It’s suddenly gone colder today, and the post I was writing didn’t fit my mood. I am going for something for something cosy from the backlog instead. Put the kettle on, won’t you?
Filed under Flowers
PACO RABANNE METAL (1979) : CHAMPAGNE JACUZZIS, BIANCA; BUBBLE-FOAMed ECSTACY, AND THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO
This week I find myself deeply drawn to Paco Rabanne’s Métal.
It is spring outside. Bright, something between warm and cold, and the flowers are blossoming slowly: tulips pushing through, peach blossoms already blown away by the wind.
With the sunlight, the new air, and all the freshness I feel in the atmosphere, as well as the freedom of being off work for almost three weeks (sheer heaven), I want optimism: zest, but with emotional, and aesthetic, intelligence.
Métal, a sly, forever fresh, delicious concoction, fits the bill perfectly, a scent that is not often written about for some reason, but one that I find very beautiful, and strangely not dated considering the fact that it is already 34 years old.
No: Métal is ageless. A shimmering, (dirty) angel of the disco set who constantly has one eye on the next: a laughing, exuberant, parfum savonneux: always soaped down and lightly fresh from the shower, washing away the sins from the night before with dismissive,deft swishes of the hand;a foaming, aldehydic sparkle of fresh greens; ylang ylang, white iris, rosewood and peach, all gently laminated with the classic, subtlely metallic sheen of rose à la Calandre, Paco Rabanne’s other, rather more philosophical and held back masterpiece from 1969.
Upon contact with the skin, this lugubrious scent bursts with life: quills forth from the bottle clean and energized, elegant, green and sweet, the protectant veil of aldehydes preserving the joyous flowers and fruit within in a bubble of about-to-step-out-the-house ecstacy that never fades; a white pant-suit (white, white, most definitely white – the white of Bianca Jagger and her Studio 54 stallioned entrance, the white of the Scarface mansion: that seventies, flared Travolta white; the white of the lights; cocaine, and the mindless, careless, flamboyant last days of disco……)
Under the glorious sheen of this scent is that effervescent, pampered smell of expensive designer bubble baths that was taken up again later in the eighties in such scents as Courrèges In Blue (1983) and Byblos (1989). Beneath all that luminosity, if you look at her closely, Métal is smiling, of course; but wide-eyed, with gleaming shark-white teeth. Though she never betrays it, there is something depraved beneath this epidermis, and herein lies the real beauty of the perfume: unlike other disco era perfumes of the period – Ivoire, Scherrer, Rive Gauche, Michelle – which all have some internal self-awareness of their in-built shelf lives, an inner knowledge of their decadence, Métal conceals this side of herself to mad perfection – even to herself :: we see just a glimpse of it, occasionally, under her future-seeing façade, in her eyes: and, as with other such perfumes such as Chanel’s Cristalle, to which this perfume bears a slight resemblance (though fruitier, younger, less haughty), this is, to me, what seals the scent in forever-fresh immortality.
Unlike the ‘clean’ fragrances of current climes though, which are so chemically preened you immediately smell a rat, Métal is evincibly human ( if perfectly put together: it is very difficult to pick out individual notes – all so sheened and shined together effortlessly in a manner very much of the time); a scent that must have smelled stunningly beautiful emanating from the shoulders of the disco creatures of that era; or the valiumed wives moving about their bay area lidos and mansions, as sunlight spliced their vodka martinis and their long, floating sleeves trailed the secretive jungles of their houseplants.
As they, like Nina Van Pallant in Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye, concealed the potential numbness within the cold veneer of the current, of the fashionable, the momentary; the flesh that would decay; but which, at this moment in time, laminated in Métal, felt preserved.
To me, there is definitely something of all this in this scent, like the liana females who also inhabit Harry’s House, one of my favourite songs by Joni Mitchell…
Caught up at the light of the fishnet windows
Of Bloomingdale’s
Washing those high fashion girls
Skinny black models with raveen curls
Beauty parlor blondes with credit card eyes
Looking for the chic and the fancy
To buy
He opens up his suitcase
In the continental suite
And people twenty stories down
Colored current in the street
A helicopter lands on the Pan Am roof
Like a dragonfly on a tomb
And businessmen in button-downs
Press into conference rooms
Battalions of paper-minded males
Talking commodities and sales
While at home their paper wives
And paper kids
Paper the walls to keep their gut reactions hid
Yellow checkers for the kitchen
Climbing ivy for the bath
She is lost in House and Gardens
He’s caught up in Chief Of Staff
He drifts off into the memory
Of the way she looked in school
With her body oiled and shining
At the public swimming pool….
Yes: these slender, maquillaged, loose-limbed, pant-suited women who, in the movies at least, exist to rest on the arms of the rich men who own them…
And the white Art Deco mansions, in Florida.
I have referenced De Palma’s perennially popular classic Scarface before in relation to Léonard’s lovely, if simple, Tamango (1977), which always reminds me of the character Elvira and her gauche, ‘bored’ moves on the dancefloor early on in the film as Tony is listing to possess her, materialistically, as his trophy wife. Métal, which is far more complex, expensive smelling, and downright gorgeous in many ways, might, in some ways, be the same character a couple of years later, when, married to Pacino, we see her, still beautiful, but pining away in their gilded mansion, their giant, ivory jacuzzi filled with foam, champagne bottles and excess.
This perfume might almost be what holds her together: it never loses its ever-recurring sparkle, its foaming, delirious lustre.
For this review I have been discussing two bottles of vintage Eau De Metal, and also the parfum (pictured), a bit ropey and old now, but still lovely. There is not a great deal of difference between the two perfumes; one is just lighter and fresher, the other more long-lasting, as you might expect. Ultimately, though, I think I like Eau De Metal best and would recommend it to anyone who goes for this deeply appealing, timeless, feminine sheen, still easily found at discounters online. Get vintage if you can.
Filed under Floral Aldehydes, Perfume Reviews
GOLDMINE TRASH
Recently Birgit at Olfactoria published a post congratulating herself on finally finishing a whole bottle of perfume. When I read it I didn’t know whether to laugh or blush…
Yesterday, upon the orders of Duncan, and because we have the time now that we are in the spring holidays ( I am a slob of unbelievable levels, and he is a tidy Virgoan ) I had to dust, reorder and make more presentable the perfume cabinets, a task that took me a whole afternoon, but which yielded some treasures I had forgotten I had, and some I had no idea I owned in the first place. We also nailed them to the walls to prevent the possible calamity I described in my Killed By Perfume article, so hopefully now if there is a Richter 9 earthquake the perfumes may rattle about and spill but at least they won’t be the source of our demise.
While going through whatever was there, and trying to put it all in some semblance of order or taxonomy, I also threw out whatever ’empties’ were malingering at the back of the closets, or in long neglected drawers: they constituted a whole bag of bottles that will have to go out with the glass next Tuesday. What the neighbours will think I can’t imagine.
The shame, the decadence…
Filed under Bric-a-brac
SUPERCILIOUS: RACINE by MAITRE PARFUMEUR ET GANTIER (1988)
The last time I was in Paris was 2005, a five day perfume whirl in which D and I did literally nothing but take in perfumeries; no time, even, for art or sightseeing, though the diamond brilliance of the December light illuminated every building with a beauty that was breathtaking and formed a constant backdrop as we skirted from one place to another, all the places I I had long wanted to visit, such as Serge Lutens and Les Parfums de Rosines at the Palais Royal; the stunning Guerlain flagship store on the Champs Elysées; Anémone, Colette, JAR, Caron, Montale (which you could smell from across the street, and where I bought the glorious Aoud Queen Roses); the Etat Libre d’Orange headquarters in the Marais, and, perhaps most exquisitely, the gorgeous Maître Parfumeur et Gantier on the Rue Des Capucines, in which, after losing our way, and a big steak lunch in the brasserie opposite, we entered and lost ourselves; a range of perfumes – poetic, restrained, tasteful – that somehow gets lost in the forest of blogography words written on the newer, sharper, iconclasts…
Yet its founder, Jean Laporte, who sadly died in 2011, was also a great olfactory innovator, founding L’Artisan Parfumeur in the seventies and beginning the niche revolution alongside, other French luminaries such as Diptyque, in the process. As L’Artisan became more commercial/twisted ( I don’t know about you, but I personally lament what has happened to the house, no matter how devilishly clever the current creations by Bertrand Duchaufour may be: Vanilia vs Vanille Absolument; Tubéreuse vs Nuit de Tubéreuse, Patchouli (exquisite, exquisite ) vs Patchouli Patch? Vétiver vs Coeur de Vétiver Sacré? No contest bébé, the originals, all cruelly discontinued, were all infinitely better – simpler, yes, but more lovely, in my view); but whatever the reasons (perhaps he was bought out), Monsieur Laporte set up a new company, Maître Parfumeur Et Gantier, which, as its names suggests, does in fact sell scented gloves in lambskin, deerskin and peccary, among other uselessly luxurious accoutrements, a throwback to other centuries, a feeling that is accentuated by the silence and otherworldliness of spending an afternoon in the boutique with the gracious assistants who come alive as you enter the premises like reanimating, magic mannequins against a backdrop of red.
What comes across in the house’s creations is a deep subtlety; the scents in the range all feverishly delicate, mysterious, tucked inside of themselves; beautifully androgynous, or flamingly aristocratic, as in their gorgeous purple magnolia poudré, Magnolia Pourpre, a lavish scent if ever there was one, but still with that watered air of restraint that seems to characterize all the creations on offer. I could happily have bought up half the shop – the myrrh, tarragon and coffee-laced curiosity L’Eau Des Isles, and the glass-eyed, foppish Iris Bleu Gris were particular highlights for me, but there was one of the scents I just couldn’t resist: Racine, a perfume I am extremely fond of, and the scent I will finish this week of vetivers with.
As I have previously discussed, citrus top notes are the most common addition to vetiver blends, particularly those aimed at men, and in the present dicta, there should also be pepper, black or pink, in addition to harsher, woody backdrops, grapefruit, and possibly even a little drop of oudh or its synthetic equivalent if ya pleasey, just to keep it sexy and au courant with that sillage that says darlin’ I mean business.
Usually in perfumes of this type, the lemon or bergamot in the opening will disappear fairly quickly and be taken over by the usual contemporary architecture of cashmere woods and the like, and this is where Racine is different: rather than the constrained urbanity of Tom Ford Grey Vetiver or Lalique’s Encre Noire and their debonair, besuited attractiveness, Racine, from the Les Caprices du Dandy collection, entwines a predominant, fresh-as-a-vine, sinuous vetiver from the Réunion Isles with a sucked-on-a-lemon, imperious citrus note, combined beautifully with a mauve-hued, satin plum cushion of prune, oakmoss, geranium, and, gently intertwined, a touch of equally dry, deep-octaved patchouli.
Here, there is none of the synthetic bolstering that constantly gets on my wick; instead the scent comes across as effortlessly aerated; refined, heads above, and positively supercilious, a quality that I realize is not desirable on a daily basis, but which, like a feline, I sometimes need to just get through the day, to rise above it all, stay intact and not let the banal shit of the dreary, brainwashed weekly ‘reality’ get me down. Though my bottle is now empty, save a drop or two for the sake of reminiscence, this was always, along with vintage N°19 and Calèche, my go-to for days when I wanted to feel detached; high-spined. From the very name of the scent, referencing the renowned seventeenth century writer Jean Racine and his elegant, ‘diamond-edged’ prose, to its direct allusion to the vetiver plant itself (‘racine‘ means ‘root’ in French), to the almost ludicrously ‘royal'(and slightly overdone) design of the flacon, the whole experience of Racine was a great, regal pleasure, while simultaneously remaining very wearable; one of those perfumes I could spray on at will and always trust to deliver the goods – the vetiver/lemon throughout the day interlaced, the purples of its velvet-lined garments consistently, pleasingly, presumptuous.
Filed under Flowers
EQUILIBRIUM : SPICED CITRUS VETIVER by SONOMA SCENT STUDIO (2013)
I had a brazen woody on one hand – Wazamba (Parfums d’Empire), and Spiced Citrus Vetiver on the other. And passing from the simplistic ebonic rudeness of the former, to the latter, far superior perfume, it seemed as if I were suddenly staring right down through my own hand, down through to the glassy surface of a forest pool, a three-dimensionality and sylvan aliveness that was quite startling in comparison.
A shimmering vista, like curtains opening on a intricate, pastoral scene at the opera, the eye taking in a thousand details at once as the prelude of the orchestra starts up; each ingredient shifting into its place with a well-grounded twinkle in its eye.
Soon, there blooms a big, beautiful orange, surprising us when we might have expected more tart citruses such as lemon, or lime – the usual suspects in vetiver/citrus blends – but this vivid, delicious blood orange immediately casts a warm, solar glow over the proceedings; an interlude for viola and orchestra in a definitively major key, as soft, floral absolutes of osmanthus and jasmine sambac emerge and shield us from all harshness.
The cited ingredients of clove, ginger and cinnamon are only subtly perceptible to my nose, adding complexity and a certain nose-tingling aspect perhaps (particularly in that delectable opening), but nothing in this blend can detract from the key players of the perfume, who, when Orange gracefully leaves the stage, sing their contrabasso mellowness in balanced unison for hours: a measured duet of Sri Lanka vetiver and Mysore sandalwood (believe it: I can smell it), while a sly touch of vanilla absolute adds an extra suffusion of delicate heat.
The simplicity of this final stage of the perfume may disappoint some who are more enamoured with the elaborateness of the opening, but the overall effect of the scent is so optimistic and uplifting, with such a sense of inner equilibrium that, as with the studio’s Cocoa Sandalwood, you can feel your shoulders unstiffening, loosening; a scent perfect for a day alone at home when you feel that you need to compose and regain yourself.
For those looking for an exciting, virile, off-kilter vetiver, you might want to try a more earthy take on the note such as Route Du Vetiver, or a stricter interpretation such as Artillery No 4. This perfume is a more rounded, feminine take on a overly-trodden path, and the perfumer, Laurie Erickson, has, with this creation, cannily filled a vetiver void in the market – this could be the one that converts the vetiver haters.
Gone are the soil-sodden, earthen smokiness; the resinous, lingering, almost astringent aspects of the root (all of which incidentally I love about such vetivers and the reason I wear them…) Instead, in their place we find a scent of balance, solidity and natural well-being; an elixir of grasses, woods, spices, flowers and citrus fruits that for many, I imagine, will become a dependable, well-loved balm for the soul.
Filed under Perfume Reviews, Vetiver
MY PRISTINE BEAU: VETIVER BABYLONE by ARMANI PRIVE (2008)
Continuing on our theme of blameless young men, and their faultless, light colognes (see Signoricci and Original Vetiver), we find ourselves today revisiting Vétiver Babylone, a perfume that forms part of the Armani Privé Collection – one of the most overtly superbist lines in the world of perfume: at least four times as expensive as his regular scents, immaculately blended and housed in stylishly low key flacons of African Kotibe wood; scents that always smell rich, soigné, but never stray beyond the faultlines of taste; and never take that extra, daredevil risk that would make them smell truly exciting. Like a faultlessly made-to-measure suit, his clients can swan into the Armani boutique, have their scent chosen from one of the muted, glorious blends in the selection; and put their trust in his wise, been-there done-that, hands.
One can easily imagine Signore Giorgio some afternoon in June, with a young, exquisitely dressed and handsome companion, getting ready for their day ahead, and, before clothing himself and at the behest of the maestro – several, light but perfectly judged spritzes of the immaculate Vétiver Babylone sprayed in all the right places as they descend from their balcony and head out into the streets of Milan – the celebrated, experienced master designer, and his bright-eyed willing consort.
The scent of his giovane on this day is a sharp, refined and masculine tea citrus, crisp and new, with echoes of woods, patchouli, and a purified, vetiver delicately poised somewhere in the distance. The contemporary, metallically preserved top notes (bergamot, cardamom, mandarin, pink pepper, coriander), stay pure and crystalline as a Dolomiti stalactite; the stately, more suggestively sexual undertones taking hours to appear, finally later at dusk, when this beautiful man is back at the villa being undressed.
Filed under Perfume Reviews, Vetiver
cascades
I took this picture yesterday in Engakuji shrine, just down the hill from my house. A cascading flourish of bamboo, some kind of Japanese catkins (or laburnum?), and in the foreground, with its fresh, delicate scent, white plum blossom. An impetuous, stirring whoosh of incoming Spring.
Filed under Photography
O The Virtues: ORIGINAL VETIVER by CREED (2004) + SIGNORICCI by NINA RICCI (1976)
A bright winter’s morning. The bathroom of a stately home.
On the wash basin, lies a pristine bar of soap.
It is the most perfect soap imaginable; a hard, impenetrable, triple-milled yellow soap; the clean, heart-clearing brightness of bergamot: the finest essences of sun-binding neroli all married grassly to a light, fresh note of cool, purified vetiver root planted down, somewhere beneath the surfaces, in its fragrant, pounded, centre.
A vetiver, then, of spanking immaculateness and spruceness; a perfect accoutrement to the face-splashing morning ritual: a scent that very reeks – very nearly, ALMOST – of trust.
Until you smell Signoricci that is, when the artificial, clammed together, and somewhat hysterical brightness of Creed’s Original Vetiver is suddenly exposed……
Signoricci, one of the few key masculines from a classical house that, in its heyday, produced some of the most delicate and exquisite feminine florals ever created, predates Creed’s scent by three long decades and is of a similar soap-cleansed theme; citrus (lemon, verbena and lime), over delicate, cologne-steeped vetiver, but in this long discontinued perfume the effect is incredibly, incredibly refined.
I first smelled smelled Signoricci at my brand new friend Federico’s apartment in Rome one October afternoon – standing there, alone as it was on his wooden bookshelf in his room – and I remember how immediately blown away I was by its deceptively simple beauty; a beautiful conception of fine-hearted masculinity that is almost impossible to imagine now in today’s world of hard-hitting woods; spices; and designer-bearded synthetics.
Beginning with perhaps the most piercing, yet simultaneously gentle and perfect citrus top note I know of, the vetiver, cedar and sandalwood heart of this composition is revealed gently and gradually; an accord of almost heartbreaking cleanliness: a perfection and purity of soul.
Its perfection notwithstanding, if there can be any criticism of Signoricci (and must there be, really?) it is just that: this perfume, in all honesty, is possibly too perfect; a saintly, flawlessly scrupled man who seems too good, almost, to be possibly true.
Like doubting Thomases, we stand agape.
Filed under Perfume Reviews, Vetiver
KILLED BY PERFUME – a tale of Japan, earthquakes, and my potentially toppling, lethal, perfume cabinets
Tomorrow will be the second anniversary of The Great Tohoku Earthquake, a day that all Japanese, and all people living in this country, will never forget. It was a catastrophe of such destructive proportions that almost 20,000 people were destroyed and entombed in the devastating carnage that was wrought by the unprecedented tsunami that tore the north of the country apart; footage of which, unlike my family and friends back in England and elsewhere, I could never bring myself to watch because it was too horrific, too close to home.
It was a completely surreal and terrifying experience. One day we were going about our daily business, the next we were being told that we couldn’t go out in the rain in case it was radioactive because of the fallout from Fukushima: we found ourselves sealing up windows, stuck inside like some B-movie, shielding ourselves from an invisible threat; the aftershocks continuing for a very long time afterwards, constantly rattling everyone’s nerves; we had no idea what to do, whether to leave the country or stay, assailed on either side by the hysteria of the western media, family and friends; contained, on the other, by school responsibilities and the eerie reassurances of the Japanese authorities. I have never been so confused in my entire life, and was only kept afloat by phone calls to my mother who somehow managed to absorb all the information that was being given and relay it back to me in calm, objective fashion: you don’t have to flee…..yet. Wait it out. See what happens…
There we were, stuck inside the house, not sure what was going to happen, bunkered down, unsure of whether the air was safe to breathe, or whether a nuclear disaster of cataclysmic proportions was about to rain down on us if the nuclear reactors at the Daiichi plant did, as threatened, explode and destroy everything in their wake.
I was for fleeing (though what to do about the cat was a huge, boiling point of contention between us that made Duncan refuse to leave and me hysterically exasperated….)
We didn’t have to stay. We had friends in England and Australia offering to put us up, even fly us out if we didn’t have the cash immediately to hand, as hordes of foreigners panicked and rushed towards Tokyo Narita airport. There was even a message from the British Embassy saying that there was a charter plane TONIGHT which can get you to Hong Kong, and from there you can ‘get to’ Britain, as though we were part of The Great Escape. All this while the Japanese around us went about their business as usual, stoically (or brainwashed? we didn’t know), and the teachers at my school continued to go to teach. For the first time in my life I really felt totally at a loss.
************
Apart from my mother’s brilliant handling of the situation, the other thing that truly saved me was Facebook and the support and advice of my friends within and outside of Japan – it really was a lifeline to sanity (and yes, I realize, I realize guiltily, profoundly and completely that what we were going through was NOTHING compared to what the poor people freezing up in the north were going through, those whose families had been washed away, homeless; bereaved, in situations beyond imagining, but this only added to the weird emotional maelstrom. Even though you yourself had thought you were going to die in the earthquake, because it really did feel like the building I was in was about to fall down, as parts of the ceiling started to collapse and I clung to the wall praying that it wouldn’t): despite all of this, you knew that you were so lucky in comparison to all the others who were going through unimaginable sufferering in the affected areas that you felt you couldn’t moan or complain in any way. You had to pretend, almost, that nothing had happened.
It was a noble collectivism that the Japanese in the streets around me evinced, and it was profoundly impressive, but at the same time disturbingly coercive, especially to someone as childishly in need of self-expression as myself; I am a person who, if forced to contain strong emotions too long, feel as if I could go mad. And at that time, I really did feel as if that were a distinct possibility.
Aside my mother, then, the other thing that saved me was Facebook. Really. There were so many people giving us encouragement and advice, or just allowing us to vent with dark humour if necessary; just the very spontaneity of having that connection to the outside world at your fingertips was an outlet that allowed me to see, feel, process and interact with my friends and family and in the process try to understand what was going on and what we should do next. Flee? Stay? (We went on an eight day ‘adventure’ down south, to Atami, Nagoya and Osaka as a compromise in the end…, and it was only once I got away from the immediate confinement of the house, and the seemingly imminent dangers, that I could finally come to terms with what a dreadful calamity had happened to the country, and all those poor people and families, and, seeing the first cherry blossom trees of the season, break down properly and grieve for them.)
* * *
With the recent ‘timeline’ function on Facebook it is possible to revisit exactly what you wrote at particular times in the past, rather than those impressions immediately flying off into the ether, never to be retrieved.
I have not looked at the conversations from that time until now, but have just scrolled down to the posts from March 2011 and all is raw and vivid. I can feel it all coming back as though it had just happened . There is a lot of humour, but also unkempt, intense feelings…..
Is it emotionally pornographic of me to want to publish some of that here on The Black Narcissus today? Possibly. But I don’t really care. I find that now I have started writing about this subject I don’t have the desire or ability to stop, particularly considering the date. This time two years ago the country was functioning as normal; the next day it was to be ripped apart and come to a virtual standstill. No trains, electricity, rations in the supermarkets, the dire and very real treat of radioactive poisoning, bodies still buried under mud. It feels right, somehow, to revisit it.
March 15th: My Facebook status was:
COCKTAIL CHERRIES. Apparently the red food colouring contains large amounts of iodine, something we all need against radiation. This is a product unlikely to be swept from the shelves by the panicked..
Reading this strikes me as bizarre; I had totally forgotten about it, but I am writing, apparently seriously, about cocktail cherries, and how we could surreptiously secure ourselves supplies of iodine if it ran out (or if foreigners were somehow excluded from getting them). But we really were deeply worried about radiation, and still are to a large extent. I don’t trust the government and have no idea if the air we are still breathing or the food we are eating is in fact safe.
Another post from March 15th:
In terms of scent, Demeter’s Pina Colada is working for me right now.
Funny how perfume could work its way in there…anything simplistic, charming, stupid, was quite good at this time in the days of the aftermath…banal TV drama box sets, sweet scents, just things to relieve your mind and nerves.
The same day:
The poor people! I am sorry: I have been selfishly cocooning myself in pop irony and all, but I think me and the D are just in deep shock, like most others. It is only starting to dawn on me how much people are suffering around the country. We actually realized it was real only this Sunday morning.
When the earthquake happened, and I was evacuated from the building I was in, I had to walk home, alone, for three and half hours, along the river, just following people as I wasn’t sure what direction we were supposed to be going in. Looking back I think I was in a trance, as I remember stopping to take pictures of plum blossoms and noticing how beautiful the sky looked. And standing next to the railway lines, seeing old ladies being lifted down on emergency ladders from the carriages, but watching from below, these people huge and cinematic, the sun glinting through the pine trees as they walked slowly and warily along the tracks. By the time I got from Fujisawa to Ofuna I saw that there was a blackout there, and that there were no traffic lights; cars making sense of it all but in danger like some 80’s horror movie. I kept walking, and up the hill where I live which is always dark but which was now almost completely pitch black except for some very faint emergency earthquake lighting, and some Japanese voices droning through speakers placed somewhere that intoned advice on what to do next. I still hadn’t heard from Duncan, but for some reason, which I am ashamed to admit now, all I could think about was Hitchcock. I HAD to see The Birds.
My first reaction when it happened was to come home and watch The Birds.
Because I am, how can I put it, cold perhaps? The Birds was so right you can’t imagine. Because when I was walking home, in a daze, everything was extraordinarily beautiful. The light was obscene. And there was a row of cormorants, about twenty, perched weirdly on a telephone line across the river. I was in a strange state. The earthquake was real, but The Birds is so abstract, just fear manifest, that it was perfect.
* * *
March 13th: I had a japanese lesson yesterday in Kamakura. It was like a ghost town. And in a chichi cafe, quite empty aside me and Ms Nagai, I learned all the vocabulary. Radioactivity, leak, and three words for dead body. ‘itai’: corpse (polite nuance);’shitai’: ‘corpse’: (a bit direct) and ‘shikabane’ (which i already knew): dead body, a bit old, with fishy circumstance.
Seriously, we feel a bit seasick. is the ground still moving? this is HIDEOUS
Can’t sleep. Panicked.
Duncan is so exhausted he is zonked out: I am lying there in a froth and no sweet marjoram is going to change it
Just awoke from a dream in which I was pushing my mother from an earthquaking hotel in Paris.
…
When it comes to nuclear rain, i could do without the exquisite japanese ambiguity. Fuck! Another aftershock.
….as i write!
This country is prone to cover ups and anything to avoid losing face: then the bastards at the helm apologize sometime later at a news conference; a hypocrisy i DESPISE!
…..
It’s like my internal calibration system is all wavy; an unpleasant drunkenness.
\
D has gone out to scope for supplies (March 14th)
We are in bunker mode!
Status: “Earthquake?” “No: two eggs.”
This is a conversational exchange D and I have just had. Our brains have turned to gelatin.
March 14th:
it’s like living in a Frankie Goes To Hollywood song. My piano teacher just said ‘don’t get wet in the nuclear rain!’
‘Ok!’ I cheerily replied. ‘I’ll try not to!’
March 15th:
Dare we emerge?
Seriously, my friends: if you have any information regarding radiation and nuclear bullshite, feel exceedingly free to share it with me. Particularly if it is reassuring (you may edit apocalyptic broadcasts accordingly).
….and I don’t watch any TV either: just snippets of internet news. Who wants to continually watch death and destruction? Just voyeuristic vultures. I feel for those people so much but feasting my eyes and soul on it for hours and hours at a time seems pointless. Masochistic.
Neil Chapman : Hanging my shirts out in the nuclear air.
.
D:
bring em in you tit!
·
Just opening the window to get some ‘fresh air’ has suddenly taken on sinister implications. should we be sealing ourselves in a la Sylvia Plath?
And so it went on and on, trying for a bit of levity, and trying not to let too much of the horrifying information get to me. Having friends to talk things through with ( I haven’t put up much of that here as they might not want it to be made public) but in any case it kept me feeling more balanced.
There was one post, though, something I wrote on a day going back to work in Fujisawa, when my senses were simultaneously dead, yet more alive than they have ever been, which captured precisely what I was feeling. I have just found it:
Neil Chapman: Plugged In To The Matrix.
Now where shall I begin?
There is no doubt that this has been one of the most surreal and extraordinary weeks of my life,
and today I felt myself confounded and actually unable to comprehend the world around me. It is hard to explain, but I have spent the week, as you know, in this melodramatic swirl of hysteria, though I was never as close to ‘breakdown’ as I may have appeared: this is just how I choose to express myself, or rather I don’t ‘choose’ anything: it simply comes out the way it comes out. But there is no doubt that the country is traumatized, and I know I am, mildly. For a few days, though the emotional core was ultimately safe, I did find myself in unfamiliar waters of panic and shutdown (rarely do I go to bed at midday to avoid the world but on this occasion I did), and would spring from relative calm to spiralling anxiety the second I read news reports, or, ill-advisedly, looked at images of the tsunami. Believe me it is much easier to do so when you are out of the country than when it is in the place you live, just further down the coast. The devastation, on loop, just created a maelstrom in the brain you couldn’t wash away; it was buoyant under everything else even when you slept, and then this nuclear reactor thing which, obviously for us personally, it is a literal threat.
Or is it?
And this is where The Matrix comes in. The last two days have seen our parents pleading with us to leave; terrifying reports on TV, and you lovely people sending us advice or more often ordering us to leave. By Wednesday night I was whipped up into a frenzy again and was utterly incapable of even imagining going into work and thus we began the escape plan. I wrote a well-worded, but clearly boilingly concerned, e-mail to my boss saying I couldn’t work today but as you know, just as we were about to join our friends in the above adventure I called my school manager and really, the sound in his voice when I told of my radiation fears really was one of total puzzlement.
What are you talking about?
Everything is fine.
The air is fine.
Everyone is at work, your students are waiting for you, we would really prefer it if you would come in (silent pressure, like a megaphone)…..
So I finally leave the sealed up stuff-chamber we have been inhabiting; dark, unsound, all the past week’s mad feelings still floating about uninhibited in the rooms, and I dragged myself out of my clothes: shaved off the beard, and became Mr Chapman again.
Outside was blue; bright, a typical, beautiful cold Japanese spring day.
I boarded the bus, and caught the train to Fujisawa. Nowhere was anyone wearing masks, except for the usual ones for hay fever. And yes, the lights were dimmed in the stations and vending machines, and yes, people were collecting for charity, but otherwise, everything was utterly normal. Gleaming, happy reality, not an iota of the armaggedon panic of the computer and the pleas and the oodles of milliverts about to subvert our biochemistry and turn us instantly cancerous.
And i stood there, with my coffee in hand, and actually had the sensation of not being able to mentally compute the astronomical difference between my life on here with you, and all the internet reports, and all the foreigners fleeing the country in charter flights, and my dad writing DISASTER in my in-box, and the swirls of atomic clouds and dust in my mind, and the absolute NORMALCY of what I was perceiving before my very eyes.
And I experienced some form of split down the middle of my consciousness as if indeed, this were The Matrix that those in the world, the real world, the dark world, were plugged into.
Happy, bright, everyday boring life. not even a JOT of darkness in the air. (March 19th)
But it is not that simple.
What I have realized is that possibly neither of these worlds is correct. Most of you on here are seeing this hypohysteria news reports which play the greatest hits of horror over, and over, again. And I don’t doubt they are true for a minute, when hordes are streaming out of the country and losing the Japanese respect (if they had any to begin with.
But you step into work, and it’s all subverted.
There is nothing to worry about.
All the foreigners leaving are being panicked by leftist anti-propaganda: the dangers are no way near as acute as being reported:
the US navy is reporting nuclear particles out of spite…..
I have never, ever, in my life, felt so incapacitated in my ability to distinguish fact from fiction and reality from irreality, hyperbole; information from misinformation; and just stood back from my own perceptions and watched them all, fascinated.
I LITERALLY DO NOT KNOW WHAT IS REAL OR UNREAL YET KNOW I AM ABSOLUTELY SANE. THE MEDIA CONTROLS US: WE KNOW EVERYTHING: WE KNOW NOTHING.
…….two absolute, sharply cut realities: a collage of panic and drummed up horror, vs sublimated trauma and a fierce, fierce desire to get back to that shiny surface where Japan thrives best. I am defeated.
But I did my lessons, and enjoyed them. And managed, a little, to salvage the Vivian Leigh I have descended into this week. Got back a bit of respect, just about, as if I represent the foreigner in capital letters.
And then walked home up the hill, convinced I could smell it in the dark, and something metallic, and something like a sunburnt feeling on my cheeks; but then I am a hypochondriac neurotic so discount what i have just written: (don’t)
Anyway: we head south, the D and I, tomorrow; hopefully it will be fun but everything feels different once you get out of the glare of the shop windows and the urban sun: there is a watery, pale vulnerability in the air: we are shellshocked.
…………
It really was a time when I felt that there was no link between the Japanese and The Foreigner. Never have I felt more estranged:
The Japanese create a force field around themselves; unite their egos, or dissolve them at will: it is something we in the west simply cannot do. They can make an atmosphere so powerful that everything wilts in its path. Seriously. It is both highly admirable and somewhat terrifying to me, so obviously self-centered and egocentric. I do not WANT to disappear. They can.
What I don’t understand is how much of today was forced. I can’t quite get to the bottom of that: is it sheer willpower forcing normality to the surface?
…I was talking to my friend Setsuko on my cellphone earlier, trying to get a grasp on what i was experiencing, and, I quote: “….we also pay little attention to something intangible, such as radiation.
If you don’t see it, it doesn’t exist…”
I am not sure if this is interesting for anyone out there reading this, if it all just seems far too self-indulgent, but I think the above illustrates quite well the extreme confusion that being a foreigner in Japan after such a terrible disaster entailed.
It took a long time to recover (again, I realize, of course, that relatively speaking I suffered nothing and have nothing, absolutely nothing to complain about). Yet I felt terrible, so deeply unsettled.
April 6th:
Even today I could have sworn there was an aftershock as I sat outside in the sun. And then maybe again this evening….just a weird feeling that you never know is real or not. The ground has not felt the same since…all those idioms…..’he is very grounded’…’she has her feet on the ground’…. have suddenly stopped making sense.
And I know that it was nothing compared to up north but the shock of that quake at the gym brought tears to my eyes and left me very shaken (like everyone else: people were screaming in other rooms as I clung to the walls…). and then no phones working…and the immediate huge aftershock…and then that walk home…tomorrow I go back to work: maybe that is a good thing.
Just seeing footage of the tsunamis, the little I did see, left me with nightmares for the last few weeks, as well as endless ones about radiation and losing Duncan. I cannot begin to imagine the psychological damage of those actually devastated by those waves…God.
April 15th: What it feels like tonight: five minutes off a rollercoaster, still unsteady on your feet; rolling, rolling rolling, nice and slow: lurching. Like a huge hull of a ship in the moonlight. You are in your cabin and it is CREAKING. These floorboards are creaking. And it might just be the wind but you know it isn’t.
:somehow not an earth’quake’ but a gargantuan rock-a-bye-baby;cradling us all: malignly imperceptible, almost: but vast and uncontrollable.
And disconcerting in the strange depths of your being you never knew existed; that you had this barometer connected to the ground and what lies beneath it; that you resonate together..
* * *
I am sitting here, looking at keys dangling and wondering if they ARE moving. Seriously: there is a beast beneath! Growling very subtly.
And i am starting to not be able to entirely see or walk straight but am now seeing a profound beauty in it.
The fucker is taunting us.
Now it seems to have stopped. But it has got to the point where I just think. Yes. I am mad. It is that. And I was in the other house for about fifteen minutes, and it was honestly like being in some haunted ballroom of an abandoned, huge, cruise ship. And it is interesting: perhaps if you ARE mad; do you just go with the, er, flow? But still hugely gratifying to come in and find duncan in bed, saying, yes yes it has been rocking for about half an hour now: I can feel it.
…..
There are pink earthquake clouds in the sky tonight. don’t be surprised if something happens tomorrow. This isn’t me: it is several women friends who always comment on these particular, perpendicular lantern-shaped clouds that often appear the night before.
At this point i am not even complaining: merely observing. Because it is so odd, and so monumental, to have the earth no longer solid, for so many days consecutively. With the imaginary quakes to fill in for the time when the earth itself is not rocking. April 16, 2011, at 1.55am.
A constant, neverending circle.
* *
March 10th, 2013 :
Tomorrow is the second anniversary of all this. Reconstruction is taking place, although not as much has been done for the people from the affected areas as should have been; charity and volunteer work still continues, as do the aftershocks and tremors, which we were told would continue for years.
In fact (and now I am finally coming to the story suggested by the title of this post), the other night there was a minor earthquake in the middle of the night and the first thing I did was to leap up and hold onto the perfume cabinet. Not because I am so shallow that I think that my perfume collection is the most important thing in the world – much as I love it, I do realize that it is merely a collection of delicious, ephemeral pleasures and memories – but the old, wooden Japanese antique cabinets they are housed in, I realize, could in fact quite easily crash down and kill us in the night. We foolishly sleep on futons directly beneath them.
It had been on mind anyway, that we might need to move these vertical treasure chests, but there was a news programme on the radio yesterday as well which was warning about the dangers of having heavy furniture in your bedroom, especially when it is not properly secured to a wall… It has struck me that this huge thing, which I love, and which suits the tatami style room perfectly, could literally be lethal.
The threat of another major earthquake never goes away. But the least we can do is to avoid being crushed full of a huge, grande armoire of Guerlain, Balenciaga, Dior….
The irony of it; a perfume lover being killed in the night by the thing he loves most……
Filed under Catastrophe, Japan
ANGELS AND INSECTS: LA CHASSE AUX PAPILLONS by L’ARTISAN PARFUMEUR (1999)
This uplifting, flowery delight by L’Artisan Parfumeur was recently being pushed by Yokohama Barney’s New York as a wedding scent: the window dressings, fancy as ever all swirling linden petals; pink blooms, tuberose princesses; and lepidoptera brides. I don’t know if it is especially nuptial – though that idea certainly does make sense, for the butterflies, fluttering in your stomach – but I do know that La Chasse Aux Papillons is lovely; heady, joyous, light-winged and summery.
A whirl of leaves as you rush gaily past shrubs; a dizzying flourish of petals : tuberose, linden, orange blossom – the linden blossom crucial here, steering the perfume in a different direction from the majority of feverish hot house flowers and giving the perfume a slightly cooler, more mysterious edge, the whole an exuberant delight that I really like and have on occasion even considered buying – but for some, all the giddying, whirling about with the butterfly nets may leave you dizzy, s ick……..
A fragrance, then for the extovert I would say; for someone not afraid of display his or her colours, of reeling in admirers.
