Cosmetic Repairs (ROUND 1)
scent of the day: Madagascar le Baume Vanille, by Parfum d’Empire
Tremendous here, absolutely! Second wear and my view has only improved. Whereas so often my higher priced items have rendered my lower priced items jokes, this one makes me consider my continual patronage of mega-priced houses like Ensar. This swings way about its price class.
One thing I did not expect is the camphor—almost a camphorous cooling herbality: a bit of minty rosemary and spearmint catnip, and even Listerine thyme and vapor-rub lavender, but mainly a pepper-clovy holy basil. The menthol feel is persistent and rugged but not loud. You might think that it comes from a whole herb placed in the rum drink that this is supposed to be. The thing is, this does not—despite what I thought and what people, including Corticchiato himself, have said—come off to me like a drink. The air-swirled dustiness is what takes away that impression.
I expected a gourmand. But this is supremely dry and dusty. Even the sweetness never turns gourmand. This is aromatic vanillin rather than dessert vanilla, the sweetness carried not by syrup or frosting but by the dry, woody perfume released as lignin slowly breaks apart. Whatever molasses richness once existed has been weathered into something airy and mineral. I would have been happy with a molasses booze drink. That is what I expected. But I love this even more. It is dusty and minty. Yes, it is like the rum has evaporated—the angels demanding the whole thing, not just a share, as the saying goes. It is like the rum has evaporated into a dust. It is like a pestled rum-and-herb powder. Think of the many dusty leather perfumes. Now replace the leather with a vanillic, herb-infused rum that has been turned into dust form.
Black pepper and clove do wonders in here, creating a very medicinal dustiness—almost enough to feel like minty herbs. The slightly herb-reinforced rum has been barrel-aged so long it has turned into a rich dust. That is what I really get from here. It is the same sort of lignin-breakdown vanillin smell I get from old books, as well as from fragrances (like Opus II) meant to recreate the vanillin outgassing of old books.
Lignin is a structural polymer found in wood and plant cells. Needless to say, heavy oak wood used to age spirits is rich in lignin. Spirit makers actually char or toast the oak to break down the lignin so that the ethanol starts extracting the vanillin that comes from that breakdown. Whereas the vanillin that comes from book-lignin breakdown is accompanied primarily by bitter-almond benzaldehyde and baked-bread furfural, the vanillin that comes from oak-lignin breakdown is rich in allspice-clove eugenol and peaty-hearth guaiacol. Those accompanying organic compounds—both of which are medicinal (eugenol in the Anbesol way and guaiacol in the Scotch whisky or lapsang souchong tea way)—really seal my impressions. The eugenol’s vibe of peppery mintiness (downright carnation impressions) and the guaiacol’s vibe of campfire ashiness (downright lapsang souchong tea impressions), both of which are rooted in the warm spice blend Corticchiato adds (phenolic-lozenge clove, molasses-bark cinnamon, singed-wick black pepper), really seal my image of a charred rum barrel whose contents have long ago evaporated (that evaporated part known as the “Angel’s Share”), leaving behind a residual crust of caramelized sugars and tannins, the charred oak staves themselves degrading so much that they release an airborne vanillin that gives off that distinct sweet paper-and-vanilla scent very close—were it not for those unique accompanying compounds—to a dusty 19th-century library.
The dust itself is neither compact nor diffuse. It hangs suspended but low to the ground, like a creeping morning fog that never quite rises. Rather than coating the air in thick clouds, it drifts in a fine aromatic veil, it was my movements that stirred the plume of vanillic-booze medicinal powder. The dust’s olfactory character allows you to picture oak staves, barrel wood, splinters. But these survive only as ghosts, as the memory of timber after decades of slow degradation. Everything substantial has been pulverized to powder. I cannot shake the image that the barrel itself has continued aging long after the rum disappeared, the wood gradually surrendering its structure into an airborne residue of vanillin, tannins, eugenol, guaiacol, and faint herbal spice.
*Let’s workshop this poem about an enterprising madam energy—a charming haggler whose toothy smile masks an implacable ruthlessness when it comes to her money—reincarnating across history like Ganon.
Cosmetic Repairs
If Queen Nzinga (that big boss who owned and sold countless black slaves) were here,
she would be that smiley African slumlord every hood knows: buying up foreclosures
and, after Mexican patch jobs, knocking for rent—her black Benz bumping Burna Boy.
“We need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.”—Kafka (against the safe-space cancel culture pushed by anti-art bullies, left and right)
