122009

It's long-awaited winter in the city. Heavy snowfall is expected in the next 24 hours. Can't imagine a better way to spend a Sunday, warm and dry and dreaming big.

*Lord's-Jester*

My leather scent, Cuir du Farceur, is better than expected. For the first few moments it smells a little spicy; after a minute or two the leather doppelgänger creeps in, and it's quite elegant. I'm really impressed with myself: I was able to intuit which notes would add to the leather effect with surprising precision. This is a perfume one would wear to meet somebody important; both men and women will enjoy this perfume. The question now is: which strength suits it best? It might be one like Ares (used to be Adam's Amber) which I will offer in several strengths. Anya McCoy explained to me that a perfumer changes the basic recipe according to the strength of a given version; for example, it might be that one gets the sense the eau de cologne version of a perfume could use extra benzoin and lavender, while the eau de parfum version needs less of each. This is another area where I find I have excellent imagination; I can "picture" what needs to change.

I know now that I am nothing like other natural perfumers. For example, when I first started Mandy Aftel's course, and read Essence & Alchemy, when she wrote about smelling a perfume while you're making it, I found it didn't work for me to do so; it took a couple of years for me to figure out that's not the way I work. It does me absolutely no good to smell a perfume in process--all I smell is alcohol. I never really did much examination of individual extracts; others spend years just involved with individual notes. For me, from the beginning, perfumery has been about whole compositions; I have been concerned with making complete perfumes, all in one go. My perspective is that study of an individual extract does me no good at all. A given note will smell totally different in a finished perfume than it does on its own. Same for dilutions; some perfumers swear by diluting all aromatic materials; I _only_ pre-dilute those materials which I can't use straight from the bottle (for example, orris butter, immortelle, and pine needle).

I am not trying to know individual components; I am aiming to understand how individual parts play in a finished perfume. So to "get to know" benzoin alone is a waste of time for me; I'm concerned with how it smells in a finished perfume. I have smells cataloged in my brain; I don't need to be near my perfumer's organ or extracts to compose a new recipe. My imagination for natural perfume is second to none. I compose in complete "thought forms." Sometimes a given recipe fails; more often the finished product needs a little tweaking, more orris, less lavender, less in the top, like that. I make a perfume then wait two weeks to a month (perfumes with more notes need longer to mature than simpler ones); from there I can see what parts are working and what parts are not--by applying perfume to the skin, which is the only way to get a sense of a perfume, after a complete one mixes with skin chemistry. I don't need to have an in depth relationship with, say, labdanum to know whether or not I used too much. It's finished perfumes which concern me.

So how do I know I'm on the right track? Feedback from other natural perfumers. "Normal" people are not so reliable; why? Because olfactory education is non-existent--a serious thorn in my side. Despite the efforts of some modern philosophers, the olfactory sense is the highest of our senses, with more potential for sublime effects than any other. I know from experience that my methods are unique to me, and also that I can make perfumes with far greater longevity than most. Pleased is she who learns of natural perfume; this art, as it was practiced in days long gone, is truly sacred, inspiring us to live grander lives, helping us to sense honor, and grounding us firmly in beauty wrested from the earth. There's a reason rabbis, priests, imams, and shamans were the original perfumers: sex and reproduction once were sacred endeavors. And (natural) perfume has always been about sex appeal. Now, if we only had olfactory language to use to talk about what we smell!

*Film*

I had three experiences (aside from years of still photography) in film and television: 1) took a course during high school (maybe earlier) at Weist-Barron, meant for TV actors, 2) I trained in doing voiceover work, for radio and television, and 3) I went to film school at NYU, The New School, and School of Visual Arts (SVA); I lasted about a year and a half at that.

The only experience I remember from Weist-Barron is this: one day I went in for my class with other young people but the room had changed; I accidentally went to the wrong room, full of adult students. I knew everyone else was older, for the first time, but I thought they were just mixing it up a bit. We went through the whole class, and at the end the teacher asked if I was a new student. I explained that I'd been studying with another teacher--he stopped me in disbelief. "How old are you?" he asked. It came out then that I was supposed to have gone to the _youth_ class. What I remember most is that the adults in the class, thinking I was also an adult, had behaved totally differently from any other group of adults I'd ever seen, ribbing each other, making statements full of sexual innuendo, and generally having fun. I remember thinking, "Cool! I get to have fun when I grow up."

Voiceover work was loads of fun. I remember making some really killer demo tapes. The idea was that over time one developed a reel of their best work to send to interested parties. What I had the most fun doing was taking copy that was drab and boring and turning it into something completely zany. I remember one was a TV shoe commercial. For some reason, what seemed to fit the copy to me was a person speaking maniacally fast; when I played it, the whole room went into hysterics. I think our instructor thought I showed a lot of promise. In the end, though, casting about for callings,I made a conscious decision that voiceover work was not a thing I wanted to be remembered for.

My first experience with film was when a friend from Milton was going to NYU film school. One night we were hanging out, and Joe had rented a 16mm camera from the school for a project. He explained what he wanted to do: to portray an enormous plant-as-person erupting from a small pot in a split second. I thought on possibilities, and finally asserted that I had a solution. The trick was to zoom in tight on the edge of the pot; from there, anything rising from behind the pot would appear to rise _from_ the pot. Worked like a charm and Joe got the highest score in his class. I like to think I've always been quite adept at interpreting the world through a camera lens.

Later I went to film school myself. I started out at NYU, but quickly came to prefer The New School and SVA. I had a favorite teacher at NYU though; he taught film theory and I learned more about film aesthetics from him than anyone else. For example, I learned that the way car scenes are shot is an abomination, one we've learned to compensate for; if a camera switches directions for focusing on two different people on either side of the front seat, the background naturally changes direction too. But when you sit in a car, it's all one direction. A good solution is to build a sidecar for the camera so one can shoot both folks from one direction, close up or far away as necessary. Most directors can't be bothered with such trivialities. Trivialities! I think not.

In the end I found all the teachers at NYU (except for that one) to be far too staid. The teachers at The New School and SVA were much more to my liking, guys still working in the field, loads of hands-on learning, not as much about theories (except for that one) and film criticism, more about actually making movies. I decided finally that the best, and only right, way to go about things was simply to start working on films, starting at the bottom and working one's way up. At the same time, though, I was having tremendous personal revelations, revelations which ultimately led me way from New York, up to Maine to start a homestead, and finally to the west coast. I had to do what I did, to live through what I lived through, in order to come out on the other side and be the person I am today. Besides, I knew the film world was about to change, from actual film to video and digital. What a swift transformation it has been.

*Quotations*

My deepest impulses are optimistic, an attitude that seems to me as spiritually necessary and proper as it is intellectually suspect.

--Ellen Willis

If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading or do things worth the writing.

--Benjamin Franklin

There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love.

--Washington Irving

Perhaps our eyes need to be washed by our tears once in a while, so that we can see Life with a clearer view again.

--Alex Tan

I always knew looking back on my tears would bring me laughter, but I never knew looking back on my laughter would make me cry.

--Cat Stevens

Tears are the safety valve of the heart when too much pressure is laid on it.

--Albert Smith

The soul would have no rainbow had the eyes no tears.

--John Vance Cheney

Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts.

--Charles Dickens

Before the reward there must be labor. You plant before you harvest. You sow in tears before you reap joy.

--Ralph Ransom

Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears.

--Edgar Allan Poe

Peace love and ATOM jazz