I spent most of last summer listening to the music of David Bowie. As though I was discovering him for the first time. Somehow, and for no apparent reason, although I have a good few Bowie albums in my collection and have long had a keen respect for his music and alien-like unapproachability; the fact that he was (I can’t believe I am already using the past tense, I really can’t) so effortlessly, so brilliantly cool and so utterly, uniquely distinctive, so inimitably original – despite all this, I had rarely let his oeuvre get so completely under the skin as I did for those hot weeks we spent at home in July and August just lazing around and blasting out his music. Last August the soundtrack was David Bowie. And virtually nothing else.
My longtime friends all know that I am always making CD compilations that I then send them ( although it has tailed off somewhat in recent years), and, if the CD drive hadn’t been bust at that particular time and I had been more prescient, then many of them would probably then have been receiving, in the post, my ‘Ultimate Bowie’ mix, called ‘I’m Only Dancing’ that I was working on and listening to obsessively, all day every day, so perfect in the searing Japanese heat, so ridiculously exciting. Exotic. Full of heat, yet cold; that exquisitely clammy froideur, grandeur; that bi-optic, reptilian genius (and yes of course I realise that you can just send playlists online and all that, but receiving the physical, personally designed CD as an object to keep – and all my friends will also attest, always perfumed, oh yes, you have to perfume the track listing to make it sink into you even more – is so much more pleasurable and endurable). The antithesis of the banal and the prosaic, this weird, eerie funk music bathed in atmospherica, those cold, staring eyes, the curious, unworldly mindset of an inscrutable, canny rockstar who had so perfected the art of overwhelming detachment that for many people, in many walks of life, he was a God.
Beginning with the cocaine-fuelled hysteria of ‘Stay’ from Station To Station, a song that played loud could literally bust my brain chemistry I find it so exhilarating, so rangy and sinewy, a blinding, white-powder shock funk that even with my crummy, bad knees had me dancing like a dervish round the kitchen on the vestiges of my cartilage (along with Duncan, as well half the time, both of us swept up in the fever), in my decade-hopping mix taken from most of the albums, I then wound eclectically in my choices through the blue-eyed white boy funk period of Young Americans (possibly my favourite Bowie album), that record – seen on my sofa in the picture – that has such addictively swaggering songs on it as Fascination and Right – so insanely danceable and heady I could lose my mind to them -(and have done, frequently) on the dance floor, through to the shimmering, jazz-tinged chameleonica of Lady Of The Grinning Soul (so, so beautiful, from the Aladdin Sane LP, along with that classic, addictive and head-spinning eponymous song), through to the gloom-laden instrumentals from Heroes and Low, and The Secret Life Of Arabia (swoon) as well as the Turk-tinted pop songs from Lodger – all my favourite Bowie songs, in my obsessive compiling, merging, gradually into a two CD mix that gradually segued into the hits, on Part Two, from Loving The Alien through to Space Oddity and the beautiful Life On Mars, Ashes To Ashes, Look Back In Anger, the, again absurdly groove-inducing John I’m Only Dancing (Again) and ending, finally, with the full length album version of Let’s Dance, which to me, is such a blisteringly, searingly, body-wrenchingly exciting pop song that I can still never forget the moment, in 1983, that it blasted right through to the top of the charts. It was amazing: nothing had ever sounded quite like it. When we have a party and I put it on and it reaches that climax, I really do tremble like a flower.
*
And then, just two nights ago (really?) we were about to go out, to Tokyo, and post bath, getting ready upstairs and applying my scents, I happened to see on social media that there was, out of the blue, a new single: Black Star. Like many people, I have been less enamoured of David Bowie’s output of recent years, but clicking on the Vevo link for the hell of it I found that I was quite mesmerised, that his music was again renewed: a riveting, ten minute song that begins like Bjork’s Spain/Moorish Hunter, that then segues and swoops into more soaring, melodic territory before returning, with its Butoh influenced dancers, to its odd, jittering start. It was so good I listened to it immediately again twice more afterwards, excited and genuinely drawn in. I’ll buy the new album next week, I said to myself, having read some rave reviews, amazed and really pleased that someone, at 69, could still be at the pinnacle of their powers, still able to shift gears, and styles, create relevant sounding music ,preserve that mysterious aura that David Bowie has always had more than any other pop star, ever (forgive me if I am sticking to the present perfect tense; it feels more natural, somehow, than the past simple: can he really have gone? ). I really couldn’t believe it at all this evening when I saw that he is now dead, just when he was about to stage another artistic rebirth (with another single, and a musical, most tellingly, called Lazarus. He knew).
*
In truth, if I am honest, unlike other people I know, I never felt any deep, sentimental connection to David Bowie. In some ways he even repelled me . Many of my friends, on the contrary (because I naturally, obviously, have the kind of friends who love David Bowie) will be really mourning the loss of the man today and tonight, really mourning him – on a deep and emotional level for what he meant for them- for the incredible pioneering of his artistry and androgyny, his middle finger to the establishment, for the sheer influence that he has had on so many spheres of modern culture (he changed music; he changed how we view gender, the man truly liberated, and the way he looked was so astonishing; I picked up, again in the summer, during this almost clairvoyant late-stage Bowie mania, a Greatest Video Hits Collection that was fascinating to watch, to see his evolution, but despite all the kaleidoscopic image changes and abrupt changes in musical style it was the Life On Mars video that struck me the deepest: I honestly don’t think I have ever seen a human being look more amazing; more enviably stylish and original. He was not of this world; a man who fell to earth, from beyond).
Yet, as I said, he never really touched me emotionally. The friends I have in England and around the world at this moment who will probably be crying at the loss of their Hero, their Thin White Duke, their Ziggy, those precious, classic records they played to death as they were growing up and that presented them with salvation and a sense that there was hope for people that couldn’t, or didn’t want to, conform to the bleakness of society’s rules, I know they will be devastated at his loss, but I myself had other idols and music that touched me on a deeper, more intuitive emotional level, that reached further into the recesses of my soul. He was not my favourite musician. And yet, when I think about it, there is not a great deal of music in the pop music canon that can make me feel quite so deliriously excited and outside myself as David Bowie’s, that can rev me up in such an incandescent, peculiar way. If dancing and the inability to sit still, or restrain your inner organs in serenity is emotion, then the man, in fact, did blister me to the core.
For me, David Bowie was more than just a pop singer, or a performer. He was a true artist. He was living his ideas, aware of his deity-like status, yet not exploiting it. He just created, from afar. And how clever, and how tragically beautiful, in a way, this ending. To make an album in silence, while suffering with a terminal illness in pain, to still create and make new music as a fresh, indignant riposte to mortality: to release an album – on his birthday – and then to die right afterwards. It is a cruel, master-plan of a cosmic joke. His final bow. Sad, but totally brilliant. Somewhere, out there in the strange Major Tom trajectory of his space odyssey, I know that the Star Man is smiling.
I’m in tears.
He was a one off: irreplaceable.
One of the most admirable things about David Bowie is that he remained married to the same woman for 23 years.. Most pop/rock stars trade in for a younger version eventually.. even Neil Young has recently done that. I suppose Paul Mc Cartney would have stayed married to Linda if she hadnt died.and there is always Ozzy Osbourne .. LOL.. Shocked that David Bowie has died.. I thought he would last forever .. he never seemed completely human.
and expert at transforming and reinventing himself.
Oh god yes, that goes without saying.
I can’t imagine that his having been faithful to his wife will be the thing that he will be remember for (after all, he is said to have been incredibly promiscuous when he was young), but I do know what you mean. During my Bowie obsession last year I looked at quite a lot of youtube videos, not only of music but also TV appearances and so on and I was quite surprised at how unpretentious he was. Really quite down to earth, shy almost. Of course, when he was in ‘Bowie mode’, at press conferences and so on, he was suitably (and impressively) aloof, playing that role, but although of course I don’t actually know anything about him really other than what has been presented to me, from what I saw, he came across as quite a decent man who had successfully compartmentalised his private life and his art.
Brilliant homage to him Neil. Lovely to read. Like you, I never felt emotionally connected to him particularly but his music somehow sits under our whole lives and carries so much with it, it’s impossible not to pause today and reflect on his monumental contribution to culture. His music is frequently sublime, and his self-reinventions were so astute, dallying as he did between avant-garde and mainstream, making beautiful fusions. He was a true artist. I wrote on facebook earlier ‘He handled his death with such elegance and dignity, preserving space and privacy for himself and his loved ones, but still managing to end on a massive ritual artwork performing the fear, frailty and acceptance of his encroaching mortality. I feel his Black Star video helps us glimpse a little of death’s face directly through him and it’s most unnerving but also so brave and beautiful.’ A lot of my friends have been in tears today – people who normally never shed a tear at anything, and I welled up slightly at Absolute Beginners. In the last few days, mooching around in damp misty Yorkshire January gloom I’ve had a strange sense of something ending – in fact by yesterday evening the moon here was fully dark which may account in part – but somehow, when I watched his Black Star video, it felt so apposite that he should go on a dark moon, slipping away quietly into blackness. I’ve been dousing myself liberally in Perfumers Workshop Tea Rose (which you introduced me to this summer) and it’s placed me in a strange, sweet, raw melancholy – it is as if I’ve been waiting for something to happen – like the space between a death and a funeral, or the quiet last days in a hospice where you need to find the words you need to say and complete something well. I feel Bowie did complete something well.
Beautifully put: you say here what I also felt watching the video (but did you see it after he died or before? I am fascinated by the fact that I hooked onto that video in that way just before he died :I somehow can’t quite face watching it now, or listen to his music.)
As for the emotional connection, I think as eighties pop kids we would probably not have quite the deep-rooted attachment that seventies kids would do: we can’t quite imagine what it must have been like for them, to have this person, so freaky and beautiful and off-kilter, coming down like a saviour. I mean, all the people I love – Kate Bush, Madonna, Morrissey, Boy George, they were all there at the concerts, obsessed – I suppose I fell in love myself with Bowie’s acolytes.
Also, I am not a guitar man, a rock-n-roller. Of course there are heavy guitars in my music collection, like you I am Mr Eclectica, but ultimately I am much more of a synth-pop disco funk kind of person, so most of those early hits like Jean Genie, Rebel Rebel and so on I can appreciate on one level but never actually love. In fact, I have that double CD Greatest Hits collection from a few years ago and find it almost unlistenable. I usually don’t like ‘Best Ofs’ in any case, because they rarely are (singles are singles, and they are meant to be surrounded by album tracks to pad them, lighten them, detach from them, give them context, embellish them) and so I find endless hits hits hits, always in their edited 7″ versions to boot, unenjoyable. In Bowie’s case, even on the albums I love, I rarely like the singles. I have no time for Changes, I am not even that bothered by Fame, Golden Years, and actively dislike Sound And Vision. All those major keys and easy hooks, they bore me (sorry David). Of course there are exceptions to the singles rules, particularly the early eighties singles – like I say, Let’s Dance, China Girl and so on – I think Ashes To Ashes is a masterpiece – that is one case where I like the single but almost none of the album – I find Scary Monsters also unlistenable, especially side two (oops, all of this is really highlighting what a non-Bowie fan I am!), except that I could easily fill up three CDs of songs I adore by him which just shows you that I am. His ‘Plastic Soul’ concept and execution, the songs on Young Americans and Station To Station THRILL me, as I have written in the piece above in my typically over the top manner, as do all the Berlin albums (though, again, I don’t like the song Heroes, never have).
That is the point though I think. The oeuvre was so huge, and encompassed so many different styles, that there will be people around the world all with their own favourite playlists, loving him in their own way – some honing on the Diamond Dogs, probably other people listening to the lite-Bowie stuff like Tonight….One of my favourite albums of his is All Saints, a collection of instrumentals which is beautiful.
I wrote a really long contemplative reply to this on the train and then my signal went out of range just as i was posting it! No time / energy to write it all out again but will say more anon.
I await your thoughts.
A wonderful post Neil. I cannot add much to what others have commented, but like him or not like him, David Bowie was an “original”.
Absolutely and Totally. That is what I so admire, and his steadfastness in just being who he was (and who he was creating). Many tributes have talked about the tension between artifice and truth; the aesthetic disturbance of mining reality and the universe to create something more beautiful, and that is something I can completely relate to.
Hey ! thank you for what you wrote, Neil. I enjoyed immensely reading it. I sort of grew up with his music so… XXX
I think we all did.
Wonderfully written. My all time favourite. The only music I dance to. Spookily I’ve pretty much had Bowie on repeat for the last fortnight. So very sad.
Gwen! So wonderful to see you on here. You were one of the first people I thought of, naturally, when I heard that he had died (can you believe it?). It was in your room that I first listened to Lodger, and you let me borrow it – I can picture it now. And then when he was going through his naff Glass Spider stage and you were always listening to Never Let Me Down- I can see that as well. And didn’t you have an amazing compilation tape (or was it Julia’s? I know we were always exchanging and borrowing music from each other), but it had stuff from Lodger on it but also other albums. I think I probably heard Wild Is The Wind the first time at your house as well. In fact, you WERE, basically, my Bowie source.
Such great memories of those times, Gwen. Such a sweet friend.
N xxxxxxxxxx
He is and will be stardust
There definitely was something otherworldly about him (unless he just so successfully created that persona that we all fell for it). This ending, though, Blackstar, releasing that and then going off to the next realm, whatever that is, has certainly reinforced it all. Isn’t there an exhibition currently in Amsterdam? Have you been to it? Would you be interested in going? I know my friends were ecstatic about the Bowie exhibition held at the Victoria and Albert museum in 2013. With me it was more about the music: I was never a true disciple in that sense, but then again, to see the costumes and memorabilia collected together might give another angle, and certainly become more iconic now that he is no longer with us.
Wonderful words, Neil. David was my ultimate music hero. Growing up in London and coming into teenage-hood in the late 60s, his music was literally the soundtrack to my life throughout the 70s and 80s. I saw him for the first time when I was 14 at a local college just after he brought out Space Oddity and I was hooked. I saw him 6 more times, including the Ziggy Stardust and Diamond Dogs tours and then the ultimate – Live Aid- in 1985. When I moved to the US, I saw him again at the Glass Spider and Reality tours. It’s so unreal to see someone that was so much a part of ones important, formative years when the music was SO important, when lyrics said what we all felt but couldn’t express, when we were all struggling to identify who we were and how we fit into it all – that incredible electricity that was the London scene at the time – is no longer a part of this world. I’ve spent the day listening to all my vinyl, scratched almost into oblivion as they are, feeling that his death is more than just an ending of a life. It seems like its the end of an era. *My* era, if that makes sense.
Grrr my ID came up as salmack1 – but its Sally M here 🙂
Like the great man, we all have our alter egos…
(or is that just a bit too slick)
I hope it’s not, though! I think ultimately you had to be there at the time you were to get the entire picture, the full magnet and obsession. But even coming into him from the eighties and then going backwards into the catalogue it was/is amazing. I still feel very strange about it all.
What an beautiful written post about the Legend! Honest and Sincere! Thank you!!
//Yukiro
Thank you for so saying so. Let’s listen and dance to him next time you come to the house!
Am I getting this post posted ? I flipped a button I should have left alone And disappeared into Neverland
Oh not you as well. That side of things I really don’t have a CLUE about – Mr Untechnical I am afraid. I just do the writing.
Till later. Can I please have my own T B N account back again, Mr World Press?
Leaving it till the morning
Always my own policy.
Can I just put it out there Neil that I would pay good money for one of your exquisitely perfumed Bowie compilations…. A life fully expressed – I think Duncan put it like that? I had a series of VERY intense dreams about him after he died – His incredible artistic energy and originality, combined with a dazzling star quality and the perfect face (better with the imperfect teeth) – It’s genuinely difficult to believe he is dead I agree. Maybe he isn’t…
Exactly.
And I would make and send you more CD compilations gladly if we still had a CD drive. These days people make dropbox digital compilations that just aren’t quite the same…
.
my (straight twin) brother helped me out of the dream that he so adroitly had died after his, this, sweltering video of ‘Blackstar’ (which I again watched just now) by noting that his death was probably ‘Time-Edited’ (i.e., a morphine shot) (an assumption ! totally) but he has slightly more ratio than I have and ever had. (notably we were nurses for 45 years !) also did I never had such tight connection with David (Bowie) as I perhaps was supposed to have. as a Gay man and with identity facilitations. I always have had that with the one and only Madonna, whom I will love forever and … still. and with Karl Lagerfeld at whose death I did was quite devastated, as I also was with the death of the most ‘Silent’ Beasty Boy. (Adam “MCA” Yauch.) but I am simply ten years younger than David was. (born 1957) so I also had other persons for reference (never to ‘orient’ myself, I could perfectly do that myself). Yoko Ono, John Lennon, rather than Pink Floyd, the Soft Machine (much weirder and less self-absorbed), Syd Barrett (of Pink Floyd), Andy Warhol, the whole performance anti-art and especially anti-theater movement of NY and Europe. (Fassbinder, Werner herzog- and Schroeter, Lynch, fotographers Helmut Newton, Chris von Wangenheim, Guy Bourdin and Diane Arbus, Nan Goldin and Marilyn Minter & Stacey Kranitz.) but of course David Bowie did play a role and I remember having been sad when he died. I did liked the ‘Thin Machine’ for its erratic place in the Bowie canon and really great music. further have I made the same trajectory in perfumery from off 1974 (which isn’t such event to put forward bc you are born when you are born, and we were just born in 1957). Madonna is one year younger. but with the perfumes I rather have (sort of) the same taste in that I love all the (well, the most notorious) 1980s Hooker Perfumes. then to keep it short, in the 1990s I loathed the aquatics and ozonics (inepts and diluthedts) but there were Gale Hayman Beverly Hills (1990), Donna Karan Donna Karan (also I guess in 1990), Boudoir (I had nothing with Vivienne Westwoods fashion), Mahora of which I still have two 100mL’s. then since 2003 (2004) ALL Montales Rose-Ouds and Flower heavy perfumes. then Vero Kern, Dusita, all the heady ‘Haute Joiallerie- parfums’. the last thing I will write is that you wrote something on your birthday dec. 2d, and you were born in 1970s, so that gives you a stern Capricorn moon hence the endless and causing me to piss my pants, tirades, rants, Jugendstil loops, which I can quite handle with my scorpio moon. thank you for so much pleasure and I just keep on reading. (I won’t comment anymore. I still regret my echolaly some years ago.)
No : more !!!
I loved reading this and that you love my rants.
I am a Madonna maniac
And adore Fassbinder, Herzog, Lynch … it is joyous to share passions in this increasingly grim world !
(while from Caron I still have [les Pois de Senteurs de chez moi …] (in ‘pepper and salt shaker-bottle) and Parfum Sacré (Edp intense) and the three Mon Ylang, Più Bellodgia and Parfum Sacré, from Guerlain the delicious (as esthetically pleasing the Blue Lantern Flacon is while also indescribably frail and heavenly the Jus) Guet-Apins and the Edp L’Instant, L’Heure Bleue (Edp, old), Mitsouko (parfum and Edp which I ‘threw’, poored, together to make an Exrait de parfum). Nahéma of course, in a Luxe Vaporisateur Edp. (I had the Shalimar and Mitsouko in 1974.) I just still wanted to express the fact I am more a Chanel-person. I had the perfume of No5 in 1974. the Edt. then was there with the Launch of Coco of which (also for my mom, always) we had the Edp (with which it begun) (and I do still have, and the Extrait. then both the Allure and Allure Sensuelle. in the 1990s I bought the parfum Gardénia @ 31, Rue Cambon. the No19 Edt I had in 1974 as also the parfum. Cristalle I had somewhat later but still have a 1980s Edition of Edp. FFW I had all the (ooch) Coco Mademoiselles but eventually landed on Edp Essence. recently I gave in to the new No5 L’Eau in the rectangular bottle. I have the Coromandel parfum which I find fabulous. No19 Poudrée is fantastic. (I researched the used ‘musks’. it appeared there has been three sorts of orisses in it. “Iris is the central ingredient of the fragrance, along with several ‘new interesting musks’ “, this remark needed more research. this happened last night (=evening in Dutch). I found texts about White Musks in Perfumeshrine 2009 and Cafleurebon 2011 about some thén usual White musks and Aromachemicals. also in 2011 they got rid of (possibly) carcinogenic and desastrous for Biodegradability, musks (these bad Musks stay forever in the Milieu ‘primarily against musk ketone, musk xylene ~both nitromusks~ and polycyclics’ perfumeshrine 2009. but the names I did encounter were: the Aromachemical Alpha-Isobutyl-Ionone (orris- violet- powdery note) and the fact that there were, yet, three kinds of Orrises ! in Chanel No19 Poudré. ‘Absolue Celle Iris’ and Orris Absolute as Mixture of Maroccan and Chinese Orris-Butters then Iris Beurre Noir (the smell of Orris plus Wine and Dry Fruit Accents, made of Unpeeled Orris Rhizomes). ok, that shall be the last specification yet not before I sufficiently lauded your extraordinary writing skills and emotionally driven swooshes of instinctive and as well deepening and diving as also floating and heavenlilining, writing. which is quite the stimulus ! you ARE psychic. your writing is so mesmerizing and alluring, deeply instinctive and artistic (better: esthetic) alluringly. it is a Joy ( ! ) to read your indepth feelings (and adroit analyses [moon in Capricorn]) of all the perfumes which happen to pass in the night. I had to laugh VERY LOUD at Duncan’s ‘yuck’.
‘les Pois de Senteurs de chez moi’ actually is Bellodgia from the 1990s. and it is splendid. perhaps I am a tad less perfume-critic than you so eloquently and knowledgeably are.
I don’t feel I am at all in fact but thankyou anyway
You know I love a Caron
I thrill to this praise even if it is undeserved
But it is interesting : I have been told I am unmistakeably psychic – by a psychic – it scares me – and I am triple Capricorn – it a monstrous sun sign Sagittarius
What a disappointing combo
Passionate – but bogged down in bullshit – a hopeless neurasthenic not destined for much longer
well I feel I have to expand on the Haute Joiallerie-parfums. it struck me that I almost always loved the perfumes (not all, only the heady, rich, whorey ones). Cartier Must (also an Extrait from the 1990s), Must II, Panthère (I still had the ornate with Panters to the side crouching up, parfum de toilette and have since had three Edp, this last one with Glass Panthère on top, Baiser Volé Essence (god how I agreed with your rating, but I love Lily.) Rose-Oud in the Exclusives domain. Chaumet Le Parfum. Mauboussin still the very first, ‘Mauboussin Pour Femme’. such a dense, asphyxiating Amber confection it is almost like molasses syrup. (I even had the perfume !) van Cleef & Arpels (a kind of Dutchified name, as I am from the Netherlands). First, I had the perfume and do have the Luxe Vaporisateur of Edp w civet. Lys Carmin from the Exclusifs Collection. GEM in a Luxe Vaporisateur in Edp. (I always find this a Trinity: Creeds Fleur de Bulgarie, sharing it’s somptuous vertiges with Gem (vCleef) and Nahéma of Guerlains fame. Graff (them of the $ 65, million Haute Horlogerie ‘Hallucination’) already discontinued Lesedi di Rona (a famous diamond) VI of which I bought 2. it is Oud with Orchid but smells like a High class Rose-Oud (and of, Montale). € 350 times two. Tiffany yes. Tiffany for women, the older the better. Chopard Agar Royal, Cašmir, Wish, Love (a concoction of ‘Roses’), but I would have always loved and never had it, [Happy or, Happy Diamonds] which was a 1980s thing, then at last Bvlgari (which as Jeweler leaves me stone cold) Rose Essentielle, then the Splendida thangses Jasmin Noire (which I do find ‘beguiling’) , Iris D’Or, Patchouli Tentation. I had a brief fling with ‘Black’. also David Yurman his eponymus David Yurman which was a kind of Envy on steroids.
Boucheron by all means. Boucheron Pour Femme in a Luxe Vaporisateur w Edp. if it was the Ring I had it in perfume also. if however jaipur were the ring, I had that in Edp & parfum. the ring was unbelievably over the top and worth its Possession. Trouble I most certainly had. (yes Boucheron was the ring w perfume. no, they were both Rings in perfume, so I had Jaipur perfume.) Initial.
I F love Jaipur- and finding the parfum is one ot my dreams
How does it differ ?
Bitch you is on a ROLL here !
Van Cleef – j’adore – cola cubes – I have it next to my bed
the Jaipur perfume was fabulous. (my word.) it was rich, opulent and with plum and plenty of Flowers. it had that rich Haute Joiallerie-vibe to which I longed. best exemplified in Cartiers Panthère, also in Must. I read your musings about the Ambers and I have understood it all. xcept they to me are, since my Standard to Ambers obviously is Calvin Kleins (female) Obsession, a category I love. yet they of course can be oversatiated. the ‘Ring’ of Jaipur was Over-the-Topness exemplified. I could afford it all just with an Arbeiter-income from having been a nurse for 45 years and worked for 50 years. just a medium-income. I twice bought the La Prairie Caviar Luxe Crème Pour Le Visage @ first 550 guilders and later, ironically, € 550. then I stood out on the Rotterdam- avenue with the thought, ‘and now what to eat this month’. but the Crème WAS fabulous. and I absolutely despise Luca Turin forever. while I never actually read books of him short citations are enough to get stings in my heart for I would want to mureder him in his selfbloathed cocoon of perfumolalia. fuck him.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
(‘yuck’. Duncan in his dryness.)
hahahahahahahahahaha
Éditions de parfums Frédéric Malle. how I could afford this is an enigma but I bought all these around 2000s. so, the right ones. Portrait of a Lady was later but I had the first pick, with, as I most decidedly remember, castoreum. Carnal Flower. (Dominique Ropion my favorite perfumer, soit.) Une Fleur de Cassie (w Castoreum & Cumin, now not listed anymore). Une Rose (now Rose Tonnaire). for my twinbrother Monsieur, Cologne Indelibile, [Patchouli], Géranium Pour Monsieur. also [Vétiver Extraordinaire]. then also Musc Ravageur, Le Parfum de Thérèse. Later the ‘Promise’, al Waad, which a Moroccan Lady coming to an older friend of mine, corrected the pronunciation of. it was “Al Wa – CH- èd” with a very sharp ‘CH’ which we ironically, also have in Dutch. I loved it. and as last to mention, only to give you an idea of my perfume tastes, I most certainly will not break in on other posts, Lys Méditerranée.
How the hell do you afford all these if I may ask ?
Portrait I never liked but CARNAL – omg yes
the 1980s Beverly Hills hooker perfumes.
Giorgio Beverly Hills 1981 was THE watershed. although then I didn’t knew a thing about ‘perfume-decades’ and other classifications. I feel this perfume always WITH Obsession and Poison. then (as it was officially called ‘Giorgio Beverly Hills Red Glamour Cologne’). with Giorgio and with the Trinity in itself, my favorite perfume. then: Gale Hayman Beverly Hills 1990. she was the summa of ALL the hookerperfumes of the 1980s with Roses, Gardenia, Cloves and Civet. the Beverly Hills, Hollywood, Gloria Swanson perfume to end all such perfumes. the scene in the film Sunset Boulevard where Gloria Swanson and Erich von Stroheim bury a real dead chimpansee at night in the obscure and haunting garden of her mansion, shall forever personify this perfume. also Fred Haymans 273 (which you find a farce, and of course that isn’t bad). also Bijan Beverly Hills Bijan perfume, of which the perfumes costed $ 1,000. in his boutuque on Rodeo Drive you could get Ties from $ 1600. why I find that so exhillarating is that Bas and me (Aad) really grew up poor. my dad was on wellfare (an alcoholic). once we really didn’t have floorcovering and wore plastic sandals as shoes. ALWAYS 2nd hands clothes. (which I none, not one experience, regret or would bash.) and they (and we) were Dutch communists. while I will forever be extremely to the left (I even vote maoist then (1970s) and was a fervent adherer to the Baader Meinhof Gruppe, this had in the (ironically) 1980s profanised itself towards a more Mass Murderers Empty (Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Vietnam War etcetera and until Putin & Trump) yet still extremely leftist position. yet I keep joggling this with my taste especially, for Beverly Hills 1980s perfumes, Versace, Karl Lagerfeld and Chanel (also w Mattheu Blazy) and Madonna (also Working Class) but with the necessary vile contemptment for all things so blatantly Super Rich and Empty and yet I would still visit Rodeo Drive (and not). so if you were wondering how you could unify such diffident impulses: you can and you will. we have to be ourselves. even if I have to die for it.
I LOVE Red as well – and have long planned a proper post on it
Want to smell Beverly Hills now – our sensibilities are certainly similar
(for the moment I am just laughing. it is also funny that I had an A.I. horoscope of you based on dec2nd, 1970 and saw indeed a Capricorn rising. but you can only get to this result when you have the Birth time. and I didn’t.) so I guess you’re Sagittarian with both the Moon in Capricorn and Capricorn on the rising point. it is ALWAYS right, no matter what we may have in a horoscope. my dad WAS a Capricorn and with the moon in C., and both my parents had Scorpio rising. so, scathing humor and drop dead-dry reviews I simply adore. Bas & me have laughed with our father so unforgivenly. the thing HERE with your writing was [Bowie also a Capricorn] that you knew how to precisely formulate how we each (all the recipients here) could determine which place Bowie had in our lives. that is visionary and striking. that you can come with such ‘Choice’ for us (and you and Duncan) explicating the place Bowie had in our life. (and I thought about it !) of the same level as the landing on the moon ! what I finally (for now) add is that you already have your book on Perfumes and Japan, here, HERE. quite as it is. see it as a ‘pre-post’ Punk book just as is. it namely is brilliant and visionary. as are your foto’s. I like the cut-off focus of foto’s of non-descript ‘events’ (or, ‘non-events’). it is just so modern. you’re also photographing Flowers as persons, also inanimate objects as events and persons. something my twinbrother (nurse but also artist, photographer and ‘Imaginiste’, Imager), always has done and does. so HERE is your book and with a pre-post Punk and – Cataclysmic, sensibility, it is already done. copy and paste.