April 30, 2022 · 11:25 am
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‘WHAT MAKES A PERFUME A MASTERPIECE’? THE BLACK NARCISSUS INTERVIEW WITH THE SLOWDOWN, NYC

A writer in New York one day came across a copy of Perfume in a book store, which led her to The Black Narcissus.

https://www.slowdown.tv/smell/black-narcissus

8 Comments

Filed under Flowers

8 responses to “‘WHAT MAKES A PERFUME A MASTERPIECE’? THE BLACK NARCISSUS INTERVIEW WITH THE SLOWDOWN, NYC”

  1. Old Herbaceous
    April 30, 2022 at 12:49 pm

    Great insights! I enjoyed reading this.

    Reply
    • ginzaintherain
      April 30, 2022 at 1:50 pm

      Oh good. It was nice being contacted out of the blue simply because the journalist got drawn into the perfume world based on the writing she discovered in a book shop – because that was my main hope when I wrote Perfume in the first place – I wanted to create a kind of Alice In Wonderland experience.

      Reply
  2. Gisela Barrington
    April 30, 2022 at 7:06 pm

    This truly was an Alice experience for me….no, not what you wrote, but what I found so unexpectedly on the Slowdown site. The description of the papier d’Armenie perfumed papers, which I used as a poor student to perfume my world of bedsits, cheap hotels and tents. I had completely forgotten about the amazing pleasure they gave me a lifetime ago….These days my perfumed pleasures are more expensive!

    Reply
  3. Robin
    May 3, 2022 at 12:30 am

    Really well done, dear Neil. God, I could read this kind of thing, your thought processes, for days. It’s so energizing and yet paradoxically soothing somehow. I know we feel a great affinity with you, and with each other, and this really underscores that magical connection. And as you alluded, scent itself is a communicator, allowing us to have a shared experience. When you talk of Vol de Nuit, I KNOW exactly what you mean. The notes, the composition, the emotions it stirs, just as if I was listening to Bach here in Robert’s Creek as you were describing one of his solo cello pieces.

    And. Can we talk about those sideburns?! Perfection.

    Reply
    • ginzaintherain
      May 3, 2022 at 12:20 pm

      Glad you liked it R – I wondered if I was just repeating myself!

      As for the sideburns….well, they have just kind of happened, as I haven’t had a hair cut since the beginning of 2020 – I just kind of snip at it once in a while – and I found that I liked having them!

      Reply
  4. Robin
    May 3, 2022 at 12:32 am

    I also loved the idea of scents associated with us that allow us a kind of immortality.

    Reply
    • ginzaintherain
      May 3, 2022 at 12:26 pm

      I mean definitely until those that associate the scent with us are also no more, but some people, as you know, literally ARE their perfume in your mind – whether it be for good or bad reasons (like your Vent Vert): nothing else attaches its way into your deepest psyche like that combination of someone and their scent: it’s almost as if you have physically internalized them; drunk them into your own body. Quite potent, quite intimate.

      I think when studying existentalism at university I got stuck on this tedious idea that we are all totally separate from each other and utterly alone (true in many ways, I know but), trapped inside our own bodies and skulls without the capacity to know what anyone else is really thinking or feeling, but as I have got older and understood the power of empathy and intuition, telepathy even – I think perfume feeds into all of this as it literally, physically connects you, like an invisible thread between one entity and another.

      Reply

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