Orphan Mechanics (ROUND 1)
SCENT OF THE DAY: Mohragot, by Prissana
Both sharing a tingling minty core (betel and clove) as well as smoked woodiness based around olibanum and oud, this is the more earthy and green sibling to the more resinous and smoky Ouddicts Anonymous.
The Ensar, even in the EDP form I have, is—even though it its more conspicuously a minty and fougere like—heavier and more mysterious. The inclusion of Ensar signature jammy fruits (blackberry, currant, fig) suggests a dark sweetness that makes it feel more nocturnal and brooding—made even an LA night of Film Noir, which is why—especially with its noticeable tobacco—I consider Jame Cagney as its representative.
The Prin, on the other hand, comes off more botanical and more daytime-oriented. The presence of lime plus the tropical flowers (jasmine, frangipani, ylang) makes it much brighter, and sunny exotic, than the Ensar. Indeed, here I get much more gourmand assocations—and these are benbt in a more garden-savory direction. The pandan leaves here, which people in Thailand often put in their water like we might cucumber or lemon, combines a grassy and nutty aroma to make what comes off as a sort of leafy popcorn. Even though there is oud here too, the oud (Trat) comes off more nutty and vegetal (think almost fresh tobacco) compared to the sour-bent ouds in the Ensar (plum-tobacco Cambodian, peaty-swamp Mereuke)
Here I picture here vetiver roots cooked, low and slow over a campfire, with savory herbs and minty spices. Betel leaf shines here as it does in the Ensar, these two frags being my two benchmarks of the note. Betel leaf, peppery but it gives—unlike the dry and woody black pepper—a lovely phenolic quality: a sweet mentholic tar, which makes its seem like there is lacquer or varnish over the pungent-herbal marigold. Chalood bark amplifies the cinnamon and clove in an herbal-incense direction.
You can see a commonality across Prin but it is more a style then a note (Bianchi orris) or accord (Tauerade)—and quite frankly I love it. It is hard to keep all my Prins straight. This one is so good. The vetiver, one of my favorite notes in perfumery (along with the undersung black pepper of Honour Man), really drives this home. There are so many good Prins I don’t know how this ranks—it would be hard to rank but I know it is not in the top.
In the dry down the vetiver comes out is in the Vetiver-Insolent style (nutty) and, while it is not as “lovely” and friendly as Vetiver Insolent, it is much more deserving of the name—because, just like Hayra’s folded-in-on-itself brooding vibe, this has an ominous reticence that is almost scary sicne it is at the same time such a sunny garden frag. Glad I bought this. There is just something about the Lomros style that is so good. very good in the air, you catch reliable whiffs that are alluring
*Let's workshop this poem about the persistence of momentum beyond belonging, as seen in what remains of the residual heat and rhythmic fury inside both a rogue planet and a dying man.
Orphan Mechanics
Black silhouette bending the distant dots, the ejected planet—still churning core heat
like hospice hips bucking medulla inertia against each downstroke of snug mercy, spit
slick—wanders as ours might one day through zones questionable in stellar allegiance.
“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)
