on scenting (discerning qualities with the sense of smell) and. . . my new samples

I was smelling CdG Synthetic "Soda" on myself and had this experience I'm sure many of you are familiar with, and in a way it was a bit of a revelation for me.

I was thinking of various references/scent memories that connect with this fragrance: ginger slices from sushi, too strong lemon lime soda, the lemon that comes with sushi, slightly impregnated with the scent of pickled ginger, irish spring soap, soda water with lemon. Thinking of them all in turn I realized that fragrances can play a trick with your brain analagous to what happens optically looking at a graphic in which a flat object appears by turns to be a solid 3-D object rising from the flat surface of the image, say, a hemisphere, but after one changes ones mental perspective one sees a crater instead. It's always engaging and amusing to switch back and forth consciously between 'believing' we have before us the various things it seems to us we might be seeing/smelling in apprehension of the sort of phenomena than can trigger this sort mental/sensory switching operation.

= = =

anyway I got a bunch of new samples: fou d'absinthe timbuktu idole people of the labrynths geir l'homme sage paname dammisso and two more I have tried:

Mistrael - I was very interested cause a friend wrote a book by this title (unpublished) it went on way too spicy for my tastes, like christmas candy. After I washed some of it off (I think I put too much on, being conditioned by Mark Birley and most CdG weird scents, which are let's face it all weak) and an hour later.. it's kind of pleasant. Again though to me it reads "man's fragrance" in a way that I find hard to love.

I wrote here before about this question of nostalgia in scents for me. I hate anything traditionally signifying "this is a man's cologne" at least to my limited understanding, but this includes most everything. perhaps sometime I wil get over it. Learn to appreciate them on their own terms without this rather difficult requirement I have. In the end I am not about to start wearing this stuff and I'm not going to buy it for my friend's upcoming birthday, although I would have loved to cause it costs a fortune and would be a nice gift if I really could stand behind the scent myself. It's pleasant, too "manly" clovey, and it's not so bad but I have no interest in wearing it.

There was a time when I only loved modern classical music (well, and bach) because I felt mozart et al were too "predictable" but eventually I came to love it all, after I overcame my impatience with a sort of repetitiveness to much of it and learned to love it instead.

Amour de Cocao (sic?) - disgusting. I wanted to check out other "gourmand" scents after reading a post about how the comme "sweet" line is a "sell out" imitating the many "gournamds" out there. Based on reviews I went for this one and it grosses me out. It smells like chocolate flavored whey protein powder, cocoa puffs. Just a degraded chemical wanna be chocolate scent that comes off as some kind of gross over the counter bad medicine for children. Now I really appreciate CdG "spicy cocoa" even more. It's such a really appealing scent, and chocolate is just a part of it.... and as far as it's genderific associations go... it's rather neutral, but in any event, it's a little sexy.

this is a rambling message that comes back to your question after digressing, sorry!

unfortunately I'm not really knowledgeable to tell you what else it might smell like. I will be giving my sample to the guy with the book title, so can't offer it. a big nutmeg clove thing or something . . . fading into something much more liveable a kind of sandalwood impregnated with spices.

Mistrael might be ok for me if I wore more different things but I tend to stick to the few that really enthrall me. And as I keep saying in posts, I have a kind of aversion for what I call nostalgia in fragrances that maybe is a prejudice.

This whole issue of what makes a man's scent in the fragrance industry, hmmm... Maybe there's this conceit that men have to be markedly deodorized, there is a certain overkill on notes of some tenor that says, "we are purging this carcass of it's beastly human oozings/body chemistry". Something "bracing" something "clean" in the sense of sharp smells relating to cleanliness like pine cedar heavy spices alcohol ... Anyway mistrael for a long time when you put it on looks smells like you are trying to keep some monster at bay, it's harshly aromatic with spices. For someone trying not to smell like a goat you could make a worse choice. To me maestral smells like a football coach during the day when he is teaching his math classes and maybe he smokes a pipe. But he's a not bad smelling football coach; it's kind of nice.


I tried 2 more today: luctor et emergo from people from the labyrinths, as one reviewer complained, does smell like play doh. I can't imagine who would wear it, child molesters maybe?

Oh yeah and L'air d'artisan, which. . . gulp I have written about 2x now, don't want to fill all boards with my most provocative notes, but you can look up the weird little review I wrote of it. Cause I'd like to know if there is any validity to my question about its associations. Someone had stated, very evocatively that someone *passing by* with this scent would leave the impression of having been a woman. And this sort of clarified for me something I was smelling, that I then immediately put my finger on...