THE BURNING QUESTION : : : RED SKIES by MAHER COLLECTIVE (2021) + REPLICA BY THE FIRESIDE by MARTIN MARGIELA (2015)

It’s that melancholic near end of the year feeling where you sum up in your mind everything that has been happening, how it has been and where you go from here.

For me, there is a lot of uncertainty surrounding everything given that I will be off work for fourteen months from February – (not by choice: I didn’t request that long for knee surgery but had to fit in with the academic year and financial considerations of the company -); I will have a lot of time on my hands. Which could either be a precious blessing – though I will have little money – if I get into a creative groove – or isolating and depressing, if I don’t.

During and post corona, I think I was somewhat mentally shattered. This year, I still feel I was slowly moving through and past all of that in some ways, having processed certain things that were driving me down, but still very susceptible to stress and neurosis – and increasingly, socially avoidant.

I am a very introverted extrovert – essentially a performer (D and I are doing a big show next week in Shinjuku) but also someone who ‘fills up’ very rapidly. This year I have found that with teaching and any other kinds of interaction that I get mentally exhausted more quickly round people than I used to (the natural ageing process? teaching burnout? deep down I do know I need this break to regroup and recalibrate) – and yet, simultaneously I find that loneliness; that piercing, mid-afternoon existential dread that can envelop and almost floor you when your thoughts whirl around you too much – I have to travel quite far to one particular school on a Thursday for instance and get the 3pm blues pretty badly; that feeling of being empty, but also having the whole universe inside you, can be saddening and hard to take.

It’s amazing how the void can, in a moment, be partly filled. I randomly went into Gap – to buy a sweater I needed in the pre-Black Friday sales, and suddenly the beautifully familiar opening minor ascendant chords of the dance floor classic Ain’t No Body by Rufus and Chaka Khan started playing on the shop soundsystem and began colouring my soul. You can be floundering in your own inevitabilities out at sea – and then are suddenly thrown a lifeline. The genius of music is its instancy – its ability to transcend all else and take you out of yourself, or rather into something : a feeling of connection and fullness. I had to stay in the store until the song had finished.

I have also been realizing the same about perfume. For me, wintry melancholia is a given: part of me loves this feeling; the poignancy of life and death poetically borne out all around you in the trees and the wrapped up people shuffling by in their own private worlds; the twinkling lights, the memories of old family Christmases as a child.

The heart lights also up though when someone walks by wearing a pleasing scent – an unsolicited brightening that can take you unawares. We often think about perfume from our own perspective and tastes, but it often fascinates me when particular scent profiles I would never in a million years consider wearing myself, work perfectly – and very enjoyably – on someone else. I have just had a bit of a wild and very sociable weekend which did me the world of good (though our livers might disagree): a Thanksgiving party crammed into a small apartment between Kawasaki and Tokyo on Saturday night where I got chatting to old friends and possibly some new – and a show in East Tokyo last night which was creative, life affirming and wonderful (with the way the world is going, I suppose ‘my kind’ will become more and more marginalized and vilified, but in a way that only makes the solidarity with those you feel a kinship with even stronger).

As I may have written before, I don’t do smoke. Smoky. Burnt woody. Bonfire-esque. Barbecue. Not even in food (I can’t stand smoked cheese, harissa, BBQ sauce – anything smokey at all – though I don’t mind a few songs by Smokey Robinson). In perfume, aggro-sizzlers, combined with the metallic and woody aromachemical; those niche-tastic woodcutter home batch black embered notes that studio type creations often employ, are the most unlikely things you will ever find me wear – well I simply wouldn’t, I can’t – but I will say that I was amazed at how much I was enjoying smelling an exemplar of this type – Red Skies by Maher Olfactive on my friend Andy at Josh and Amber’s. He had just one spray on his chest, he said, and the husky base (oakmoss, davana, labdanum and leather) brooding, jolted by the sharp metallic calone/kaffir lime leaf/bergamot jasmine of the top was sillaging just as a perfume should; sexy and fresh; enough to frame the conversation, adding intriguing depth to the interaction. A difficult, but very sweet, ultrasensitive character who works in the gaming industry, this perfume broadened his perimeters ; emboldened his entire aura.

Another smokey scent was evident immediately from the entrance at the party of the imperious Michelle, whose potently sultry perfume knocked you sideways and drew you in. It was the second question I asked after what’s your name, and it was ‘By The Fireside’ ‘- she presumably somehow assumed I would know it was a Replica, the range of perfumes by Martin Margiela that has become very popular here over the last year or so. Usually a perfume by that name is probably the very last one I would seriously sample in a full smorgasbord of ‘smell memories’ as I just don’t go for smouldering timber, but on her – this smelled fantastic.

I enjoy it sometimes when there is an intense internal friction within a perfume; a duel being fought deep inside the construction. Rather than a non-jagged edged smoothness, like the Sophia Grosjman -created Boucheron Jaipur I was myself wearing myself, By The Fireside presents as sweet, smothering and cosy – all chestnut, vanilla, amber, Peru balsam and cloves with a slow beating heart of rich warm orangeblossom – not entirely unlike the original Boudoir by Westwood, worn by the hostess that night, actually- perfumes not afraid to be sensual but without descending into tackiness –but cut through at its angrier core with a brow-furrowed, dark and deeply woody guaic and juniper accord that is in constant competition with its easier, sweeter side. The contradictions are compelling. We soon got into an intense discussion on astrology which was fascinating, all lit up extra by the beguiling otherness of the Other’s perfume; the perfume, weaving its way in and out of the mingling smells in the room and coming back to you, both making the person very distinct, as they emanate an unfamiliar cocoction that binds itself to the words and the connections you are making, and yet entering you, intimately – as you cannot help but notice and breathe in their whole bodily scent. At these times, the coldness in the air outside fades away; In such moments you feel more connected; whole; alive.