Scented Scrabble

Koku
the radio show
on everything scent, smell, odour, spice, perfume, perfumers, history


by host and perfumer
Vedat Ozan
becoming available online hereand Koku @ Açık Radyo is on Facebook



here, facebook page, including recent Harpers Bazaar spread
here
Listen, also here
Read here

















photos:
Scented Scrabble: by Lura Astor
Perfumer Vedat Ozan: by Serkan Eldeleklioglu

Basenotes' March Madness winning by a hare

It's Lutens in the lead by a spritz as Chergui sillages past Tauer's no! no! Tauer's L’air du Désert Marocain inches ahead

Who will it be folks in March Madness at Basenotes?

Ha ha
a resin wreath to the winners

here

photo: Bachmont

A Smell of Death - centuries later, smells sweet

Death comes in varying smells

I am not a coroner or forensics person
but have read
that the smells range
from vanilla to scatological to
smelling ghosts of perfumes past

Woody TopNote

Here is an interesting article on the use of essential pine oil for Vietnamese mummification some centuries ago. Also of note, cinnamon wine, rice, pemou wood, coffins made of shell, lime, rice paste, sand, molasses and/or honey ...

... the mummy's joints were still supple hundreds of years later, as were the pine oil soaked betel and areca leaves (the two leaves are often chewed together).

picture: areca

Stereo Smelling

A recent article

Smelling Scenery in Stereo:
Desert Ants Perceive Odor Maps in Navigation

is worth a read clickhere from ScienceDaily

For the record
I smell in Surround Smell ! ~LA

photo: electron microscope ant here

Limon 'Cello!

more cello as Spring blooms burst open

from Adam Hurst

his site click here









pic: Dragonfly Metamorphosis

Odors as Words chirp chirp

With time to merely skim
rather than read in depth
Jaron Lanier's book
You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto
Alfred A. Knopf, NY 2010
caught my attention.


With titles such as the following
for those who know me/my work, is it any wonder?

Editing is Sexy; Creativity is Natural

Were Odors the First Words

Digital Peasant Chic

Paring the Circle

What will Money Be?

What is a Person?

From Images to Odors

and quotes such as

A smell is a synecdoche: a part standing in for the whole.

Perhaps the grammar of language is rooted in the grammar of smell.

In addition to the normal language we all use to describe objects and activities, we reserve a special language to express extreme emotion or displeasure, to warn others to watch out or get attention. This language is called swearing.

One of Charles Darwin's most compelling evolutionary speculations was that music might have preceded language.

Only a handful of species, including humans and certain birds, can make a huge and ever-changing variety of sounds.


Illustration: John Gould 1841 large ground-finch Geospiza magnirostris, one of Darwin's finches.
Charles and Chatham Islands, Galapagos Archipelago

It's Spring ... Are Your

Olfactory Bulbs blooming?



photo: Flemming Christiansen

nasal organ

 









playing
the
nasal organ
gives
such
pleasure

and
the nasal organ
plays with us ...

trickery, delight, early warning system,
fun, foolery, ridiculous sublime

presage

-->

The receding tide

gathers momentum to wash the shore again

Illustration: Blue Wave Lura Astor

Kiev

Models dressed as
perfume bottles
at an opening in Kiev
Tauer Perfumes
at 45 seconds
click here










Illlustration: Beautiful Lace  Lura Astor

trip the light fantastic

Mattias Rodrick

listen to here
here and

Rodrick's site and videos here

La Loie Fuller Folies Bergere ...
Loie Fuller was filmed by Edison, working with light projection and early film.
I danced the historical choreography - with 50 yards of fabric. It took tremendous strength to project the fabric into space at the right time with the right movements, hitting the music and light cues, without the translucent, silk fabric falling or failing.

trip the light fantastic:
lyrics from The Sidewalks of New York/ East Side, West Side
words/music: Chas. B. Lawlor and James W. Blake

food writer goes perfume shopping

Corby Kummer,
food writer,
goes perfume shopping
with
Luca Turin


read here from Technology Review/MIT



photo: Felix Fernandez Penny more here

wish upon a star - celebrity fragrances

for some fun

here is a list of celebrities and some of the fragrances they wear.

A lot of Gendarme mentioned, which translates as Policeman.


Fashion design houses bringing out their own perfumes is relatively recent, historically.

photo: Gendarmerie à Rochefort: Jean-Marie Dumont/Yoyo17017

Connectors

 













Now is blessed
the rest remembered

People need connectors
writers, heroes, stars, leaders
to give life form ....

Ceremonies, theatre, dancers
to reassert Tribal needs and memories
a call to worship,
uniting above all,
a reversion,
a longing for family and the safety magic of childhood.

- jim morrison

photo: Felix Fernandez Penny more here

Archival Reconstitutions Redux

Life in the
Past Lane

- bumper sticker from the
Southern California Genealogical Society
 
Not only are Archival Reconstitutions being created in the perfume world link

but, serendipity brought my attention to a documentary on Cleopatra from the Egyptian point of view, and another from archeological/forensic teams linking ancient royals, including ones excluded from historical texts, Cleopatra: Portrait of a Killer.
 
With plastination and the global dna bank it's going to be interesting linking the travels of not only families, recessives and dominants, but of germs, viruses, immunities and more.

illustration: Family by Lura Astor

Aspirational Vehicles

Years ago I stood on a crosswalk of Laguna Beach's tourist row when new Hummers filled the street - shiny, new, fast, high, cocky, tourist traffic be damned esprit. There were a lot of them, and most of the Sunday drivers looked like the young military from down the coast, sitting on high. I thought, this'll sell gasoline.

Then I met a woman whose parents had bought a Hummer and she sniffed, what are people doing buying the car if they can't afford the gas? The vehicle reminds me as part hearse.
 
Arianna Huffington ran for governor of California against Arnold Shwarzenegger. Her site played a great animation - her driving a gas saving Prius and Arnie in his Hummer gas consumptive.
I found it! This animation still makes me laugh here it is from 2003
His direct quote, "I'm for children" plays a bit differently in 2011.

Today I read, in ... the Huffington Post ... that GM General Motors is discontinuing the "controversial brand" read here

Hummer cologne came out with in-depth branding. I test drove a spritz of the aspirational cologne vehicle Hummer 1 and it ran right over me. Just as they are designed to do. In the perfume boutique I worked at years ago, Hummer didn't do great sales but Ferrari Red and Ferrari Black were huge sellers among boys, men and women buying for boys. Aspirational vehicles in a box with the logo on Ferrari yellow.

If you are over 18, 21 or 39 depending on the country where you live, you can click here scroll down to number 3 and listen to the beginning of one Hummer song. I am sure they are singing about the manly cologne in the manly machine.
It is by The Yuppie Pricks and titled Hummer in my Hummer.

There, I did it. Linking cars - colognes - music - animation - politics - gasoline - humor!

Point lastor!

Nose Geeks

 
Book rec for nose geeks

A Field Guide to the Invisible, Wayne Biddle

quick chapters include:

BO, Allergens, Bad Breath, Perfume, Pheromones, Neutrinos, Musk

BO body odor
"The human body excretes or secretes thousands of volatile chemicals, many with strong odors. We leave behind a cloud of bitter ammonia, rotty hydrogen sulfide, vinegary acetic acid, pungent ethyl alcohol and skunky mercaptans. We are short work for bloodhounds."

For those hooked on The Tudors series:
"Henry VIII preferred his dollop laced with rose."

"The Versailles court of Louis XV, known as la Cour parfumee required that a different perfume be worn every day of the week. The king's paramour, Madame de Pompadour, spent 1 million francs to establish a personal perfume bank that would guarantee her perpetual novelty."

Illustration: Eyes of Lura Astor 2010

keep your nose wet

 

I am a macrosmate a good smeller
Many mammal macrosmates have a wet nose, detecting wind direction and to varying degrees, odor location.
Microsmates are poor or small smellers, the sense appears less important

Anosmates live in an odorless world, the non-smellers, some with only a rudimentary olfactory organ

more in Piet Vroon's Smell: the Secret Seducer

 

 
Illustration: Shimmer Colors Lura Astor

Cellist plays with himself - 37 parts

Sometimes I hear music or see performing ingenuity and remember why I must've become a dancer - my body could play music, lines, chords and variations within one body.

For Fun
Ethan Winer plays 37 cello parts ... be on the lookout for their cat with a gold halo



More at his site here

Cat: Franz Marc

Poetry of Perfume

"I’m kind of hooked to the game of art and literature; my heroes are artists and writers.

Listen, real poetry doesn’t say anything, it just ticks off the possibilities. Opens all doors. You can walk through any one that suits you. … and that’s why poetry appeals to me so much – because it’s so eternal.

As long as there are people, they can remember words and combinations of words. Nothing else can survive a holocaust but poetry and songs. No one can remember an entire novel. No one can describe a film, a piece of sculpture, a painting, but so long as there are human beings, songs and poetry can continue.

If my poetry aims to achieve anything, it’s to deliver people from the limited ways in which they see and feel."

Jim Morrison
Los Angeles, 1969-70

I feel similarly about perfume,
smell, scent, fragrance, odour.
Scent is real, scent is abstract.
Scent tells a story.
Scent opens a door. -LA

Illustration: Pink Snake Lura Astor