SCENT OF THE DAY: The Black Knight, by Francesca Bianchi
A plum-purple medicinal leather fragrance of noire romanticism (purple because of a dense pat of orris butter, which here goes more in the waxy-lipsticky direction of Imitation Man than the powdery-soapy direction of Cuir Cannage; plum in shade, or even eggplant, because the vetiver has the black inkiness of Encre Noire; medicinal because of the tarry vetiver-patchouli-leather combo we get in so many similar “hospital” fragrances like Gucci Guilty Absolute and Bentley for Men Intense; romantic, in a more gothic direction, because of the Bulgarian rose placed right in the middle of this dark morass),
The Black Knight marries worn-but-beeswaxed leather (tunic belts, saddles) with murky greenery (dank oakmoss, musky patchouli, medicinal artemisia) that—with the help of florals (lime-tart rose, tobacco-hay narcissus, infant-head orris) and smoky woods (moth-repellant cedar, earthy-inky vetiver)—would seem to be perfect for evoking a fern-trampled forest clearing where an embattled medieval knight has just taken off the hide-liner of his gauntlet glove (releasing, in the heat of his sweat, a rubbery-gasoline aroma)—
I say “would seem” because, even in spite of the anisic warmth of the caraway (which can bring to mind the tinctures and tonics of medieval apothecaries where candles alight parchment-inked recipes of benightedness), for some reason I am brought instead to the gloomy-yet-sensual scene of Seal’s Batman 2 music video “Kiss from a Rose” and the whole wintery Batman aesthetic (perpetual-night metropolises of low-key lighting suggestive of widespread corruption, unease, cynicism, and disillusionment; dark trench coats on citizens who seem more like specters of chiaroscuro fog, their heeled boots clacking against slush-wet cobblestone; the eerie sheen of pallid moonlight against art deco cathedrals of black steel and stone gargoyles),
a film-noire scene that can easily be married (in a nice middle ground compromise) with the medieval knight marketing in the figure the Dark Knight himself: Batman, a good-guy hero and so a better representative warrior for this fragrance than the Kurgan barbarian of Highlander (of whom I do sometimes get hints) if only because any villainy suggested by the subtle animalic touches (a goat’s stale sweat) seems ruled out by the green touches, the feminine florals, the sun-warmed hay, the golden balsamic sheen of beeswax.
Placebo
The sun felt too good at the funeral. All our faces canted upward beyond divisions. I had spritzed body spray in the backseat and had taken a pill, a full one. These rides, ugly, tended to mount into galloping self-abandon and not being able to stick my part, not disappearing like a reliable tool, could be read as truer slut shaming— my failure becoming her humiliation.
The widow kept looking over at me even though I had only just met her. It gets easier each time. I bend the air. I feel it. Some other woman, her sister or a good friend, looked at that look— as if she too needed mouth smacks, a blood penance licensing the hips. I closed my eyes for real this time, though. The warmth was enough. I would stand here under the sun.
“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)
