Su Hija Esta en Buenas Manos (ROUND 2)
scent of the day: Taifi Misk, by Ensar Oud
A pure rose—the sort of luminous rose we find in Sultan White Rose—made earthy and creamy by a mega-dose of Mongolian musk and spices. The main spices are cumin and clove, but the clove is more noticeable, likely because the Japanese rugosa rose, one of the roses used here like in one of my favorite rose fragrances (EO3 Rugosa), brings not only its characteristic pineapple but clove as well. The effect of this strange tension is what one might liken to a deeply animalic rose milk chai—sweetness like that of a minimally sweet artisanal honey.
I also have The Rose of Sandzak, which is SWR plus SRR, albeit more bent toward the latter, at least in intention. On paper, I would say this is way more up my alley than all the other roses. I am not sure in practice. It is quite quirky, I can give it that. It does not demonstrate the blending skill of the others, even of Sandzak—an excellent scent, but offbeat as well. Taifi Misk is to SWR what The Rose of Sandzak is to SRR Isparta—a leveled-up execution (although the Sandzak rose combines strong SWR elements too).
Taifi Misk is very much like J-Musk (Version 5 is my reference). The big commonality is, of course, the musk. It should be said that big differences lie in this big commonality. J-Musk uses Kashmiri musk, which is much more like a tea made from smoked cedar: dry, inky, and resinous, with a velvety, warm-bedroom shadow that goes especially powdery with the help of the orris and the ambergris. Taifi Misk uses Mongolian, which is oily and furred in feel, with strong impressions of dark earthy chocolate—chocolate really coming through especially with the help of carob, an ingredient Prin uses in Mongolian Mriga to bring out the chocolate of the Mongolian musk.
There are other commonalities too. Both have a strong sour citrus presence bent hard in the pineapple direction that Rosa rugosa brings in both fragrances, although I might say that Taifi Misk doubles down on the bitterness (perhaps because of the yuzu). Both have a clovey character, this rooted in the rugosa rose too (and J-Musk also doubles down with carnation). Both have a soapy vibe, this centered around bitter neroli in the case of Taifi Misk and around indolic white florals in the case of J-Musk—although it should be said that J-Musk’s soapiness is much more prominent, and this lends much more of a soapy-dirty tension than we get in Taifi Misk.
The biggest differences are that Taifi Misk, with its various oud varietals, much more honors oud connoisseurs, whereas J-Musk, with its various animalic varieties, more so honors animalic connoisseurs. The texture is a big difference too, and this is expected from the different musks used: J-Musk brings more powder, and this brings cream. For whatever it might be worth to say, Taifi Misk is more like the Figment Man to J-Musk’s Kouros.
Taifi Misk has what seems to me, after only two wears, a castoreum base. That makes its base, especially compared to the skanky hyrax-muskrat-civet-ambergris mix in J-Musk, a bit more generic (but understandably so because this fragrance skews so weird it threatens to go off the rails). Almost a yellow-green daffodil weediness, like in the case of SWR, comes from costus at the base of Taifi Misk. But that greenness it brings, even in concert with the green elements that come from the piney frankincense, might be less than what I get in J-Musk. I still have to do a side-by-side, so grain of salt on these comparisons. These two are definitely siblings, though.
*Let’s workshop this poem about how the foundational tales of Christianity and Islam, despite encoding a similar power-asymmetric relationship with kid brides, differ in terms of freak-off consummation
Su Hija Está en Buenas Manos
Christ arose from a relationship marked by an infinite gap in age and power, holy dew
pearled at dawn with enough rico suave to make Mohammad’s manhandling of Aisha—
portable pocket pussy, brown— look like a spastic mongoloid creaming a hogtied camel.
“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)
