Gonzo Domestic Squabble (ROUND 3)
scent of the day: Memoir Man, by Amouage
Peppery bite with creamy sandalwood and smoky-green vetiver—an honour man connection. A moody-dark-green fougere like Haxan, only Haxan is much darker and danker and sinister whereas Memoir is much more enchanted and classy and elven (very close in feel and, as the near identical note pyramid would suggest, in smell to Fougere Platine) / leather-woody-fragrance set apart from a straightforward fougere by being built around absinth and wormwood / minty-basil barbershop opening, although not as barbershop as Epic Man and not as minty as Beach Hut and not Amouage’s official barbershop scent (that honor goes to Bracken Man) / foresty-leathery scent (although plasticky leather of Imitation Man rather than the animal leather of Haxan).
Very enjoyable. I wish the tarragon-marjoram-basil-fern opening was a tad shocking to me at first. I am soemwhat blind to this, which is a shame. The roundness—yesm, this could be a benchmark and roundess and smoothness along with Dia Man and Inverno Russo 2—almost seems to be a fiunction, like in the cas eof Inverno Russo 2, of an opaque wax overlay. The positive of being encased in such a wax overlay is that there is little possibility even for otherwise scratchy herbs to be scratchy. But the unfortunately thing is that it seems to blunt the smell. That is how I frame it anyway. I am partially anosmic likely to severla of the ingredients in here. Even though I love the waxy overlay vibe I get in fragrances like Honour Man and Inverno Russo, I would have much rather taken away the waxy overlay so I can smell all these wonderful herbs even if it meant that it felt that I had glass in my nostrils. But what ends up happening is that the herb dazzle of the first few second largly goes away and after first hour what become most priminent is a smoked leatheriness (guiac, labdanum) I know for all too many fragrances.
underappreciate like Journey Man. the leather is plasticky but it gets a chocolatey quality after awhile. I sense vanilla too—more woody, even tobacco like, than extract or any ice cream. most definitely brings to mind dark enchanted forest with glowing green (like some of the boards in Toad Adventure game on WiiU—indeed, like a post-rain graveyard in such a land) / frankincense is there contributing to the mineralic pineyness and pepperiness. altogether this scent has more of a European than oriental feel (at least when compared to the more boisterous scent that goes in the same quirky fougere direction: Epic Man). The moss accord here definitely contains an unlisted medicinal patchouli, which is responsible both for the dampness (wet graveyard) and chocolatyness while also boostign the mint. Patchouli is a hidden key player
the dry down is clean man, but a forest and hands in dirt man of cigars and leather (clean but somehow with the darkness of black ink, and so very distantly reminiscent of Bianchi Black Knight in that way) / a paradigm case of dark and yet fresh almost perfectly balanced (and encapsulated perfectly in an the enchanted dank forest with so much green glow) / one of the best fragrances to be versatile and wearable without sacrificing on frag head artistry (especially when you go heavier on the spray since this can be considered light like Jubilation, as has it has sometimes been described even since 2013 from my research).
this is a quieter Amouage people say (so it might noit just be all my anosmia) but keep in mind that its projection might be deceptive for various reasons: the Amouage sprayer is stingy, bottle might need to sit with some oxygen, the opening is quite nose-blinding, and you might need time for your brain to learn to pick up all the notes—at least this is what I tell myself. I will say that the last time I wore this was probably about a year ago and the performance to my nose did not improve. I think I need not wait so logn next time. Before a wear. pleasant but subdued (although I like some others get particularly noseblind / fatigued by this), which—although not for me—might be good since it is challenging one-of-a-kind combination
settles down to a leather like a lot of Amouage offerings, albeit here is it a rainsoaked smoky leather (creamy like in Honour Man), a rainsoaked smoky leather that is—yes, I cannot shalke this overcast graveyyard scene—leaned up agaisnt a tombstone. It would be one of my favorite Amouages if it had better performance, in the sense of: if it gav eme more reliable whiffs. my partner likes it (and lieks it the most compared to the other Amouage offerings) / always present and long lasting, Memoir never shouts like Interlude or Epic (a subtle confidence, although not the near whisper of Dia Man) / this is definitely a signature scent that can be worn on all occasions by me.
The nose blind issue with memoir man is particularly dangerous since (a) I find no aspect of it offensive and (b) many are said not to like this and (c) it seemed weak to my nose before my brained learned to smell it better (and even then it is on the quieter side of the spectrum objectively_/ as of now though Memoir man does have a pervasiveness, but that pervasiveness is much more a feel (if you will) than an actual scent, as if it were full of aroma chemicals that serve less a scent role than a scent-bolstering or feel role (you can definitely feel it in the mouth) / Really good scent with proven performance now that my brain has learned to smell it better, but not as good as something like even Honour Man. Moody fresh bitter dry elements like epic man and yet almost boozy wet elements like Overture me.
After several wears over many years, the scene—bleak, rainy, gothic—I get with this one has become clearer. Toad’s Adventure land—that is definitely unshakable. But what has rose up even into greater prominence is this stony mineralic graveyard aspect—wet dirt and wet stone, the sky an irradiated overcast. The stone element is many a function of the combo of olibanum and rose. Teh olibanum gives a peppery and terpenic (so a pine forest cemetery) aroma whose cold slate aura is ampilfied by iron-oxide rose (which comes off as chilled dewy metal here, not warm garden). Alone this olibanium here would probably give me vibes of cold stone cathedral, ancient marble, or a damp crypt. The oakmoss accord, which as I said is largely centered around a medicinal chocolately patchouli, anchors the damp and somewhat decayed aura. Even without the vetiver, which brings us right to the rooty graveyard dirt, this oakmoss accord contributes an inky—almost marine—aroma that makes you think of the green fuzz growing in a shaded area of a driveway right under the garden hose spigot or even the paint-flake look of lichen (a fungus and algae symbiosis) clinging to bark. Wormwood, in conjucntion with the other herbs, makes for a chilling ghoulish atmosphere—bringing a bitter medicinality that cannot but conjure Poe-imagery in my mind.
*Let’s workshop this poem about a college student’s clandestine intervention in a courtyard dispute that triggers a visceral psychological regression into childhood trauma.
**Drew out some more of the damning incest details.
Gonzo Domestic Squabble
Drunken shouts became a sloppy knot in the grass. Mounted on his chest, the girl—her tit torn free— grunted berserk hammerfists to his skull. I watched from my dorm. That hyperarousal of helplessness, that battery brine—my mouth knew the slaver of it, retching, before I did. Electricity tingled my pinkies like in childhood. I needed in on it, in on their union, like when my mom and men fought in a fuck coil fecal with the piston of glucking fists, her shark eyes dead to Teddy and me—as far as a child could know, the sugar of the verboten still locked in cookie jars. A nonagent, less than zero, I felt. I felt my way in darkness to the kitchen where my suitemate, out on another date, kept his pest control loaded. I pumped the air rifle, an edging pace. I bore a hole in the screen, sweet time, for its tip to retake control.
As with my mom and her men, my need to add extra fury into the fracas was an ache righteous because I mattered nothing to them—righteous because pain and injury come with the territory. Lured by the homecoming prospect that I might rise out of oblivion, that my intervention might make one body purple the other back into oblivion (proof as to whom mastery belongs), my squinted aim held despite the upheaval pounding through the carotids. Female shrieks, so familiar, followed the BB strike. Bodies punched for air. Spurred by my sting, the man took his mount with headbanger chokes that bloodied my lip. My cock tried leaving me like when her squirt pelted Teddy and me—sheets of deadened thuds, rug in a cloudburst—with that musk of hot pennies saltier with my tears. I pumped, past ten. I took a third shot.
Voices from other windows in the quad heckled and I took the fourth shot and the fifth, no longer caring to cover my noise or even the mirror it raised. I pumped again, those vinegar clacks—clack, clack— I knew from many semesters had to have ricocheted against the brick. But some phantom ring in my ears screamed, my brain tunneling its attention. And I shot. My soul, my cock, needed him to forget her need to breathe. That felt familiar too. “Ahhh!” he yelled, holding his face in response to the hands now pulling the strings—my barrel too far out, reckless like when I dropped Teddy to suck her nipple in goo-goo-gaga as she re-blew: lowing like a cow in estrus, sweeping my hand across the blub. He kept uppercutting her gut even though she was through. Red and blue strobes had him flee to the woods, the girl sobbing like her.
“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)
