The Last Vestiges (ROUND 7)
scent of the day: Arsalan, by Prin
Arsalan (2020, Prin Lomros)—a funky-spicy oud fragrance that, although described by several who smelled it on me as “ethnic poop,” goes much more in the rancid-mold-meets-cumin-flecked-cheese direction than the fecal-hay direction typical of an Indian oud or the industrial-rubber direction typical of a Laotian oud)—
chokes the space with a Homa-inversed ratio of cheese funk (twenty-percent nutty-buttery-shroomy interior, eighty-percent moldy-musty-yeasty rind) that blooms by some Prin alchemy from exotic spices (boudoir-pit cumin, rooty-musky turmeric, chalky-cola clove, bready-licorice caraway, lemon-eucalyptus cardamom, molasses-bark cinnamon, citrus-celery coriander) and tropical florals (honey-crotch jasmine sambac, coconut-cream gardenia, ripe-apricot champaca) and coniferous resins (lemon-pine olibanum that here alongside the synthetic musk calls to mind the Mriga series, sticky-caramel opoponax that here alongside the patchouli gives velvety whiskey vibes with a fungal edge)
all muddled over an in-your-face oud chassis that—less a matter of terroir than of comparatively cheap supply being oversoaked and romanced with a less-than-Bortnikoff hand of foreplay welcoming in all sorts of fermentation that would have even microbiome purists reconsidering Summer’s Eve—seems to be still living (the aged-wine sweetness of Cambodian oud bringing fruity-boozy tones of cherry tobacco, overripe plums, rum-soaked raisins, and honey-dipped suede; the old-wood mossiness of Trat oud bringing medicinal-fermented tones of mildewed tobacco, eucalyptus tincture, moldy cheese rind, and root-beer sarsaparilla),
the intense repulsive energy of the fragrance taking a long while before settling by hour four into a musty-antique combo of saffron leather and creamy sandalwood (albeit still with a good throw of anal speculum-porn crudeness stemming from the centerpiece oud blend, which comes off neither with the scorched racecar-tire rubber of L’Oudh or the moldy swim-tube rubber of Thichila (and definitely with none of their amberwood synthetic feel) nor the charred farm-stable cowpats of Lao Oud or the sunny sour-green rose of Triad (and definitely none of their high quality) but rather something more like the mildewed earthen-cellar goatskin aura emanating from the brainy wrinkles of a cave-aged cheese’s geotrichum rind after being tucked in the armpit of an Indian man trying to smuggle it back into his country)—
the overall result being a warm and spicy animalic floral-oud composition that is meant to channel the leonine essence of its namesake Arsalan (Lion), the throne-reclaiming hero of the Persian epic Amir Arsalan-e Namdar, and that it is hard to see (for all its lesser quality ingredients than the mega hits of artisanal perfumery into which I have gone balls deep) ever falling from my top twenty five best fragrances of all time (Prin is just that damn good);
the overall result being, to be more precise, a genre-bending microbial stew (spicy-gumdrop mastics like Serge Noire, stanky-sexy ouds like Lao Oud, buttery-indolic florals like Salome) that gives us the classic chypre’s forest-floor-rooted spices and fruits and florals and yet deletes most traces of bright-citrusy elegance to double down on the base-thrum of charred-and-mildewed leather, almost as if Rochas Femme walked into a frankincense-and-myrrh temple of curry-pored goat worshippers as they bang the moldy hides of djembe drums next to their “holy water” (unpasteurized cream in wooden pails, vibrating out to the beat a subtle butyric tang that falls short of the vomit-impression of movie-theater popcorn butter).
*Let’s workshop this poem about a pocked-marked meth head (eyelashes loaded up on mascara like one of those NASCAR redneck slores) out for cash from her mother, who watches her toddler each day
*Worked on two lines today, bolded below. Outsiders to the art might find it ridiculous to spend so many hours on a mere line. But that is the name of the game.
The Last Vestiges
Happy Meal box battered (fries stiff, having clocked a night’s share of miles), the meth-mouth mom sighs at the door. Into her childhood home she whirlwinds (“Heyy my big boy!”), scooping up the TVed toddler in a centrifugal hug that streaks away her prom gaze over the fireplace. Unlike that pit reek cartoonified by curbside Febreze, that fluttering cheer cartoonified by curbside mascara (and a toke in the mirror) wilts in on itself. More cash must be coaxed out of Granny.
She does that teen sway, one foot behind the other— men, smoking against the car, framed in the window, crank-cricket vigils etched in scorched-earth craters. Too fast the day approaches when—against the fixity of that reek, too contagious to stand—the transience of that cheer, no less contagious, will flare so bright that the boy, his fingers fretting the toy’s contours, will understand the necessity of becoming immune to hope at a level of consciousness before his time.
