d is on the midst of a fascinating programme at the moment : he, and a network of foreign writers based in Japan, are sending original postcard poems to each other, dashing off poetry on a limb ( on a whim :). almost on a daily basis. They look at the image (or they create the image); they pen a few words ; they rush to the postbox.
I love the spontaneity of it. The beautiful language being generated.
(One that was there today, waiting )
Filed under Flowers
The Shiseido Lady is still shedding Stuff.
‘ne ne’ she said as I sidled by the shop on my bike ( practically every other day we come home with something – glassware, stationery, I took home a random old cinema brochure of Eddie Murphy in Beverly Hills Cop): ‘do you want these ? The Inoui is almost empty, but better than throwing it away. Do you know this one from a long time ago, Nishiki ?’
I had never heard of it ( nor Reve D’Amour – an intriguingly pine cone resinous aromatic chypre I am immediately taken with – the Nishiki sounds good on Fragrantica but has turned so I can’t really judge it).
And Shiseido More ?
Don’t mind if I do. The pinkest and most strawberriest talcy lighthearted floral aldehyde ever made – if Marilyn Monroe ever had a fluffy white chinchilla, she surely would have dipped it in this.
The madness apparently continues until July.
Filed under Flowers
It has been a very intense period for me, as it always is at the beginning of the new academic year. I hibernated so enjoyably for the much quieter winter and start of spring, concentrating on writing in Kamakura, happy to be alone or with D, steeped in delicious introversion and really enjoying not always having to talk. Now it is the opposite: I have to be (or feel I have to be….maybe this is the problem) explosively outgoing in order to break the ice with often very shy/withdrawn/unwilling students who aren’t used to having a foreign teacher and using English for 80 minutes – and to get them all relaxed and talking in pairs and for the atmosphere to breathe a little bit takes a lot out of me, to the point where their faces are looming in my consciousness at the weekend and I can’t quite shake the baggage from my system. To be honest, my nerves are shot. Before I get on to perfume – at weekends I have been wearing the Guerlain Vetiver Parfum I bought a few weeks ago that I am addicted to and wear alongside vintage Mitsouko, Shalimar, or Vol De Nuit (sometimes all four – they work perfectly, soothing me into their powdery mirage) – I want to talk about this ‘social anxiety’ I have – if you want to call it that – as I am interested in what you think.
No student would ever believe that I am anything other than utterly extroverted and exuberant; self confident, witty and charming – in their evaluations they often write that they love how I let them express their emotions and the positive and conducive atmosphere in the classroom in which they can relax and talk to other students unselfconsciously : the idea that I might actually be a sociophobic introvert who runs when the going gets tough would completely flabbergast them. If I feel ‘overfilled’ mentally in a social situation these days (especially since the coronavirus pandemic, when I got really claustrophobic), I have to go, something that happened on Saturday night at a fabulous night in Ginza to see the drag star Alaska Thunderfuck when the cup was overflowing and I suddenly felt overpowered. Had I not already been performing all week to the max in the classroom, maybe I wouldn’t have felt like this. But there is only so much interacting I can take without losing my mind – what does this mean?
All the discussions that go on now on whether we are extro, intro or ambi – the word ‘ambivert’ not appealing to me very much as it sounds like the love child of a pervert and an amphibian – can come across as self obsessive, what with all the other labelling and identity politics that is now ubiquitous- you need about six official definitions as to your sexuality, personality type, etc etc and it can all get a bit too much and me me me – even if I personally find such discussions very engrossing.I have discussed neurodivergence before on The Black Narcissus, and the possibility of being on the spectrum – though almost anyone I say that to laughs in my face due to my empathic sensibilities; I have been told, if we must have a classification in the current style, that I am more likely an HSP (a ‘highly sensitive person’) – which still sounds faintly ridiculous.
At any rate, I know that I am rather strange, in several ways probably, but particularly in the sense that I am genuinely fascinated by other people – by every student I teach, by everyone I work with, by almost everyone I meet and by those I just see on the train, or in documentaries or in newspaper articles or working in a convenience store- the unique particulars of each individual mesmerize; suck me in – but if we meet physically, it is as though I osmose those people, absorbing them through my skin into my bloodstream and brain and they end up eating me alive. I have no protection. When conversation is engaging I love it but there is also a limit; I can usually feel myself getting very overstimulated and mentally tired these days and have to withdraw (and that is with people I feel drawn to and like); outside of a professional context, where I have no choice but to communicate and connect as it is my job and the lessons would fail otherwise, I find I am increasingly intolerant of those I can’t gel with. For even short periods of time. Which I am finding slightly alarming. If, after a long working week, where I can’t really sleep from all the mental exertion and upbeat hilarity and enforced transformation from flat, passive aggressive sullen silence (the group mentality of Japanese classes can create dark, morbid vortexes such that you wouldn’t believe – at the individual level many such ultra introspective kids would be different, but en masse, Jesus if they don’t know each other and the feeling in the air is kimoi, gross, uneasy, they will just retreat into their hard shells like the most recalcitrant snowcrabs creating a black blood-siphoning hell hole – it is my job to claw them back out up to the daylight with my almost bullying tra la la ) ; at this point in the year, when the psychic intensity is too high – it mellows out from now, they get used to how it all works, I can cruise on autopilot a lot more eventually, so that by the autumn I will be dreamily retreating inwardly looking to all the nice holidays and immersion in things I want to do alone – if I find myself conversing with someone who clashes with me (D says I am terrible with other divas; other people with big personalities, the ‘clash of the alphas’) in recent times I often end up behaving very badly with them and have to extricate myself from the situation by any means necessary. This often means mortified hungover regrets the next day (yes, the alcohol doesn’t help), and then yet another conversation about how opposite we are (he is perfectly self contained, and doesn’t get affected at the deeper level by anyone else, making social interactions far lighter and enjoyable – we are utterly different…)
Sigh. Anyway, I suppose I shouldn’t complain. First World Problems. I am lucky in that all of this is very yang; very yangy indeed – all saturation and stimulation and excitement, overconnection rather than a lack of it, rather than negativity and depression – a cup bursting at the cracks rather than a sad, empty vessel (though I do feel like one of those as well of course, particularly around 3pm)’; a therapist I sometimes see says that I am addicted to ‘hyperarousal’, and I think she is right; I always want to make the moment more magical, more quixotic and embodied, more cinematic – to push things to some kind of apotheosis so I end up with hives (literally – when I have overdone it the tingling starts on the scalp and the next thing you know I am a red armoured reptile with hard mosquito like bites all over, a proper Ms. Urticaria). I rev up the kids in the classroom – ‘so exciting’ !’ – they exclaim; I have deep and intense conversations – the only ones I really enjoy aside what I call ‘ether’-like froth where you can just josh about nonsense with someone on a similar wavelength – but then I just end up crashing and craving solitude. Solitude is beyond essential for my equibrilium; and lots of it. Not so much it leads to too much loneliness – which we can all fall prey to sometimes especially in moments of existential angst – but I have realized that, quite simply, I can’t do two days in a row with people, which has happened recently – four consecutive nights actually – and that social events – which I want – I love my friends – must therefore be carefully calendared. Is this unreasonable? Do I have a ‘borderline personality’? How are you in this regard? I would love to talk about it, to be honest. You can see what a pain in the ass this makes me for D though. I am so f****** neurotic, increasingly so : ‘Nothing is ever easy with you’ he said the other night. And he is right.
Some things are easy. Like the joy of finding a Mitsouko vintage soap set for 530 yen at Book Off (£2.60 – surely one of the most outrageous finds yet). Squinting as I walked down one of the clothes aisles when we went in for a reconnaissance mission for records and new/old vestments (though there is no room in the house for all of his clothes anymore) and had a quick look at the toiletries section just in case, mine eyes, to their vast astonishment, did spot the familiar black and white optical illusion pattern of the classic old Guerlain packaging – probably my favourite of all time; in fact the words I said to D upon taking it out of my bag later for further inspection – those green soaps, my goodness how gorgeous they are on every level – were that he could ‘use this box for my ashes’. And I think I meant it. That is how much I love this particular aesthetic, the ancient Graeco elliptical black and gold. It thrills me just to look at it. Later that day I was meeting up with a new friend – I know, insane contradictions – but as you get older, true connection gets less easy, and this is a Japanese colleague I have found I get on very well with as he is as eccentric as me – and a Leo, to boot! – glad to diversify my collection a bit – who is reading some of the semi-finished chapters of my Japan book for me; his own explanations about the culture from his own particular point of view (his English being exquisitely high level, his personal experiences quite challenging) extraordinarily interesting for me, providing perspectives I would not otherwise ever have considered. He collects fountain pens and admires good design; I showed him the Mitsouko box and besides the visual beauty of it he was completely entranced by the scent of the soap emanating from its gilded green wrapper as well ; I thus promised I would give him some of the perfume at a later date. “Thankyou. I will definitely wear it” he said.
Interestingly, I also recently had another meet up with my very close friend Melanie – who was here a quarter century ago when we were like psychic Siamese twins, to an almost disturbing degree – but she is now back, via England, Mexico, Malaysia and Vietnam, and we have taken everything up from where we left off, learning to get to know each other again; both dissimilar in many ways – I feel she is possibly now the stronger one – but still with an unquenchable desire to plunge into all manner of esoterica and psychologica. I gave her two bags full of samples and perfumes I felt I didn’t need any more, for her to share the wealth with her husband and daughters – they have been having great fun the last few weeks trying the various fumes – but it was interesting that, though I didn’t entirely want to part with it – a Mitsouko extrait – somehow I wanted her to have it and smell it; and I have a personal tradition of giving vintage Mitsouko to friends (as you do.. . and as we know, there is ample supply of the stuff in Japan, still, to keep this tradition going). Her reaction intrigued me: ‘oh wow, I really love this. wow.‘; not musty or fusty or dusty or old biddy but just ‘wow: that is really gorgeous’. Amazing, that both recent encounters with old and new friends, Japanese and otherwise, had this result. So I ask you : WHAT IS IT ABOUT MITSOUKO?
‘Mitsy’ as some call her – although that is the name of my parents’ cat so I prefer it with the ‘souko’ on the end, went very nicely yesterday for a leisurely afternoon with D at a cheap Italian, together with the Vetiver Parfum, which is just so damn adaptable I wish I had 20 litres of it – enough to continue spraying for a lifetime. The bottle is going down too fast….
When I bought Vetiver at Shinjuku Isetan a few weeks ago, it gave me an opportunity to have a very nice Guerlain experience. The proper, I am a customer and I am going to sit down and be treated to all your wares, type of experience. I got to smell or resmell a lot of very pleasing things; with the cash, or a rich benefactor to hand I would gladly accept bottles of Frenchy Lavande, Iris Torrifié, even Fève Gourmande, which struck me as a little GGG (generically Guerlain gourmandise – you know, sweet and lovely and rich but also a little amorphous and lacking definition) and several others, but what I really wanted to get my hands on and sample thoroughly were the extravagantly priced but beautiful sounding L’ Art Et Matiere Les Extraits, featuring extrait strength essences of the main ingredients used in the classic Guerlinade base : bergamot, iris, rose, jasmine, tonka, and vanilla. It is an interesting idea – and if the perfumes prove a hit, good for the Gueralin coffers too, which ultimately, obviously, is what this is all about.
Ah yes, about that price. Sorry to be prosaically proletarian, but the price of these extraits, for a relatively small bottle, in Japan, is ¥85,000. I can currency convert – £540 – which still sounds rather appalling, but isn’t the reality of the Japanese cost, which is more expensive than the rent of most of my colleagues. 850,000 yen, in real terms, feels more like 800 dollars – the rent here can easily be three or more times that – depending on where you live in Tokyo, but it can also easily be half: still, when a bottle of scent costs more than yo rent then you know it is not just pricey but extortionate (for random contextualization as to how reasonable Japan in many ways is – my siblings’ flat in London, a nice place in a pretty popular area but not central, in yen would be ￥465,000, more than most people’s take home monthly salary here).
But back to the Guerlains. Do the perfumes merit the cost?
I don’t know. But if you feel like pampering me one day for the hell of it I would be delighted to receive the rose, jasmine, bergamot and vanilla. The rose is a pure rose, really gorgeous, with a slightly melancholy smear of patchouli chypre (but very faint – it is the rose that sings, and if I were in that mood, that solitary sad rose state of mind and I like Guerlain best when there is a dash of melancholia – think L’Après L’Ondée- I can imagine being besotted by this. It is simple, but does somewhat ravish the senses). The jasmine is similar – it reminds me of an old solid jasmine perfume D inherited from his Cypriot grandmother; rich, noble, with strawberry elements and undertones of sandalwood; replete with the essential oil, it is almost more like an aromatherapeutic tincture. I say yes to Jasmine Days, when a full grandiflorum is just what the nurse ordered. An old school duchess. In contrast, the Bergamote Fantastico (slightly silly name) would make the perfect perfume for a rich Arab teenager- dry; with a slightly sexualized guaiac wood undertone polished up like gold in the top accord with a lip-smackingly citric burst of the purest bergamot, bergamot flowers and mandarin, it is definitely a brilliant beginner’s cologne: Delphine Jelk and Thierry Wasser must have really gone for the most bergmotted bergamotesque here with the blossoms and all. I would gladly partake. As I would with so many Guerlains – even if one suspects, deep down, that the quality – though still high, comparatively – isn’t quite what it used to be.
As I sat there on my Guerlain guest throne chatting to the exceptionally pleasant woman at the counter, clearly taking pleasure in what she was doing, with no froideur but still just the right sprinkling of aloof cool, I sprayed myself lavishly with some of the extraits, wanting some skin time with them. The vanilla, obviously. Quite a lot on the right arm (even though I was already perfumed). A bit playdohy. Some of the Bergamote. Then the Tonka Sarrapia – a weird, smoky, very beany coumariny concoction that has an enigmatic allure but which I personally found nauseating – and all of this together was definitely not the right perfume for a night show three floors underground for a cabaret show in the depths of Shinjuku, which I was just about to go to and should have thought about more carefully. . Good lord they are potent, some of these perfumes. And I knew I smelled disgusting. ‘Are you wearing banana’? Someone asked. What it smelled more like, in fact, was a Chernobyl level version of Dior Hypnotic Poison in combination, with a strange marine tone emanating from somewhere in the midst that tipped the whole mess into bulimic repulsion. The miasma emanating from me didn’t do much good for my headspace, and neither for those around me I am sure. I was embarrassed. I smelled preposterously overperfumed. And deeply regretted it (and having a spat with a new person introduced to me from America before we went in with a very loud voice who could only speak by shouting, I think my perfume tipped me over the edge – look, now I am even blaming Guerlain for my personality deficiencies – I didn’t behave very politely with her). I stank. I just wanted to go home.The iris had faded into the background very quickly at this point – but one thing I had enjoyed earlier at the Guerlain concession in Isetan was a little flourish by the staff as I inhaled the divine opening note of the Pallida. I have said this before, but for me, a really good iris is the most coldly enthralling of essences, and always bursts forth in the white powdered top notes masking everything else in its vicinity: I have smelled many truly gorgeous irises that spellbound me to the spot morph within minutes into perfumes I wouldn’t touch with a bargepole; at the start, the heavenly material takes the stage – but it all depends on what happens next. As the girl wrapped up my Vetiver and put all the scent cards in the bag with their little plastic covers she said (in Japanese); ‘Ah, if you like that, try this…. and sprayed some crepe tissues paper abundantly with a combination of the Iris Pallida extrait and L’Heure Bleue parfum. There are no words for how resplendent that combo was at that moment, and she noted the reaction on my face.
“This is heaven I said.”
Tengoku desu.
But back in Ofuna station, after yet another long and fraught conversation (or one way haranguing match, with me as the perpetrator) about our personality differences – I hate being so reactive all the time, so difficult when he is just trying to be sociable, I took out the paper she had sprayed, expecting a reprieve, and smelled nothing but an appropriation of L’Heure Bleue, no iris, and a great deal of crappy , cheap artificial sandalwood that tipped the entirety of the melange into pointlessless. It was, frankly, depressing.
The shirt I was wearing that evening had absorbed the perfumes thoroughly. To the point that I left it hanging in our room for a week after the event as a vanilla perfuming essence (may as well get your money’s worth seeing that you will never be able to actually get a bottle). A really sweet, buttery, vanilla vanilla – quite gorgeous actually – if not quite characterful enough, that filled the whole room with a really vanillian, cakey, vanilla. It took me right back to my vanilla days, when I was bright eyed and bushy tailed and staying on plantations in Java and doing Vanillatastic talks at Perfume Lovers London and the like. Newer to the writing game. Certainly a less jaded self, in any case (I definitely preferred my forties to my fifties so far). Though a tad sickly peut-être, I wouldn’t say no, if you were offering, to Vanilla Planifolia. And yet, I must also admit that I wasn’t entirely regretful either when I put the shirt in quite heavily washing powder-filled wash cycles to rinse the smell right out. Twice.
Filed under Flowers
I feel I have been here long enough to know what smells distinctly ‘Japanese’: and Tender Peach, a warm and inviting, fresh musky liquid body soap kind of scent that is immediately familiar to me from those that surround (floral, clean peach skin, deeper sandalwood – it reminds me of the entrances to rotenburo onsen/hotsprings, wearing it I feel rather relaxed) most definitely fits into this category.
On A Cloud, the most recent release from the Tokyo based outfit, is also cool and semi-relaxing but also a little odd ( J – Scent does like to experiment and has some unusual perfumes on its roster ): this is a sugared, minty cloud with notes of fresh peppermint, vanilla and ‘milk’ – the effect akin to enjoying those beige coloured butterscotch mints I used to enjoy at my grandparents’ house but whose name, at this moment, elude me. I have semi-considered getting this one — but when would you wear it?
Another well made item in the J Scent I am currently half stalking is Cafe, which matches a rich, adult lady orange blossom a la original Jean Paul Gaultier (‘Classique’ to some of you) with a rather daring heart note of coffee. The effect is peculiar but magnetic: rich; erotically mellow. ‘Tastefully bold’, you might say. Mmmm….
I wonder what they have in store for us with their next release, Holy Animal ?
Filed under Flowers
Gone are the days when I would avidly follow up on every new Serge Lutens release. In the early days we perfumisti lapped them all up as though he were God. The perfumes stood out as so different from what else was around back then in the early nineties: the original – much, much, denser, thicker, sweeter, ambrous, complex, atmospheric elixirs that came at affordable prices felt newly provocative: the bitter green of Sa Majesté La Rose, the unfettered exotic amber of Ambre Sultan as it was back then, so heavy and spicy; the (for me) fascination but utter revulsion of Arabie – whether you liked them or not those perfumes were exceedingly good value and genuinely exciting.
In the intervening years I have had many of them, as you probably have too. I have bought perfumes at the head office at the Palais Royal (Sarrasins, Cuir Mauresque), but not really worn them. I have gulped down others by the multibottle (the original Un Bois Vanille, Borneo 1834, Louve); toyed with others – I do like Vitriol D’Oeillet and Cèdre, for instance. Others stand there, unloved (like Datura Noir). Still others I wish I had managed to get my hands on (Dent De Lait; Rahat Loukoum; Fourreau Noir – perhaps his most underrated amber).
The magnetism towards the man himself and his brand persists.
I have always liked the Lutens florals – A La Nuit , Tubereuse Criminelle – and have worn Nuits De Cellophane (a bitter, synthetic mandarin osmanthus) as a work scent. And in fact The Lady Tamer – as in a female tamer of other things, animals, rather than some brute who oppresses and defangs his women, is like a tropical version of the latter – there is something blinding and headache inducing about it (somehow, the existence of a Serge Lutens Frangipani had eluded my conscious, which I had to rectify the other day in Tokyo – after the Guerlain Vetiver Parfum, this was the other scent I knew I had to smell).
It smells deep pink. It is bright (dazzling, in a way). Frangipani, bitter almond and ylang (and presumably a lot of jasmine and tuberose as well), with some unpleasant initial indolics that make the entirety smell very much like an air freshener used to cover up the smell of the doo doo – like Glade Purple Lilac, or one of those ultra fake florals that masken, but can never hide, the products of our inner recesses. Thinking I would be buying this, instead I was slightly recoiling. On card later, smelling it again today, the plumeria note is far more alluring and I was reminded of the eighties pimiento-flecked editions of Chanel Gardénia, as well as Rochas’ ill fated Poupée (a strange, hazelnut inflected high pitched tuberose I still have some affection for). Shrill. Kinda cute. But yes : Poupee indeed.
Filed under Flowers
It’s been a while since I travelled up to Shinjuku Isetan specifically to try and potentially actually buy a new perfume. But I have always loved Guerlain Vetiver and the idea of a ‘parfum’ variant was just too intriguing to pass up. Buoyed up by a positive review on Persolaise I went straight to the Guerlain counter on an (unseemly busily Golden Week Saturday) and asked to smell it: within five minutes I had bought it. I love the bottle. The green colour. The label details. The heavy feel of it in the hand. The sense that the soul of the scent – the basic DNA – that husky, tobacco nutmeg with the vetiver and tonka that make it so distinctive – was still intact, even if some of the softer details have been swept away in the process.
Thirty years ago or so I used to hover about a bottle of the original Vetiver edt in a shop in Cambridge with a slightly tattered box (probably more tattered each time I went in there because it was me doing the tattering); eventually it went on sale and an ever increasingly perfume obsessed student could then buy it. It was a new departure for me , scent-wise, but there was something haunting about the perfume, like a cello played in a smoke- timbered house. It really tugged at an unknown chamber within me. Those melancholy, musky-citric, more profoundly human and poetic edges have been shorn away, and I miss them. But this slightly flintier, darker variant, which prolongs the essential vetiver note at the heart with a subtle note of juniper and coriander for a slightly basilic green astringency, is something I will wear regularly, probably layered with a touch of vintage Shalimar. It is me. And much better than some reformulations I have had over the years, where I always felt an overpreponderance of unnecessary, inexpensive ingredients. This is streamlined, simple. I made the right choice.
Filed under Flowers
I always liked cheap chip shop cherryade.
So naturally I love this.
Filed under Flowers
