The Black Narcissus

One of my old friends came back to live in Japan again this year, 25 years after we first spent time together getting to know the country and culture, lost in a new dream. It has been great reacquainting ourselves with one another after all this time – the last time we properly spent time together was at her wedding many years ago in Mexico; her husband is from Guadalajara and on Sunday night we went to their apartment in Yokohama to have authentic enchiladas and chilli bean soup and a cornucopia of avocado; Melanie and I can go to places and dimensions that most others cannot reach; I find our conversations liberating.

On the way to their place, an area of the city I haven’t been in decades, the last time being one of the most melodramatic days of my life (an incident I am writing about in a book about Japan I am currently working on, I can’t reveal it yet) D and I passed a couple of ‘recycle’ shops on the bus. One is a proper old school junk shop, another a chain emporium. We had arrived early, and had time for a quick mooch before socializing and went back down the road to investigate (there is nothing like the possibility of a treasure bargain). The bric-a-brac shop didn’t yield, even if the owner tantalizingly revealed that he has a stack of vintage perfume to hand but just hasn’t done anything with it yet in terms of pricing and what have you and was adamant that nothing could be done at that particular time. He couldn’t possibly say when either. So that was that.

The second, locked in some glass cabinets, had a beautifully pristine bottle of Hermès Amazone edp for $12, which I snapped up immediately as I may already have an identical bottle but it is something I wear with ease; it fills me with a smoothness that ruffles out my rough edges; androgynous and elegant/benevolent, it satisfies a particular spot.

Courrèges’ Empreinte, a delicate leather chypre I have reviewed before,is a perfume I own in both the iconic gold extrait bottle you can see at the top, plus a slightly jaded edt (less impressive both in appearance and in smell). An exceptionally chic scent, moss and quinoline and leather - but not a butch leather; more like a beautiful woman in a seventies faded white leather coat, clutching some gentle flowers (animalics and a curious peach/melon top note create a slightly distancing effect as though she finds herself somewhat superior to other people), I think I have nevertheless only ever actually worn this out in public once or perhaps twice. I like it, respect it, but don’t adore it.

One of the reasons my bottle goes admired but relatively unloved is that I am simply rarely in the mood for the Cabochard/ Miss Balmain / Givenchy III template on me personally (I am basically just not chic enough). Leather always gives me a feeling of ambivalence, even if I am great fan of the original Givenchy Gentleman. - there is something snooty and brittle and very Parisian about this genre of perfume that on me can feel like cosplay – these are once in a blue moon kinds of fragrances.

And yet the perfumer behind Empreinte (‘imprint’) was Robert Gonnon, a master of subtlety and floral enweavement of patchouli and chypre undertones who created monumental classics such as Anaïs Anaïs for Cacharel, the magnificent Ô De Lancome as well as perhaps the best lemon leaf scent ever created, the obscure but very beautiful Quiproquo by Grès - not to mention the divine exuberance that is Métal de Paco Rabanne. (read or re-read any of the links to past Narcissus posts here and you will find yourself whiling away a whole afternoon of vintage reverie…)

While Robert Gonnon’s refined imprint may be unmistakeable when it comes to this coveted Courrèges (though I have always preferred Courrèges in Blue), the issue at the time was whether I should buy it.

Sitting, almost hidden, on a glass shelf below the Amazone were two unopened, still cellophaned, 28ml Empreinte parfums for ¥6500 each ($45), wow the exchange rate is bad; that feels more expensive here, and, it being just before pay day, I decided that I didn’t feel like buying them. I would happily display one in the collection as the bottle perfectly suits our house’s aesthetic, possibly keep one back for the future as a gift, but there are times when you just feel like being sensible and saving money.

(This brings me to an issue I am uncomfortable with, actually, in Perfumeland; the insufficient amount of conversation around money, and how much this hobby/passion/ whatever you want to call it/ really costs. Because unless you are one of the top TikTok/YouTube perfume stars and thus being sent bottles of niche by the truckload every week, building a collection of perfumes is extremely expensive. Even ordering sample sets in order to be in the know about all the latest brands coming out is prohibitively impossible for the average person. Which is why, sometimes, all the presumptions about comparisons between acronymed scents; ‘you know, it’s a bit like TFVO or AAMO and YSLLP ‘or a million others that each scent lover is assumed to know and have ordered sometimes seems to be a little obscene; the privilege of it all, how much we have all probably spent and sometimes regret even; how prices have become absurd, like the latest $600 Guerlains; on occasion I just have to be more realistic financially - you might even say, ethically, and say no).

And yet.

As we were leaving, having an instinct that a big Empreinte parfum of that size might be worth a fair morsel on the internet, I checked the current eBay prices.

Admittedly, that is for a 60ml. But even the 28ml varieties we were looking at regularly go for $500; we were going to be late for the dinner party at this point and I also realized that, with the labyrinthine hell of the current J-Post system, where you can’t send anything in the post without downloading an app first and then printing out an exhaustively detailed document with hyper-anal descriptions of every item therein, something I just can’t do as I find it too brainbusting – plus, the staff are extraordinarily vigilant about liquids not leaving the country - it has long been impossible to send perfume anywhere when I used to do it all the time……so basically, it would be impossible to send or sell this anywhere.

(Unless I just wait until the next time I come back to England and put the two boxes in my suitcase… )

Music is extra emotive at Christmas. Particularly carols. And Bing Crosby. And Merry Xmas (War Is Over), which I find unbearably poignant even when things are relatively peaceful; I remember D and I once singing it at karaoke and then bursting into tears simultaneously; it can have that effect. And while the music can get grating, since we don’t really ‘do’ Christmas and thus have no need to trudge through shopping malls being bombarded with the same songs and melodies over and over again (I haven’t once heard Wham!’s Last Christmas yet this year only cover versions, and bizarrely, I am one of the few who never get tired of hearing that song – might have to dust off my Pudding Mix original 12″ and play it on Christmas Eve: as it always takes me back to being a fourteen year old in 1984 and just feeling woozy in the glow of Christingle) —- in terms of the earworm, so far the season has been benign.

But today I don’t want to write about Christmas music. I want to write about restaurant music (I do realize that complaining about such things is such a ‘First World Problem’ —but then so is raving and gagging about perfume).

I suppose the problem is that my extreme sensitivity to music in restaurants, cafes, bars etc, anywhere there is a soundtrack going on where you are eating and drinking and making merry (or just trying to read a book) sometimes makes me feel like I am the only one in the world who is actually in possession of auditory apparatus. Does no one else ever complain about this? Sometimes I imagine that I am the only one who even notices (an exception; I remember when I was in Florence with a pack of perfumisti for the opening of the Lush Perfume Library, and the very musical Ida Meister of Cafleurebon - an excellent opera singer, by the way, was with me in trying to get the groovy hotel staff to tone down and turn down the utterly inappropriate disco music they had chosen to dj us with over breakfast – who wants that when they have just woken up? It was unbearable ).

My hearing isn’t even that good, to be honest; I have had tinnitus for almost twenty years and hearing loss in my left ear of up to 40%, but I am still acutely receptive to music and noise and am finding that this is driving me away from establishments I might otherwise frequent far more frequently. Sometimes I really fancy eating one particular thing – after all, eating out in Japan is fantastic – but find that, knowing precisely what CD, or playlist on their computer they will be playing in advance makes me unable to stomach entering the premises. Particularly if the volume is too high (this I NEVER understand; I am club/dance lover, I like music L O UD -which is how I got tinnitus in the first place – when the music is the key point involved; we did all night house/techno for D’s birthday in Hamamatsu and I was practically making love to the speakers despite my affliction; the other night we were blasting out records with a new Bose speaker he has bought; a live album by Michel Polnareff made me feel as if the French singer were singing into my very soul); but surely background music in a restaurant or cafe is something different, no? On the Hamamatu, night in question, looking for somewhere to eat we had initially settled on one of those craft beer/organic hamburger type establishments, not entirely our thing but we were hungry and we had started out late, but sitting down, Enrique Iglesias’ Hero, which really isn’t one of my favourites, was playing so loud that despite the embarrassment of getting up and leaving when you have started talking to waiters, it would have been utterly unendurable for me to have sat there. I could hardly hear myself think, let alone peruse the menu. We had to go. I am just not going to be able to enjoy my dinner being blasted with shite.

Anyway. To ‘All By Myself’. Eric Carmen’s plaintive 70’s miserabilist heartbreaker (there was a lot of miserable music in the seventies, wasn’t there?) based on a piano piece by Rachmaninov is a personal melodramatic fave, at least every once every few years or so, and discovering a nice ‘Western Style’ restaurant in Kamakura that serves gratins and pasta and tuna melts, comfort food with delicious salads, I was happy and amused to hear it again. It had been a while. But not three times in one evening, the selection on loop (is this a strategy to drive out customers more quickly? Just stay for 40 minutes until the dreaded Melissa Manchester track (‘Don’t Cry Out Loud’ demonically comes back on again? The first time we heard it we laughed at the campness of it all, even if the shrillness of the singer’s voice drills through the delicate side area of your head like a partial lobotomy, but surely this is not a song you want to keep hearing on multiple occasions (is the chef, listening to this MD (they have an MD player in there, an anachronism from the 90′) not. in fact, insane?(we have been to the restaurant three times now; it might not be possible for me again, even if on Tuesday night the volume was at least mercifully lower though I am not sure I can handle Melissa again.). For those of you who don’t know this song, do feel free to check it out below:

I mean I don’t hate it, particularly the soft seventies opening, but let’s face it, if you are near the speakers and trying to hear what the other person is saying while forking things into your mouth, this power ballad is taxing to the nerves to say the very least. You feel as if you need to start clapping when it is finished. To let the eaters just eat in peace, couldn’t they just play some nice quiet jazz? (strangely, the more Japanese the eatery, usually the more Western the music usually: a cheap place in Ofuna I like plays melancholy jazz ballads and Bill Evans type piano, not overtly on repeat either. You can sink into your seat for a while, get refills of oolong tea and lose yourself in a book or your phone like plenty of other people). The other night, conversely, we felt like something hot and comforting and went to a tonkatsu restaurant, excellent food, but where banal saccharine Japanese tv themes in major keys played seemingly by a robot corroded my enjoyment of the evening greatly, particularly when it seemed to all have gone back to the beginning (have these people never heard of playlists/ mixtapes? Last night we made/had dinner at home listening to a compilation a friend in New York had sent, meandering through all kinds of genres but still coherent, and at low volume; it was perfect; that way you can lost in the music and just forget it is there, even; to me,letting things just repeat over and over again suggests a severe lack of imagination and delicacy/thinking about the customer (and the staff: I think I get this from my mother, to be honest. She used to work at a department store for Austin Reed, and was driven to utter distraction by Christmas music that would start at the beginning of November or earlier, practically ready to shoot the speakers out).

For my birthday this year, we went to Hakone Yumoto, a hotspring town an hour or so away, and came across a very bohemian and bizarre cafe restaurant right up our street, full of strange statuary and paintings, the kind of cavernous place you could lounge for hours sipping cafe au laits; the soundtrack, this time, classical, which suited the ambience perfectly…….but then there are only so many times you want to listen to Mozart’s Turkish March or even my beloved Debussy; the first time hearing my signature piano piece Clair De Lune made me sentimental and nostalgic, for when I played it as a child; the third time….time to get the bill.

The occasion that truly took the biscuit though was this. Many years ago we had discovered a very plush Croatian restaurant in the posh backstreets of Nihombashi near the gilded flagship Mitsukoshi department store, all red velvet Europeana and beef stews and dill and the like: fancy wine and an enjoyably retro atmosphere. it was not cheap, but it was one of those impromptu ooh let’s try here where you have food you have never tasted before, a new ambience. The wine was good.And the Croatian folk music they were playing was perfect for the setting. At first, we just sank into our seats and enjoyed the view. Perhaps a 35 or 40 minute CD. Exotic. Different. And unfamiliar music is of course less immediately grating than a famous song you know and can’t abide, or even one you do like, but just don’t want to keep hearing over and over again. But repeated music is repeated music nevertheless, and after about three spins of the exact same list of ditties I eventually asked the seasoned waiter politely if he could possibly play anything else.

“I’m sorry, sir. We only have this one CD in the restaurant.”

“.,…….,,……?!!!”

I asked him how long the restaurant had been in operation.

“About thirty three years, sir.”

Thirty three years of the same CD.

IS THIS JUST ME ?

If a perfume can be self-polarizing, then for me, Matiere Premiere’s Crystal Saffron is possibly the intensest. The central heart note of saffron, extracted from crocuses grown in the Greek region of Kozani, is mindbendingly good : delicious and beautiful and reportedly the highest quality of saffron available in the world. Wedded to a Somalian incense that anchors the base, you would think you had hit bingo ( and you still might – this thing is damn sexy and could easily sweep the naive and unaware straight off their feet).

The ambroxan though. Oh my lord. That intense, acrid, membrane piercing woodnote that makes my spleen and marrow cringe in instinctive terror, is so strong in this perfume that even in the little sample box, hidden in a drawer, the final stages of this scent make me want to call up the biohazard people and have it removed and scrubbed clean with gasmasks and hazmats.

Ambroxan and other woody synthetics are favored ingredients of perfumer Aurelien Guichard, who likes to combine them with very fine, even mesmerizing natural materials to addictive modern effect. French Flower, for example, treads an exquisite line between ambroxan and a heady sweet and brain altering tuberose absolute that you literally can’t get out of your head; I sniff at that regularly, it’s like a drug. Neroli Oranger is the perfume I received as my birthday and Christmas present this year from my parents (for me to get a second bottle of any perfume speaks volumes) as it is just stunning in Spring; so bright and refreshingly optimistic that it regularly garners compliments; when I combine with a fine bergamot oil, reactions have actually verged on delirium. Others in the range, though, the ultra brutalist architectures of Santal Austral, Bois Ebene and the shuddering Falcon Leather I just loathe at the deepest level of scent being ; like being twice basted in tar, drowned in a barrel of creosote (then buried in a teak-interiored casket breathing mahogany). It’s a personal thing ; some people get off on the sheer directness of such potency : I just feel under attack.

Which brings me to the newest creation in the collection, Vanilla Powder. Guichard’s deep and edible Encens Suave, one of his earlier releases, is a warm and very enveloping coffee/ cacao frankincense with rich vanilla that is fantastic when you need emotional warmth – when I saw the name Vanilla Powder on the sample box my heart skipped a beat as I knew that he can do a fine amber and that this one could be interesting.

And it is. Like a space age variation of Serge Lutens’ delectable Un Bois Vanille, a coconut-dusted vanilla with an almost aquatic, shiny edge is given ‘verticality’ and depth with a backbone of palo santo (and, then ( oh no you cry !) unfortunately, much to my chagrin, what smells like a dosage in the base notes of the detestable ambroxan….). With a saffronish edge somewhere in there, Vanilla Powder is not powdery in fact, more flirty and fetching ; very modern and millennial, it would work perfectly on the cute with clean skin in a club context, inviting, shimmering and bite-me ( it reminds me somewhat of the Ariana Grande Mod Vanilla I reviewed recently, all part of the current. MK Baccarat Rouge Brigade that are erotically persuasive but for me, just somehow too…. blunt). On my skin, the last fade of this scent is all modern wood-notes, and you know I just won’t ever, evergo there. I do like this house and the ones that I love from there, but if I want vanilla, i want it softer : I want vanilla

T’is Shalimar season.

The last night in London this August I met Olivia, who was moving house and downsizing her estimable and beautiful perfume collection. While much of the prized loot was going up on eBay, the most treasured and used bottles going with her to the new abode, she very generously (my eyes were like saucers) ‘wondered’ if I would like to have anything for myself, from a selection she was willing to part with.

As a shameless Shalimarholic – some readers may remember that I got a giant vintage eau de toilette last December for my birthday: once it gets cold it becomes my go to on weekends – there is nothing like it for a wrapped up night out in the city - I was intrigued to find out how this one would play out on skin as I had never properly worn it in depth before; as a former Vanilla Boy, I still do from time to time like to indulge in some podwork, the creamy black speckled bean always having suited me down to a T, and so I couldn’t resist taking O up on her generous offer (I also brought back in my suitcase a vintage Rive Gauche plus an original Shiseido Feminité Du Bois, both precious and gorgeous).

Sticklers for detail will be asking themselves yes but which Ode A La Vanille are you talking about? Sur La Route Du Madagascar, Sur La Route du Mexique or just the plain ode? There are subtle differences, as there will be with any perfume using extracts from specific varietals (I once stayed on an organic vanilla plantation in Java where I studied the production and harvest of the orchids as well as doing a talk on Vanilla at Perfume Lovers London where we discussed and analyzed beans from all over the world including Tahiti and Uganda). I am no expert, but familiar with some of the differences; the thing is, the three bottles Olivia had brought out for my consideration had been separated from their boxes, and it was difficult to know for sure which ones we were looking at (smelling). Choosing one of them instinctively-I think it is probably the Madagascar, the hidden vanilla at the bottom of the perfume just spoke to me more when I sampled it from the bottle cap – I waited until winter here before starting to wear it and it has become a real joy – the contents are dwindling fast : I need to put a lid on it.

What is fascinating about Ode A La Vanille is that unlike Shalimar special editions such L’Initial, Lite/Legere, Souffle etc, all eager sycophants that some might prefer but which I just find slightly irritating, Ode smells almost exactly like the original vintage Shalimar, just a little less acidic – definitely less lemon – and dries down in precisely the same delicious fashion; the ambery, opoponax leather and powder, that sense of being papoussed in warm splendour; the vanilla not remotely conspicuous; but sometimes, at particular moments, you suddenly catch a drift of the purest vanilla on your scarf; inadvertently from the fur of your cat where you have been stroking her; the vanilla a perfect augmentation.

– shame they smell like cat piss.

Most of my students no longer wear masks, which has changed my approach to classroom scenting. This term I have not really been wearing perfume – it hasn’t felt right, and I don’t want to waste it. That doesn’t mean I have chosen to go ‘odorless’, however ( is such a thing even possible in any case ? Some of my colleagues smell delightful, others clean and pleasant – I can recognize which fabric conditioner they are using; some just of natural human, while a few teachers, as in the school I was working at yesterday, smell frankly nauseating, as though they have been wearing the same yellowing white shirt for months).

Given that I always have the fear that at heart I smell like lamb kebab, the olfactory goal for me has been ‘pleasantly soap’ – a simple, warm floral deodorant spray that will not offend anybody, along with my Scent Of The Season, Nivea Soft – a gorgeous jojoba based hand cream that came out this year and smells of roses, osmanthus and lily of the valley and all things venerably soapy, and which I also espied on the desk of one of the young dandyish administrative staff, who always smells dreamily immaculate. The man has excellent taste.

This pleasant and easy combination has been my go to for a few months now – I feel calm and mellow in it; but then sometimes, obviously, you do just fancy a little spritz of something else as well to up your game, to galvanize the moment, whether it be on the back of the hand for personal pleasure during an afternoon lull in the day, or a few generous sprays after work to consolidate the spirit with an extra dose of elevation.

I realized last week that Dusita’s Douceur De Siam – a balsamic rose de mai perfume from 2017 that I always liked but hadn’t actually really worn – works perfectly in this precise context I am seeking.

It’s interesting. If you are wearing anything earthy or heavy, spiced or classic vintage on your person and then try Siam on another wrist, in contrast, with its green violet leaf champaca ylang top accord underscoring the rose main theme this creation comes across as feminine and ‘pretty’; yet if you come at it from a different angle, from the pure as the driven soap perspective, the perfume has a rich, Mysore sandalwood undertone, that smells even a little bit oudish (probably the Thai chalood bark accord used in the scent alongside some vanilla absolute) which feels much more decadent and masculine, but not intrusive. The beautiful rose oils in the perfume rise above everything in the blend ;the overall impression smooth and pleasurably subdued, yet surreptitiously full bodied and sexy. My bottle is in my coat pocket this week : I imagine I will be putting some more on again bit later in Yokohama.

Speaking of which, it was glorious to be strolling along by the sea in Yamashita Park on Sunday, the most beautifui afternoon, roses everywhere, not a crow in sight ( or at least not that I was aware of). Japan at this time of year can be spectacular, see-sawing between chilly melancholia pre-Christmas sensations, and warm balmy days that suspend you in sunlight. Days when you just drift along, living in the moment, forget (most of) your troubles and then stop – literally – to smell the roses.

I was attacked by a crow yesterday. ‘ Attacked’ might seem a bit melodramatic, but I am really not sure what else to call it. To say it hit me might suggest that it crashed into me unknowingly, blindsided by sunlight or temporarily malfunctioning landing gear, that we had a ‘collision’. But in fact, as I was walking my bike up past an old cemetery by the lake, while humming happily to myself in the sharp Autumn light, completely out of the blue I was suddenly hit violently on the top of my head by what felt at first like I was being bashed by a hammer ( in which case did it divebomb me beakwards or could the claws of the undercarriage also have delivered this blow?) ; all serenity shattered as it swooped up cawing loudly, the echoes of my fuck yous ! echoing shamefully round the gravesite; handclapping furiously, memories coursing through my nervous system of the indelible scene in The Omen 2,that horrible scene where the journalist uncovering the diabolical realities taking place is now doomed to die violently – running desperately for their life but eyes pecked out savagely by swooping overhead scavengers

Anyway.

I have just come out of my evaluation on an bleary overcast day in Fujisawa and immediately come face to face again with one of these now frightening creatures (pictured). It has been eyeing me beadily. And my heart did skip a beat momentarily – but I bore it no malice ( I think : yesterday, my heart was beating wildly post-incident as I tried to laugh it off to myself as just a one off bizarre occurrence, but there were more of them waiting – or the same ones waiting – on the telephone wires ahead, and I thought shit : is this going to become a new phobia ? I don’t really need anymore to add to the list). Then today, this morning at work, I found out that such aggressions are not as unusual as you might think.

It made good conversation. The secretary was horrified by all of our corvian anecdotes, clutching the side of her head a little too hysterically I thought personally – but one of my J colleagues had also been pounded on the head in exactly the same manner; another had had one coming at him horizontally slamming into his chest to grab a gold necklace in a bewildering tussle as a university student that had terrified him, but drew no blood ( I also checked the top of my head instinctively after it happened yesterday, to check if it had torn my scalp – now that really would have been melodramatic with blood streaming down the side of my face coming back into Imaizumidai – but perhaps the bird was just giving a physical warning of territorial patrol – ‘don’t even think of coming near my delectable red bean anko sweet cakes, human’ ) rather than more rabid, intentional Hitchcock murdering impulses

Why did it go for me? I was doing nothing threatening – although on second thoughts I was carrying two bags of groceries : maybe it was in the mood for a free lunch. Maybe it thought I was a bad singer. Or else it just didn’t really like my perfume. I am not really sure. In any case, there are apparently far more of them about these days, in cities, and elsewhere, waking you up at dawn if they land on the balcony, tearing plastic rubbish bags and scattering garbage-strewn mess deliberately onto the streets glinting rudely in saucy iridescence….. side-eyed, scarily knowing ( can it really be true that these ancient beings have the intelligence of a seven year old human child ?)

/

Whatever. They aren’t going anywhere soon and neither am I,so I suppose we will just have to continue to coexist (good job Japan doesn’t allow hand guns like America though, as I can’t guarantee that I might not have just blasted it out of the sky on impulse, smiling vengefully as it thudded to the ground).

No. It is fine. And it was good, in a way, that I came across one again today so soon after having one up so close (actually boring down into my head). (UGH!!!!) I think it neutralized something. Nipped something in the bud. Calmed the brain stem. It was very shocking ( have any of you had similar experiences ?) : but I absolutely refuse to get crowphobia. I don’t really hate them. I never have. In fact I always rather respected their naughty outsider status, which in a way I can almost relate to. They have attitude. They are cool. They are shiny. They have chutzpah. But you can be damn sure that from now on I will be looking up very warily around me at all perches and telephone wires and right up into the sky, each time I go past that bloody cemetery

JOURNEY INTO LIGHT : VOL DE NUIT by GUERLAIN ( I933 )