MANIPULATING OUR PREFERENCES

A couple of days ago I read an interesting post by Dee Howe on how she learned to love Cuir de Russie, which she had previously hated, simply by reading lots of positive reviews. One commenter labeled the post “fascinating and disturbing”. I would wholeheartedly agree with that evaluation. As a perfumer, I’d go a step further and label it “frightening” because the implication is that the first reviews of any newly-released perfume could make or break it. Everyone who reads the reviews would be drawn toward the positive or negative opinion of the reviewer(s).

As a neuroscientist, I naturally thought about why it is that our perceptions of perfume are so easily manipulated by expectation. Olfaction is a weird sensory system. It’s well-known that receptors in the nose undergo short-term adaptation, but what may not be so well known is that specific types of odorant receptors can increase or decrease in number depending on exposure to an odorant. However, the receptors, labile as they are, are just the beginning of the process of smelling.

The way information about odors is represented in the central nervous system is not at all straightforward. The same set of neurons may be active in response to a whole host of different odorants, which may have little in common with respect to chemical structure or perceived odor. Not only that, but almost all of the odors that we smell are mixtures of many different molecules. I think it’s fair to say that most of our olfactory neurons are active most of the time. The pattern of activity across neurons and across time may be strongly influenced by context.

Our cognitive task is to organize these spatiotemporal patterns of activity into whatever interpretations make the most sense. It would be sort of like a dynamic Rorschach test in which we look at abstract, moving patterns and have to organize them into shapes or concepts that we can understand and articulate. Being told beforehand what to expect makes the task a lot easier. If we’re primed to expect a flying bat, or a crying baby, that’s what we’re likely to see. If a reviewer tells us to expect rotten horse manure, or expensive leather, that’s what we’re likely to smell.

I know that my olfactory perception has changed as I’ve worked with perfumes and raw materials. When I first started, I couldn’t stand the smell of “teak” (a synthetic woody note), but after experiencing it multiple times alone and in finished compositions, I’ve come to appreciate its role in perfumery. Maybe my receptors for it have been down-regulated, to use the scientific jargon for elimination of some of them. Maybe familiarity makes the heart grow fonder. I don’t know.

The other thing that I’ve experienced is that I’ve become much more sensitive to all types of musks, and I think this has to do with cognitive organization rather than receptors. Instead of musks being an incomprehensible pattern, I’ve learned to recognize a pattern that’s common to all of them, as well as the features that differentiate between the different ones.

So it is with perfume. Liking or disliking a perfume isn’t as simple as picking a synthetic musk out of a crowd of other molecules, but it may involve reorganizing patterns from ones that are disliked into ones that are liked, kind of like switching from seeing the mother-in-law to the wife in that classic ambiguous figure.

[Graphics adapted from Wikimedia]

WHAT ARE ARCHITECTS THINKING?

Every so often I'm struck by how bad design dictates how we live our lives, and how it gets perpetuated because people accept it as "the way things are". These design issues can be anything from malfunctioning perfume sprayers and uncomfortable clothing to bad urban planning and building design. Here's the first in what might grow to be a series on how design affects our lifestyles.

Part 1: Windows

One afternoon last week when I was working in my office the power went off. Not too surprising given that we had a hurricane-like storm with high winds and heavy snow, followed by a clear, sunny “eye” that was followed by more winds, snow, and rain. What did surprise me was the huge fuss going on in the hallways. People were milling around, acting as if some major disaster had happened. The last time I heard such a commotion in the hallways was during the Nisqually earthquake when the whole building was shaking like crazy at about a magnitude 7.

At first I didn’t understand what was wrong, since my laptop with its battery was working just fine, and there was plenty of light coming from my window. However, once I went out in the hall, I was reminded that most of the building is windowless. The only rooms that have windows are those around the outside of the building, and there’s an entire core and basement that depends entirely on electrical power for light, even during the day. To make matters worse, I learned that almost everyone in the building uses desktop PCs that won’t run unless they’re plugged into a power source, so crowds of students, faculty, and staff were suddenly plunged into complete darkness without so much as the glow from a battery-powered computer screen.

The building where I work was built in 1973 - not a good era for architectural design, but a precedent-setting one. It looks like a dark brick fortress from the outside. Inside, some of the walls are bare cement and others, until recently, were painted horrendous shades of orange, rust, mustard, and avocado green. Ugly as these design features are (or were), they’re cosmetic, and can be fixed quite easily. What really boggles my mind is the fact that the building is a huge 4-story square the size of a supermarket with the bulk of the rooms in the interior where there is not a single photon of natural light. I’m one of the lucky few who has an office with a window. Frankly, I don’t think I could have worked at this institution as long as I have if I had had to spend my days in a windowless room, especially one with fluorescent lights.

Next to all of the light switches in the building are placards admonishing us to “save energy – turn off the lights when you leave the room”. That’s all very well and good if we’re working at night, but the real question is why some mid-20th-century architects thought it was a good idea to make everyone turn the lights on during the day. This building is by no means ususual. Everywhere in the world there are public buildings, shopping malls, and even rooms in people’s private houses where there is no source of natural light. It’s ironic that when daylight saving time rolls around, people just go to work an hour earlier, turn on the lights, and burn them for the same number of hours that they would if they were in their normal time zone. I thought the idea was to save energy by not having to use artificial light in the early morning?

Energy savings aside, there’s something cheerful and comforting about natural daylight and being to see outside, and something annoying and depressing about spending the day in a concrete bunker with no idea what’s outside. It’s no wonder the bureaucrats, geeks, and sales clerks in their windowless cubicles and big boxes are grumpy and unhelpful. It would be interesting to know how many health problems, both physical and mental, are caused or aggravated by working day after day in windowless spaces. It would also be interesting to know how much energy would be saved if every room in every building had windows to let in light during the day. Probably enough to light up Las Vegas at night for the next thousand years.

[Supermarket and bunker photos from Wikimedia. The cat is mine.]

NEW PERFUME MATERIALS!

Just when I thought I had most everything I needed to make perfume, my world shifted again with some new discoveries. What set it all off was a package from a fellow perfumer that came in this afternoon’s mail, containing five new materials that I bought from him and 23 (!) samples of other materials, most of which I haven’t tried. It’s going to take me a while to go through the 23 samples, but one of the things that I bought is going into at least one version of the Devil Scent, both Dev and Lil Mod 2. If I keep discovering new materials, I’ll never get those perfumes finished!

The new babies are all synthetics with names that probably wouldn’t ring a bell with anyone, so I’m not sure how much to describe them here except to say that one is an animalic scent that’s a different version of the ones I already have. Another is a wonderful floral base that I’ve already put in Lil 2. I’m trying to keep one version of Dev purely natural, so I have to resist the temptation to tweak it with synthetics.

For some reason, Lil continues to prove a much easier subject than Dev. It’s technically easy to make a bright floral, and maybe I’m just not as emotionally invested in a perfume for the evil underbelly of femininity as I am for a loveable, leather-clad rocker. I have to admit it - I care very much for Dev. I want his perfumes to be as dark and assertive as possible, and nothing is good enough. I keep tweaking and tweaking, and am never satisfied. The labdanum keeps getting lost in everything else, not appearing until the late drydown. The leather doesn’t play nicely with the rest of the fragrance. I’m trying to use davana and finding that a tiny bit goes more than a long way.

The one promising thing is that the all-natural Dev has excellent longevity. I used a tiny bit of real ambergris tincture in it, and it must have magical fixative properties because I can still smell the base on my skin 24 hours later. I haven’t added the cinnamon leaf yet, because I’m trying to get the base right, but I think that getting some middle and top notes added to the mix is going to make a big difference. I’m still shooting for having three versions of Dev ready by the end of March.

A SEASON OF HOPE

We’ve been having storms all week. Storms that blow in with high winds and rain, hail, snow, alone or mixed together – you name it. Yesterday I managed to get out for a little while between storms and check out our neighborhood, which is coming back to life after the winter. It’s nice to know that even if it still seems like winter to people, plants are convinced that it’s spring.

The roses are all putting out new growth, and should be blooming again soon. Along with the spring bulbs, the entrance area to the local new development is planted with garish primroses in every primary color, looking like plastic flowers from the Wizard of Oz. Primroses are probably my least favorite flower, just because they look so artificial. I guess my aesthetic philosophy requires some imperfection in order to achieve the right balance.

In the woods, the Indian plum (Oemleria cerasiformis) is in bloom. It’s one of the first native shrubs to bloom every year, a sure sign of spring. I never thought to smell the flowers before, but was pleased to find that they have sort of a cat-piss and blackcurrant fragrance, not strong, but definitely there. The Oregon grape plants (Mahonia aquifolium) are also blooming, but had no fragrance that I could detect. Maybe it will develop as the flowers mature.

Everything is extraordinarily wet and green. The frogs were croaking the other night and the robins are hopping around the back yard hunting the fat, juicy, pinky-brown earthworms that are hidden everywhere in the ground.

Events in the US and elsewhere may be depressing, but spring is bringing it’s usual message of hope for better times. Maybe not in politics, but at least outside our doors.

[Flower photos are from Wikimedia. There was too much wind to get a good photo of anything outside yesterday.]

MORE DEVIL SCENTS

I know everyone is anxious to see what the Devil Scent Project comes up with, but perfumes aren’t made overnight, especially when the perfumer has a day job and several others jobs besides and has been spending a lot of her free time, such as it is, reading Quantum Demonology. After I got back from my latest trip, I was busy packing and shipping orchid plants to places that had been too cold to ship to all winter, slogging through the usual end-of quarter marathon of work, and trying to get the momentum going on a new theatre production.

I’m not caught up yet, and never will be, but I did find time tonight to get back up in the lab and test the things I mixed up before I left town. I was surprised to find that they’re not half bad! Lil has mellowed over the past couple of weeks, and is starting to have the sharp edge and kewda-passionfruit note that I was going for. It still needs a lot more sharpening and tweaking, but I think it’ll be ready to send a prototype to Tarleisio soon.

The real surprise was Dev’s base that I mixed up before I left. It’s mellowed into a real fragrance that could almost stand on its own. Instead of hijacking the composition, the giant arborvitae has decided to cooperate and lend a unique note to the opening. As it dries down, the animalic notes show up, but are no longer stinky. The incense is there, too. I’m wearing it as I type and actually loving it!

Before trying the well-rested Dev 1, which I thought I would end up scrapping, I had started working on another Dev base (Dev 2). It contains four - count ‘em – 4 different variations on labdanum (You can never have too much labdanum!) Along with the labdanum fest these's immortelle absolute, balsams, and some animalic notes. I’m going to add some more things in a day or two when I have time and my nose is fresh.

I think I may make a Dev 3 variation that has a lot of leather in it. It will have labdanum too, of course, but in a duet with the leather, not as the lead. I may even get some samples shipped off to Tarleisio by the first of April.

MYRRH AND MUSHROOMS

This morning my sample of the day was D. S. & Durga’s Resin from a 2.5 ml decant that I got on sale from TPC. It didn’t leak or evaporate – hallelujah! I was a little surprised to find that it’s pretty much myrrh straight up, with a halo of sweet, violet powder in the sillage, so I did a search for information about this fragrance. I didn’t find much. There is one fairly negative review on Basenotes, a listing on Fragrantica that says it’s “masculine” and that the notes are “copaiba balsam and myrrh”, and that’s it.

The D.S. & Durga website is one of those overly designed exercises in conformity with the latest trend, complete with a gratuitous “welcome screen” that is late to arrive and overstays its welcome, too many moving parts, light gray or pastel font on an off-white background, and no way to go back once you’ve gone forward. I’ll be glad when the fashion for super-low contrast type and cumbersome animations on perfume websites (and my students’ Powerpoint presentations) goes the way of the dinosaur and the dodo bird. What I did find out from the website, by deduction, is that Resin has been discontinued.

Back to the perfume itself. Copaiba balsam isn’t much of a fragrance on its own, and is used more as a fixative than for its scent, which is rather flat, woody, and a little peppery. Myrrh, on the other hand, is one of the quirkiest scents in the whole realm of perfumery. There’s quite a bit of variation from one variety to another, but what’s constant is a deeply resinous, bitter, leathery, almost industrial, note that’s absolutely unmistakable.

I have written about myrrh before, but sometimes I can have a perfectly formed image of a scent in my mind but cannot find the right words to describe it to others in terms they'd understand. This can be very frustrating. Smelling Resin this morning I had an epiphany in the realm of semantics. Myrrh has a distinct smell of freshly cut “champignon”-type mushrooms. All mushrooms have this scent, but the white and brown button mushrooms have it in a fairly pure form, unobstructed by other notes. It’s what I smell when I’m out walking in the woods and catch a whiff of mushrooms before I see them. It’s the smell of dead leaves turned to flesh, the smell of wet, decaying forest sprouting exuberant saprophytic life. Often I’ll go looking for the source of the scent, and sure enough, there the mushrooms are, hiding under the dead leaves or behind a fern. It’s a pungent, earthy scent and it’s one of the notes in myrrh, stronger in some varieties than others.

It’s funny that the natural mushroom absolute that I have, made from cepes, doesn’t smell at all like fresh mushrooms. In fact, it smells more like soy sauce than anything else. However, my experience with the mushroom note this morning set the gears of inspiration in motion yet again, making me wonder what it would be like to create a perfume based on myrrh and mushrooms. It might turn out to be “not suitable for human use” as the Basenotes reviewer observed about Durga’s Resin (I happen to disagree with this statement), but it would certainly be an interesting exercise in blending related notes.

[Myrrh and mushroom photos from Wikimedia]

THE JUGGLER

I’m back from Southern California, both physically and mentally, ready to start posting again.

Anyone who has followed my blog for a while will know that I go through phases of prolific posting interspersed with periods of nothing. It’s just the nature of my life, in which I juggle many different parallel streams of activity and can only hold onto a few at a time, while the others move on their own from the momentum that I create. I’ll admit that this modus operandi partly stems from my own nature, which tends to make me want to do one thing obsessively for a while, then take a break. If I care enough about whatever it was, I’ll come back to it, like the burning torch that eventually sails back to the juggler’s hand after following its own independent trajectory for a while. If it gets dropped, I probably didn’t want to be juggling it anyway.

This whole discussion of juggling made me think about the symbolism of juggling. Medieval jesters and minstrels are sometimes depicted as jugglers (jongleurs), and that reminded me that at some point I’d heard of a tarot card called “The Juggler”. I looked it up and found that it’s what is now known as “The Magician”, the first card of the series, symbolizing new beginnings, new ideas, new journeys, and hidden things revealed. The Magician also appears to be an alchemist, scientist, shaman, con man, and trickster, so incorporates both positive and negative qualities. He’s God, the manager of positive energy and the Devil, the manager of negative energy (a la Quantum Demonology).

What I like best about the juggler, though, is the fact that he necessarily symbolizes both the beginning and end of the circle, the point where things come back to where they started, but continue on in a way that is both the same and different. The never-ending moebius strip of an infinity sign over the classic Tarot magician’s head.

As T. S. Eliot said in Little Gidding,
“What we call the beginning is often the end

And to make and end is to make a beginning.

The end is where we start from. …

… We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.”

I think this way of thinking really epitomizes my need for working in cycles. Each time I come back to perfumes long finished, perfumes in progress, or to my blog, I start over again, knowing each of those things for the first time.

[Fire Jugglers and Tarot card images from Wikimedia]