Lurana: Enticer of the Light writer, artist Lura Astor

A Year of Smells ...

2011-12-31T06:35:00.000-08:00

Wishing you
a New Year
Full of
New Smells

photo: WindSculpture Lura Astor

Scent Categorization

2011-12-29T14:21:00.000-08:00

... we each must figure out how we categorize smells
and even categorize
how our interpretations can fluctuate and be influenced.

~ Lura Astor click here

The following is from
the long awaited book
Perfume: The Alchemy of Scent

by Jean-Claude Ellena

Perfumer at Hermès

"In order to judge perfumes that have outlasted time I use today's nose, whereas for new perfumes I use yesterday's nose.

And I realize that memory works in such a way that perfumes, which are not experienced with excitement and passion, which are not linked with a personal story or, in our business, with the training of the nose, are devoid of meaning and leave no trace in the memory. I thus conclude that evaluation by categories, by classification, is not enough for me. This perception of perfume is too analytical, too distanced, to move me. In order to discover a perfume, I have to enter into it and grasp it from the inside. Once it is separated from its external apparel, I can appraise, judge and decide.

I also notice that my perception, my understanding, and my judgements of perfumes have evolved with the ideas, the values, the customs, and the tastes of society, and that the mental picture I have of perfumes has constantly altered and become richer. This means that I am constantly reinventing my representation of the past - the past that builds my future creations."

Illustration: Heart of the Matter Lura Astor

Sea Smells See Smells

2011-12-28T08:26:00.000-08:00

Breathe deeply, and you ... remember that smell for the rest of your life, the bold, fecund aroma of the tidal marsh, exquisite and sensual, the smell of the South in heat, a smell like new milk, semen, and spilled wine, all perfumed with seawater.

- Pat Conroy The Prince of Tides

Growing up in New England there was a brisk, wake-you-up, salt-bite to any sea inhale. A coast away in California, the ocean scent is truly Pacific, not as stinging, more lulling.

photo: Ocean Rope Lura Astor

We Smell What We See?

2011-12-19T20:33:00.000-08:00

“They hear what they see.”

Bobby Darin was quoted in Dodd Darin's book
Dream Lovers: The Magnificent Shattered Lives of Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee by Their Son. He was talking about the advice to always be a sharp dresser as a performer and also his desires to stretch his musical range and not just be seen as Bobby Darin thus Mack the Knife et al.

I have this sense that people smell what they see.

Unless self-trained, packaging, adverts, color choices, point of sale, and what-not get into the perception field of how we interpret what we smell.

By self-trained, I include those school trained (eg. perfumer training) but,

to get into the depths of interpreting smell, we each must figure out how we categorize smells and even categorize

how our interpretations can

fluctuate and be influenced.

petal fireworks: Lura Astor

Death Matters Exhibit

2011-10-22T08:15:00.000-07:00

155,000 persons die each day

Tropenmuseum Amsterdam's exhibit Death Matters
opens 3 November 2011 click here
and addresses how we relate to death throughout the world.

Do we need new rituals?

Online living memorials exist as facebook pages, web sites, wikipedia entries and more. Quickly receiving visual and audial information across media platforms has changed our perceptions.

Smell and scent play an important part of death rites, memorials, burials and reminiscences of those who have passed.

Spritzing certain scents can bring a person right back in the room.

See Additional Posts
The smell of pine, centuries later click here
and here

Jim Morrison's beautiful poem on connectors/rites click here

Gunther Van Hagens, creator of Body Worlds and the plastination method of preservation has intrigued people around the world. click here

photo: plastinated human body/Body Worlds/San Diego 2009 Patty Mooney

engraving: Calavera Oaxaqueña José Guadalupe Posada circa 1903

Creamsicles

2011-10-18T20:26:00.000-07:00

Finn Earl (Anton Yelchin): Who is this?

Ogden C. Osborne (Donald Sutherland): (mild laugh) Ah, that's Creamsicle

Finn: Her name was Creamsicle?

Ogden: Yeah. Yeah, she smelled like a Creamsicle

Finn: Mr. Osborne, Creamsicles don't smell.

Ogden: Smells good doesn't it?

King of Norway introduced me to her. She had a mole shaped like Cuba.

She and Billie Holliday

got into a cat fight

over me.

The two of 'em used to sing duets.

One in each ear.

Billie Holliday could sure sing.

Creamsicle used to hit the high notes.

photo: the great film Fierce People 2005 Lions Gate
Director: Griffin Dunne
Writer: Dirk Wittenborn

Mae West Went West

2011-10-18T06:20:00.000-07:00

Mae never takes showers, preferring tub baths perfume with rose-scented bath salts. She has more than a dozen fluffy negligees and wears a different one every morning for breakfast, which she eats on a pink satin chaise lounge in her boudoir.

She has twenty-seven bottles of perfume on her dressing table, but the one she uses almost exclusively is of sweet pe scent … Her hair-dresser comes to her home every morning to give her a finger wave. Her hair is shampooed weekly. Mae’s fingernails are manicured three times a week and always coated with a vivid red polish. She has massages several times a week.

For the sake of her curves she eats rich, creamy foods – likes chocolate candy too.

She is left-handed, naturally, but hides the fact in public. She can’t ride a horse, but is proud of her ability to ride an elephant. She likes to motor, but cant’ drive a car, and is afraid of ocean and air travel. She is a disciple of Yogi, writes in bed, dictating to a secretary.

She’s a home girl, and oddly her homework is writing.

- Becoming Mae West, Emily Wortis Leider, Farrar Straus Giroux 1997

Photo: She Done Him Wrong Paramount

Packaging Design: Becca Fox

Moonraker's Perfume of Fire

2011-10-17T06:25:00.000-07:00

James Bond: Trifle overpowering, your scent.

photo: Moonraker 1979

Ahh, burning odor of hydrocarbons

2011-10-16T09:09:00.000-07:00

if we don't make it there

our kids or our kids' kids are

gonna make it

Where?

To outer space

And it has its unique smells and pockets of smells.

From lunar smells of firecrackers and spent gunpowder, to spaces smelling of sweet sugar or sulfur

Read the fun little article click here

"The final frontier smells a lot like a NASCAR race—a bouquet of hot metal, diesel fumes and barbecue. The source? Dying stars, mostly.

We have a few clues as to what space smells like. First of all, there were interviews with astronauts that we were given, when they had been outside and then returned to the space station and were de-suiting and taking off their helmets - they all reported quite particular odours.

For them, what comes across is a smell of fried steak, hot metal and even welding a motorbike, one of them said."

- Steven Pearce Omega Ingredients

photo: Antennae Galaxies NASA/ESA

distant perfume

2011-10-13T06:21:00.000-07:00

In the place where this memory lives is perhaps the key to open all the other places that hold the stored words and stories that slip away. I am thinking this once again, walking down the street, writing in invisible ink.

Will the thought of how to unlock the other words and live the memories for the second time (perhaps on paper this time) disappear into that other world of shadows and distant perfume? My mind seems to remember it but cannot actually smell the aroma. It is like the memory of a scent. Perhaps this memory can transport me to another state. Is that not as real?

- Deborah Winger, in her lovely book Undiscovered

photo: NYC 6th Ave. circa 1940

Smells of Manliness

2011-10-12T07:12:00.000-07:00

15 Manliest Smells in the World

are listed in
Brett and Kate McKay's
Art of Manliness
23 June 2009

the list delights me with its quaintness

The original Old Spice makes it in

shoe polish

sawdust

and guess what else?

click here

photo: Teater Kolibri 18 August 2007 FredrikBorgström

11 October 2011 Brian Pera's Woman's Picture & Andy Tauer's Miriam

2011-10-10T17:16:00.000-07:00

See the film
hear the director, Brian Pera
who also is the director/star of The Way I See Things click here

and

several of the stars

and

Perfumer Andy Tauer visiting from Zurich, Switzerland

and
the first of the Tableau de Parfums Miriam

Host: the luminescent Ann Magnuson

Tuesday 11 October 2011
8:00 PM

The Steve Allen Theater at The Center For Inquiry
4773 Hollywood Blvd
Hollywood, CA 90027
call 323.666.4268

For ticket information click here

click here for information on the Tableau de Parfums

What I love about this film and Brian's directing is time and space change until you sit, not sit like in a chair, more sit as in yoga or a meditation or at a picnic; sit with yourself, to dawning recognitions blooming within the film.

Painting: Nana Edouard Manet

Smell of Rain

2011-10-09T07:50:00.000-07:00

Inspector Barnaby: This cloth, where'd it come from?

Tailor: Ah, that's a lovely 18 ounce tweed, hand woven in Scotland before the war.

Barnaby: I swear my father had a suit in this material.

Tailor: I wouldn't be surprised.

Barnaby: I can remember how it smelled when he'd been out in the rain.

photo: Midsomer Murders The Made-to-Measure Murders May 2010

goin' bananas

2011-10-08T07:23:00.000-07:00

green leaf

clove

candy

photo: banana Cavendish

Scent Bar 7 October 2011 Andy Tauer/Brian Pera - Los Angeles

2011-10-07T07:27:00.000-07:00

Lucky Scent

lucky again

Perfumer Andy Tauer visits from Zurich, Switzerland

Director Brian Pera in town from Tennessee

Scent Bar

8327 Beverly Blvd

Los Angeles, CA

5-7PM

Champagne Reception

showcasing the first scent created for

Tableau de Parfums click here

an ongoing film series by Brian Pera
creator of A Woman's Picture
click here

showing in Los Angeles
Tuesday 11 October 2011
Steve Allen Theater

photo: Lucky Hand lastor 17 April 2010

Expect everything else to become like perfume ...

2011-10-06T07:01:00.000-07:00

Perhaps our sense of this,

the sense of belonging to a world held together by networks of ephemeral confidences

(such as philosophies and stock markets)

rather than permanent certainties,

predisposes us to embrace the pleasures of our most primitive and unlangued sense.

Being mystified doesn't frighten us as much as it used to.

And the point for me is not to expect perfumery to take its place in some nice, reliable, rational world order, but to expect everything else to become like perfume.

- Brian Eno 1992 Details Magazine

Treasure Hunt - kiss in a bottle

2011-10-05T06:47:00.000-07:00

Original Inspiration

Add Interpretation

Amazing what black and white film and a soundtrack can do? Or, is it something in the air!

Spritz, Spritz

kiss in a bottle

Marula Amarula

2011-10-04T06:47:00.000-07:00

2009 Couldn't resist a bottle on an end-aisle ... having read Lyall Watson's writing on the plant - what would it taste like?

Amarula a cream liqueur with an elephant with tusks on the label: this natural liqueur is produced from the unique fruit of the marula tree and fresh cream; product of South Africa.

I find it has a slight citrusy tang and creamy vanilla blend.

In an article perfumer Vedat Ozan sent to me at the end of 2009 on Upcoming Flavors marula is listed ...

click here and scroll down see animals enjoy the fermented fruit

Was the BBC documentary of animals getting "high" once a year with the marula tree's fermented fruit monkied with?
I have no idea other than Amarula didn't have that effect on me ... for better or worse

photo: Marula tree and fruit, Transvaal, South Africa by Rotational

luxe, calme et volupte

2011-10-03T05:19:00.000-07:00

luxe, calme et volupte

painting: Henri Matisse 1904
poem: L'Invitation au Voyage Baudelaire

electrical

2011-10-02T08:36:00.000-07:00

All but the anosmic,
those who have lost the sense of smell through injury or disease,
have experienced the instant recognition
of a past incident flashing
through the brain during one inhale.

-Lura Astor

photo: Thunder above Madeira Waters Don Amaro

beauty het-erotic strings gluons

2011-10-01T13:15:00.000-07:00

At the fundamental level Nature
for whatever reason
prefers beauty

-physicist David Gross

director of the Institute for Theoretical Physics at UCSB
University of California Santa Barbara
heterotic strings - bosonic string and superstring
heterosis hybrid vigour

Knit that model! click here
for Knit Chaos and Chaos fragrance
photo: Tree Trunk Mystery Lura Astor

Time in a Bottle

2011-09-30T10:53:00.000-07:00

If I could save time in a bottle

The first thing that I'd like to do

Is to save every day
'Til eternity passes away

Just to spend them with you

- Jim Croce
Time in a Bottle

sung to the same song ...
If I could have sex in a bottle

our marketing leads to the same thing of course
promises, promises, promises

Arpege taglines: promise her anything ... but give her Arpege

or

No bottles to break – just hearts!

illustration: Perfume Bridge Lura Astor

Hombre means Man, Man oh Man

2011-09-29T08:01:00.000-07:00

ambergris

2011-09-28T07:22:00.000-07:00

Star Date September 2011
somewhere known as California the Golden State

Mid-sleep, the sense of smelling ambergris

message from the whales
a nice feeling
I layer it with fragrance when I awake

Check out Scentual Antiquities ambergris click here

painting of Sperm Whale Scarred Giant by Chris Harman

olfactory diagnosis may become mainstream

2011-09-27T08:37:00.000-07:00

Say ahhhhhh
let's smell your breath,
your skin, your eliminations, your toes

Healers, midwives, medical professionals
have long documented the use of smell in pre-diagnosis

Why Ida Meister, working in the fields of oncology and neuroscience,
loves her amygdala click here

I've heard doctors speak of smelling ketones on the breath of diabetics ...

"... early stages of basal-cell carcinoma, a type of skin cancer, can be detected by analysing the odour of a person’s skin using gas chromatography and mass spectrometry ....

Dr. Buszewski is now tweaking his device so that it works with the bio-marker profiles of a range of diseases.

If he can do this successfully, olfactory diagnosis could become mainstream without a wagging tail in sight."

read here - Olfactory Diagnostics: Smelling Bad
The Economist 28 August 2008 click here

photo: Greenman lastor

Sniffer Rats and Tuberculosis Detection

2011-09-26T08:02:00.000-07:00

Hey Men from Boys in a Bottle

2011-09-25T06:16:00.000-07:00

Check it out

scent bomb bombykol

2011-09-24T07:04:00.000-07:00

Scent bombykol
is the sex pheromone
secreted by female silkworm moths
when sexually available
and it gets the male silkworms
doing the flutter dance

"It is smell, therefore, that guides the Moths, that gives them information at a distance".

click here for a great article and pictures

photo: bombyx mandarina Reanimator86

chili smoke singe

2011-09-23T09:28:00.000-07:00

smell of autumnal

roadside chile roasters

spinning the smoked scent

to singe nostrils and memory

In New Mexico

thinking

"a chile is a chile"

is just

ha ha ha ha ha ha

Happy Autumnal Equinox!

photo: Yellow Leaves Lura Astor

botanical poisoners

2011-09-22T10:40:00.000-07:00

Dr. Anderson   We drank, and Price just fell to the floor

Bergerac    What made you think it was, uh, poison

Dr. Anderson   Well that’s the funny thing … the smell …

Coroner Dr. Rodgers   What we have here is common old garden poisoning … in this case we have an intelligent adult, a respected financier, a pillar of society here on Jersey, dying from the poison … hemlock …. Grows in marshes and ditches. Looks like sickly cow parsley.

Dr. Anderson   The effect of hemlock is instantaneous. It must have been administered by someone at the ceremony.

Dr. Rodgers   It must be 150 years since someone was last murdered with hemlock. Jersey has its very own Lucretia Borgia!

-from Bergerac/Poison February 1987

Don't just put it in your mouth - some plants look alike but one is poison.

- Advice from the 1970's - learning to harvest free plant edibles growing wild in cities and countrysides.

Remember recipes from Stalking the Wild Asparagus by Euell Gibbons ... cattail pollen flour and more?

Wicked Plants: Botanical Rogues & Assassins

through 30 October 2011
San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers

click here

The dose makes the poison -Paracelsus

color

2011-09-21T15:07:00.000-07:00

The color alone seemed a form of wealth.
The landscape was gentle, and the deep green grass made me feel mellower:
to have seen this was to have discovered a part of this poor country in which people lived in contentment, with space and a mild climate.

- Paul Theroux The Old Patagonian Express: By Train Through the Americas 1979

photo: BigSun lastor

ahhh the smell of sulfur - thus all the fart jokes in the world?

2011-09-20T08:49:00.000-07:00

I prefer matches, thank you.

I love the smell of sulfur.

- from The Two Jakes 1990 Paramount Pictures

Richard Farnsworth, Jack Nicholson

Also Check Out

primordial soup makes smelly lab

and down the hall they complain

more on sulfur vi-eggra? men get sulfur?

sulfur - last of the series

green aria - the reviews are in

Stewart Matthew collaborates with renowned fragrance designer Christophe Laudamiel and composers Nico Muhly and Valgeir Sigurdsson

smell of fear, recovery, ash, cash, balance

huffers, volcanic ash, the smell of aliphatic hydrocarbons

anise sulfur

steam locomotives and beautiful perfume

green aria includes podcast

Niki de Saint Phalle - DC

2011-09-09T09:27:00.000-07:00

Niki de Saint Phalle's larger-than-life sculptures are now in Washington DC; to date, the only major outdoor sculpture corridor in our nation’s capital by a woman. Through October 2011 on New York Avenue NW, between 12th &13th
click here

Known for her sense of color and playfulness, Niki de Saint Phalle died in 2002 but her work lives on in her famous sculptures, whimsical gardens and grottos throughout the world, and in her perfumes in sculpted bottles.

Her Tarot Garden in Tuscany, Italy Il Giardino dei Tarrochi click here

FREE EVENT Those in Washington DC on Saturday 10 September 2011 at the National Museum of Women in the Arts for all ages 11AM-5PM. Materials are provided to create Niki-inspired works click here

photos: Niki de Saint Skull
Niki de Saint Phalle's Queen Califia Patty Mooney
Sagittarius

bear this in nose

2011-09-08T08:02:00.000-07:00

A bear's nose picks up 100 times our scent.

There is a documentary on the negotiation of space between animals and humans, especially in regard to housing developments and land useage. Park rangers state that it is easier to train one bear than 1,000 humans.

I've spoken to people who smelled the strong smell of bear in the outback, but have never smelled it myself. Meanwhile, in summer heat bears come down to soak in Los Angeles foothill jacuzzis.

photo: Wildpark Bad Mergentheim

Check Mate ... End Game ...

2011-09-02T09:06:00.000-07:00

Weekend preparations are underway

hanging around to be smelled

2011-09-01T08:05:00.000-07:00

I smelled her

awoke from a dream with this phrase,
loving the play on the verb, for,

smelled

moves in both directions

he smelled her, his nose going into the skin, and,
the smell came in from a distance, to be smelled.

Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto added the scents of spices
within his suspended, sculpted shapes.
His large installations fill space and invite interaction as
viewers are also sniffers and touchers.

pictures/coverage
at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome click here and here

at the Armory New York City click here and here for slides

Lavender Water by the Bucket

2011-08-30T12:24:00.000-07:00

Det. Supt. Foyle: You left the room?

Mr. Ellis : It was too dark.

Foyle: Well, I know somebody did because um Fleming ah said he heard the door open before the shots were fired.

Guy Spencer: That was Rosemary Harwood.

Foyle: How'd you know that?

Guy: I was just outside.

Foyle: Erah, how did you know it was her if you couldn't see her, because it was, it was too dark to see anything?

Guy: I smelled her. She um, she wears lavender water, errr,

I'd say she wears it by the bucket. It was definitely her.

~ from Foyle's War, The White Feather
photos: Molinard Lavande Extrait Double Lura Astor

Liquorice Licorice Anise Fennel

2011-08-26T11:37:00.000-07:00

Reglisse Noire

created by perfumer
Jessica September Buchanan
of 1000 Flowers
click to right in
Feed Your Inspirations

is a refined beauty
a scent that will wear well in any season

A gentle haunting echoes when I wear this one ... wondering where is that from? and it is on my arm.

click here for interviews with the perfumer and reviews
liquorice dreams by the perfumer click here

If you remember Callard and Bowser's licorice toffee ... Reglisse Noire offers a wink.

If this gives you a sweet tooth, check out licorices from around the world at Licorice International click here

Smelling Reglisse Noire I don't get the playful cutting of licorice candy found in Pink Sugar/Aquolina, the bit of austerity found in Anisia Bella/Aqua Allegoria, or the Good 'n' Plenty opening of Anis/Etro

I do get persistent refinement that pleases from beginning to end.

Shiso leaf adds to the refinement and though star anise is used, I fondly recall Swedish limpa bread with its anise, caraway and sometimes cardamom, Italian snowflake pizelles, freshly chopped fennel, anise tea.

More recently, Shiso/perilla leaf, of the mint/basil family, made the leap from sushi plates to summer cocktails.

Liquorice potables: ouzo, raki, pernod, absinthe, anisette, are renown for whatever remnants of stories trail those who partake.

Growing up, we had 2 parakeets, JoJo, with palest blue of sky feathers, and Miss Blue, lapis lazuli blue with black/white mask. While lying on a bed reading, the birds would fly over, perch on our chest, and scrape our teeth, their feathers smelling of softest anise. Whatever social primping or mineral from our teeth the birds gained, we too benefited from kind whiffs of calming anise.
And, in history, birds have been perfumed to fly through feast halls wafting scent with wings.

Star Anise is related to the magnolia family, but a far cry from the buttery lemon scent of magnolia flowers.

Related by odor, not by genus, anise is used to attract fish, mixed with wine helps cure asp bites.

Sulfur is used to detect gas leaks and capsules of anise oil were added into white metal plane bearings of
early steam engine trains in Britain, releasing scent during overheating.

Koku radio
click to right under Feed Your Inspirations
has a broadcast on the smell of licorice increasing vaginal blood flow and information on how various odors affect gender blood flow.

Congrats Jessica September Buchanan on your beauty of a scent!

illustration: Star Anise
photo: Shiso Pepsi
photo: Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway No. 957 Helena
photo: Sweetbay Magnolia Derek Ramsey/Ram-Man 2008 and the Chanticleer Garden

My Lurana Facebook Page - yay

2011-08-25T12:19:00.000-07:00

a dedicated facebook page

as I near 500 blog posts

happy to say

Here you go click here

be talking with you -

in the comment sections

Thanks for all your support and feedback over the years

and most importantly ...

interesting research and creations that you share with me.

It's an honor.

sniff sniff Feed Your Inspirations

art: California Poppy Reveries ©Lura Astor

poetry sillage

2011-08-24T09:01:00.000-07:00

don't feel like writing a poem,

instead, I will light the incense-burning vessel

filled with myrrh, jasmine, and frankincense,

and the poem will grow in my heart

like the flowers in my garden.

~ student of Hāfez
خواجه شمس‌الدین محمد حافظ شیرازی

15h century AD

Perfumery and Ritual: The Use of Incense, Flowers, Distillates, and Aromatic Objects in Asia. This Workshop took place at Universitat Heidelberg click here

incense peppermint click here

Nathaniel Musselman incense crafter click here

smells so good click here

photo: Fallen Leaves lastor
Trail lastor

Art Humor

2011-08-23T13:15:00.000-07:00

I friggin' love Art History meets Theatah

Highly recommend

Guerilla Girls Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art

click here
some of their famous posters click here

Lee Krasner, painter, wife and helper of painter Jackson Pollock, received a retrospective show at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC, 6 months after her death in 1984. As of 2008, Krasner is 1 of 4 women artists to have had a retrospective show at the Museum of Modern Art. But, the museum has only been open since 1928.

One more from 70 Million, both directed by David Freymond

National Museum of Women in Art in Washington DC click here

Guerilla Girls 1985

Scented Fans

2011-08-22T14:51:00.000-07:00

Scented fans have a long history

The Fan Museum in Greenwich, London
current exhibit click here

Air à la Mode

features fans of
Sylvain Le Guen
with one, scented by perfumer Francis Kurkdjian click here
through 13 November 2011

Books for sale include one from the exhibit on the sound of fans as live music plays. Hadn't thought of that extra sound of air ruffling en masse.

photo: Fanning the Senses
The Fan Museum 2007
photo: Don Quixote Bolshoi Ballet
Marc Haegeman 2006

pssst Mel ...

2011-08-12T08:40:00.000-07:00

a cologne spoof starring the big man J.C. himself

Nasal Synesthesia

2011-08-09T16:26:00.000-07:00

I think it is an optimistic message

that we harbor so much

multi-sensory perception

The fetus makes 2 million synapses a second

Synesthesia rhymes with anesthesia
Anesthesia = no sensation
Synesthesia = joined sensation

We don't understand how

metaphor works in the brain

.... So that synesthetic associations our ancestors made long ago
have grown into the more abstract kinds of language that we understand today
and that's why metaphors make sense.

.... metaphor is the reverse of what most people commonly assume. It doesn’t depend on a capacity for abstract verbal abstraction, but rather on a physical interaction with a concrete, sensual world.

These are a few soundbites from

Richard E. Cytowic, M.D. click here

breaking down the vocabulary of synesthesia

Hirshhorn Museum, Washington D.C.

part 1

part 2

part 3

Cytowic has authored Wednesday is Indigo Blue

The Man Who Tasted Shapes

Synesthesia: A Union of the Senses, and more.

Earlier Related Posts Here:

Olfactory Synesthetes: Do You Smell in Color? click here 18 June 2009

Sniff 'n' Poof click here 2 Oct 2009

Illustration: Plum lastor

Smelling a Bit of a Dog

2011-08-08T14:13:00.000-07:00

Cressida Draper (Suzan Crowley) Do you like dogs? I think it's important for men to like animals.

I can always trust a man who smells a bit of a dog, don't you think?

Jim Bergerac (John Nettles) What else should men smell of then, eh?

Cressidea Gunpowder, sandalwood, tannin, what do you like?

Bergerac Uhp, roses?

Cressida Ah, come on.

Bergerac Cricket bat oil.
Cressida Cricket bat oil?

Bergerac Well you asked, didn't you? What do you like most?
Cressida I don't know. When I was a kid I loved the smell of the tannery, leather ...

from the series Bergerac: All For Love 1991
photo: BBC /UK-TV

Opossums

2011-08-03T07:23:00.000-07:00

When opossums are threatened or harmed, they mimic the appearance and smell of a sick or dead animal.

The physiological response is involuntary, like sneezing.

Playing dead reflex develops; the brain does not always react this way at the appropriate moment for baby opossums.

When playing possum, the animal's lips draw back baring teeth, saliva foams around the mouth, eyes close or half-close, and, the scented fluid secretes from the anal glands, thus the smell of death.

In the stiff, curled form the animal can be touched or carried without noticeable reaction. Slight ear twitchings are visible as the animal regains consciousness within 40 minutes to 4 hours.

Interesting articles click here

Smells of Death Centuries Later - Smells ... Sweet

Illustration: 1875 Popular Science Merian Opossum

Jasmine Lapis Lazuli

2011-07-25T11:14:00.000-07:00

A friend shows a picture of lapis lazuli.
I fondly recall that Donovan got lapis lazuli into a song.
But wait there's more! Jasmine ...

Joe Bean's Theme

Long and lazy schooner

In lapis lazuli

Aquamarina

In a southern sea

Soft and sensual sunset

Sommerset Maugham funset

The warm breeze of evening

Caresses silk dresses

The lazy leaning lady's languid way

The lovely leading lady in our play

Soft eyed and always thirty

Jasmine fills the air

The lovely leaning lady's languid way

The lovely leading lady in our play

Soft eyed and always thirty

Jasmine fills the air

When I hear astrud

Jasmine fills the air

When I hear astrud

Jasmine fills the air

When I hear astrud

Jasmine fills the air

~Donovan Leitch the Hurdy Gurdy Man

guitar : Bbmaj7 – Bbm7
Eb – Ebm
Bbmaj7 – Bb6
Cm7 – F7
(F7) – Bbsus-Bb-Ab-Bb-F7 (three times)
Eb-Bb-F7

Jasmine filling the air is a real entity
I remember the first time smelling jasmine incense - magic
Sleeping under star jasmine bushes in California
Tasting fine jasmine teas
Jasmines remains a star performer in perfume

For summer, I have a spray bottle in the refrigerator containing jasmine tea and rose water to spritz on

If you're in Grasse, France, 2 August 2011, a jasmine event with Pierre Benard and others at the Musée International de la Parfumerie, includes presentations and 2011 perfumes using jasmine, including By Kilian. Click here

photos: Jasmine Merchant, Tunisian stamp 1955
Lapis Lazuli - lastor
Jasmine Flower - lastor

Sweet, Lachrymatrial, Sulfenic Producing Onions

2011-07-14T14:17:00.000-07:00

from the series Foyle’s War
taking place during WW2

Samantha Stewart (Honeysuckle Weeks): Could I have a smell?

Police Officer selling tickets to the raffle for the onion: Wha'?

Samantha: The onion. I haven’t seen one since Christmas! mmmmm

Strawberry Fields Forever

2011-07-05T13:18:00.000-07:00

Your hair smells like … strawberries.

- Leland (Ryan Gosling) The United States of Leland

Becky (Jena Malone): It’s my shampoo dodo, it’s not my hair.

Leland: Well, I still like it.

Strawberries are part of the rose family Rosaceae.

Eating strawberries helps cool the body, so it's nice that they grow easily in summer.

photos: The United States of Leland/Paramount Pictures

Strawberry perfume bottle: link here

Strawberry Alarm Clock of the 1967 hit song Incense & Peppermints

what 7-ll stores are to milk

2011-06-30T07:05:00.000-07:00

Chromosone 11 & Olfaction

2011-06-27T06:48:00.000-07:00

Chromosome 11 constitutes just over 4% of the genome, contains more than 40% of the olfactory receptor genes, making it the largest chromosomal repository of such genes in the human genome.

Many of the genes on chromosome 11 are grouped into related clusters known as gene families, the most notable of which is the olfactory receptor gene family. This family, whose corresponding proteins govern the sense of smell, is the largest known grouping of genes in vertebrate species.

In humans, its members are sprinkled throughout the genome, with the exception of chromosomes 20 and Y. But chromosome 11, which constitutes just over 4 per cent of the genome, contains more than 40 per cent of the olfactory receptor genes, making it the largest chromosomal repository of such genes in the human genome.

-Broad Institute 1996

Click here for a brief video

Minute 1:25 begins the region affecting olfaction

photo: National Library of Medicine

Rhino Nose Er Us

2011-06-24T13:01:00.000-07:00

a visit Inside the Nose ... with a bit of humor thrown in
as we visit this tunnel that works day in day out

Viagra in a Bottle

2011-06-19T09:04:00.000-07:00

You Wish! Known to have Side Effects

smell of a ...

2011-06-14T06:23:00.000-07:00

from The United States of Leland 2003

Writer/Director Matthew Ryan Hoge

Leland (Ryan Gosling)

I thought you said your girlfriend was in Los Angeles

Pearl (Don Cheadle)   She is

Leland    Then how you do explain the smell?

Pearl    What smell?

Leland The smell of a girl

The Little Drummer Girl

2011-06-13T06:03:00.000-07:00

from the 1984 film based on John Le Carre's novel
Le Carre appears in a cameo as a Commander

Diane Keaton as Charlie, smelling driving gloves
Whose are these?

Yorgo Voyagis as Joseph

Those were his. Sprayed with elixir of Michel.

Charlie Yeah, I'll be the first perfume bomb in Aramis.

In 2004/2005 Victor & Rolf's
Flowerbomb/Flowerbomb Extreme debut

Photos: Warner Bros./Victor & Rolf

Lord's Jester Perfume

2011-06-11T09:29:00.000-07:00

Adam Gottschalk, perfumer and founder of Lord's Jester, brings deft touch, a heartbreaking quality, a tinch of humor throughout, and homage to beauty for beauty's sake.

Enjoying the beauties I've smelled to date, liquids, and the solid has wonderful melt. Click here for his site link.

Luminosity, a transparency
and the sense that here is a perfume maker who truly does love women.

So, Adam, if this is you clowning around - keep on doing it!

And, on you-tube you can find Adam's many poetry recitings.

photo: lastor

Wildflowers & Shame

2011-06-09T07:56:00.000-07:00

grows hair on your chest and leads to ... Frenching
seems so innocent

Icy Perfume, Russian Skater, Yankee Ingenuity

2011-06-07T19:55:00.000-07:00

That's Evgeni Viktorovich Plushenko on the ice. Ice is nice.

Love his skating at the 2010 Olympics

have not yet smelled Glacier

Recommended Book The Frozen Ice Trade by Gavin Weightman
reads like an historical thriller -
Ice and what to do about it?
Yankee ingenuity gets it from here to there ...
marketing ice in the form of iced tea, ice cocktails, iced cream and the long list of new delicacies.

Today's ingenious marketing?

Getting more out of scent and flavoring in food and daily life.

Andosterone Saves the Day

2011-06-04T12:16:00.000-07:00

The Mistress of Spices

2011-05-25T12:48:00.000-07:00

Everyone has a spice

A fun fiction using spices as the woof and warp, weaving the mythologies of changing cultures while bringing along your traditions.

It smells so beautiful here.

The 2005 film stars Aishwarya Rai, who I suspect is the Angelina Jolie of India, and Dylan McDermott; based on Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's novel.

Season Nings

2011-04-17T15:31:00.000-07:00

Cayenne in coffee
a welcome bite
... inspired by a strawberry dipped in chocolate imbued with chili powders

I like violet pastilles
licorice and clove gums

and on occasion,
spritz ambergris in my coffee

B/W Sketch: Half Moon Cafe lastor

Smelling Life

2011-04-17T07:20:00.000-07:00

A tree trunk

creature

smells

what's being

carried in

the

wind

photo: lastor

Color! Portals! Sniff Sniff

2011-04-13T09:07:00.000-07:00

"The painter of the future,” said van Gogh,
“Is a colorist such as has never been seen before."

I do hope so. The delicious irony is that paint manufacturers, color theorists, and colormakers, practically inclined craftspeople, have traditionally been conventionally minded folk, offering up gleaming new tools into the hands of visionaries who go and do something crazy with them, break the mold, create a revolution. Long may it last.

…. that is the way of art, to find ways to take advantage of what technology offers. That, I hope, is the one central message of this book: technology opens new doors for artists. And of course technologists cannot then prescribe which portals the artists will go through or what they will do on the other side.

- Philip Ball, Bright Earth

which portals the artists will go through?

Illustrations: Whea, Sunwaves, Tree Portals lastor

and have you slept with ...?

2011-04-11T10:35:00.000-07:00

Perfume is an inner dimension of femininity that, above all, expresses in its own particular manner what cannot be expressed in any other way.

You can't love a perfume you haven't slept with.

-Coco Chanel

Illustration: Klimtfume lastor

Douglas Hopkins of The Perfume Factory

2011-04-07T14:35:00.000-07:00

Long time fashion (including perfume) photographer, previously a scientific photographer at MIT catching exploding volcanoes on film ... The Berlin Wall falls ... Douglas Hopkins click here visits some Russian perfume factories with a perfume chemist friend. He then goes to Poland, smells Prastarah and proceeds to buy the world rights. Full story on the scent, with some age to it, that crosses Polish and French Royalty history click here.

From the site: Prastara has been produced in Europe continuously since 1848, a Latin manuscript was more recently discovered in the attic of an 800 year old Polish soap factory in Lodz shortly after WWII. This may be the specific indication of its origin, from the fact that Louis’ mistress, who later became his last wife, was of Polish royalty.

"A kissing distance whisper."

Honey Notes & Bees

2011-04-02T11:33:00.000-07:00

I love a true honey note in fragrances.

At Bee Natural, I enjoy Joe Waggle's use of lemon grass essential oil into melted beeswax, in order to increase a swarm box’s attractiveness. Read how here: click here

... recently sent a link to Holy Bee Press click: We Talk Bees

Enjoy!

Wearing Parfum Privee/La Perla with its touch of honey.

Primordial Soup makes Smelly Lab

2011-03-29T11:49:00.000-07:00

An article caught my attention, enhanced by the mention of a Smelly Lab. It talks of recent technology furthering the findings of Stanley Miller's famous 1953 experiment, his creation of primordial soup of organic molecules. New York Times article, 26 March 2011 click here

Re: hydrogen sulfide -

"It's very smelly," Hazen explained. "Just a trace of it will make your lab absolutely uninhabitable — and make you enemies up and down the hall for months."

An article of 27 October 2008 mentions that hydrogen sulfide, with its noticeable rotten egg smell, may actually regulate blood pressure ... click here
... something soakers of sulfur mineral springs have long known!

Cheese Perfume

2011-03-23T09:53:00.000-07:00

Having discovered the British television series Doc Martin 2004, I give you this:

Doc Martin/Doctor Martin Ellingham: What's that perfume?

Doctor Edith Montgomery: I can't remember the name of it, it was a gift from an infertile, and rather unattractive, couple.

Doc: It smells of cheese.

Edith: No more IVF for those two.

IVF: in vitro fertilization

Cheese Perfume, easy to achieve: eat Cheetos and then smell your cologne/perfume.

Horse-shoe vetch
hippocrepis comosa
has an odour like cheese click here

photo: Doc Martin
illustration: Horseshoe Vetch William Curtis 1798 The Botanical Magazine

Incense - Poetic Smoke

2011-03-11T11:31:00.000-08:00

Gifted incense maker Nathaniel Musselman has unique offerings on his Etsy site at incredible prices.

Click here

I've tried many of these and can't wait to share them in workshops.

Part of my need in an incense is the ability to breathe well with the smoke, especially while practicing with any breath work: deep breathing, yoga, Tai Chi, meditations.

Musselman's work is superbly well-balanced, the odors divine - no cloying here; with deft touch, the burn is excellent - smoke spirals.

Knowing that traditionally, many medicines can be inhaled via smoke, I approach incense choices with these things in mind:

Scent - do I enjoy the odor?

Physically - can I inhale it easily in the air space?

As a spiritual transportive, a room "freshener" or "cleanser" and, just for fun.

Nathaniel Musselman has whimsy, deep craft and a studious nature that serve us well via his gifts in the form of these beauties.

Transformative art ... poetic smoke.

photo: Nathaniel's Incense Lura Astor

Grapefruit & Muguet

2011-03-11T09:10:00.000-08:00

Vedat Ozan, perfumer in Istanbul, now offers various scent accords click here.

These allow you to play not only with single notes but with accords, at a good price.

The other day, while looking for a spritz of grapefruit and unable to locate the effervescent Ananas Fizz, or Vedat's grapefruit, I found instead, Vedat's Muguet.

Over it I sprayed Pamplelune/Guerlain Aqua Allegoria, a grapefruit fantasy.

This instinct turned out to be true.

Pamplelune, many agree, is a strange scent. For me, it has always had a scratchiness to it. There was only one fellow, I worked with in a fragrance boutique, where it really shone its colors, straight out of the bottle. On him, it is magic.

Learning long ago not to think it sacrilegious to mix fragrances, no offense to perfumers, but after all, I mix paints, and mix ingredients to create new recipes ...

This underlayering of Ozan's Muguet immediately rounds out the scratch in Pamplelune's sulphurous undertone. This blending brings up and rounds out the sparkle, soothes the sharp. It also gives me more opportunity to wear Pamplelune whereas previously I wore it only when I needed odd, or to try it on someone else's skin.

Perfumers still find Muguet/Lily of the Valley a tricky one to capture, and as with rose, you will find numerous variations-on-a-theme available for your smelling pleasure.

photo: Grapefruit Lura Astor

When in Rome, Smell Like the Romans Do

2011-03-01T21:14:00.001-08:00

From the 2005 television series Rome:

Ah, Victory,
smoke, sh*t,
and rotting flesh.

photo: Marcus Cyron

Flying Squirrels

2011-02-11T06:45:00.000-08:00

Flying squirrels
have a highly developed
sense of smell
allowing for easier
night foraging
as they harvest
fruits, nuts, fungi, bird eggs

southern flying squirrel/glaucomys volans/petit polatouche: U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service

Lady Liberty

2011-02-03T09:04:00.000-08:00

I dream the perfume stand

is crumbling

It is the stand to Lady Liberty

and I see the perfume bottle to Lady Caron

a bottle embossed with our Statue of Liberty

I know we must take a stand

sometimes just being firm with who we are

Sometimes a practice, such as the horse stance or the universal pose/post.

The stand has weathered time well

good quality satin discolored only slightly

leather weathered, the construction still functional, the clasp is in place.

The marketing for Caron's Lady Caron says it is an optimistic fragrance, elegant and uplifting, that Parfums Caron founder Ernest Daltroff's spirits soared as he passed the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor, the gift from France, the home he'd just left to flee Nazi invasion.

Is our stand (personal, familial, community, national, global)

vacant of the Lady Liberty perfume?

but

well constructed, aging well, its clasp in place?

A reminder - we must stand in our selves,

Whether we are moving or making like a tree?

Smelling Rabbits

2011-02-02T11:04:00.000-08:00

Happy Chinese New Year, dear ones.

May your creative lives and dreams and productions be prolific!

Need Inspiration?
Nose around and "see" what you find.

photo: Dixi

Cups of Stinging Scent

2011-01-31T11:24:00.000-08:00

The first time I smelled these beauties, my sister had returned from California with some buds.

They were so strange, mysterious, stinging musky, captivating and odd.

Years later, I end up in the land where they grow, some with lemony scented leaves, some with stinging medicinal odor. I love, love, love them.

Eucalyptus flowers, with hard, protective, cup-like structures
Greek roots
eu = well
calyptos = covered

In 1770, eucalyptus specimens made their way to Europe from Australia. Captain James Cook's explorations of the Australian coast allowed botanists to collect and catalogue several different species, bringing them to London. Over 700 species.

photos: lastor

the wavelength spectrum of 380 nm to 740 nm/nanometers gives me such pleasure

2011-01-24T09:22:00.000-08:00

I met Darius Monsef IV, founder of colourlovers.com, some years back in Portland, Oregon.

Life and color are completely different experiences for everybody, he says in his recent interview in San Francisco Magazine here acknowledging that people see differently.

I know that people also smell, perceive smell, differently. For a bunch of us, color is right in there in the mix, what I call olfactory synasthetes.

Darius also said, Mark Zuckerberg told me he’s color-blind, and that’s why Facebook’s header is blue. It’s the easiest color for the color-blind to see.

As kids, my sister, brother and I were upset to hear that our dog only saw in black and white. Dad reassured us by saying, it's like he's watching black and white television, which is what we had - I'd watch TV at the neighbors to see the Emerald City in color after a black and white journey to the Land of Oz.

In my research on synasthesia among perfume people, a wide range of differences emerges. Though I smell in color, texture, shape, energy, etc., I don't see letters in color. It is similar among healing work practitioners - the wide range of how we smell, feel textures, see light patterns, and more.

Experiencing color is a great pleasure in my life, whether I see it, smell it, taste it, hear it.

photo: Wedding Cake of Darius & Kaili

Do Plants Smell?

2011-01-22T09:18:00.000-08:00

Ahah
the same verb coming and going ... smell

to smell it, a something
to be smelled

The ability to smell their surroundings is vital for all plants.

It is now known that plants have, in different forms, the same innate abilities as those with which animals and humans make sense of their environment.

Plants see, smell, taste, feel and even listen to their surroundings.

Read about it in this article link here

Shout out to Deb I for turning me on to this

photo: a rose is a nose is a rose lastor

Florida Water

2011-01-20T06:45:00.000-08:00

Lanman and Kemp's Florida Water reminds me of my now passed older brother who brought it back after a trip to Cuba right before it closed to American citizens in the 1960's.

Cracking open the foil seal

his musk, tan skin that he liked to peel off as a sheet of map with his crooked smile and fisherman muscles

cinnamon, joyous neroli, sun-bleached hair lemon

bergamot, settling clove, sensitive heart whom I adore

lavender that I grew well with inherited green-thumb

rose - family pets were buried under their bushes

jasmine – an eternal favorite shared in tea

All in a bottle ! Instant! Sniff !

John Elliott Hirsch 03/16/1944 – 01/20/2003

illustration/photo: lastor

Ahh Chooo!

2011-01-18T07:50:00.000-08:00

You can own it.

Information here

I know.

I k(nose)w!

Heart and Nose

2011-01-17T07:30:00.000-08:00

A nose is like antiquity,
the nose was the man
who made and created aromas,
through smoke.
He was the shaman, the alchemist.

Today’s nose is a technician with a wide range of technology at his disposal for the task, making it easier but he must remember
that he has to use his shaman side as well,
meaning he should
use his heart
otherwise his nose won’t work.

- Ing. Eugenio Alphandery

Direttore Generale e Contitolare
Officina Profumo e Farmeceutica Santa Maria Novella
at Esxence: The Scent of Excellence
The Art Perfumery’s event
Milan, Italy

link here (scroll down to view video)
and to the right in Feed Your Inspirations

Illustration: Bast Bottle: lastor

Hero Sniffer Rats

2011-01-16T08:00:00.000-08:00

A man who teaches rats to sniff out land mines & tuberculosis - from Bart Weetjens:

Rats have more genetic material allocated to olfaction than any other mammal species. They are extremely sensitive to smell. Moreover, they have the mechanisms to map all these smells and to communicate about it.

Last year about 6,000 recorded people walked on live landmines .... worldwide almost 1.9 million died from tuberculosis as a first cause of infection.

TB can be diagnosed based by the volatiles exuding from patients.

The rats only need 200th of a second to discriminate the scents. (LA note: I want a Reality TV show - professional noses, rats, dogs, on your mark, get set, go!)

A microscopist can process 40 samples in a day, a rat can process the same amount of samples in 7 minutes only.*

Can you imagine the potential offspring applications, environmental detection of pollutants in soils, customs applications.... and so on.

- Bart Weetjens

(*Lurana says: I'm not for unemployment, I am for people being employed in more meaningful work. Let the rats do this sniffer work.)

Like any hero, simple - give it a food reward. Gentle.

more here at TED Series

Hero Rats Headquarters link here

APOPO Detection Rats Technology click here
Adopt-a-Rat click here
photos: courtesy of TED and APOPO
A Shout Out to Deb I for sending this info my way

The Sense of Smell is Invisible

2011-01-14T09:40:00.000-08:00

What is interesting about the sense of smell is that it is connected to everything else. It is a connecting sense. And in terms of academic research, it's wonderful because it is so interdisciplinary.

-Hans Rindisbacher
Author of The Smell of Books: A Cultural-Historical Study of Olfactory Perception in Literature
Professor of German
Chair, Dept. of German & Russian
Pomona College, Claremont, California

Rindisbacher's current research is in Soviet perfumery from socio-historic perspectives. It includes how the ideal of the feminine changes in controlled political climates, as do relationships to perfumery and cosmetics.

Listen to his recent interview on Moscow radio
(in Russian and English) click here

move the red slider bar to 20:10

A previous article click here

And, might I add:

Art does not reproduce the visible, rather, it makes visible.

- Paul Klee

photos: lastor

Taste Bud Test

2011-01-04T06:46:00.000-08:00

Hey kids, try this at home!

A scent/flavor test
from Givaudan
click here

photo: Taste Buds: Filip em/Neuroscience

Partial Solar E-Calypso Happy New Year EYeah

2011-01-04T01:04:00.000-08:00

Heal thyself smellers ... Dance of the Nose ... listen

Zebulon par Laurent Assoulen

Heidelberg

2011-01-02T14:33:00.000-08:00

Click here for the online tour
The German Pharmacy Museum
located in Heidelberg Castle

Deutsches Apotheken Museum

29-30 November 2010
Perfumery and Ritual
The Use of Incense, Flowers, Distillates,
and Aromatic Objects in Asia
Workshop took place at Universitat Heidelberg.
A few photos by William A. Franklin here

photo: Rane Abhijeet

Center of the Universe

2011-01-02T09:14:00.000-08:00

Though I can't put my hands on the research, Rob Brezsny mentions that according to an article in the Max Planck Germany Institute, the Center of the Universe smells like raspberries.

That wasn't in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy!

In Chandler Burr's The Emperor of Scent, Luca Turin's mention of Bois de Lune with its smoky, red berry sillage and souchong notes, set me on a chase.

A sucker for lapsong souchong tea, or the blend of Russian Caravan, its steam instantly transports to the inside ribs of whaling ships, first smelled as a kid at Connecticut's Mystic Seaport - old tar, sturdy, smoked timber.

Serendipity parked me in front of Bois de Lune years later. Driving through crowded, Portland, Oregon rainy downtown streets on the way to an interview. I did not yet know that ...

At the interview the woman said she would never hire me. When pressed, she answered, because you have worked for yourself. And you asked me here, why?

... the reward! Inside the French lingerie boutique I had parked in front of, tucked away on a back, high shelf ...
Bois de Lune by Manuel Canovas. A candle of red cedar, red berries, rosewood, and smoky, haunting souchong.

Reward and closure to one of the many fragrance hunts that continues to move me around the chessboard of this world.

Perfume can be like forensics ... unraveling the mysteries ...

photos:
Raspberry: KoS
Charles W. Morgan Whaling Ship: Mystic Seaport

Come La Luz

2010-12-29T05:50:00.001-08:00

Come la luz
they called it

Eat the light

Franz Wisner in his book Honeymoon with My Brother (Kurt's the brother) talks about Venezuelan drivers running the red lights.

For those who bottle light, paint with light write the light, I thank you for your communications and inspirations.

Wishing us all yet another New Year ... there are so many, depending on the day.

Lompoc Luz - lastor

Venutian Tides

2010-12-25T06:30:00.000-08:00

Venus in the morning sky
as big as a car headlight.

Clouds give meaning to the word scuttling, winds move them at a pace
as fast as clicking crabs at tideline
in mating season, scuttling sideways
amid phosphorescing sands.

Seagulls' sunrise squeal,
last night's basso-vibrato -
frogs appearing after the rains.

You put it in a vial
see, hear, smell what becomes
in the sillage of your imagination.

Send some in a bottle to me and yours.

photo: Lavendar Sky Sunrise lastor

Incense Peppermint

2010-12-24T11:31:00.000-08:00

Good sense, innocence, cripplin' mankind
Dead kings, many things I can't define
Occasions, persuasions clutter your mind
Incense and peppermints, the color of time

Who cares what games we choose
Little to win, but nothing to lose

Incense and peppermints, meaningless nouns
Turn on, tune in, turn your eyes around
Look at yourself, look at yourself, yeah, yeah
Look at yourself, look at yourself, yeah, yeah, yeah, no

To divide this cockeyed world in two
Throw your pride to one side, it's the least you can do
Beatniks and politics, nothing is new
A yardstick for lunatics, one point of view
Who cares what games we choose
Little to win, but nothing to lose

Good sense, innocence, cripplin' mankind
Dead kings, many things I can't define
Occasions, persuasions clutter your mind
Incense and peppermints, the color of time Who cares what games we choose

Little to win, but nothing to lose
Incense and peppermints Incense and peppermints

Sha la la Sha la la Sha la la

- Strawberry Alarm Clock
songwriters: John Carter, Tim Gilbert
photo: lastor

Longest Night

2010-12-20T19:54:00.000-08:00

Can you smell
the fiber
of
your soul?

photo: lastor

Scandal in Bon Voyage

2010-11-28T11:58:00.001-08:00

Prime Minister Jean-Etienne Beaufort (Gerard Depardieu): Why are you here?

Actress Viviane Denyers (Isabelle Adjani): I refuse to see the police.

Jean-Etienne: I'm not the police chief.

Viviane: No, perhaps you could call him.

Jean-Etienne: Perhaps. I'll think about it. It is Jeanne Lanvin.

Viviane: Pardon, I'm Sorry?

Jean-Etienne: Your perfume. It's Jeanne Lanvin.

Viviane: Yes ... it's ... Scandal.

Jean-Etienne: I'm very fond of it.

Viviane: You could call him now?

Jean-Etienne: Who?

Vivane: The chief of police.

- from Bon Voyage 2003, Director: Jean-Paul Rappeneau
A lovely French film, make sure to watch the director's cut.
Perfumer: Andre Fraysse 1933

Be Cool

2010-11-28T09:12:00.000-08:00

Steve Tyler of Aerosmith: Tell me something, what was that stuff you put in our clothes?

Edie (Uma Thurman): You mean the lavender water?

Steve: Yeahhhhh. The lavender water. I'll never forget that smell. Joe Perry still talks about that ...

- from the movie Be Cool photo ©2005 MGM/UA Entertainment

- lavender processing in a cooperative; photo: G.Willemse

Molinard double-distilled Lavande edc

Molinard photos: Lura Astor

Camphor

2010-11-08T20:13:00.001-08:00

sniff sniff

That's an interesting perfume.

It's Vicks. I have a cold.

Ahh.

- Hot Shots 1991

Clean, Clean, Clean, Clean

2010-11-06T08:30:00.001-07:00

Hugh Laurie from A Bit of Fry and Laurie

Ambient Fragrancing

2010-10-05T06:11:00.001-07:00

Ambient
fragrancing
has a
long history
... campfire
for one!

Klimtfume: lastor

Froggie Went A Courtin'

2010-10-01T19:54:00.000-07:00

These beauties, the African Clawed frog xenopus laevis have donated their eggs to science. University of Tokyo scientists used the eggs to build olfactory sensors.

"The immature eggs were harvested and then injected with DNA from fruit flies, silk moths and diamond back moths, which stimulated the eggs to produce the olfactory sensors of these insects ....the eggs basically acted as a platform for the parts of the insect DNA that have been shown in the past to be responsible for detecting gases, odors, and pheromones."

Articles here and here

Photo: Tim Vickers Xenopus laevis

The Perfume of the Lady in Black

2010-09-25T19:30:00.000-07:00

Le Parfum de la Dame en Noir

Written and Directed
by Marcel L'Herbier
1931

2005 film, trailer here

There are many beautiful parfums noir in the world!

and the 1974 Il Profumo della Signora in Nero

Autumn Alchemy

2010-09-21T20:00:00.000-07:00

Almost tragic isn't it, autumn? But so beautiful

- Chef Giorgio Locatelli

Re-reading this line, I then came across my writings from August 2005 on
Alchimie/Rochas, Jacques Cavallier 1998

For those unfamiliar with the bottle by Serge Mansau (glass swoon), it is reminiscent of a magic wand in a magic pumpkin of beautiful autumnal color.

Alchimie, you bewitcher.

Alchimie, you bringer on of autumnal nostalgia, the time when land hovers, for moments at a time - into a phrase of time, the ear can hear to the horizon.
Watercolor transparencies of rust colored leaves and woods. A walk in the damp barked green forest, dark soiled, dark limbed, the wild colors of Mother Nature's last ditch attempt, before shedding into winter's serenity. The ice crackling quiet. But, first, the party!

The bee buzz around grape must. Dried golden stalks. Browns. I think of Cavallier's palettes of browns within M7, Alchimie. Woods of santal, oudh. (I hold to my 2002 prediction that M7 (Alberto Morillas & Cavallier for YSL) will have a comeback and be an even stronger seller, as it is "found again".)

Just when I fear its fruit note will sour, Alchimie veers.

It's a skin veil that hurts with its mystery. A deep inhale grounds, then on to feel the mystery of sheer watercolor autumnal silk on the skin.

This one haunts. Evokes.

I remember, Cavallier doesn't care for flowers, florals. So, in this one those notes on the palette, the florals, are used for enchantment, the beauty sleeping in the forest. Either sleeping to be eventually awakened, or, sleeping to eventually die, autumn to winter. It is the Life-Death bloom-or-fade transition that disturbs, that Alchimie captures. Fruits & Woods - flowers used as coloring, tints, hues, sheers, wind ...

Definitely a rêve, this dream state perfume. There is a vulnerability with this one, the mature sensitivity before the ice coat is worn.

It's the most beautiful day in the universe, and I am allowed to attend. It is not classic beauty, or textbook, or Hollywood film. There is overcast burning off, Mercury out of retrograde, stationary direct. A veil.

Veil of mist, veil of burn off, veil of heart yearnings, veil of sun's shine, veil of Alchimie, veil of thyme in oil on skin, summer bug repellent, Raid in the memory, citronella, nail polish remover, hair sprays, Hairnet with hair net, spider's web holding a bun.

Because of my own training in autumn's early dark nights getting darker and darker, sweating in ballet rehearsals with cold chill goosebumps and then ... a pumpkin appears ... in Cinderella during Snoopy's pumpkin patch season, I present:

Sergei Prokofiev: Slow Waltz, from the ballet Cinderella Op. 87
Piano: Vladimir Ovchinnikov
Venue: Piano Festival 2008
(performing 17 October 2010 in Bushy, Hertfordshire, England info here)

Happy Autumn Equinox!

Trees: lastor

If You're in Amsterdam - 23 September 2010

2010-09-19T22:30:00.000-07:00

Smell It! ... exploring olfactory dimensions in contemporary art at the Stedelijk Museum, click here

Presenting recent developments in smell culture with the experience of scent

Artists: Peter de Cupere (lecture), Sue Corke/Hagen Betzwieser (art work), Valentina Hulsman

(olfactory performance).

Jim Drobnick examines the practice of distillation in contemporary olfactory art, connecting the artistic search for new ways of addressing aesthetic and political dimensions of urban experience.

His must read:

here

Round Table Discussion: Peter de Cupere, Jim Drobnick, anthropologist Yolanda van Ede, Adam Tasi of SmartNose.

Moderator: Caro Verbeek, olfactory art historian. The 2 lectures will include visuals and smells provided by Aroma Jockey Dr. Perfume and visual artist VJ ED (AromaVisuals).

here

In the exhibition Monumentalism: History and National Identity in Contemporary Art, Job Koelewijn presents an olfactory art work.

The Stedelijk Museum has other art works in its collection that use the sensory experience of smell, such as Edward Kienholz's The Beanery 1965.

Painting: Calm: lastor

How Many Roses are Covered with Dew?

2010-09-18T10:40:00.001-07:00

How much do I love you?
I'll tell you no lie
How deep is the ocean?
How high is the sky?

How many times a day do I think of you?

... how many roses are covered with dew?

How Deep is the Ocean
-Irving Berlin 1932

photo: Huntington Garden November 2009 lastor