Imps: (bold entries are linked to reviews within this blog)
Velvet Coyote Hell's Belle La Petit Mort Dirty Zephyr Strangler Fig Darkness Shub-Niggurath Embalming Fluid Dracul No. 93 Engine Antikythera Mechanism Centzon Totochtin Perversion Mary Read Les Infortunes de la Vertu Dragon's Hide The Apothecary Lightning Queen of Hearts Ava Maria Gratia Plena The Reaper and the Flowers Hairy Toad Lily Lilium Inter Spinas Dragon's Milk The Last Squished Jellybean Czernobog Tenochtitlan Thanatopsis
My recent experience with La Petit Mort (actually, I'm still experiencing it) has me back in the old "I can't wear perfume" mindset. I've resolved to order a dozen imps instead of just six, consisting of those scents I consider the most promising from my own research, plus a few taken willy-nilly out of the favorites of a few people who seem to have the same scent preferences as me.
Today I'm ordering (as imps):
Shub-Niggurath
Embalming Fluid
Dracul
No. 93 Engine
Antikythera Mechanism
Centzon Totochtin
Perversion
The Apothecary
Dragon's Hide
Mary Read
Les Infortunes De La Vertu
Lightning
Let's see if I have more luck with any of these.
I received no less than sixteens imps today. I'm speechless with the possibilities. In addition to the twelve I ordered, I got (of course) four unsolicited extras. Not one of the four sounds even remotely like anything I would consider getting for myself. Heavy on flowers, and one described outright as sweet. Still, I've said before that I welcome the boundary-pushing. That attitude will certainly be tested this time.
No reviews yet, but after sniffing through way too many in one sitting (I know, bad!), here are my impressions:
Embalming Fluid: tea with several slices of lemon. I like.
The Antykythera Mechanism: Something sharp, then my sense of smell was blown completely out. Couldn't smell anything for several minutes. Too early to say.
No. 93 Engine: Something faintly metallic and catch-in-throat (acrid). Seems more masculine than not, but maybe because of some wood (?) that I associate strongly with men's scents. Too early to say.
Lightning: This reminds me very strongly of chapstick. Hm.
Mary Read: Strong booziness, spice, something -- again -- acrid. I like, I think.
The Apothecary: Herbs. More herbs. Interesting.
Shub-niggurath: ??? Baked figs and holiday spices over dirt? What the hell??? I think smelling all the ones before must be messing with me.
Dracul: Clove and fresh, clean skin over something musty?
BTW, I have no idea if my descriptions are even remotely like what these scents are supposed to smell like. It's been too long since I read the descriptions and I'm overloading my olfactory system. Just, humor me. I'm sure I'll be embarrassed later.
Centzon Totochtin: Yikes! Cocoa over booze with a hint of ... Hawaiian Punch?
Perversion: This baffles me. It smells familiar one end to the other, but I can't pick anything out or come up with an association. Dunno.
Dragon's Hide: Instant men's cologne. Very in-your-face wood (???) scent. Seems almost single-note to me.
Les Infortunes de la Vertu: Another super-blended one (i.e. hard to pick anything out). Overall, I like. Very comforting scent.
Ava Maria Gratia Plena: White floral with strong scent-associations of cleanliness. Doesn't smell soapy, just ... blindingly clean, if that makes any sense.
Hairy Toad Lily: Astringent berry? My nose is really going downhill.
The Reaper and the Flowers: Some very light floral and grass? Hay? Very, very light. Delicate.
Queen of Hearts: Holy blown gaskets! My eyes started to water. Fruity, floral, in that order. I'm going to say "Not me", but I'll give it a more through assessment later.
There's my initial run-through. Completely useless because I overwhelmed my sense of smell, but I couldn't resist. I mostly wanted to pick out the ones that seemed most promising so I know where to start.
Another scent dislike -- an odd one, perhaps, for someone on this site -- is strong perfumes, no matter their components. By strong I mean something with a lot of throw. Perfume, to me, is something you should pick up when you're close to someone. Maybe it's the romantic in me, but I think of it as something that should make you want to lean in and and take a deep breath. If it's swirling around you at ten paces from the source, it's irritating and pointless. People with strong perfume are no better than walking room fresheners. And why would you ever want to stand close to someone with a wall of scent around them? Actually, "wall" strikes me as a good word; a person loaded with perfume has a built-in defensive perimeter of scent. It isn't inviting, it's prickly and thick, like a rank of shields and spears.
I think my preference here is because I'm very aware of how much of my feelings for people are affected by scent. This may be something from the survival-based category, as I seem to rely a great deal on my sense of smell to really get a feel for people. Unfair or not, how someone smells can weigh heavily in my judgment.
We may be talking about pheromones here, as well as grooming scents. An example: I've known many people that make my whiskers stand up, for better or worse, before I've seen or heard anything from them that should give me a strong opinion. (BTW, I'm not a fan of simplistic application of the word 'instinct' -- instinct is merely the functioning of our five natural senses at a threshhold below conscious recognition. It isn't magic, it's just some part of us that resists being affected by the frontal lobe.) I know a few people that are pleasant, well-liked, and easy to get along with but that raise my hackles. Pheromones? Psychological? I don't know why it would be the latter. There are people that I really want to like, but for no apparent reason can't summon anything better than mild dislike for. If that isn't bad chemistry (quite literally), I don't know what it is. Well, and let's be honest: Conversely, I've known people that were absolutely no good, but that I was instantly comfortable around. People that were definitely not companion material, but that gave me an almost instant feeling of kinship, or ... well ... desire.
I know there are plenty of psychiatrists out there that would argue that every bit of that is software, and that it feeds a need for rebellion, or that it's hardware and feeds a need for adrenalin-pumping danger, etc., but that doesn't explain instant attraction to someone who's perfectly suitable as a companion, and yeah, I have those moments too. As an aside, I fully believe that we don't know enough about how our brains function to be able to properly distinguish between impulses that are software-driven, hardware-driven, or both.
I genuinely believe that some part of my olfactory-system-to-primitive-brain process can detect and make me understand when I'm too alike or too unlike some people (in all the wrong ways) at a basic, genetic level. It seems farfetched when stated "out loud" like that, but I'm not claiming to be any different than anyone else. I think we humans have many potentially strong, primitive subconscious interactions with our environment that have, for many people, gone rusty with disuse (or with being ignored). So what am I saying? Can we subconsciously detect when we're a good "chemical" (i.e. genetic) match, sexually? What about when we're judging a person of the same sex? (Speaking, obviously, from a heterosexual point of view.) Are we able to subconsciously understand that someone is very different from, or similar to, us in makeup, and do we then become more or less comfortable with them because they're "of our clan" or "other"? Did human senses ever allow our species to correctly judge such things, and do they still? Is it all written in our pheromones?
Another example: I know a few men that I don't particularly like or dislike, but that make my skin tingle when they're close. Seen at a distance: nothing. Sound of their voices: nothing. Thoughts of: not the least bit inappropriate. Close up: strong, unreasoning response with a deep desire to get close to their bare skin. What is that if not pheromones? I can't actually smell anything, but I'm responding from head to toes to someone that I'm otherwise completely uninterested in.
As far as grooming scents, I've never had a chance to research it, but there are men's scents that instantly leave me feeling mellow and ... pliable. I've never gotten that straight from a bottle of cologne, but warmed on the skin of a few men, it's hypnotic. My significant other is a good example of both: Freshly showered and without added scent, when I'm against his skin I feel like I want to just cling to him, breathing deeply, and stay that way forever. With cologne, I want to nibble every inch of him. With hot skin and a fresh, light layer of sweat ... oh. my. god.
Pheromones. Definitely.
Sorry. Wandered off track there. Ahem. So ... my point being: When I'm talking to someone and all I can smell is a thick layer of perfume (or cologne), I'm irritated by it in the same way I would be if that person required me to converse with them blindfolded. I feel like I'm being manipulated. It's as if they're projecting who they want to be, forcing me to have a specific impression of them, instead of just letting me get to know them. They may as well be wearing a costume, or talking with a fake accent. Ugh. It wrecks my sense of who they are and makes me uncomfortable. I literally feel like one of my senses has been stripped away. Deliberately. And as innocuous as the perfume wearer's intentions are, I end up resenting the olfactory masking.
I wonder sometimes why I like some scents that should probably seem overpowering or obnoxious: gasoline, used engine oil, wet paint (high VOC, yeah baby!), fresh asphalt, just-snuffed matches, hot metal. Especially hot metal and black engine oil. My ideal mate would probably be a mechanic (though I was seriously considering being a mechanic myself 20+ years ago). Why would any of these appeal to me?
Scent is so deeply wired into our brains, that you'd think the only scents that would appeal to us would be the ones that somehow enhanced our chances of survival (and reproduction). We're quick to pick up the scent of a pending storm, decay, lack of cleanliness, etc. Granted, many scent likes and dislikes are purely psychologically-driven. You could argue that my liking for oil and gasoline had to do with watching my dad work in the garage when I was very young. I don't know that to be the case, but I'm positive we all have associations that invite instant like or dislike, but that we can't necessarily put a name, face, time, or place to.
What about sour, bitter, acrid, or chemical smells? I like the smell of hospitals. How weird is that? I like quite a few natural scents that are, apparently, generally disliked, like bruised marigold foliage (astringent, chemical). Love! But everyone I know who smells it recoils. And tomato foliage (astringent, oppressively herbal). I could seriously see wearing a perfume that had tomato foliage at its base. Oddly, I also like the smell of damp, dusty places, like old houses or barns that have been abandoned. How could the latter possibly be a benefit to survival? It's probably not, but I remember often playing in an old abandoned barn when I was a child, and so must have positive associations with the smells inherent in such a place. More psychological underpinnings. I'm beginning to think that psychologically-based scent preferences easily (and sometimes completely) override the hardwired ones.
My animal scent likes and dislikes are pretty distinct. I like the smell of cats, but not dogs. Horses, but not cows. Allow me to rephrase: it's not that I dislike the smell of dogs (except wet ones) or cows, but that I get no reaction from them other than internally taking note of their scent. Cats and horses give me a real physical reaction, a pleasant one. (Don't read too far into that; I'm talking warm fuzzies here not Catherine the Great.) I also love the smell of many objects that are found around horses: leather, wool, denim, hay, and weathered wood. I'll categorize this as psychological. I grew up around horses and cats. Childhood = good, therefore ... etc.
I have a few scent dislikes, but none that drive me out of a room, with one exception: citrus mold. Agh! And the odd part is, I can smell it before it's even evident. I'll start smelling this nauseating scent a day or two before the first powdery bloom appears on an orange or lemon. And I can walk into a room and instantly tell if there's newly-molding citrus in it, even if I can't see the fruit. The strong scent usually goes away (for me) on fruit that started molding some time ago, even if there's mold still on it. This scent ... it isn't just unpleasant, it's something I really can't take. I have to get away from it. This has me wondering if I'm allergic to the type of mold that forms on citrus fruits. Why else would I have such a strong visceral response to it? Do we finally have here an example of a survival-based scent preference? I haven't done a proper scientific study of the reactions of other people, but my significant other can't smell it at all, whereas I can smell it in eensy-teensy-parts-per-million at a hundred paces and it gives me an instant headache.
Continued ...
So I received my first imps some time ago and am just getting around to putting my impressions into words. I've decided to be quasi-scientific about it and do the one-scent-a-day-noting-all-impressions approach that I see so many people adopting in the reviews section. But first ...
I'm a little frustrated, when reading the reviews of others, to see descriptions of people's impressions that basically rewrite the lab's official write-up, or that seem to hinge entirely on the name of the scent. For example, Coyote: We get lots of descriptions of warm fur smell, lying in grasses in the hot plains sun, etc. I almost wish the lab would release the scent unnamed, let us review it, then tell us what it's supposed to be. And without revealing the notes.
There's no doubt that we all smell things differently, pick up different scents, completely lose others, and turn scents on their heads on our skin (or amp up particular ones). Having said that, it's not helpful to read a review of a scent with the notes described as "cedar, bergamot, black tea" and to see someone say "I'm standing in the woods sipping a cup of Earl Grey." Now, that might be exactly the impression the person got, but I can't help but believe their impression was affected by the description. We humans are nothing if not mentally malleable.
I'm not sure where I'm going with this. This isn't intended as a rail against people's review styles, and I certainly don't want to discourage anyone from writing reviews in a way that expresses their sensations most meaningfully. However, I feel the process is tainted by the marketing. (Bless the lab, they do what every good business does.) Just my take on things.
Last note: I've already smelled an imp or two that had the main notes stand out most strongly as the ones listed by the lab, so I'm not saying that people are incorrect to fix on those elements and write about them. All I'm saying is that I will try very hard to review scents based on how they smell, and even though I'm sure I'll be influenced to some degree by the words, I really, really will try to be objective.
