• Smell Design
  • Custom fragrance creation
  • About
  • Contact me

oleafragrans

~ No one rejects the gift of fragrance, except the obtuse (ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib )

oleafragrans

Archivi della categoria: Stories

On Fabrizio De Andrè, smells and life as a work of art

30 giovedì Ott 2014

Posted by oveis in Musings, Stories

≈ Lascia un commento

Tag

Authenticity, De Andrè, Inspiration, Love, Musings

Yesterday, in melancholic moment, I bumped into Rimini, a particularly heart-wrenching song by the late Fabrizio De Andrè. De Andrè was an absolute genius, and his sudden death in 1999 left many in Italy with an incurable sense of void. His death woke many of us up to the reality that his voice would not have commented on our world and its miseries and joys forever. Rimini then led me to this interview:

Now, Fabrizio De Andrè wasn’t keen on giving interviews, but in the few he gave every word uttered is heavy as a stone and sharply meaningful. He was used to speak his truth with a warmth, humility and precision that one would think he took it from the same mysterious source he drew the lyrics of his songs from. As much as his relationship with the supernatural was troubled, to say the least, and despite his iconoclastic anarchism, I wouldn’t hesitate to call that source ‘divine’. In this sense, his words were always an entrenching and rigorous exercise in what the Greek called parrhesia.

The way De Andrè conducted the interview had me thinking about the notion of the care of the self and the connection between ethics, aesthetics and truth. Briefly and simply put, the care of the self is a fundamental principle of moral rationality, which has been exiled form modern thought and simultaneously deprived of its ethical content in current practice. The connection between ethics and aesthetics, however, is necessary if one want’s to turn life into a ‘work of art’, to borrow a Nietzschean expression. It is a call to practice beauty, which I think is one of the marks of De Andrè’s life and work.

Now, what does this have to do with perfumes. It does.

This interview sparked a reflection on my own practice and the role I want perfumery to have in what I do. As I have said, in order to make sense of a fragrance, you have to tell a story around it.  But alas! when you do it, you are doing it to make it attractive, to trigger emotions, feelings and memories. The risk of it is slipping into affectedness and inauthenticity.  If, with Plato, rhetoric is the art of making truth persuasive, marketing is the art of making a lie appealing. What I am trying to say is that, in the practice of perfumery and its necessary marriage with words, one has to practice the discipline of the care of the self: making love to words cannot degenerate into raping them.

De Andrè was well aware of that. Answering to the last question on an prize he had just been awarded, he responded by eluding the question. Western, Aristotelian obsession with telling the black from the white, he says, results in being obsessed with victory: ‘I am rather against victories, and awards are victories’. With his usual yet always stunning and unsettling sensibility for the wretched of the earth, he goes on: ‘The other side of a victory is a loss, or even multiple loss. And these awards gratify the most vulgar side of my self’. De Andrè managed to make of his life a work of art, and did so by being truthful to himself by exercising parrhesia in his art as well as in his thought. Whatever the art or craft one is busy with, it’s so easy to slip into falseness, to get phony and affected – which would compromise not only art, but also life.

Making love to words, or a diffuse book review of Jean Claude Ellena’s The Diary of a Nose

23 giovedì Ott 2014

Posted by oveis in Book Reviews, Stories

≈ 1 Commento

Tag

Book Reviews, Grasse, Jean-Claude Ellena, Love, Mediterranean, Mediterraneo, Recensioni

Long and ambitious title for a blog post that comes after a long silence, huh? Thing is, I was carried away by sudden slew of ideas and inspirations as I started reading The Diary of a Nose this morning on the bus, so I thought I should cautiously get back to my blog, maybe writing shorter posts rather than lengthy articles that require time, research and labor limae.

I have not been totally idle, fragrance wise. While I’m still struggling to get my book finished (okay, I promise I won’t mention that anymore, it’s becoming pathetic), I’ve been working in the evenings and in the weekends on a couple of challenging custom projects and on the launch of my own non-custom brand. So, I’ve been busy with design, logo, labels etc., and this is the big news. I am still at pains with the refinement of the concept, as crystallising a whole creative approach into visuals and few words, in a way that is both genuine and commercially appealing, is all except straightforward.

Anyway, I’ve been skipping pleasure reading for a while, but I realised that for some reason I wasn’t reading at all in my commute, not even the pile of academic articles that I keep carrying in my bag for that exact purpose. So, I picked one of the three books I had bought from Amazon quite a few moths ago, intended for leisure reading, and read a few chapters. Inspired by almost every single paragraph, I decided to review it on the blog (1).

Pleasure reads

Pleasure reads (underneath, although equally pleasant, my work reads)

But hey, the inspirations were too many to handle, and I thought that my poor weak memory would have better managed a ‘diffuse review’, that is a review in installments – more of a random array of thoughts scattered with no particular order throughout the blog than a proper review. Continua a leggere →

Persia

16 domenica Mar 2014

Posted by oveis in Stories, Things that I do, Uncategorized

≈ 1 Commento

Tag

Ghamsar, Iran, Kashan, Mashad, Persia, Raw Materials, Rose, Tehran, Travels

I just got back from a two-weeks research trip to Iran, and since I haven’t updated this blog for a while, this is the ideal opportunity for me to get back on here, and bring this embarrassing, nearly month-long silence to an end.

So, I was in Iran on the quite specific task of sorting one chapter of my book – which I apparently did, and that’s good news. Among meetings, library work, lectures and social life, though, not much time was left to indulge in smelling around – which I wasn’t supposed to do anyway, being on a funded business trip. At any rate, whatever the objective of the journey, friends perfumers asked me to bring back some rose otto from the Kashan area – for which I had already established contacts from home. My contacts, however, proved unreliable and the moment I was about to finalise the deal, they made excuses about now being end season and attempted to rise the price by about 50%. I said goodbye, then, and gave up. shah abdulazim1

Frustrated by the failure, I still needed to take a break from Tehran and managed to take a day off and head to Kashan. My intention was purely leisurely – the last thing I wanted was to spend a frustrating whole day at Kashan’s market, dodging the bazaris attempts to sell me perfectly recreated versions of the ‘pure’ rose otto of Ghamsar. I was going to go to Ghamsar on an olfactory pilgrimage, very much like one would go to Grasse if he happens to travel in Provence – but I had totally given up all hopes to come to Tehran with the precious juice. Continua a leggere →

Mitti Attar, Meeting Attar

27 lunedì Gen 2014

Posted by oveis in Bespoke Fragrances, profumi su misura, Stories, Things that I do, Uncategorized

≈ Lascia un commento

Tag

Attar, bespoke fragrances, Custom fragrances, India, Mitti Attar, profumo personalizzato, profumo su misura, Rosa

Per noi piccoli profumieri indipendenti (piccolissimi e molto part-time, nel mio caso), reperire buone materie prime può costituire un problema serio: molti degli ingredienti usati in profumeria sono costosi e spesso quelli più costosi sono difficili da ottenere in piccole quantità.

Così, è importante selezionare i propri fornitori di fiducia per le cose fondamentali, e saper cercare bene, magari anche attraverso contatti personali, i materiali più rari (1).

E’ durante una di queste ricerche (2) che ho scoperto il sito di una straordinaria piccola azienda che importa oli essenziali di altissima qualità, alla cui produzione contribuisce anche. Radicato nello stato di Washington, il sito è gestito da una coppia che si occupa personalmente di selezionare le materie prime soprattutto in India, ma anche in Europa e nelle Americhe. Lei indologa, lui appassionato di essenze, è stato per tramite del loro sito che ho scoperto dell’esistenza degli ‘attar.

Continua a leggere →

Shalimar

15 mercoledì Gen 2014

Posted by oveis in Stories

≈ Lascia un commento

Tag

Guerlain, India, Moghul, Pakistan, Shalimar, Travels

Ametto di aver forse sopravvalutato la mia capacità di produrre articoli a un ritmo decente e con regolarità. Vi è che in questi venti giorni ci sono state le vacanze, sono andato in Italia, ho visto amici e parenti, ho fatto corse prealpine in bicicletta, messo in ordine il poco giardino che mi rimane, potato melograni e trapiantato alberi di osmanthus e molestato Tamara, che quando la molesto non mi ascolta, e pagato una montagna di tasse, bollettini e cartelle arretrate. Infastidito dal clima subtropicale di questa strana prima parte di inverno, non ho fatto il rituale tuffo alla Santissima, che invece mi piace fare quando l’aria all’esterno è gelida (o bollente, d’estate). Insomma, di pensare a questo non ho nemmeno avuto la tentazione e le due bozze di articolo che avevo cominciato prima di partire sono rimaste così, al primo paragrafo. Naturalmente, non ricordo in quale direzione avessi intenzione di portarli esattamente, quindi non so bene dove andrò a parare. Inoltre, siamo vicini a febbraio, mese che, in un tempo in cui ancora non avevo idea che avrei finito per interessarmi ai profumi in modo quasi serio, definii ‘mese senza odori’, ripromettendomi di evitarlo programmando un qualche viaggio verso un paese che avesse un febbraio più odoroso.

Continua a leggere →

Blog che seguo

  • BS in Islamic Studies
  • bgirl rhapsody
  • Il senso perfetto
  • Ballandalus
  • Aroma Folio
  • در کوچه های بیدخت
  • Paradiso Perduto Venezia
  • The Digital Orientalist
  • Sunnitalia
  • Chemist in the Bottle
  • NUR
  • A Perfumed Pilgrimage
  • Perfume in Progress
  • un blog malin-comico
  • আলাল ও দুলাল | ALAL O DULAL
  • Gianni De Martino
  • Kafkaesque
  • Lane Lexicon
  • KEIN PFUSCH, BITTE!
  • mauriziopolese.wordpress.com/
Follow oleafragrans on WordPress.com

oleafragransblog

oleafragransblog

Inserisci il tuo indirizzo email per seguire questo blog e ricevere notifiche di nuovi messaggi via e-mail.

Unisciti ad altri 570 follower

Archivi

  • settembre 2019
  • gennaio 2016
  • febbraio 2015
  • novembre 2014
  • ottobre 2014
  • giugno 2014
  • marzo 2014
  • gennaio 2014
  • dicembre 2013
  • novembre 2013

Articoli recenti

  • On figs, and returns
  • On categories
  • Anosmia and the “nose of the heart”
  • Ellena on solitude and creativity – A diffuse review of The Diary of a Nose II
  • On Fabrizio De Andrè, smells and life as a work of art

Categorie

  • Bespoke Fragrances
  • Book Reviews
  • Life and work
  • Musings
  • profumi su misura
  • Stories
  • Things that I do
  • Trips
  • Uncategorized
Follow oleafragrans on WordPress.com

Crea un sito o un blog gratuito su WordPress.com.

BS in Islamic Studies

A study room for BS Honours

bgirl rhapsody

Perfume... and Stuff

Il senso perfetto

di odori improbabili e puzze (im)possibili

Ballandalus

Cor prudens possidebit scientiam

Aroma Folio

by Lemon Wedge

در کوچه های بیدخت

یادی از بیدخت قدیم

Paradiso Perduto Venezia

Osteria & Jazz Club

The Digital Orientalist

Practical examples and theoretical reflections on the do's and don'ts of using digital tools for your study and research in African, Oriental Studies..

Sunnitalia

Tradizione Islamica in lingua italiana

Chemist in the Bottle

Perfume reviews from fragrance evaluator

NUR

Ottavia Massimo © all rights reserved

A Perfumed Pilgrimage

~a scented journey from Canada to Grasse.

Perfume in Progress

behind the scenes at sonomascentstudio.com

un blog malin-comico

ho detto sì all'amore ma non avevo capito la domanda

আলাল ও দুলাল | ALAL O DULAL

আলাল যদি ডাইনে যায় দুলাল যায় বামে

Gianni De Martino

No one rejects the gift of fragrance, except the obtuse (ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib )

Kafkaesque

Lane Lexicon

KEIN PFUSCH, BITTE!

No one rejects the gift of fragrance, except the obtuse (ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib )

mauriziopolese.wordpress.com/

Il blog di Maurizio Polese

Annulla
Privacy e cookie: Questo sito utilizza cookie. Continuando a utilizzare questo sito web, si accetta l’utilizzo dei cookie.
Per ulteriori informazioni, anche sul controllo dei cookie, leggi qui: Informativa sui cookie