
Perhaps most amazing though is the way our body's admitted foibles - our bad joints or lumpy bits - start to become points of endearment. This is when you truly begin to love your body, when you start to love the "negatives" as well. They symbolise the power and charm your body actually has - your feats and accomplishments become all the more amazing because they were done by a thoroughly imperfect being, and one that you then cannot hate - just as you could not hate a loyal butler who still climbed the stairs each morning to bring you your breakfast, despite having lost a leg in the war. These are points of imperfection and weakness which, because they have carried you through the triumph, are suddenly more endearing then you could imagine.
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