ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER: : AESOP HYWL (2017) + ABOVE US, STEORRA (2025)

I went to see the (currently intensely raved about and) future Oscar contender ‘ One Battle After Another’ with a friend last night. The film, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, whose films I have sometimes liked but never loved, was exhilarating in parts, if ultimately disappointing – far too simplistic and clobberistically hammered home for a film supposedly deliciously satirizing the current political mood – – but at least I smelled gorgeous in the cinema.

We had an endless summer – I wanted it never to finish- and were then plunged into a cold rainy early winter. With a constantly aching leg, and possibly a trapped nerve (should I do the right knee as well on November 27th as scheduled? An existential dilemma), the chilling damp exacerbates the pain. So did sitting in a cinema in Yokohama for three hours unable to find a comfortable position, stretching out the leg onto the seat in front like the bad gaijin I am – the country is obsessed with how terrible foreigners are at the moment, and you do feel a bit of a pariah the second you step out the door. Melanie and I couldn’t help making comments throughout the film, though, and even laughed – gasp! keep your emotions to yourself! don’t laugh out loud in a Japanese cinema! – self control is always the key, didn’tcha knew? – because the film was hilarious in parts; Leonardo Di Caprio’s best role ever I would say, and because I have always been something of a noisy fidget who can’t keep its trap shut.

In colder weather I predictably switch to the ambery. And all year I have been layering; it seems impossible to wear just one perfume. I get more pleasure from constantly comparing and melanging. Right now, while stocks last! – the divine combination is Laura Mercier’s Ambre Lumière – a more wearable Obsession, gorgeous actually- and Guccy Envy For Men – a delicious gingery amber that it seems I was born to wear and which the d loves on me: the Ambre Lumiere, down to its last dregs – (both are of course discontinued and phosphorically expensive on ebay – 100, 000 for the Gucci, what? as only the best perfumes always are, so I should be sparingly stingeing my way through the remaining juices but naturally I do the opposite: spray them on the shoulders under a Uniqlo light undershirt; the Envy on the beard and behind the ears and on the clothing, and on the wrists, and goodness did it smell lovely all blended together last night. Bliss. I love that cozy warm undernuzzle, when, even if what is transpiring on the screen is insulting to the intelligence, as it often was – M and I groaning and eyerolling quite often when the caricatured lefties and righties uttered their ludicrousnesses – the rightwing racist c*&^%s as hateable as you wanted them to be; the wokeistas often equally irritating (probably Paul Thomas Anderson’s point – it’s all a load of fucking bullshit even if I know what side I am ultimately on): when your own body is emitting such fragrant heaven though – M was wearing Matiere Premiere’s Encens Suave which I gave her a decant of and might be her future signature – Somalian frankincense, vanilla, coffee, she is in love – it worked great with my own bundle.

I am all for spiced ambers. A particular fave is the original Guerlain Heritage Eau De Parfum – piquant black pepper melting into one of the best balsamic drydowns I have ever experienced – where can I get a bottle? – and I must say that the new ‘Above Us, Steorra’ (?) reminded me a little of the Guerlain at times when I tried it the other day at the new Aesop store in Kamakura – The Elephant Man out perfume testing.

I love cardamom, even if I have never been satisfied by its usage in perfumery – no one ever uses enough (only the one perfume I ever made by myself, Java by The Black Narcissus, fulfilled the cardamomonic quotient). In the shop, on first spray I said, ah yes, frankincense – I was told: no, amber and pink pepper, but of course I was right – obviously there is a lot of olibanum in this you fool – over vanilla and labdanum….quite a nice, physically hot and spicy new release even if ultimately there was a hint of sports fragrance somewhere in the subliminal mix that put me off. I wouldn’t mind retrying it though nor having this on a casual passerby – at least isn’t yet another Baccarat Rouge copycat. Aesop perfumes are not entirely my bag (are they yours? ) : nice enough; some decent ingredients, but to paraphrase Madonna, they don’t quite take me there. Too…pressed down inside themselves in interior pulverization with no room to breathe and never a lick of humour. Very popular in Japan though; with all the sandalwood and rosy spice recognizably leaking out from the doorsteps of each premises, they have become the new Lush.

The only Aesop perfume I actually have in my collection in Hywl, given to me as a birthday present many years ago but which I would rather die than wear (thanks Denise, in any case). This is one of those uberserious forest scents with some properly hard-assed woods (my god, Sean Penn, excellent granite thighs aside, was ridiculous in that film last night, such a caricature- meaning, of course, that he is guaranteed to win an Academy Ward); cedar, hinoki, vetiver, oakmoss with no sweetening mitigation whatsoever; on my own skin it makes me smell like the very worst kind of Neanderthal Idiot and pick up an Uzi myself and go a bit postal: it is a wrongness I can’t exaggerate in words.. I truly do hate it. So does D.

And yet. I have had two distinct experiences where women smelled so beguiling in Hywl that it almost derailed my senses and I had to do total double takes. This was quite a big lesson for me. The film was perfectly right to mock gender politics – they had become fascistic and oppressive and something was obviously going to give – but I still deeply believe that in perfume terms, though I probably sound like a broken record, bridging the so-called divide between the can sometimes lead to beauteous results.

The first experience of Hywl-On-A-Laday was with my friend Sarah, a British entrepreneur from Liverpool who I have become closer to this year: wild and hilarious and a bit on the neurodivergent tip like me – oh god, I sound like someone satirizing oversensitive asparagus tips like myself in ‘One Battle’ last night – but it is true; we both get oversaturated very quickly psychically in social situations so will just say after a couple of hours together, ok that was great, I am going back now – without drawing it all out for the sake of politesse and we both love that fact; on one memorable occasion singing Prince songs for two hours in a cheap Italian restaurant, whole albums all the way through, to the point of considering even doing a performing tribute band called Bendy and Risa – then saying right, let’s go . Her Hwyl gave her a gorgeous, sultry and unplaceable edge that both accentuated and counteracted her powerful personality. I kept inhaling.

As I did with a young translator I met for the first time either this year, was it or last …recently, anyway – now when was it, kin ell, am I disintegrating ? – I have no idea (time has become meaningless with all the painkillers and and god knows what else…, operations, so much time alone sometimes I just feel that I am going into a twilight zone and actually want to just get back to work and have a more stringent lifestyle if my shite skeletal system will let me ; to get on a more even keel.

Anyway, we met the lovely Helen at a local institution we call ‘The Brown Bar’ down at Kitakamakura station because of its nicotine stained walls and smeary atmosphere though it is actually called – Wabisuke – a slightly cold and unwelcoming, but very bohemian and conducive place we nevertheless sometimes go to because it has great ambience, music and lighting for those local drinkers who like a bit of tango or jazz and to chat quietly and drink themselves to death in the low lights.

I am always slightly nervous in such situations with newcomers. One thing that has re-emerged as an obvious things from this year is d and i’s great difference in social interactions. As I write this, he is at a new writer’s workshop he has organized for poets just down the road at our friend Simon’s – a journalist and poet from New Zealand. The congregated are going to read poetry, give feedback; walk around the haunted lake and write on spec. I am delighted they are doing it but I could never – I would feel so squeamish though I might meet up for a drink with some of them at the local izakaya one minute from here a bit later in the evening once I have finished writing this. Physically I just couldn’t do it right now, anyway (I feel this knee replacement has done something to my whole skeleton, so out of balance I feel like like a de-backboned python ) nor mentally – I like my interactions one on one. D, as I am sure I have written before, is a social butterfly with no hang ups in that regard and will meet anyone. He simply doesn’t have my (osteo) porosity. He likes new people.

Which is how we ended up spending one evening with a lovely English girl from Kendall – I knew she was from there because my previous partner, a certain Nick Chapman I was with for six months at Cambridge many many moons ago – had exactly the same mint cake burr specific to that area in the north. She was very cool, and had just released her first English translation of a novel by Izumi Suzuki, ‘Set My Heart On Fire’, a nihilistic exploration of a woman in the 1970’s Yokohama groupie scene I had happened to have already read a review of in The Japan Times the day before; I envied her young confidence and unforced charm; we kind of hit it off.

Her perfume though: I could never have personally identified it as Hywl; I was just so transfixed by the atmosphere she was giving off I eventually had to ask her. Like a picture with the ideal frame, it set her off perfectly; self-containing her inner confidence, a girl who had recently spent months just ‘being’ in Chile because she liked all the space and the mountains of Santiago and the Atacama desert and thought she would pick up another language while she was at it, and she had a distance about her – a quiet magnetism- that the perfume brought out succinctly. The chypricity of Hywl on her skin – honestly fascinating- was set at precisely the right volume – and brought out a backdrop of intelligence and ‘you will never know me unless I let you’.

I suppose I could do with trying to be more subtle myself in this Helenish way . People might have been coughing on the bus with my ambry spiceness last night (they actually were). Sorry but I couldn’t help it and am going to wear the same combo tonight. I very carefully took my paces out in the rain last night (I can walk without a stick when I want to impress friends with my progress), but I was loving the vibe my own unidentifiable sillage was giving off – certainly not immediately categorizable at any rate (unlike the characters in that film last night, who were either machine gun toting pregnant revolutionaries or repellent smelling white supremacists – Leo himself clearly stinking in his filthy plaid dressing gown and greasy hair – there was no subtlety in that film overall whatsoever and it eventually grated the goat. Which I know is probably precisely the point intended. Sometimes satire needs to paint the picture in very broad strokes so that the audience at large – they are hoping to fill out the multiplexes and teach them a lesson – can ‘get it’. To understand the message (that We Are Living In Dangerous Times, Baby – oh really? I hadn’t noticed. ). And it was funny: the action packed, brilliantly choreographed second of the third hours having me on the edge of my seat thinking wow this is like 70’s Scorcese – so beautifully filmed and propulsive. Quite entertaining. Still, the ending was, for me at least, too moronically basic. Which is also how I don’t want perfume to be. I need complexity. I need resonance, style, subversion even – Hywl had that,on both of the women described above. Why not put a few intuitively felt plot twists into your own life story to escape the obvious and boring we are so surrounded with on a daily basis, wear what is not expected; not resorting to what is typical and prescribed and deathly dull. No: give me something to think about. Immerse me in ambiguity.