Obama's climate-change speech to the UN was spot on. As always, his main point was: none of us can do this alone. We will only be able to meet the climate-change challenge by working together, rich and poor, developed and developing, skeptics and ecologists. The speech on nuclear de-proliferation was really top notch as well. (And as Letterman quipped, "Isn't it great to have a president who knows how to pronounce nuclear?") Having seen Obama speak on a variety of grave topics now, I can say that I believe in him and his administration even more than I did before the election--and that's saying a hell of a lot.
____
I posted a video this week on Facebook about "a day in the life" of MS kind of thing, meant for the lay person and MS'er alike. The response was very positive, so much so that this will become a new, regular outlet for me.
*Perfume*
Last week my assistant and I made a second try of the solid perfume I made for Pop, revamped, now called Helios. This is the first time I've made a solid perfume with 16 essences. The most I'd used before in a solid (which I will, for business purposes, call concretes de parfum) was 12 (I commonly use 18 or more essences in alcohol perfumes). Really the recipe was working all right; I wanted there to be more of an orange character, so I beefed up the top, adding orange essence oil (distilled from orange juice instead of pressed from the skins) and plenty of bergamot. The results are promising. I'll know more clearly in another week or so.
Also, this week we made a new perfume, Chronos. I happened to pick up an old bottle of something I made when I first got immortelle diluted and ready to use in perfume. The top section of this old one was all wrong, too sharp. But I noticed it had incredible longevity--it lasted more than 24 hours, and even made it through a shower and was still redolent! That's really impressive for a natural perfume. I looked at the recipe and realized it was likely that the combination of orris and benzoin gave it unbelievable tenacity. So I kept the base the same, added to the heart, and changed the top completely. I have high hopes for this brew. I will let you know how it turns out.
We also made a revamped version of Anthea, my tribute to jasmine. It is already adored by a number of people but it still seems too sharp to me. Jasmine can be sharp when not tamed. I attempted to rein in the jasmine with clary sage and rose. Time will tell whether or not it worked, but my initial sense is that it did. Maybe just a bit more tweaking, but then again maybe not. In all arts I often have trouble getting myself to say enough is enough. In perfume, I find I'm growing more astute, knowing with precision what needs to change, how much, or if it just plain ain't broke. This art is all about patience, and trial and error.
Also, I've been thinking a lot about packaging. I've found the right bottles (one 5ml, one 10ml) with black screw caps. Spray caps cost twice as much as the bottles themselves! So I will do several things, partly inspired by Serge Lutens: I will include an embroidered handkerchief for each customer (so they can apply perfume, from the screw-cap bottle, as in days of old; one cool thing about this is after you've rubbed in perfume where you want it, you can put the scented kerchief in you purse, suit pocket, or briefcase, or even a drawer; natural perfume lasts much longer on fabric or paper than on skin). I will also include in each box (found 100%-PC-recycled-fiber boxes): a printed description of the perfume(s), a tiny, glass spray bottle and a small, glass roll-on bottle, for additional options in application.
*Words*
The Global-Village Idiot
Hi. I'm a moron.
I mean to say I'm an oxymoron.
What I mean to point out
is that I'm a bright progressive person
who delights in the possibility
that the federal government will in fact
fall to pieces one happy day.
I'm a jazz lover who feels that 99.9% of jazz
is worse than obsolete--
it's 2010, people; there's no reason
to continue being stuck in the past.
You should do yourself a favor and listen
to some of the miraculously hip jazz
made in the last 20 years.
Think about it: even just considering
population growth, there _must_ be
more great jazz players on the planet now
than ever before.
But what do I know? I'm a fool.
I'm a blues singer who doesn't sing the blues.
I'm a health-food nut who eats mostly frozen food.
Sometimes I can love only as much
as I can be angry. Sometimes I can be angry
only as much as I can cry.
I cry with no one to hear
and I sing the blues without uttering a sound.
I happen to believe that the very idea
of an omnipotent designer/creator is
worse than ludicrous.
But I still believe in God's love,
and I want to know where exactly, succinctly,
is the contradiction in that?
God knows I know there are at least
two or three in there somewhere.
I feel blessed and wickedly wronged
at the same time. I might feel blessed
exactly because I feel so wronged,
as if there's some entitlement program
which awaits me in hell, a program
just for those, like me, who are
eternally confused by the ways
of our race, who double over with sorrow
as they feel the weight of the world,
and who can't stop asking, "Why?"
seldom with the wisdom of a prayer
or the grace of any angel.
Look at me now, sitting here in front of you
whining about eternal confusion
and the weight of the world,
about prayers and angels.
Best stand clear: any second I'll be talking
about souls. I mean really.
What would I know from a soul?
I must be some kind of a moron.
*Disability*
Recently I've been thinking a lot about my life with an able body. First and foremost is traveling around the world with a backpack; I could never do that now. (I might be able to travel, with lots of planning and pre-organization, but certainly not with a backpack, and not with the impetuousness I did before.) Also, I've been watching sports again. It's exhilarating to watch world-class athletes doing things I can't even dream of anymore. A brief history of my life in sports:
1. I was never much of an athlete but in my early days I excelled at one thing: playing second base in baseball. Unfortunately, my little-league coach's son (in Florida) also played second base, so even though I was better than him, I rarely got to start. It felt great to hear parents screaming when I was taken out of a game for no good reason. I moved back to New York; I was so busy trying to fit in, and nervous, that I failed to make the St Bernard's baseball team. I remember at try-outs, the coach, Mr Warnock, said, "Well, you stand up there like a batter [my father had taught me well] but nothing happens." To this day I'm bitter about that: maybe if Warnock had believed in me a little and given me a chance, I would have succeeded. That's pretty much the story of my life.
2. At boarding school (Milton Academy) I played lacrosse and football (before I was kicked out). I was an offensive and defensive lineman in football. Man, did I have fun. My best moments were on offense: often my sole job was to swing out and deck a defender on the wing. Poor guys saw me coming but didn't expect that I would be able to lay them flat with one blow. Few things in life I have found to be as satisfying.
3. For some reason, one high-school moment sticks out in my mind: after returning to New York from Milton, I started going out with a girl who was _the_ major love of my young life (more than a few months). Her family had a house in the Hamptons. It's a very small memory but it means the world to me: one day I was playing a game of soccer and we had to leave; there was a large hedge between the soccer field and the car, a hedge taller than I was. I was full of adrenaline from the soccer game; I ran and leapt over the hedge, perfectly, cleanly. Even my girlfriend's mother was impressed. It makes me smile to remember that once I was able to leap over tall hedges in a single bound.
*Health*
Please watch this important and sardonic humorous piece about health insurance, featuring Jon Hamm, Will Ferrell, and others:
*Taiwan*
[The next day was unbearably hot and we came to terms with the wreckage: the whole center of town was flooded and wouldn't be cleared for days if not weeks; the damage was incalculable. I went to look at my apartment and what I saw was life changing: the river had risen to above the first floor--in other words every single one of my possessions on this earth had been soaked and forever sullied by river mud; an entire wardrobe gone, my most dear photos turned into a pile of undecipherable sludge, all of the little trinkets I'd collected in Taiwan ruined. My motorcycle, fully flooded like everything else, was the only thing I was able to salvage The apartment was a stinking mess so there was no way I could sleep there--I hadn't even gotten to enjoy it for a single day! Back to the top of the hill I returned....]
And the final nail in the coffin of my time in Taiwan was this: on that tremendously hot day, as I sat around in my shorts, chit-chatting with the Australian/Dutch woman, she took it all the wrong way, a way which would prove to be dangerous for me. Her husband had been out all day, attending to some business or other, and our host was gone somewhere too, so it was just the girl and I, alone together, in the wake of a storm, in someone else's house. We talked about all manner of things, where we each grew up, what sort of schools we'd been to (I was barely a high-school graduate at the time)...and our love lives. I thought nothing of it at the time, but it turns out this woman was delusional and imagined things into our day together which weren't possibly true.
One of the things we'd discussed, in what I thought was our perfectly innocent conversation, was the fact that she'd only ever been with one man, her husband. Looking back now I realize I couldn't possibly, as a teenager, have understood just how stultifying that fact was for her. Craving her life as a young woman back, I see now. I found out later that when she got home the next morning, she "confessed" to her husband that we had had a romantic day and were planning to run away together! Pure and total delusion. This was the first time I learned that another person's delusions can really screw up your life (I've learned the same lesson over and over again). I wasn't even attracted to this girl, let alone ready to elope with her.
I too decided I had to face the music the next morning, and went back to my flooded apartment to see if there was something, anything, I could salvage. I had no luck, except as mentioned with the motorcycle. As I was standing there wondering how I would ever rid myself of this catastrophe, the phone rang; phone lines were working again by then. It was my friend Adam, one of the eight white folks in this little town of Hualien. We all knew each other of course. Adam sounded very worried about something.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
"You tell me," he said.
"Well, my apartment's a bust. The only thing I could salvage was the bike--"
"No, I mean about yesterday."
"What about yesterday?"
"You and what's-her-name?"
"Me and who?"
"That Australian girl, dammit! Don't pretend you don't know."
"I have no idea what the fuck you're going on about!"
"None?"
"None!"
"Well, she seems to think you two had quite the magical day together yesterday."
"Quite the magic--what?!"
"Look, I don't care to know the details. Just, I think it's important you leave town right away."
"Leave town? My life's a wreck. Why should I go now?"
"Like I said, I don't even _want_ to know what happened. But you have to know that crazy Kiwi told me he would shoot you on sight. And I don't think they really have the rule of law down there, where he comes from."
"This is crazy. Leave or die?"
"I'd say you better catch the next train for Taipei."
"This is nuts."
"It is what it is, man. You gotta look out for number one."
I did catch the train that night, bound for Hong Kong (and finally Tokyo) via Taipei. I didn't have a single swatch of clothing to my name, but for the shirt on my back. The one thing I did have plenty of was money. So I faced: a verifiable threat from a mafia-backed school, the messy aftermath of the typhoon, and yet another threat on my life from an unforeseen, unforeseeable source. With absolutely nothing to keep me, my only choice was to catch the next outbound train, never again to return to the beautiful little town of Hualien, on the east coast of Taiwan, majestically nestled between mountains and the open Pacific ocean. I saw Adam not long after, who had gotten the real deal by then, in Hong Kong. He told me I had saved that couple's marriage by leaving. Ever the fall guy/sucker I will be.
*Peace*
"I think in many ways it is the most important campaign since 1933, mostly because of the problems which press upon the United States, and the opportunities which will be presented to us in the 1960s. The opportunity must be seized, through the judgment of the President, and the vigor of the executive, and the cooperation of the Congress. Through these I think we can make the greatest possible difference.
"How many of you who are going to be doctors are willing to spend your days in Ghana? Technicians or engineers, how many of you are willing to work in the Foreign Service and spend your lives traveling around the world? On your willingness to do that, not merely to serve one year or two years in the service, but on your willingness to contribute part of your life to this country, I think will depend the answer whether a free society can compete."
--JFK in 1961 talking to students about his plans for the Peace Corps
*Music*
One diva everyone should hear is Angie Stone. She's an English hip-hop artist that's got style, a memorable voice, and a deep, funky sensibility. My favorite records are Mahogany Soul and Stone Love. Dig it!
Also, for the record, Prince's best album is Dirty Mind from 1980. Let Stephen Thomas Erlewine (AMG) tell it:
"Neither For You nor Prince was adequate preparation for the full-blown masterpiece of Prince's third album, Dirty Mind. Recorded in his home studio, with Prince playing nearly every instrument, Dirty Mind is a stunning, audacious amalgam of funk, new wave, R&B, and pop, fueled by grinningly salacious sex and the desire to shock. Where other pop musicians suggested sex in lewd double-entendres, Prince left nothing to hide--before its release, no other rock or funk record was ever quite as explicit as Dirty Mind, with its gleeful tales of oral sex, threesomes, and even incest. Certainly, it opened the doors for countless sexually explicit albums, but to reduce its impact to mere profanity is too reductive--the music of Dirty Mind is as shocking as its graphic language, bending styles and breaking rules with little regard for fixed genres. Basing the album on a harder, rock-oriented beat more than before, Prince tries everything--there's pure new wave pop ("When You Were Mine"), soulful crooning ("Gotta Broken Heart Again"), robotic funk ("Dirty Mind"), rock & roll ("Sister"), sultry funk ("Head," "Do It All Night"), and relentless dance jams ("Uptown," "Partyup"), all in the space of half an hour. It's a breathtaking, visionary album, and its fusion of synthesizers, rock rhythms, and funk set the style for much of the urban soul and funk of the early '80s."
*Quotations*
I see no reason to spend your life writing poems unless your goal is to write great poems. To desire to write poems that endure--we undertake such a goal certain of two things: that in all likelihood we will fail, and that if we succeed we will never know it.
--Donald Hall
Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.
--F SCott Fitzgerald
The writer's only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one.
--William Faulkener
Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race.
--HG Wells
Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
--Emerson
The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.
--Samuel Johnson
He who cannot lie does not know what the truth is.
--Nietzsche
A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.
--Churchill
A man's private thought can never be a lie; what he thinks, is to him the truth, always.
--Mark Twain
A man who will not lie to a woman has very little consideration for her feelings.
--Olin Miller
Peace love and ATOM jazz
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