Or, Things I Did Not Expect to Learn From Filthy Musk There are certain mistakes one makes only because one has been given too much information. A fragrance arrives called Filthy Musk. The official materials contain civet. One prepares accordingly. Something animalic, perhaps. Feral. Musky. Slightly indecent. At minimum, one expects the civet to make […]
Author: Sandy
Oh, He’s Full.
Herbert had a habit that occasionally startled guests. People would be over. We would be talking. Everyone would be having a perfectly nice time. And then, at some point, Herbert would simply be done. Not with the friendship. Not with the evening. Not because someone had said something wrong. He was just done talking. So […]
What If the Problem Isn’t That AI Gets Too Powerful?
There is a remarkable amount of Sturm und Drang about artificial intelligence right now. Not merely the entirely reasonable questions — What happens to jobs? How do we deal with misinformation? What should students be allowed to use? Who owns the work AI was trained on? What happens when bad actors have access to enormously […]
The Great Reshelving — Postscript #2: Oriza L. Legrand
The House That Waited There is a long, narrow burgundy box in my fragrance collection. I did not buy it. I did not stand at a counter and choose its contents one by one. I did not spray something on my wrist, fall in love, hand over a credit card, and carry home a set […]
The Great Reshelving — Postscript #1: The Bonds
A few days into interviewing the Bond No. 9 fragrances in my Library, I happened to be in Union Square. My dentist is down there, and afterward I found myself standing near a small piece of my own fragrance history. Back in the day, Saks Fifth Avenue was across from the parking garage, with Tiffany […]
The Great ReShelving
I thought I was organizing perfume. Nope. Not that this is an unfamiliar situation . . . I begin with a perfectly ordinary household project. A drawer. A closet. A shelf. Several hours later, I am standing in the middle of the room surrounded by objects, holding a dirty rag and a bottle of Mr. […]
The Question Changed
For a long time, I thought learning about fragrance meant learning ingredients. The notes. The perfumer. The concentration. The history. Where the rose came from. Whether the oud had been sustainably harvested by moonlight from trees that had only whispered to passing monks. (Fragrance marketing can get wonderfully imaginative.) While those things are interesting, they’re […]
Hospitality, Not Ownership
One of the strangest things has happened during this project. The more I have come to love certain fragrances . . . . . . the easier it has become to let others go. That sounds backwards. Shouldn’t evolving from a Collector into a Librarian make me more attached? Instead, it has made me less […]
Have. We. Learned. Nothing.
Chad and I have a shorthand now. Whenever a fragrance goes spectacularly sideways from what we expected, one of us simply types: HWLN. Have. We. Learned. Nothing. Today was a HWLN day. It started with a mistake. Not with the fragrance. With my process. Normally, when a new fragrance arrives, I enter the official fragrance […]
The Little Free Library
There are two Little Free Libraries on my drive out to the highway. You’ve probably seen them. Tiny wooden houses with glass doors, standing on posts at the edge of someone’s yard. Take a book. Leave a book. Read it. Return it. Or don’t. The point isn’t ownership. The point is circulation. Stories keep moving. […]