Plus ça change: Perfume and Morality in Le Corbeau (1943), directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot

It is rare to happen upon a great movie among recent releases. Long before the decline of the movie theater, I adopted a strategy to protect myself from the flood of mediocrity pouring out of the Hollywood faucet. I simply stopped watching first-run movies. I still enjoyed going to the cinema, but I'd stick to revival houses or places like the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, where I've been known to watch the entire French Film Festival. (It is held every summer over a two- or three-week period.) For most of my film viewing, I have depended on rentals: DVDs, and before that video tapes. This strategy is much less safe today, as many DVDs are now released within weeks of live screenings, so lots of "stuff" not worth watching is always mixed in with the greats when I peruse the shelves at the Cambridge Public Library, which has supplanted Netflix as my primary source of films.

I've noticed of late that there seems to be a trend going on in movie-making similar to the one I've witnessed in publishing. Movie makers and authors appear to be landing contracts before producing works, and then when deadline time rolls around, they sometimes have to hustle to get the thing done. In movies, there seems to be a further factor involved. A number of productions starring big names start out pretty decently, but then seem to end prematurely, as in twenty or thirty minutes before the standard Hollywood mark of two hours. It's not that the works are finished--they are not. Instead, they are hurriedly wrapped up, it seems, with a makeshift dénouement thrown together to get the job done sufficiently to satisfy the terms of the contract. 

My hunch is that in the case of inadequately incubated films the moviemaking team (and these days they are huge, by the way) has exceeded their budget, and the big names in question probably have better things to do, other commitments, even if the producers were able to pull together the extra cash needed to keep them around. I've read many books in the twenty-first century with similarly weak endings, relative to the quality of the opening pages and chapters. It's as though the author has simply run out of steam but is obligated to sign off on the thing by a certain date and so rushes to finish it up. Many books published today also appear not to have been edited. 

Needless to say, I find these trends regrettable, though fully comprehensible in this highly capitalized world. Nearly everyone seems to be more interested in the outer packaging and hype than in the content and form. Similar dynamics appear to be affecting the perfume industry as well. The sheer number of new launches each year virtually guarantees that many of these fragrances have been rush jobs. What else could they be, with flankers running rampant? Anyone who does not believe that most flankers are trivial probably has not given enough of them a sniff.  Not that I think that it's olfactorily worthwhile for anyone to do so.

I imagine that serious perfumers working for the conglomerates may be a bit jaded by now, given the tough budgets, low-grade materials, and IFRA restrictions all conspiring to impose severe constraints on their creative output and ultimately reining in their heartfelt desire to produce something great. Some among them may think of themselves more as hacks than as persons in a position to realize their olfactory dreams through the launch of a masterpiece. Not going to happen, if the creator has to come up with a "new" scent by cobbling together a bunch of inferior "stuff" determined by marketers to be in demand among Jill Q. and Joe. Q Consumer.

I've been thinking about old films and old perfumes and old books recently--and also old tea (pu-erh), but I'll save those thoughts for another day. Unlike vintage lovers, who worship most any perfume launched pre-Y2K, I do not believe that something old is automatically better than anything new. It's just not true. There were plenty of mediocre books published in centuries past about which we know nothing because they have been essentially forgotten. Some of them were bestsellers back in the day, but they have not stood the test of time. The problem for perfume, of course, is that it degrades and fades away, so we can never really know what it was like when it was launched. All we have are surviving bottles, and all we can do is hope that they reflect in some way the intended scent of their creator. 

I do believe, however, that the percentage of excellent perfumes in the twentieth century was much greater than today. That is not because I prostrate myself before all things said to be vintage. No, not at all. It's a recognition of the fact that many more perfumes are being produced much more quickly and using much less natural material than ever before in the history of perfumery. A big part of this trend has to do with who runs the show. The head honcho at Procter & Gamble gets the last word on the scent of shampoo and deodorant and also perfume. 

Aren't they all really just variations on a theme? A toiletry is a toiletry by any other name.

A toiletry by any other name would smell as clean.

That's the sort of wisdom I imagine bubbling up in the mind of the CEO of a megaconglomerate such as P&G. Everything they produce, at the end of the day, is a source of profit, no more and no less. The key to maximizing profit in the perfume arena appears to involve, the savviest of marketing strategists have figured out, persuading people to believe that they really prefer to smell clean and abstract, not complicated like real flowers and other natural substances, but streamlined and simple. The perfume equivalent to SSRI happiness. Don't worry, be happy. And if you begin to entertain ever so faintly the idea that there might be something awry somewhere in the universe, something which you might set out to do something about, our culture tutors you to Shut it out, which is remarkably easy to do these days. Take a chill pill. Literally.

What about old movies? Are old movies automatically better than new movies? Well, not automatically, but they have stood the test of time. If people are still watching them seventy years after they were produced, then there is probably a good reason for that. 

With that rather circumlocutory introduction, I would like without further ado to commend to your attention a film which I only just discovered, though it was produced way back in 1943:

Le Corbeau [The Raven] 

directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot

The first clue that this film is worth watching--aside from sherapop's enthusiastic recommendation--is the fact that Le Corbeau was reviled by the Nazis, the Partisans, and the Catholic Church! This film is so modern, and so intelligent, and so well-paced, and so complete and fully incubated that it would bear your sustained attention even if it were not also beautiful. This work is not, as you may surmise, a movie version of the classic narrative poem by Edgar Allan Poe, many of whose texts, for your information (in case you didn't know) were translated into French by the equally great Charles Baudelaire. 

Instead, Le Corbeau offers a rather La Rochefoucauldian (or is it Maupassantian???)  morality tale using a long concatenation of multivalent metaphors. The setting is St. Robin, "any village", and the residents present the complete range of human qualities: the good, the bad, and above all, the ugly.

The main character is the dashing Dr. Germain, after whom every single woman--and some married as well!--lusts. You know the drill: a handsome doctor who happens also to be an eligible bachelor! Sound familiar? Plus ça change. 

Salon de Parfum readers may by now be growing restless. Has sherapop lost her marbles? Isn't this supposed to be a perfume blog? 

Calmez-vous, mes chers amis. Indeed, I have brought this film to your attention not only because it is a masterful representative of several genres of cinema simultaneously, but because it further features the following scene in which perfume is touched upon in an incredibly modern way--remarkably relevant to what we are seeing in contemporary society today.

Dr. Germain has been summoned to examine Denise, a young woman with a decidedly femme fatale demeanor and a snarl that could give Sid Vicious a run for his money. Denise is bedridden, where she is painting her toenails and smoking, for want of anything better to do:

Upon hearing the doctor knock at her door, Denise immediately buries herself under the bed covers, though it is clear that her wet polish must be smearing the sheets.

She extinguishes her cigarette in an ashtray located conveniently next to an open bottle of champagne. She then begins to cough and deploys her most feeble-sounding voice to instruct the doctor to enter her chambers.

Before commencing the examination, Dr. Germain rushes to shut the windows, as the sound of the children yelling in the courtyard is grating on his nerves.  He then pauses for a moment, sniffs the air, and asks Denise whether she is wearing perfume.

Denise replies, "You don't like it?" To which the doctor curtly retorts that he should have left the windows open. 

Why is this exchange so interesting? First of all, because the scent which displeases Dr. Germain is in all likelihood a commingling of smoke from Denise's recently extinguished cigarette and the fumes of her wet nail polish. Perhaps she is also wearing Chanel no 5 (apparently all the rage at that time), but surely those two strong non-perfume odors would still be hanging in the air and dominate the space. 

Dr. Germain, in other words, is a member of the perfume police, who bristles at the slightest detection of any scent which he can denounce as foreign and unnatural. He simply assumes that the odor in question is perfume, for he is opposed to the very idea of perfume, whether beautiful or ugly.

For Dr. Germain, perfume is a part of Denise's slutty lifestyle. Her reputation precedes her, and the good doctor soon discovers that she has no illness whatsoever. This house call was only a pretext for a physical examination! While putting his stethoscope away in preparation to depart, Dr. Germain brusquely informs the young woman that she has no need of a doctor--at least not one like him, the snide insinuation of course being that she needs to see a shrink.

Rather than spoil this fabulous work for you, let me simply assuage any concerns you may be having about what is going to transpire between these two comely characters. A bit later, Denise has a second chance with Dr. Germain, and this time, she takes a slightly different tack.

In the end, the much larger mystery, of who is sending the townspeople letters filled with the juicy details of all their viciousness, is solved. But to find out the rest of the story, you'll have to watch the film!

"Parce que c'est aussi bête que ça: 
Je t'aime."

Is Perfume Make-up? The Strange Case of Scented Nail Polish

It appears that the "perfume is art" crowd are being given a run for their money by an opposing force no doubt championed much more vigorously by the corporatized fragrance industry. Perfume in some circles has now become make-up! 

I recently happened upon an advertisement for a new and unexpected product while flipping through one of the many worthless magazines littering my apartment. I receive a lot of magazines in part because Fragrancenet offers a free subscription with every purchase. So that's how I ended up with lengthy, multiyear subscriptions to such publications as Cosmopolitan, Martha Stewart Living, Every Day with Rachel Ray, Better Homes & Gardens, and the magazine in which this advertisement appeared: Allure, which is devoted above all to make-up. The only magazine perhaps even more ridiculous and yet frighteningly a sign of the post-post-modern, SSRI, Twitter-twenty-first-century times may be Lucky, which is dedicated to ... drum roll ... shopping!

This is a perfect example of why I do find myself leafing rapidly through an issue of this sort of magazine before dropping it into the vertical. Who knows what one may learn about contemporary culture, society, and mores? In this case, I learned that, unbelievably enough, there is now a perfumed nail polish being made by Revlon, in its special Parfumerie line.

I was initially thinking about simply approaching this topic from a purely philosophical perspective: Is perfume make-up, after all? Is it perhaps not entirely coincidental that Chandler Burr's disappearance from the Museum of Arts and Design was approximately concomitant with the appearance of perfumed nail polish on the market? To be honest, I'm not sure when Revlon's Parfumerie collection was launched, but I do believe that Chandler Burr's fifteen minutes of fame as a "perfume is art" theorist have now elapsed.

Does this mean that the powerful "perfume is a toiletry" lobby which exerts enormous influence on the industry--and indeed perhaps is identical with the mainstream fragrance industry--has won out? This development may be hailed or scorned, but in all likelihood that will depend upon one's prior beliefs about "perfume as art" and "perfume as toiletry". 

If you already believe that all perfume is directly connected to all cologne, which began as a way for stinky people without access to frequent baths to cover up their own bodily stench, and therefore is obviously a toiletry (being a bath surrogate), then the sight of the above Revlon Parfumerie advertisement is probably not going to bother you in the least.

If, on the other hand, you prefer to think of perfume as something loftier, something higher, something transcendent, perhaps something that someone like Jackson Pollock might create, then the sight of this little splotch of Revlon Parfumerie Beachy, which may in fact resemble some artist's work of art somewhere, may be a bit disconcerting:

As usual, sherapop manages to navigate her epistemological way through this untenable duality. Yes, of course, perfume is used as a way of masking body odor or else to add some where there is none. Musk and ambergris perfumes, anyone? Yes, of course, people like Daniela Andrier and Bertrand Duchaufour and Jean-Claude Elléna and Dominique Ropion and (add your favorite perfumer) __________________ are creative spirits and bursting with talent. But none of either of these two ways of looking at perfume--as a "mere" toiletry or as an exalted "art""--tells the whole story. The truth, my fragrant friends, is that 

Perfume is perfume!

As a toiletry, the Revlon Parfumerie project is an epic fail. Why? Because the dried perfume-enamel amalgamate, which I painted onto the back of an envelope--I figured that there was no need to risk the test on my own nails, especially with bedtime on the horizon--smells just like nail polish! 

Anyone who has ever used nail polish is aware--or was at one time--of its dangerously potent fumes, so volatile and intense that it's difficult to suppress the suspicion that it may very well be causing brain cell damage each and every time that it is used. Hopefully not, but let's face it, the scent differs from that of glue (as in glue sniffing) in degree, not in kind.

I find, in fact, that this Revlon Parfumerie Beachy, which I selected thinking that it might possibly smell like Lilly Pulitzer Beachy, or perhaps even Bond no 9 Fire Island, occupies an olfactory coordinate not terribly far from the opening of Lanvin Rumeur. But that's only because that perfume opens just like the scent of a chemical industry waste factory.

Yes, I am afraid that the Revlon experiment in product multitasking has failed in this case. No worries, though, because it will only be a matter of time before the experiment is undertaken again, by day laborers working under the yoke of some driven triple-A personality CEO, and eventually some synthetic organic chemist somewhere will devise a way to insert a scent more powerful than the scent of nail polish into the nail polish so that one can buy a single product under the guise of either perfume or nail polish (what's your pleasure?) rather than buying both.

Wait a minute! How, then, could it be that the cosmetic industry is producing such a thing, working to decrease the amount of wallet share which they can siphon off the readers of Allure magazine? This case reminds me in some ways of the Starbucks Via project. Why is Starbucks trying to sell to its very own customers products which obviate the need for them to stop off in the stores to buy $6 cups of coffee? 

The answer, my fragrant friends, in both cases, is that these companies are after total global hegemonic control. Whatever beverage you may choose to drink, and in whatever format, Starbucks will be there for you.  (Lest you forget, they acquired both Tazo and Teavana!) And whichever make-up or fragrance product you choose to spend the discretionary share of your paltry Friday take-home pay on, Revlon wants to be in on it!

In Praise of Natural Stuff: Wherein the Flagrant Lies of the IFRA are Exposed

The twenty-first century has seen a massive increase in the power and wealth of chemical companies, especially the big pharmaceutical firms. The proportion of Americans who now dose themselves with "medications" for "ailments" such as anxiety, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and depression doubled over the course of only a few years. Somewhat remarkably, many parents are now medicating their children, though their brains are obviously in the process of developing—or not.

This will come as a surprise to many, but during the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, about 20% of active-duty U.S. soldiers were prescribed (by military physicians) drugs such as Seroquel and many other medications whose primary clinical application is to treat psychosis. Record numbers and percentages of the veterans of the recent U.S. wars have taken their own lives. Is there a connection? Do soldiers sometimes awaken from their artificially induced state of apparent equanimity to discover that they have committed unforgiveable acts? Or perhaps they can no long bear the memories of what they have seen?

One thing is clear: pharmaceuticals are being prescribed more and more in lieu of "talk therapy," and conditions such as attention deficit disorder (ADD) are being diagnosed much more frequently than ever before. A skeptic might reasonably ask whether the advent of the internet is not itself a primary cause of what may appear to be ADD but in fact is a part of the structure of social life in the twenty-first century.

Persons plied with Prozac and the many other selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) being pushed by their doctors (who often have financial incentives from the pharma firms for doing so) may not care that they are being drugged into conformity. Indeed, they will gladly swallow another pill if any inchoate questions threaten to erupt in their mind. But is this a form of happiness? Or is it just a short-lived escape? Will these people one day awaken to discover that in their quest to "Don't worry, be happy," they have squandered their lives away?

I believe that SSRI bliss is not genuine happiness, because it is not a form of flourishing but an evasion of the human condition. Popping pills induces a sort of stupor, serving the primary function of squelching criticism of the source of discontent. It also suppresses social criticism and artistic creativity. Why do anything, when you can simply cop a buzz instead—and do so legally, with the blessing of your physician?! The last time I had a physical examination, I was given a questionnaire with a battery of queries about my state of satisfaction with my life. I presume that had I expressed dissatisfaction, I would have been offered a pharmaceutical “solution” to my “psychological troubles”. Fortunately, I did not mention to my doctor that I enjoy the works of Fyodor Dostoevsky.

This will seem a stretch to some, but I honestly wonder whether an analogous process might not also be underway in the realm of perfume. We are told by the IFRA that a wide range of natural materials used for thousands of years in the production of perfumes are suddenly "dangerous". They cause varieties of dermatitis—above all, skin contact allergies—and for this reason, the suddenly “evil” substances are being purged from perfume. In their place, "safe" aromachemicals are being used.

The specious reasoning behind this entire pretext for what is diaphanously a ploy to maximize the profit of the ever-expanding multi-conglomerate corporations now controlling most of the formerly independent design houses is so patently fallacious, that it is in some ways difficult to believe that apparently intelligent spokespersons for the IFRA and the big houses can promulgate this charade with a straight face.

If Guerlain Mitsouko was mangled by the “need” to adhere to the new IFRA restrictions, we can now rejoice, some say, that the once-great perfume has been largely restored to its former glory through the ingenious use by Thierry Wasser of a "new molecule" which mimics the precious properties of the original masterpiece while avoiding all of the alleged dangers which led to reformulation in the first place. Huh.

Pierre François-Pascal Guerlain

I, for one, don't buy it, and I know that others do not either. We ask, first, whether these newfangled molecules are really just as good as the natural stuff for which they are said (by their promoters) to serve as surrogates. Single molecules are simple; natural substances are complex and may comprise hundreds of molecules. Second, we ask why in the world we should believe that these surrogates are safe for us at all. New molecules are new. Yes, that's a tautology, but the implications, as far as human health are concerned, are wide-ranging and easy to deduce.

Anyone who has lived long enough to see a couple cycles of the artificial sweeteners—first there were Cyclamates, then Saccharin, then Nutrasweet (aspartame), and now we have the repulsive (to me) Sucralose—is well aware that at their inception the molecules are invariably hailed as "the answer". Cyclamates were demonstrated to be carcinogenic, so Saccharin was substituted in place.

Then Saccharin was found to be dangerous, but synthetic organic chemists had another new "miracle molecule", aspartame, waiting in the wings to fill the void. (Dare I point out that official denunications of the "suddenly hazardous for your health" penultimate synthetic solution never seem to be articulated until a surrogate is ready to launch?) Sure, if you happened to be phenylketonuric, you'd die if you consumed the stuff, but the chance of that happening could be minimized through rigorous FDA-enforced labeling. 

Only later, after the market was awash in Nutrasweet did people start to question the safety of a substance which can induce severe headaches—and much worse in those who consume diet sodas in copious volumes. (One of the breakdown products of this dipeptide is formaldehyde. That's right, as in: used to preserve organs in jars and to fix cadavers.)

No matter: now that Nutrasweet has fallen out of favor we have Sucralose! As sweet, it seems, as licorice root—only a lot less expensive, because it's synthetic, and a lot more neutral, because it's ... abstract! Sucralose is being overdosed in nearly every product in which it appears, leading consumers to believe that their drinks should really be considerably sweeter than ordinary sugar-sweetened drinks. Some who are turned off by the cloying quality have turned to Stevia and other "natural" artificial sweeteners—not a contradiction in terms! There have been critical studies about testicles and Stevia, but, whatever: pass the Prozac and Carpe Diem!

So what's my point? Let's connect the dots. Artificial sweeteners have always been used to replace sugar in products, but mostly drinks. That's right: liquids which people imbibe. It's supposed to be a good deal: one drinks “the same” Coca-Cola, but without cutting into one's recommended daily allowance (RDA) of calories at all. Sure, some people drink diet Coke as they eat candy bars, but that just means that they get to eat more candy! It seems like a great deal, in the short term. Will it be later on down the line?

I believe that the same questions must be entertained by any rational perfume user today. The more abstract perfume becomes, the less confidence one should have in the claims being made by chemical industry advocates—including the IFRA—that these newfangled molecules are better than the real thing. Just as persons who attempt after years to wean themselves off pharmaceutical crutches which they never really needed in the first place may face even worse problems engendered by their very addiction, we should expect that at some point in the future, at least some of these "miracle molecules" being used in perfumery to replace substances which were worn happily and safely by countless people since time immemorial will prove to have much worse effects on the human body than those which they were ostensibly designed to circumvent.

Key word: ostensibly. In truth, I believe, the health pretext is a big fat lie. We live in a liberal society where people are allowed to choose their poisons in nearly every other realm. Does it make any sense, really, that patent paternalism should have infected perfumery but without any federal regulation at all? We are told by the very people attempting to fob off aromachemicals in place of natural substances that the natural substances are dangerous, and the new molecules are safe.

The only reasonable response to such sophistry is for true perfumers to revolt. Those consumers who have recognized the contours of this veil of lies will unite in solidarity with you. We shall stand by your side and continue to buy your wares.

The Scent of Parmenides: Perfume and the Pre-Socratics 3

The rain has returned, raking down with it the thick humidity hanging in the air. After days of waiting patiently for release from captivity, all of the tiny drops suddenly coalesced into sheets, producing a veritable deluge of water rushing down to the ground and bouncing off the streets. The initial water-to-hot-pavement contact produced steam, but after a few moments, the temperature plummeted again by more than twenty degrees. Suddenly I began to see the unity in and of all things.

Over the course of this short period of time, I began to drift back a bit closer toward the thought of Thales once again. Water represents relief, but so does fragrance on unbearably hot days when I look forward to nothing more than returning to my humble abode to rip off all of my clothes, toss them to the floor and spritz myself with a cool and refreshing citrus cologne before grabbing an iced tea or lemonade.

Refreshed at last, I begin to ponder whether Thales may have been right after all. Perhaps the contraries posited by Anaximander and the theory of condensation and rarefaction proposed by Anaximenes do not really explain the true nature of reality.

How to resolve all of these conflicting theories? I seem to be pulled in opposite directions depending upon apparently irrelevant factors such as my current state of mind directly affected by the ambient weather conditions. How to decide whether the views of Thales or Heraclitus or Anaximander and Anaximenes are right? If Thales is right, does this not imply that Heraclitus is wrong? Or are they really in conflict? Perhaps these seeming conflicts can be resolved?

The Problem of the One and the Many

One pre-Socratic philosopher above all, Parmenides, was concerned to find a satisfactory solution to what has come to be known as “the problem of the one and the many.” Parmenides may have been the ultimate “completist,” to invoke a euphemism for what most people regard as obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), which is one of the reasons why I firmly believe that, in addition to having been a philosopher, he was a perfumista, too.

The problem of the one and the many has many analogues in the world of perfume. Flanker madness is nothing if not a graphic illustration of the problem. There is a perfume, and suddenly there are many others, bearing some version of the same name, housed in a similar if not the same vessel, and marketed as though they were all natural extensions of their namesake. Are Angel and the Jardin d'Etoiles series—Le Lys, La Violette, La Rose, and La Pivoine—really distinct perfumes?

Or are these flankers not bound essentially to the first in the series, Angel, through the use of many of the same ingredients which were present in the original perfume?

The thought of Parmenides may on its surface sound like the ravings of a man who partook of way too much peyote. Nonetheless, I would like to sketch out how it can be understood in a sober, logical, well-scented state of mind. Parmenides appears to have believed, In a phrase, that

What is, is, and what is not, is not.

To some, perhaps many people, this sounds like an empty tautology. It has no content and does not appear to have any implications for the world in which we live. How could a person who espouses this as his philosophy be considered a great thinker? you may with good reason ask.

The key to understanding the wisdom of Parmenides is found in the world of perfume, my fragrant friends, although it is true that historians up until now have not recognized this fact. Let us consider, therefore, what Parmenides would have said about some of today's perfumes. Consider, again, the case of Thierry Mugler Angel.

Before Angel was created in 1992 by Olivier Cresp and Yves de Chirin, Angel did not exist. There was no Angel, and then suddenly there was Angel. Where there was nothing, suddenly there was an iconic perfume, reviled by some, but loved by enough others to spawn a veritable flood of post-Angel perfumes all of which remind us of the one, the only, the original Angel. Sweet patchouli fragrances now abound where before there were none.

In fact, the launch of every such iconic and tattoo perfume in the history of perfumery has involved the generation of something out of nothing, because it is through the act of naming that new objects are created. What is Angel, in reality? Broken down into its constituent parts, Angel is a perfume made up of a variety of substances each of which has been delineated, too, as a separate substance through the act of naming by human beings.

We can and often do decide to gather together a variety of completely disparate things and confer upon them a single name, and then that group is said to exist as a thing in reality. But is it really real? Angel flankers are obviously modeled after their namesake, but many other houses have produced Angel-esque perfumes as well. Tons of perfumes have been said to smell like Angel or to have been inspired by Angel, most of which are really quite different, but here are a couple which do remind me of Angel more than they remind me of, say, Chanel no 5:

“Angel  clones” is a category according to some people, and there certainly have been literal knock-offs, which are sold in drugstores and explicitly claim on their packaging that “If you like Angel, then you'll like X.” But most so-called Angel clones are really just sweet patchouli perfumes with some caramel and maybe some chocolate and usually devoid of the difficult to stomach, garbage pizza-like aspects of the original perfume.

For the most part, accusations of perfume plagiarism—of perfumers allegedly attempting consciously to imitate a wildly successful perfume—seem to me to be a lot of hot air. It seems far more likely to me that combinations of notes begin to gain an appeal to both wearers and perfumers situated in a particular historical and cultural context. Sweet patchouli was a good idea, and many people, perfumers and perfume wearers alike, have agreed on this question since 1992.

Perfumers are not, it seems to me, generally speaking, in the business of copying other perfumers' perfumes. They are interested in creating perfumes. Industrial chemists, on the other hand, may well sit around their gas chromatographs attempting to deduce the ingredients in a sample so that they can produce a literal knock-off. Are some modern perfumers really industrial chemists in disguise? Perhaps.

So what does any of this have to do with Parmenides' tautology, What is, is? According to Parmenides, logic tightly constrains reality so that something cannot both be and not be at the same time and in the same way. How can Angel-esque perfumes be like Angel but also be not like Angel? The answer to this puzzle, according to perfumista Parmenides, is that all of the differences of which we assert the existence upon naming this or that thing are illusory. Reality, for Parmenides, is monolithic and unchanging. In effect, Parmenides held the opposite view from that of Heraclitus, who maintained that everything is in flux.

In order to assert the reality of all of the many things which we apparently create by conferring names upon them, we would have to possess formidable powers, indeed, Godlike powers, because we would need to be able to create something out of nothing. But how could this be? How could a non-thing become a thing simply through our attachment of a name to it? This was Parmenides' concern.

Perhaps another illustration from perfumery is needed. We currently have a favorite group of categories of perfume: floral chypre, floriental, fruity floral, aromatic fougère, citrus cologne, oriental vanilla, and so on. Do any of these categories of perfume exist in reality? Or are not these simply useful ways for us to make sense of our experience? Consider the recently invented categories of sweet laundry scents, shampoo and conditioner frags, or one of my own device: the SSRI perfume. What is an SSRI perfume? you may most reasonably inquire.

To me, these are perfumes which have an immediate albeit superficial mood-lifting effect, are affable and friendly and therefore suitable for public spaces such as libraries, and they also have a bright and shiny quality to them. Here are a few SSRI perfumes, in my view:

I believe that Clinique Happy was intended by its creators to be just such an SSRI perfume, but unfortunately it conflicts with many a wearer's physiology to such an extent that some have observed, including one of my sisters, that it should really be called “Unhappy” or even “Miserable”. Interestingly enough, the effect that donning Happy has upon some people may be not unlike the abrupt withdrawal from SSRIs by people who have become habituated to those drugs. Hide the guns. Please. 

So what is the point here? I myself, sherapop, have christened a group of perfumes by the name SSRI. I just made this name up. Thanks to the powerful pharmaceutical lobby, millions of people are on SSRI drugs these days (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors), so I decided that this label could be applied equally well to a category of perfumes with similar “don't worry, be happy”-making effects to those of Prozac and the other SSRI drugs in which many modern people's brains are now awash.

How can I, a single person in the vast cosmos, create new things in reality simply by attaching a label to them? Parmenides' answer is: I cannot. I may speak of all of these apparently different categories of perfume delineated by terms either borrowed from others just like me or made up by me, but we are all talking only about the realm of becoming, not the realm of being, which is immutable, eternal, and the essence of reality.

Now, you may say, You, sherapop, cannot invent things by naming them in some arbitrary way, but some things really do exist, for example, chypre perfumes. 

Not so fast, my insufficiently caffeinated imaginary friend and interlocutor. Are you aware of the provenance of the term chypre? Yes, it derives from a perfume of that name launched by the house of Coty nearly a century ago, back in 1917. A single person named that perfume. A person just like you or me, and later that name was appropriated by some other single person to designate what was taken to be a category of perfumes.

One person named each of these things, the original perfume and the category, but the name caught on, and the rest is history. Now we do truly believe in the existence of chypre perfumes. In the beginning, however, they were really no different from my SSRI perfumes, created by the slapping of a label on a group of diverse things by a single person. In the case of the perfume, a group of diverse ingredients were put together in a single bottle and this was labeled Chypre. In the case of the category, a group of diverse perfumes were set out together on a table (metaphorically), and this group was labeled chypre.

What is really real? All is one. There is only one real thing, and that thing is being, according to the very first ontologist in the written history of Western philosophy, Parmenides. We flail about desperately in the realm of becoming, distracting ourselves from the truth, which is unitary and does not admit of division or change. It is also ineffable, so we cannot literally talk about anything, including Parmenides' theory of reality, as paradoxical as that may seem.

I realize that such a theory may sound a bit crazy, but I think that if one reflects upon the creation act involved in the launch of new perfumes, one can at least gesture toward and perhaps even approach the truth of what Parmenides was trying to convey. Why should a mixture of a bunch of different chemicals, upon which a label, Angel, is slapped, suddenly be said to exist as a separate thing in reality? That is the question, my fragrant friends.

Now the plausibility of Parmenides' thought is going to turn entirely and only on your personal commitment to the law of non-contradiction: ~ (p & ~-p). In natural language:

It is not the case that something can both be and not be p 
at the same time and in the same way (where p = any property).

The reason why we know about Parmenides more than two thousand years after he passed away is because he managed to persuade a few people of the wisdom of his views, including not only Plato, whose theory of the Forms (which will be treated in a future episode of The History of Philosophy Refracted Through Perfume), but also his pupil Zeno.

Zeno's Paradox 
or

The Decanter's Infinitely Divisible Bottle of Vintage Perfume

Zeno, an avid acolyte of Parmenides, is best known for what has come to be referred to as Zeno's paradox, which has a few different popular expressions, but the perfume version of which has unfortunately been suppressed. So let us fill in the gaps in the historical record by here sketching out how Zeno's paradox might play out in the case of perfume.

Consider a full bottle of perfume. A nice, big 100ml bottle, sealed, pristine, and ready to spritz for the very first time. Let us pretend for a moment that we are decanters, as lamentable as that would be.  We wish to pipette our beautiful bottle of vintage Mitsouko perfume into aliquots to sell to our anxious customers ready and willing to pay the price of a bottle for the privilege of sniffing even a tiny sample of this iconic perfume, in all likelihood obtained through ebay from a hawk who may or may not have any scruples about selling fakes and diluted perfumes. But so long as perfumistas refrain from thinking about all of this, we, the decanters who make the final sale, will be in fine financial form. We know that in the aftermath of the tragic reformulation of this once great perfume, people will be clamoring to get their nose on what we've got hidden in our vault.

What to do? We wish to divide our volume of perfume into the smallest possible aliquots, so as to maximize our profit from this bottle. We paid $50, but as Zeno's paradox will demonstrate, we can squeeze an infinite amount of money from this bottle as follows.

Imagine an initial aliquot of, say, 5 mls. We could divvy up our bottle into twenty such aliquots and charge $20 for each, giving us a grand total of $400 or a profit of $350, that is, 700%. But why stop there? Why not divide each of those 5 ml aliquots into two, making forty decants of 2.5 mls and thereby doubling our profit? But wait, there's more!

Now we could divide the decants once again, to produce 1.25 ml decants, doubling our profit yet again. If we follow this process to its logical limit we will find that we will never exhaust the number of decants—and hence amount of money—which we can squeeze from this single bottle. Ingenious, indeed!

What does this example show? That the decanter's bottle can never be emptied, because in order to remove a decant we must first remove two decants of half of the size of the original decant. But the same is true of the second, smaller decant, and the same is true of the third, and the fourth, and the fifth. I think that you can see clearly now where all of this is leading.

Change is illusory. Why? Because this bottle of perfume will always remain full, no matter what we do. If it appears to be drained empty, that is only because we are deluded by imperfect nonbeing, the realm of mere appearances.

So there you have it, my fragrant friends, a perfumic proof of Parmenides' view:

All is one.

Having vainly attempted to access True Being, I think that it's about time that we all returned to the realm of becoming.