Most of my students no longer wear masks, which has changed my approach to classroom scenting. This term I have not really been wearing perfume – it hasn’t felt right, and I don’t want to waste it. That doesn’t mean I have chosen to go ‘odorless’, however ( is such a thing even possible in any case ? Some of my colleagues smell delightful, others clean and pleasant – I can recognize which fabric conditioner they are using; some just of natural human, while a few teachers, as in the school I was working at yesterday, smell frankly nauseating, as though they have been wearing the same yellowing white shirt for months).
Given that I always have the fear that at heart I smell like lamb kebab, the olfactory goal for me has been ‘pleasantly soap’ – a simple, warm floral deodorant spray that will not offend anybody, along with my Scent Of The Season, Nivea Soft – a gorgeous jojoba based hand cream that came out this year and smells of roses, osmanthus and lily of the valley and all things venerably soapy, and which I also espied on the desk of one of the young dandyish administrative staff, who always smells dreamily immaculate. The man has excellent taste.
This pleasant and easy combination has been my go to for a few months now – I feel calm and mellow in it; but then sometimes, obviously, you do just fancy a little spritz of something else as well to up your game, to galvanize the moment, whether it be on the back of the hand for personal pleasure during an afternoon lull in the day, or a few generous sprays after work to consolidate the spirit with an extra dose of elevation.
I realized last week that Dusita’s Douceur De Siam – a balsamic rose de mai perfume from 2017 that I always liked but hadn’t actually really worn – works perfectly in this precise context I am seeking.
It’s interesting. If you are wearing anything earthy or heavy, spiced or classic vintage on your person and then try Siam on another wrist, in contrast, with its green violet leaf champaca ylang top accord underscoring the rose main theme this creation comes across as feminine and ‘pretty’; yet if you come at it from a different angle, from the pure as the driven soap perspective, the perfume has a rich, Mysore sandalwood undertone, that smells even a little bit oudish (probably the Thai chalood bark accord used in the scent alongside some vanilla absolute) which feels much more decadent and masculine, but not intrusive. The beautiful rose oils in the perfume rise above everything in the blend ;the overall impression smooth and pleasurably subdued, yet surreptitiously full bodied and sexy. My bottle is in my coat pocket this week : I imagine I will be putting some more on again bit later in Yokohama.
Speaking of which, it was glorious to be strolling along by the sea in Yamashita Park on Sunday, the most beautifui afternoon, roses everywhere, not a crow in sight ( or at least not that I was aware of). Japan at this time of year can be spectacular, see-sawing between chilly melancholia pre-Christmas sensations, and warm balmy days that suspend you in sunlight. Days when you just drift along, living in the moment, forget (most of) your troubles and then stop – literally – to smell the roses.
I was attacked by a crow yesterday. ‘ Attacked’ might seem a bit melodramatic, but I am really not sure what else to call it. To say it hit me might suggest that it crashed into me unknowingly, blindsided by sunlight or temporarily malfunctioning landing gear, that we had a ‘collision’. But in fact, as I was walking my bike up past an old cemetery by the lake, while humming happily to myself in the sharp Autumn light, completely out of the blue I was suddenly hit violently on the top of my head by what felt at first like I was being bashed by a hammer ( in which case did it divebomb me beakwards or could the claws of the undercarriage also have delivered this blow?) ; all serenity shattered as it swooped up cawing loudly, the echoes of my fuck yous ! echoing shamefully round the gravesite; handclapping furiously, memories coursing through my nervous system of the indelible scene in The Omen 2,that horrible scene where the journalist uncovering the diabolical realities taking place is now doomed to die violently – running desperately for their life but eyes pecked out savagely by swooping overhead scavengers
Anyway.
I have just come out of my evaluation on an bleary overcast day in Fujisawa and immediately come face to face again with one of these now frightening creatures (pictured). It has been eyeing me beadily. And my heart did skip a beat momentarily – but I bore it no malice ( I think : yesterday, my heart was beating wildly post-incident as I tried to laugh it off to myself as just a one off bizarre occurrence, but there were more of them waiting – or the same ones waiting – on the telephone wires ahead, and I thought shit : is this going to become a new phobia ? I don’t really need anymore to add to the list). Then today, this morning at work, I found out that such aggressions are not as unusual as you might think.
It made good conversation. The secretary was horrified by all of our corvian anecdotes, clutching the side of her head a little too hysterically I thought personally – but one of my J colleagues had also been pounded on the head in exactly the same manner; another had had one coming at him horizontally slamming into his chest to grab a gold necklace in a bewildering tussle as a university student that had terrified him, but drew no blood ( I also checked the top of my head instinctively after it happened yesterday, to check if it had torn my scalp – now that really would have been melodramatic with blood streaming down the side of my face coming back into Imaizumidai – but perhaps the bird was just giving a physical warning of territorial patrol – ‘don’t even think of coming near my delectable red bean anko sweet cakes, human’ ) rather than more rabid, intentional Hitchcock murdering impulses
Why did it go for me? I was doing nothing threatening – although on second thoughts I wascarrying two bags of groceries : maybe it was in the mood for a free lunch. Maybe it thought I was a bad singer. Or else it just didn’t really like my perfume. I am not really sure. In any case, there are apparently far more of them about these days, in cities, and elsewhere, waking you up at dawn if they land on the balcony, tearing plastic rubbish bags and scattering garbage-strewn mess deliberately onto the streets glinting rudely in saucy iridescence….. side-eyed, scarily knowing ( can it really be true that these ancient beings have the intelligence of a seven year old human child ?)
/
Whatever. They aren’t going anywhere soon and neither am I,so I suppose we will just have to continue to coexist (good job Japan doesn’t allow hand guns like America though, as I can’t guarantee that I might not have just blasted it out of the sky on impulse, smiling vengefully as it thudded to the ground).
No. It is fine. And it was good, in a way, that I came across one again today so soon after having one up so close (actually boring down into my head). (UGH!!!!) I think it neutralized something. Nipped something in the bud. Calmed the brain stem. It was very shocking ( have any of you had similar experiences ?) : but I absolutely refuse to get crowphobia. I don’t really hate them. I never have. In fact I always rather respected their naughty outsider status, which in a way I can almost relate to. They have attitude. They are cool. They are shiny. They have chutzpah. But you can be damn sure that from now on I will be looking up very warily around me at all perches and telephone wires and right up into the sky, each time I go past that bloody cemetery
As an avowed lover of vintage perfume, I prefer the real thing to modern approximations. If I am going to go for that vibe, I usually want it uncompromised, all the ingredients and elements intact. If I want something niche or modern, mainstream or artisan, I enter that mindset; wear it/dress for it accordingly. At the same time, I value eclectica in general, experimentation and genre crossing, revitalizing old forms. And while reformulations of beloved classics are something I try to avoid – where everything vital is leaked out like failed embalming fluids, only the prettified corpse remaining; cozying up and pretending to be your best friend like the cat out of Pet Semetary (having the nous to recognize a zombie from a living being, I immediately recoil in horror the moment I come into contact with a ruined masterpiece),I can enjoy modern niche perfumes made in the spirit of those parfums classiques of yesteryear; scents crafted similarly, while retaining a sanded down, less quivery and emotional, contemporary edge.
Darren Alan is an independent perfumer based in Pittsburgh whose sample set a friend brought over from America to the UK this summer (it’s a shame scent creators in the US can’t ship their wares overseas any more but there you go), the first one being, of course, Jonquille – as I can’t resist anything with that word in it. I am a deep lover of Vol De Nuit, whose bitter jonquil/spiced galbanum over costus and vanillic eiderdown powder is one of the all time greats – and in fact I was doused all over in the extrait on Sunday, lounging on the futon reaching out like a slattern to sample these Darren Alan perfumes again properly, leaving my hands and wrists free: Jonquille went very well with the Guerlain. D’s reaction amused me (“It’s filthy, isn’t it”) (true, the naturally indolic aspects of narcissus extracts, with musk and ambrette seed, do die down to a certain dirtiness – something that I realized again wearing Nuit; it perturbs), but there is, here, also a fresher, jasmine floral mimosa and galbanum tweak to the formula that makes it wear like a clarion call for spring – winter is barely beginning in Japan, but I am already anticipating those fervid green shoots coming up through the February frosts – and this scent would be perfect for that time.
Another somewhat animalic potion, but far more suited to Autumn in the collection is Hekate, a mulled spiced fir-balsam woody animalic with a big dose of castoreum that I wouldn’t wear personally but which certainly intrigues, especially if you feel like outdoor sex in the forest and want to enhance your surroundings even further – it is easy to see this working for disrobed lumberjacks aphrodisiacally.
More my cups of tea, more my personal style, are Sweet Repose and Vintage Novel, the former a deeply ambery, powdered violet orris in the manner of Lorenzo Villoresi’s Teint De Neige; sweet, pressed into itself, lingering a very long time on skin.
“This velvety amber-floral perfume combines the darkest, yet most delicately balanced elements of perfumery, and combines them into a sepia-tone painting of Victorian Era mourning rooms & opium dens.
Then the untold story of soft violet & orris root suddenly gives way to the lonely, sobbing tones of the sole iris. If the sentimentality & nostalgia for “that which has been lost” were to ever emit a scent…it would be the smell of Sweet Repose. “
FRAGRANCE TYPE: Iris-Amber-Floral
TOP NOTES: Lavender Absolute, Violet, Opium Poppy Accord, Lily
BASE NOTES: Fossilized Amber Oil, Myrrh Absolute, Frankincense Absolute, Cedarwood
I must say that not all of these notes come through clearly on skin, where the scent is very compressed and ‘at one’, taking its time to unfurl its intensity, but I can easily imagine wanting to wear this to bed after a bath of an evening- it is very comforting and has a loveliness and a soothe- but not necessarily, nor exclusively, when dead, being mourned in my rose-laiden funeral casket.
On the subject of roses, both Bathory and Vintage Novel are very rose-heavy、 in a good way. I love the Ta’if roses in the top accord of Novel (Ta’if essential oil and absolute – I had sniffed this particular type of rose out immediately, it is more crimson and poignant in odour than many other roses, but usually destroyed, for me personally, with crude and aggressive woody chemicals lying underneath). Here, the distended drydown is far gentler, balsamic, softly insistent. As well as roses, the perfumer is after the scent of
the “brittle & dusty smell of the card catalog…..an insanely long drydown of old musty books, murky ink, and leather bindings which crunch when opened…releasing a flurry of crumbled glue chips on the freshly polished hardwood table.”
With a base accord of “saffron, spices, tobacco (nicotine-free), vanilla Bean Tincture, tonka Bean tincture, sandalwood (S.album), white ambergris, Egyptian White Musk, and Indonesian Agarwood (Oud) tincture” you get a very balsamic extended conclusion to your rose in this perfume that makes me feel dreamy and disconnected from harshness and heaviness in a way that reminds me a little of the older melancholy rose perfumes such as Creed Fleurs de Bulgarie. As I am very much in reading mode at the moment, it was lovely, on a cold, rainy day to have some Sweet Repose on the back of my hand as an anchor , while delving into the searing psychological penetrations of Gabor Maté.
Another Hungarian, but a far less compassionate one, was one of the world’s most prolific serial killers of time, Countess Elizabeth Bathory (1560-1614), an alleged vampire on par with Count Dracula who bathed in the blood of her young female victims in order to retain the glowings of youth and is now part of the national folklore. I had (mercifully) never heard of her before and couldn’t wear this perfume myself – too smoky and resinous but not corrosively harsh; rather, there is a strange, chiffony lightness to the Bulgarian rose otto, Hungarian Paprika Tincture, beeswax absolute and base of ‘Dragon’s Blood Resin Tincture, Vintage Leather & Deer Musk Accord, Civet, and Frankincense Absolute’ that smells hauntingly light, as though the killer were bathing herself in carbolic soap post atrocity ,the steam from the shower room slowly flowing beneath the door, invading your now fading consciousness….
Far less sinister: much more homely and congenial in spirit: are Sacred Smoke and Fêtes de Noël.
The first of these – and which I will definitely be heading out in on very cold days come December and January, is a heady, but muffled and pleasing Nag Champa scent that does, as described, dry down to smell exactly like that hazy, actual Indian floral incense – just a more refined version.
“Exotic spices, woods & rare florals combine with rich, sweet amber, vintage Mysore Sandalwood & mellow, aged patchouli to create a more refined and luxurious iteration of the classic Nag Champa Incense experience.
Rectified birch tar and halmaddi resin offer a smoky incense nuance without distracting from the clarity & brightness of the delicate rose, jasmine & champaca absolutes. The drydown leaves behind an intoxicating earthy amber-vanilla with hints of Himalayan musk accord and warm, creamy East Indian Sandalwood. This is what genuine Nag Champa smells like.”
Alan’s descriptions here make the scent sound perhaps more wild than it comes across on skin, but I do like the roundedness and throw of this one. If you have hippieish tendencies at all, Sacred Smoke leaves quite a beguiling trail in its wake, with a dry, compressed texture of integrity to it that puts me in mind of the delightful parfum extrait version of Jean Charles’ Brosseau incomparable shadowy rose musk from 1981, Ombre Rose.
The hippie’s mother, or else more materialist and upright older sister, might instead be wearing Fêtes De Noël in order to seem traditional as the turkey is being roasted and the kids are opening their presents (but looks can be deceiving – she still might drag your husband willingly upstairs during the Christmas festivities when no one is looking: there is raunch from the rose tuberose ylang ylang accord in this accord buttressing the aldehydic spices and contemporary Mousse De Saxe musk base). Cloves, orange, bayberry, labdanum and a starring base note of natural sandalwood/ vanilla, create a contemporary Caronesque, nostalgic but not fuddy floral woody spice chypre that is rather adult and sly sexy, despite its more chaste and family-orientated holiday associations. I like it, and though it is not very imaginative of me, I might even wear it on the day.
In fact, I have to say, overall. with their non-IFRA abiding components and lack of abrasive low grade chemical attachments – the bane of commercial perfumery – and blending skill, the perfumes in this collection in general are a deft blend of naturals and synthetics that have a solid sensuality. They have sillage, but don’t choke you like a petrol station : instead, they are concentrated and skin-close with strong magnetizing capabilities. Chypre Nº1 and Devil’s Share (not reviewed here) didn’t grab me on first try – on Duncan at any rate; Devil smelled like Angel, and Nº1 smelled flat and rather morose, like a mix of Mitsouko and Eau De Givenchy, very oakmossy and deep but miserable. Dorian’s Fougere, the last one I am looking at today, was another matter though. And unsurprisingly, this batch has sold out.
“A vintage barbershop fragrance inspired by Oscar Wilde’s novel “The Picture of Dorian Gray”, this is what Dorian would have worn….a true gentleman’s scent…distinguished and refined, yet with a streak of something dark and mysterious that dwells just beneath the surface.
It opens with a bright bergamot, spike lavender, petitgrain and mastic leaf. The heart unfolds to reveal notes of carnation, geranium, hawthorne, artisanal hay absolute, sambac jasmine, neroli & artisanal tonka bean absolute. The drydown reveals smooth balsamic notes, resins, mysore sandalwood, oakmoss, saffron absolute, patchouli and vintage musk & civet accords that hearken to an era of bygone elegance”.
On D the vintage barbershop powderiness was unmistakeable and nostalgic, but also very vivid and wearable (although for some reason, as we lay upstairs lazily with the cat, he decided to pair it with a his ‘n hers Vivienne Westwood’s vintage Boudoir, which was an immaculate combination if you really want to up the powdery wooze factor): this duo, now, is possibly what he is going to wear out in Tokyo for an art performance in Shinjuku on Saturday night. Old-schoolish but not too dated; stylish; sensual; unplaceable enough to turn heads.
Before I start on the perfumes, I want to get across how much Billie Eilish means to me, just for some context, you could say. I started liking her in 2019 and my love for her has only grown bigger as the days have gone by. She takes up 90% of my thoughts pretty much all of the time to be honest. I use my school printing credit to print out pictures of her and stick them to my wall, and I lie in bed looking at them for a bit, which sounds creepy but oh well. I went to her concert in 2022 and it was the best day of my life, even though I was at the back, her performance was incredible. I’m pretty sure she looked at me when she swung out into the crowd on a big crane, but this might just be my obsessive brain tricking me into thinking I had some sort of interaction with her, which seems more likely. After the show, she drove past the mob of fans waiting for her, she was looking out of the window, and I was very close to her, it took me a long time to recover; I still think about it now, which makes me question if I ever fully recovered. Probably not. I talk about her so much, my family may be sick of it, this has not stopped me in any way, and they will just have to deal with it.
And of course, the starting point for all of this was her music. I first started listening to her in 2019, like I said. My cousin, Athena, loved her and that’s when I first heard her. I carried on listening until I became a genuine fan and started memorising every single lyric to every single song. I started getting progressively more obsessed, until I became the unhealthily obsessed fanatic I am now. Her music means a ridiculous amount to me and has helped me so much throughout the years. Whenever I listen to her, all other thoughts disappear and I just get sucked into the incredible music that Billie and Finneas have made. When she sings, it sounds so genuine and from the heart, not acted or staged. I genuinely can’t put into words how much her and her music means to me. I love her so much. Her music is so relatable, and despite it being ‘sad’ music, it always cheers me up and helps when I have had a bad day. When I was around 10 or 11 I wasn’t having a good time at school and when I came home, I listened to Billie and pretty much forgot the bad feelings. Now whenever I feel sad or anxious, I just listen to her music and feel so much better. A lot of her songs are very calming and relaxed, but she obviously has more upbeat songs too, like Oxytocin or I Didn’t Change My Number. It is weird that someone who doesn’t even know I exist, means so, so, so, so, so, so, so (okay I should stop this will go on forever) much to me.
It’s not that I just love her music, I adore everything about her. I would take a bullet for her. Having this level of fandom is almost scary, but I LOVE IT. Every time I think of her (which, like I said is 90% of the time) my love and adoration only gets bigger, and stronger. Every time I watch her interviews (which is also a lot of the time) I love her even more, she’s so genuine and kind, she does what she wants and doesn’t care what anyone thinks – a perfect person.
I got the first Billie Eilish perfume, Eilish, for my birthday a couple years back, and I was so excited. Even though she makes music herself, the fact that she made this felt more special, more intimate. It means so much to me that she wears it too, I almost have a connection with her. Wearing tee shirts from concerts is a big part of my fandom, but she doesn’t wear the tee shirts too. She does wear the perfumes though and the thought of this, is so amazing to me. The feeling of watching her get ready for the Met Gala and seeing her put Eilish Number 2 on, the fact I had that exact thing, was incredible, it felt like I was even more of a fan in a way, because I could smell something that she had created. Smell is such an intimate thing, way more than just wearing something. The scent of the first perfume is predominantly vanilla and is quite warm. This is perhaps a more feminine perfume but is genderfluid at the same time, definitely for the spring and early to mid-summertime. It is chocolatey and a little spicy, quite strong and lingers for a long time, it makes me feel almost sleepy. I don’t really connect it with a specific event, but I do connect it with a lot of good times over the past few years.
I was given the second perfume before she had officially announced it in Europe (where I live) which was insane to me, beyond exciting. The scent is more masculine, which aligns with me better than the more feminine first perfume, although I wear the first one a lot in the summer. The tones are muskier and woodier, giving it a more wintery, masculine smell. I wear this one a lot more often, as it feels good in autumn and late summer as well as winter. The bottle for Eilish 2 is dark, matching the scent, whereas the Eilish 1 is gold, also suited to the smell. It was my Aunt Georgia and cousin Athena who thought to buy it for me, which gives it even more of a sentimental value, as I don’t see them a lot and they are very close family. When I opened it and saw her face I was completely stunned and thrilled. The fact I had the ‘collection’ now, meant a lot. It’s not like they were little plastic toys that are easy to get and would get thrown away, they were perfumes in gorgeous bottles! I also associate this one with lots of good times, they are just more recent and there are more of them. I put this one on and I feel connected to her again and powerful.
She is apparently bringing out a third, limited edition perfume (maybe with cherry notes?), Eilish No.3, in November. I am really, really hoping that I might get it for Christmas.
My sweet tooth is pretty sweet but not outrageous. I can crave and gorge, but also go without : it really depends. Recently I have had a thing for these deliciously soft and caramelic Tunisian dates – chock with antioxidants and nutrients (but also calories) : delicious with a cup of coffee if you get the mid-afternoon blues.
One of the best things about dates is that they are 100% natural. Swedish brand’s Caramel Days , conversely, categorizes itself as a ‘gourmand synthetic’ – which could quite easily be revolting. And yet I have just smelled this beautifully light and dreamy scent on a whim – like fresh caramel caught on the breeze downwind from a pristine patisserie – and found it delectable. Whether the effect would last I don’t know ( and I am not going to try it on myself when about to teach in a windowless classroom). But the blurb below describes this scent perfectly. Cute: sweet : uplifting, happy.
I am sick of sampling disgracefully overpriced and overblown niche perfumes that smell like shit. Sometimes I simply want something that just feels good and easy; is well made, hopefully with a wisp of the poetic (‘functionality’ doesn’t interest me), and if possible, a little intrigue and depth – a scent that you can spray on and feel happy in as you make your way through the day.
A couple of weekends ago a friend of mine presented me with this very pleasing and affordable edt, which she had picked up while back in Liverpool over the summer at Marks & Spencer : that beloved British institution, frequented by so many Brits- my sister lives in there for food shopping – if with a reputation for a certain dowdiness of stiff knickers and talc for peach granny’s birthday (it would always be extremely difficult for M & S for ever to be considered cool). Still, I was somehow quite shocked to discover that we no longer have one back in my hometown – the overly-venerated towering John Lewis department store having rendered it redundant and financially unviable during the pandemic. It felt strangely scandalous to me that it had closed down: I think that I might miss it.
At £34.00 for 100ml, Patchouli by Fragonard, available in the fragrance section at M & S, is, in my view, a really excellent bargain. It soothes and appeals, with an undertone of elegantly presented eroticism. It feels neat. Held together. I even rather like the watercolour design on the box – obviously, cheapness usually does dilute aesthetics- and aesthetics do mean a lot to me in terms of perfume collecting -but the design here is quite good. I can live with this.
Interestingly, Sarah’s Japanese husband Keisuke – who I have given woody perfumes to in the past- had detested this fresh and soft, biscuity dark tonka-bean patchouli so thoroughly on her that he refused to be in the same house: to him, it just smelled musty and old in all the wrong ways, reminding him too much of earlier eras in Japanese history and depressing grandchild smells. Repulsed. A no go. Quite dismaying. She therefore kindly decided to give the perfume to me, though she still liked it – and so did I — the very second I sniffed it from the bottle.
I often tend to be drawn to these more ‘artisanal’ French and Italian brands : the kind of boutiques you find dotted in little towns in the hills of Tuscany or Provence. You wouldn’t call them mainstream, niche, vintage, or natural/botanical – they occupy their own terroir: not quite as traditional as the old style colognes, not as edgy as indie, whose for the-sake-of-experimentation chemical weirdness often leaves an acrid pit in my belly, yet they are also usually more refined and pared down than the WAG-curdled boobliciousness of low level airport, which from me just usually inciter a couple of grossed-out heaves and a sneer. The far less sex-obsessed, celebrity-less, more in-the-family parfumeurs such as Fragonard, Molinard and the like, with their Grasse-rooted historical traditions of distilling local essences and then blending them, just get on quietly on a daily basis with the less conceptually-mired business of creating nice and wearable perfume.
D liked this one the second he smelled it on me. I felt great it in as well. With vestiges of 19 parfum and Givenchy Gentleman from the day before still lingering on my coat – I like both of those perfumes far better in their later stages, particularly when loitering on clothes, I instinctively knew that this generous-hearted patchouli would work in tandem. While the base accord is quite earthy, chocolatey, vetivery (not listed) and musky – it reminds me of a couple of old L’Occitanes I used to like, with a similar feel – the top notes of bitter orange, caraway and petitgrain Paraguay create a suavely delicious patchouli perfume with a hint of cedarwood and rose that gently opens up the senses. To me, the perfume feels contemporary and classical at the same time – not that I especially care about those distinctions – but I do like an aspect of ‘timelessness’ sometimes, when a scent is not quagmired in the steaming stench of PR horsedung and tired olfactory clichés, but can just play out and evaporate happily on its own natural terms. If you are like K, and cannot bear the smell of natural patchouli, then obviously stay clear of this one. If you are more like D and I, and, on occasion want an earthier number perfect for a comforting winter nuzzle; you have an M & S in your vicinity, or just feel like very lightly flexing your credit card, I do highly recommend trying this value-for-money patchouli scent – particularly at this time of the year. It is great. Thanks, Sarah. x
I must admit that I greatly admire people that can make it to the age of 80. Though longevity is reportedly in my genes, I often feel more like David Bowie in The Hunger, ageing rapidly within, way beyond my years, a bone/muscle double inheritance featuring waterworks and other issues, cognitive included, where I find myself acceleratedly and ungleefully whitewater- rapiding through to the great Pink Floydian chutes in the sky.
Simultaneously, it does truly feel that in many ways, 80 is the new 60. Biden and Trump are somewhat unbelievably the main contenders for the election next year, even if most people think they are too doddering over the hill to be taken properly seriously ( and both make me shudder ); yet both are still somewhat outrageously (and realistically )vying for the position of Most Powerful Person is the world. But then the Rolling Stones are also releasing a new record, Diana Ross (79) was headlining only recently at Glastonbury, Joan Collins is 90 and still flashing a boob and a sequin-fastenened thigh with younger beau when she gala feels like it ( as is Cher, 77 but unlikely to quit the show just because she is 80: her spirit is indomitable) and hats off to Nancy Pelosi for stalwarting her way through all manner of heinosity; it took some guts. In the artworld, Yoko Ono still rocks it mightily at 90, as does Yayoi Kusama at 94 (I once stared into her eyes at the Mori Tower in Tokyo and knew at that moment – I had naughtily strayed longer than I was supposed to and she had arrived earlier – that the black diamond madness was actually real); David Hockney is still exhibiting new paintings at 86, and I suddenly realized the other day that I have recently been out at the cinema to see films by several octogenarian auteurs I have long admired, including Dario Argento, Martin Scorsese, David Cronenberg ( if Crimes Of The Future certainly wasn’t the Canadian creepoid’s best work, it still intrigued); Clint Eastwood – not my political bag but brilliant, film wise still, at 93 (how?!!! ); directors you are understandably not allowed to like ( (Woody Allen, Roman Polanski ) but whose film catalogue you vastly admire nonetheless – 87 and 90 respectively !- premiering films at Cannes ; your favourite directors like David Lynch (77) and Brian De Palma (83) still off in the jungles of Colombia trying out new aesthetics and screenplays and ideas …. … ……all of it just making you feel sometimes guilty, as I often do, for feeling clapped out (and decrepit and pathetic) at 52.
There is so much terrain still to cover.
So many energy reserves left, if you can find the life inspiration and the meaning and you still have the verve (and the nerve) to go there; slaking off the unwanted skeins of ageist received wisdom and keeping – as much as you realistically can – the physical apparatus in check . To just shake it off, like The Incredible Hulk, or the irrepressible Taylor Swift : The parameters and paradigms – in the recent, convulsively transformational decades – now seeming – at some meaningful and deeper level of human consciousness, in much of the world – to have genuinely, rightfully, changed.
In August, one day after lunch, we went back to the Packhorse Bridge Nature Reserve, a place I was apparently taken to a few times as a child, but couldn’t quite remember.
No matter. The scent on the air of the wild English orchids growing there freely on the embankments was delicately, quietly thrilling; marshmallow pink, lotus-like; surprisingly, more perfumed and sensuous than any of the perhaps more magnificent-looking flowers we saw in profusion just ten days earlier at the National Orchid Garden in Singapore.
My parents always encouraged my love of flowers as a child, and their garden, a little more overgrown than usual this year (and thus far more to my taste), was probably more beautiful than I have ever seen it. My mother may not be able to do the gardening quite as vigorously and meticulously as she used to but it is still her pride and joy. She is happiest just out in the sun, with her trowel, planting, pruning, bedding, rearranging and the organic whole is a pleasure to sit in and roam.
It was also nice to spend this gentle half hour or so together just walking in the outdoors on this unusually warm and sunny late summer afternoon as well, taking in nature with some intense emotions and nostalgic reverie; picking plants and flowers along the way from the hedgerows as we used to do as kids (both she and I collected things for our ‘nature tables’ as curious children). Fast forward five decades, with so much life passed in between, and here we all still were…
