WINNERS OF THE SONNET XVII DRAWING

The scraps of paper have been mixed up thoroughly and two of them were drawn.

The grand prize winner of the 30 ml bottle of Sonnet XVII is YUKI.

The runner-up, who will receive a sample set of Peace-Love-Perfume is PEPPY OBRIEN.

To claim your winnings, please e-mail me at olympicorchids at gmail dot com.

[Roulette wheel photo from Wikimedia]

THE QUARTER MILLION PAGEVIEWS DRAWING

I’m way behind on everything except running double speed to keep from falling horribly behind on the things that have hard deadlines, so the quarter million pageview mark has come and gone while I’ve been busy with those things. However, I still intend to put on a drawing to celebrate all of the wonderful viewers who have lurked in the background as well as those who have come out of the lurking closet to comment over the past few years.

Here’s what I have for you:

The grand prize is the very last brown cardboard box ever – one that I’ve been saving for this purpose - a 30 ml spray bottle of Sonnet XVII perfume.

Runner-up prizes are as follows:

Two 1-ml sample sets of the Peace-Love-Perfume trio.

This is an easy drawing – you don’t have to do anything except leave a comment saying what the weather is like in your part of the world. In Seattle it’s beautiful, clear, sunny, dry, and warm. Look at that blue sky! My tuberoses are finally blooming, so I’m excited. Their fragrance isn’t as strong as I had expected, but it’s lovely, quite a bit different from tuberose absolute. Maybe it will increase as more flowers open, or maybe it changes over the course of a day. I'll have to check it in the morning.

[tuberose pic was taken today in my garden]

MASTIC

Pistacia lentiscus is an evergreen, shrubby tree that grows around the Mediterranean. It’s related to the tree that produces pistachio nuts, but instead of nuts its main product is its resin, known as mastic. Based on photos (as far as I know, I haven’t seen one in person) the tree itself is pretty, compact in form, with a thick, gnarly trunk, looking a bit like an olive tree. Its leaves are a darker, brighter green than those of an olive tree. It blooms with inconspicuous yellow-green flowers, but produces big, showy clusters of red fruits.

The resin is initially transparent, but turns a cloudy, slightly translucent light lemon yellow as it hardens. It’s used for a lot of things, including chewing gum, varnishes, food flavoring and, of course, perfumery.

I first experienced mastic as the dried granules of resin, which provide a unique chewing-gum experience. You can chew the same granule repeatedly and it doesn’t really lose its flavor, which is actually more an odor than a taste.  When I was a kid I used to pick dried pine resin off of tree trunks and chew it. Mastic reminds me a little of that resin, but is harder in texture and not pine-like in flavor. Both types of resin soften up some from the heat of the mouth, but the mastic remains quite “chewy”. It becomes brittle and hard after chewing, but will soften again if chewed a second time. It probably sounds silly to recycle a piece of chewing gum, but why not, if it retains its pleasant properties?

The taste/smell of mastic resin is quite complex and unique. It’s bitter and green in the same way galbanum is, but without the cigarette-ash note that’s in galbanum. It’s as if galbanum had been purified and made into its better self. It’s got a light lemony note along with the bitter, resinous scent, and something that reminds me of the astringent, salty, underlying flavor of pistachio nuts, without the nuttiness. To me, it seems like an elaborately carved or fabricated 3-D filigree construction of brittle ivory.

The essential oil has many of the same fragrance properties as the resin, but it’s a little smoother and not quite as brittle. I really like the oil and, even though it’s relatively expensive, I think I would use it instead of galbanum if I made some of my fragrances over again. As it is, I used it in the newest one, Sonnet XVII, to lend a dry, inorganic, minerally, almost salty aspect to the top notes. Now that the blend has mellowed, I find that the mastic provides an immediate counterpoint to the sensual, moist, cushiony softness of the osmanthus, which has risen to appear at the outset as well as in the heart.

Mastic oil has become one of the staples of my lab, and I imagine I’ll find myself using it in many future compositions.

What is your favorite resinous smell? Leave a comment and be entered in a drawing to win a small sample of mastic essential oil along with a sample of Sonnet XVII. 

[Photos of tree and resin granules adapted from Wikimedia]

RECOMMENDED READING

Sometimes, when coming back to one of my creations in any medium after a long time, I’m stunned by how good it is, and how I failed to see the merit in it initially. I think anyone who creates has probably had this experience, needing to see their work with objective eyes in order to appreciate it. Sometimes I’m also stunned by the ability of others to draw so much beauty from my creations, and to express it so beautifully, creating an entirely new thing of beauty.

Olga Rowe has done this in her review of Sonnet XVII on CaFleureBon. The review is truly a thing of beauty, both in the words and in the art that she chose to illustrate it. She has not only told a story, she has managed to incorporate into a literary work an accurate and detailed description of the fragrance itself. Nothing sounds forced or contrived. It’s a masterclass in how to write a good perfume review.

I am immensely grateful to Michelyn Camen and CaFleureBon for giving me the opportunity to be a part of this wide-reaching project.

[The puzzle picture that Olga posted on her review reminded me of one that I had painted many years ago, shown here.]

THE BEST AND WORST OF SEPTEMBER

September has been a terrible month, or a very good month, depending on one’s point of view. In any case, it’s been unusually hectic, and I’ve neglected the blog terribly. The first two weeks of September I was spending half of my time teaching an intensive course and half of my time finalizing and preparing Sonnet XVII for release. The third half of my time was spent taking care of the orchids and regular life activities. I probably didn’t do the publicity end of Sonnet XVII justice, but I did the best I could given the time constraints I had. I’m still thinking about the formula. I’m reasonably certain that it’s good, but I need time away from it before I can evaluate it properly. It was certainly well received at the LA Fragrance Salon, with many people (even naïve spillover people from the chocolate show) commenting that it smelled “earthy”, which was one aspect I was going for. When I smelled it yesterday, I could actually detect the spikenard, so maybe the elusive spikenard will come out of the closet after all as the blend ages. It was awarded a bronze medal for “best new product”, but I can’t figure out whether this is a mild and sincere compliment or damning with faint praise. I’ll be an optimist and assume the former.

The Los Angeles Fragrance Salon was different from the one in San Francisco in that it was a tag-on to a big chocolate show. Many of the people who attended were chocolate-lovers who wandered in through curiosity or accident. I think all of the fragrance exhibitors spent a lot of time educating those chocolate enthusiasts who were interested in perfume. Some were interested, and some weren't. The typical exchange at my booth went something like this:


Me: What type of fragrance do you like?
Visitor: I don’t know. I don’t really wear perfume. Something light.
Me: (thinking, I don’t have anything “light”. I don’t do “lite”.) OK. Do you like florals?
Visitor: Yeah, I guess so.
Me: Try these orchid fragrances (I spritz Red Cattleya, Golden Cattleya, Little Stars, Osafume, and Javanica on test strips).
Visitor: mmmmm….. what’s this one?
Me: (thinking, “This one is anything but lite”) Red Cattleya (or one of the others). It’s an orchid fragrance.
Visitor: Ooooh…, I like it.  (happily buys a 5 ml spray bottle of Red Cattleya (or one of the others) and moves on to the next booth).

The saving grace of the LA Salon was that we flew down to LA a day early and got to spend a whole day at the Santa Monica Beach. There’s something magical about the beach, the sun, the warm sand, and the salt water with wave after wave surging and breaking in a rhythmic pattern. It was a time of total relaxation and renewal. A year’s vacation compressed into a day. The first time we had been in real sun in about 3 years. Michael got painfully sunburned. I just turned a slightly darker shade of tan. It was wonderful! Being in a warm place made me realize how tense we all get when we live in cool or cold climates, and how unnatural it is.

As soon as I got back to Seattle from LA, the fall quarter started, with more teaching, meetings, and the usual round of academic stuff. My theatre group’s fall show is coming up soon, so I’ve also been busy with casting and rehearsals. I have a lot of pending orders that I have to ship out this coming week.

For some unknown reason, I’ve been wearing nothing but really good ouds since I’ve been back, none of the usual sample tests. I don’t know why, but I just can’t face standard, conventional perfumes right now. Somehow, straight oud is comforting.

The weather in the Pacific Northwest is still dry and sunny, so I’m enjoying that, even if it’s not as warm as LA. Every day that I can go barefoot at home or wear sandals when I go out, is a gift. I think this whole past week I’ve really been in recovery from traveling and the LA show. I forgot to bring my camera (as usual) so didn’t take any photos. I know people came by and took pictures of my booth, so as they’re posted, I’ll put them on here, if I find them. I suppose the bottom line is that I’m in a fall funk, sad to see summer over so soon. That will change, and I’ll get back to posting regularly, I promise.

[LA Fragrance Salon poster from their website; other photos from Wikimedia]

SONNET XVII IS OUT!

I've been holding back on talking about the new perfume, waiting for the definitive post to be published on CaFleureBon. It appeared tonight, and includes a long description of how this collaborative project with Michelyn Camen developed from the brilliant idea she had of making a fragrance to celebrate one of the most famous love poems by Pablo Neruda, one of the greatest Latin American poets. The post also documents my approach to the actual making of the fragrance, our back-and-forth discussions as the concept and the fragrance developed, the notes, the final packaging, and a drawing for the first full bottle produced.

I feel like it's been an all-out sprint to the finish line, but with the feeling of exhaustion comes the exhilaration of knowing that I've had the opportunity to participate in a truly unique experience in the art of perfume. I have a special fondness for Latin American writers and the magical realism genre, so the whole project resonated with me to the extent that I mentally obsessed about it so much that I went through periods of not being able to accomplish anything in the lab and had to work in intensive spurts. Now that it's done (at least this stage of it) I feel like I'm too tired to think straight and I need to collapse and go to bed so that I can get up and travel to LA tomorrow for the Los Angeles Artisan Fragrance Salon, where Sonnet XVII will make its debut. As I said in the other post, I only hope that the fragrance does justice to the poem:

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off. 
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, 
in secret, between the shadow and the soul. 

I love you as the plant that never blooms but carries
in itself the light of hidden flowers;
Thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance 
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride,
so I love you because I know no other way than this

where I do not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

And in Spanish:

No te amo como si fueras rosa de sal, topacio
o flecha de claveles que propagan el fuego.
Te amo como se aman ciertas cosas oscuras,
secretamente, entre la sombra y el alma.

Te amo como la planta que no florece y lleva
dentro de sí, escondida, la luz de aquellas flores,
y gracias a tu amor vive oscuro en mi cuerpo
el apretado aroma que ascendió de la tierra.

Te amo sin saber cómo, ni cuándo, ni de dónde,
te amo directamente sin problemas ni orgullo:
así te amo porque no sé amar de otra manera,

sino así de este modo en que no soy ni eres, 
tan cerca que tu mano sobre mi pecho es mía,
tan cerca que se cierran tus ojos con mi sueño.