on memory and perfume
Gotas Frescas by Instituto Español
28 April 22
Memory is fallible. Have I already said that? See what I mean.
Like Nick Cave in Wim Wender's 'Wings of Desire' I'm not going to discuss the relationship between death and perfume. No, I'm not going to discuss the relationship between death and perfume. 1
I'd like to discuss the relationship between death and perfume.
In reality, any link is a tenuous remnant left over from last week's edition to tie together memento mori and perfumery. Ancient Egyptians using scented oil to bring the dead closer to dog-headed Gods in spaceships. Ring a ring a rosies obfuscating plague decay stenches. All very tenuous. 2
I'm not the only one to create this link between perfume and death. It's just not that historical. Nose Euan McCall created an art installation... No. Rewind. If we're allowed to call people who make perfume noses, then can't we all use this specification system? Reverse Bodily Nominative Determinism. Anne is a visual artist, Eye Anne. I have my opinion column, Mouth Julian. My friend Kay is a seamstress, Fingers Kay. My friend Ben is a private detective...
Back to Euan McCall, who along with artist Eric Fong and forensic anthropologist Dr Anna Williams (uh-oh) made an installation featuring Thanatos — Eau de Mort. A perfume that smells of death. Technically I suppose it’s not really a perfume, as you can't buy a bottle, more a smelly installation with "a short film evoking the intensity of searching for a cadaver in a forest, and eerie photographs of staged crime scenes" 3. Coincidently, something I've had experience of, staged crime scene photos that is, not searching for cadavers in a forest. Just to clear that up.
In July 2009 I was part of the interactive theatre troupe — You Me Bum Bum Train — performing at the Glastonbury festival. My role was a police inspector interrogating audience members, who attended one at a time in a faux interview room. My fellow detective mocked up some quite graphic photos to hurl across the desk. "I put it to you that...!". Very graphic photographs now I think about it. With hindsight perhaps dressing up as C.I.D. officers and showing gritty crime scene photos to people who hadn't slept for days due to copious drug intake may not have been the best idea.
In the time between this and last week, I've been bought "Perfume The A-Z Guide" by Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez — Anne really having had enough of my dilettante ways. The Sunday Times journalist India Knight says it's "one of the best books I have ever read".
Back in the 90s I had a column in Graphics World magazine reviewing computer programming books. Unpaid. But I was never short of doorstops. My policy was, if I didn't think a book very good, then simply not to review it. Here, in this column you are saved my more childish moments by Anne saying "are you sure you want that published in perpetuity?". I'm going out on a limb. I'm going to say that India Knight was paid to say that, and it is not one of the best books she has ever read.
It's 506 pages of perfume reviews, on average eight to a page. It does however, contain some essays at the start which are very informative. Wrapping your dead in oily bandages of myrrh is not wearing perfume. It is a deeply occult practice to do with pyramid sects, dog stars and having your heart weighed. Literally. Not "was he a kind man" type weighing. Actually weighed. Weighed against a feather. Like that's going to work.
Sniffing a bunch of roses because no one’s collected the dead this week doesn't cut it either. We’re talking splashing something on that smells nice (without the need to cover up the fact we're dead, or the person next to us is dead, in general without any dead people being present), and that another alive person would smell really similar if they splashed some all over. Or on their neck.
I can tell you that the definition of perfumery as bottles-of-smelly-stuff-we-wear-while-actually-alive, thanks to Perfume The A-Z Guide, kicks off in 1868 with William Perkin synthesising coumarin 4, no more rotting tonka beans for you. The point is reproducible essences rather than witches' potions and dead people's balm. Odours formulated from synthesised coumarin can range from sweet vanilla to rotting hay. They really can't keep away from rotting can they? 5
No more history. Booooooring. Perfume triggers memory. Memories are far more related to death. We remember things that don't exist anymore. When did you last say, gosh that really brings back a memory of the other week. Usually we're reminded of our grandmothers or a childhood memory. I am not precluding childhood memories of our grandmothers. Just attempting not to get caught up on specifics.
The strange thing about childhood and memories is that the experience of childhood does not meet our later recollections of it. In a manner similar to Tolstoy's fantastic opening line in Anna Karenina, "All Happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way". Mea culpa . I had no idea it was Tolstoy or Anna Karenina either, I just knew the quote. Thank you Google. 6
With hindsight I had an unusual childhood, but a happy one. I know of at least two subscribers to this column who had unconventional upbringings. How many of us can recollect that time when our gift of a baby elephant ran away, smashing through the garden fence, never to be seen again, leaving us empty handed on our birthday? Or life in caravans. During childhood, whatever the circumstances you are raised in, it all seems perfectly normal. At the time. It is reality.
The playground does not reward nonconformity. Our accents are adopted in secondary school. Early teens are spent learning to blend in. Late teens are spent desperately trying to stand out to the opposite sex. As we emerge into adulthood we discuss our childhoods to discover our strange histories. Psychologist Laura Carstensen says that we become more content as we get older 7. I wonder if memories get happier the further back they reach.
I am a huge admirer of Christopher Brosius. He’s a nose. People say "that perfume reminds me of Aunt Corrine". Brosius had the paradigm shift of thinking I'll make a perfume that smells like Aunt Corrine. Or my grandmother's kitchen. Or my uncle's garage. Or being on the beach when I was a kid. 8
Perfumes as memories are commonplace now. Every perfume has a "story". You have probably seen Maison Margiela's Replica range, their perfumes "intrinsically linked with memories" launched in 2012. 9
In 1992 Christopher Brosius co-founded Demeter Fragrances, and in 1996 as part of the Library of Fragrances gave us eight single-note fragrances including "Dirt". Which smelt of, well, dirt. The smell of a damp earth floored basement to be exact. Along with "Snow" and "Thunderstorm" which definitely have an ozone edge. Leaving to found CB I Hate Perfume in 2004. 10
Demeter are still making fragrances without him, and in a moment of stupendous serendipity for me have one called "Funeral Home". Although sadly it's really heavy florals rather than corpses and balms.
Skulls and flowers being a very popular tattoo motif, and the scent of white lilies being associated with funerals, it's easy to see how a connection between death and perfume has been made. Rather than putting it down to chemists, I'm willing to wager a bottle of Gotas Frescas cologne that at least one member of the Death and Floral 11 perfume brand has a skulls and flowers tattoo. Just a wild guess. Their "Queen of Moths" contains Incense, rich chocolate, decaying flowers, tobacco, dark woods, attic dust. I'm quite taken with "Art school drop out — Fresh paint water, wet clay, car exhaust, number two pencil shavings".
Even Lush, the fizzy unicorn it's-sooooo-fluffy sparkly bath bomb rainbow-breathed glitter-pixies has a perfume called "Death and Decay". It's vegan. Which seems kind of weird. It's jasmine and ylang ylang. So sickly sweet. Tonka absolute is in there as well, so you can now nod like a fellow dilettante and say "good old William Perkin, and his synthesising coumarin". 12
Since everyone else is being tenuous as fuck, if we're doing perfume and death, then it's not lilies. It's roses. Also an apology, I realise that last week was memento mori and this week is memory but things don't always work as you plan.
Did you know the rose is born of death? This is the point where I find out everyone is down with Classical myths except me. But in case you also bunked off school to hang out in Chiswick Park I’ll relate here.
Flora, Goddess of flowers (unsurprisingly) is all cut up one day finding number one nymph dead in the forest (see McCall, Fong, Williams and searching for a cadaver. Practical stuff, not just for art you know). Flora begs her God pals for assistance (for nothing ever goes wrong bringing people back from the dead, or invoking the help of Gods).
Flora gives the nymph a diadem of petals (Anne knew what a diadem was, 'something that adorns like a crown').
Venus, Goddess of love and looking hot gives her beauty.
Vertumnus, God of the seasons and telephone hold music gives her a lovely scent (see, things are tying together nicely here).
Vertumnus's wife Pomona, Goddess of fruit trees (and probably bushes and shrubs, etc), gives her rosehips. The be honest I'm not so sure rosehips are really that useful. Nice jelly, good syrup. That's about it.
Bacchus, God of wine, gives her nectar. They say nectar but that seems highly unlikely doesn't it. Let's just say wine. Way more useful than rosehips. Unless it's rosehip wine. Can you make a decent wine from rosehips? Sort of thing Epicurus could probably help you out with.
Finally, in a grand act of showing off, Apollo, god of healing and feeling good, puffs the breath of life into nymph number one…whose cadaver in the forest is then reborn into the rose.
I'm going to ignore the whole rosehip / rose thing. Side note, Vertumnus apparently tricked Pomona into marrying him and not the loves of her life Silvanus (God of woods) AND Picus (Not a God but a lover of nymphs) by disguising himself as an old woman. I'm not sure how this works. Roman romance seems really much like the rosehip / rose thing. No one looks that closely at whatever’s going down.
I learnt this from the very fantastic blog deathscent.com run by Nuri McBride who may be my new internet crush. I strongly recommended you check her newsletters on scent (without death), and death and scent. 13
The only reason for this retelling of a tenuous scent based funeral rose tale is to shoehorn in John Cale's marvellous song "Rosegarden Funeral Of Sores" from 1979.
Older readers may say "That's Bauhaus!" No, check the writer on the label. One J Cale. Not JJ Cale. That's different. JJ gets his mention when I get around to doing a Paul Thomas Anderson post. You have no idea how much work it took to get from death and perfume to Rosegarden Funeral Of Sores.
While on a trip to New York I made Anne trek to visit Brosius's lab in Brooklyn (CB I Hate Perfume don't have a shop). She was very 'are you sure?'. This is reminiscent to my experience of asking to visit Hollywood while staying with my friends Bryan and Barbara in L.A. Bryan, to his credit, did not say 'are you sure?', or maybe it’s because he's a mischievous git and just wanted to see my face once "on location". If you haven't been, Hollywood is not the Oscars with palm trees. It's a dump. Winos, cheap wig shops, the disenfranchised and the mad. With lots of shopping trolleys as fashion accessory. The highlight was the look of glee on Bryan's face, and his general thigh slapping mirth when I discovered the truth. I had to have several apple martinis in a prosaic mall to recover.
East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NYC is also a dump. Tom Hanks was not walking a poodle. And CB I Hate Perfume is not Dolce and Gabbana. It's not even Ikea. Although there was some dexion shelving. Not much else. But since I had travelled all the way from London, England I was allowed into the inner sanctum lab room. But I was not allowed to take photographs. He was very strict about that. In case I reconstructed the next top secret scent from my photographs of box files, plastic storage boxes and overflowing paperwork. But because I am a rebel I have a selfie taken in his bathroom.
You can peruse his website for descriptions of his scents and memories, I'll give a couple here, including my all time favourite perfume Eternal Return. 14
701 Eternal Return — it is a blend of Fresh Ocean Air, Wooden Ship and a faint hint of Cypress Trees growing on the cliff above the water
I'm sure Christopher Brosius didn't name it Eternal Return knowing my interest in the stoic school of philosophy 15, who believed in a reoccurring universe. To be honest, cyclic worlds is a bit beyond me, but I like them for their views on staying chill. Nietzsche was also a fan of eternal return's reoccurring universe, which wasn't beyond him, unlike good and evil.
Eternal Return could be issued as a special edition to accompany this post called "Eternal Return — Endless Death". Just a thought. (Yes, technically Endless Death/Constant Rebirth but work with me here).
I'll conclude with Greenbriar.
Greenbriar 1968 — this scent is a memory of my Grandfather, the sawmill that he owned and the stone house where he lived. It is blended with Sawdust, Fresh Cut Hay, Worn Leather Work Gloves, Pipe Tobacco and a healthy amount of Dirt. There is also a faint whiff of cotton overalls covered in Axel Grease...
His scents are extraordinary, I've purchased around half of them. But do sniff them first. As my daughter says of quite a few of them, "too much mushroom". There's a whole lot of mycelium going on.
Katia Apalategui has taken Christopher Brosius' groundbreaking memory-of-a-person fragrance to a whole new level. Brosius says of his "Memory of Kindness" fragrance (the aforementioned Aunt Corrine) "Long years later, I easily recall my aunt's smile. It is indelibly linked to the smell of the tomato vines around me, shimmering and beating like a cloud of butterflies. And for my whole life, the smell of tomato leaves instantly brings to mind my aunt, her gentle, loving nature and her boundless kindness. What does a child remember? 'A child remembers kindness.'" 16
Katia Apalategui will take your dead person's clothing and make a perfume from it. No. Really. I’m struggling to have anything to say on this. Anne loves second hand clothes. I have long said to her “Great, the smell of dead people’s clothing”. This just seems like a terrible idea from a Black Mirror episode. What if the scent is slightly wrong and you start to remember them differently. What happens when you go to a second hand shop. Just Agh! Here's a link in case you want the details. Somewhat needlessly I think they point out it's made-to-measure. "It's not just for the morbid... but children temporarily away from their parents". I can't. Just no. 17
In hunting down "The Decay of an Angel" I came across Moth and Rabbit 18 on the Smell Stories site. Where Timothy Han takes his inspiration from books to create niche perfumes, Moth and Rabbit have upped the ante. In some ways a successor to CB I Hate Perfume, their scents evoke the worlds created in a film. Smell Stories were kind enough to send me a couple of samples. "Duke of Burgundy" works perfectly, light old fashioned florals with cigarette ash, which I think perfectly sums up the older lesbian sadomasochistic relationship captured at the heart of the film. Unlike Replica copyists, Moth and Rabbit has distilled the collective experience of a movie like “La Haine” into experimental but wearable perfume. 19
A Calm Yet Confrontational Scent; That Traces Your Neck Like a Sharp Cold Blade With Buchu Sulfur, Metallic Bloody Notes and Cold Aldehydes. There Is a Feeling That Something Is Going to Happen With Burnt Rubber, Cold Cedar Notes Creating a Concrete Effect, Combined With Birch Tar, Leather and Bay Oil.
Dying Out on a Cold, Damp Cellar Smell With Cedar Atlas, Dark Musk and Moss.
For fear of closing on a dry powdery finish, all things perfume will end here. After I've mentioned the recommendations.
No. Not Patrick Suskind's "Perfume". Really. You people.
I lust after Acqua di Parma's Colonia every time I pass through duty free at an airport. The bottle shape, that yellow, it’s the classic gentleman's citrus cologne. 20
OK, a little more history. That barbershop lemony scent? That's Officina Profumo-Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella’s Acqua di Sicilia, or if you want to be really old school there’s also Acqua di S.M. Novella, aka Acqua della Regina (the Queen's Water) created by Dominican monks in 1533 for Caterina de’ Medici, who owned Tolstoy's line about unhappy families like no one else. The original scent. 21
Her Maj and fam swear down by Dr Harris & Co.'s Arlington Cologne. I've purchased this and Acqua di Sicilia. Back when I capital investor clients with offices in St James’s. 22
But I'm going to recommend Instituto Español's Gotas Frescas. As beloved by Spanish waiters everywhere. Well, Spain mainly. It may lack the subtle top notes of the aforementioned colognes, but my friends, it costs £6.48 for a bucket sized 750ml. You can literally dip yourself in it. There's even a shower gel in case being able to spray yourself every half hour for 5 pence a squirt isn't enough.
www.perfumesclub.co.uk/en/instituto-espanol/gotas-frescas-edc/p_102049072/
Ideal watching after immersing yourself in Gotas Frescas would be "Border" directed by Ali Abbasi about a Danish customs agent with an acute sense of smell.
No trailer, as it's best watched knowing as little as possible, so instead here's a nice picture of the protagonist in a river, and a link to Amazon where it's available to stream. River, stream, yes? I was pleased.
www.amazon.co.uk/Border-Eva-Melander/dp/B07TZKJH9G
www.amazon.com/-/es/Eva-Melander/dp/B07NRHNRGY
itunes.apple.com/us/movie/id1439154949
References
“Wings of Desire” directed by Wim Wenders. For a black and white existential film about angels in Berlin, there are quite a few jokes. I've always loved this one eavesdropping on Nick Cave's thought process during a gig.
Eau de Mort reminded me of Pseudo Corpse scent used for training cadaver dogs. Good boy! https://www.elitek9.com/Sigma-Pseudo-Corpse-Scent-Kit-PSCI/productinfo/SD32/