Category: Miscellaneous
-
Ekphrasis: Towards a Fragmentary Writing (June 2021)
I have had my transformation – if you could even call it that (in its proper sense). What has happened is a desire to write once again, but to write differently. To write in a way that I feel does justice to capturing not only the experience of perfume, but…
-
Six Years In: Thoughts Stemming From an Empty Bottle of Brin de Réglisse
My bottle of Brin de Réglisse (Hermès 2004) is by and large, empty. I’m saving those final squirts – but I do spritz it every so often. It is at once my reference for good perfume, and a key to my personal history, down the sentimental tunnel of time past.…
-
Monthly Musings: On Approach – What Do I Need to Know Before I Begin to Know? (April 2019)
On Approach: What Do I Need to Know Before I Begin to Know? April 2019 Consider my question in this way: it begins with an event, and a manner of entering into this event. Consider this event in the instance of perfume analysis. Firstly, is analysis the right word here?…
-
Monthly Musings: In Absentia, October 2017
The other week I sat on the edge of the Yarra River, which runs right through the central business district of Melbourne. I undid the middle button of my double-breasted jacket – Loro Piana – mid-grey and riddled with a black and blue check. As I undid my button and…
-
Monthly Musings: Discordant – Why Pessimism is Okay and History Matters, September 2017
Discordant: Why Pessimism is Okay and History Matters. This post is a reply to In Defence of Gabrielle, which is an objection to my earlier post: The Chanel Problem (In Reference to Gabrielle by Chanel). I am holding this as an academic exercise; a dialectic process, and therefore it goes…
-
Monthly Musings: In Response, July 2017
Before I even dare utter the word justified in this musings, let me just address something I egregiously forgot to do in June’s post! It’s been one year since the musings format first launched, and as you’d expect from anything me, it’s a glorious mishmash – sometimes fiercely intellectual, sometimes fiercely…
-
Monthly Musings: Tu Quoque, June 2017
June seems so far away. I have been slack, and it’s almost time to publish a July musings too. I am too tired to expound on meta-topics here today, despite having a lot of ideas. Such writing tasks are arduous; monumental challenges of translation from idea and concept to a…
-
Monthly Musings: Advice for the Young at Heart, May 2017
This month I will be expounding (in a quick flurry) a number of ideas I’ve had fermenting away in my head these few months. Appeals to Authority. Is there any good reason to accept the judgments and musings of a brilliant scent-scientist over the everyday bystander who wears a dribble…
-
Monthly Musings: How to Smell – The Polygonal Approach, April 2017
Allow me to begin with an apology, for excuses are less tenable – I have had little time to draft anything scent related. The weather has changed quite drastically here in Melbourne. It is cold. And I am enjoying the cyclical process of rediscovery. Rediscovery as a wearer is one…
-
A Treatise on Spice: Spices in Perfumery
The chef protests that he is nothing without his spices. The perfumer protests that he is nothing without the high quality of his raw materials. I protest that spice notes are an indispensable part of the perfumer’s palette, adding not only to the aroma, but to the structure and the…
Olfactics 