Why We Need War (ROUND 1)
scent of the day: Fiore D’Ambre, by Profumum Roma
Fiore D’Ambre—a spiced-floral amber with not only top-tier naturals containing none of the autotune boosters of the growing monocrop of Taylor Swift perfumery seemingly hellbent on smoothening out the crevices of our brain (ambrocenide, amber Xtreme, norlimbinol, and so on), but also with a vintage feel that scratches my musty-antique itch quite nicely (and with a lovely feminine Oud-Sinharaja vibrancy instead of the usual drab brown that I actually prefer)—
opens with a narcotic pizzazz of Avon-powder florals (opium poppy, but also perhaps a civet-splashed trio of jasmine, carnation, and orris) enveloped in a combo of creamy-vanilla opoponax leather (like Shalimar) and soapy sandalwood incense (like One Man Show Oud Edition) with a twinge of fantasy honey made from opium poppies (which never happens since their alkaloids are toxic to bees)
and then finally—these first elements receding from the spotlight but continuing to hum for the fragrance’s long life of linearity—a lemon-almond musk marked by sweet-sour rosiness and patchouli-like earthiness ramps up until it becomes hard not to see this as a more balsamic sister of Habit Rouge especially given their shared spicy florals (jasmine and carnation mixed with clove and cinnamon, perhaps even cumin) and warm resins (benzoin, opoponax) and warm woods (sandalwood, cedar)—
the overall result being a fragrance that interprets the classic amber structure through a unique lens, as can better be seen when contrasted with Ambra Aurea and Ambre Russe (two major ambers in my collection):
(1) Ambra Aurea, which is largely a bruléed Ambre Sultan minus the spice rack and with a good dollop of ambergris to make for a cognac-smoky oceanic amber of monolithic naturalism, offers the densest and most unfiltered primal charred amber (bittersweet molasses, chocolately and with a caramelized edge);
(2) Ambre Russe, bringing a festive feel of airy circulation to a similar charred-amber-plus-ambergris profile, swaps out the dense and melancholy cognac with vaporous tea and vodka-champagne effervescence (the amber here less like molasses than like burnt brown sugar on a cut of birch-tar leather);
(3) Fiore d’Ambre, the classiest and most feminine of the three (a velvet-gloved hand dusted with opium pollen) and bringing in a posh citrus powder to brighten the overcast skies of the other two saltier ambers, takes the resin heart of Ambre Aurea (nearly molasses here on an analytical nosedive, even though holistically it seems more like light brown sugar with melted Amber Kiso butter) and uses grandma-makeup-desk florals plus citrus-honey (as well as perhaps even a soap-evoking smidge of musty oakmoss) to animate and aerate the composition in a vintage direction of European refinement (like a less growly Teatro Alla Scala by Krizia or Civet by Zoologist or perhaps also YSL’s Opium, which I have yet to smell but does share a lot of structure aside from the clove-patchouli-opoponax opium poppy accord).
*Let's workshop this poem about how a culture of aesthetic paralysis and synthetic perfection pushes desire toward the last remaining signs of life—until even small motions of the face become charged.
Why We Need War
That latex look (lips stuffed like duck liver, forehead like a pet) now a norm of decency,
fuck-bot companies can scale back biomimicry—until, that is, deviant kids find kink
in facial mobility beyond mere brainstem blinks: crow’s feet of joy, brow arches of fear.
“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)
