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jean claude ellena – journal d’un parfumeur

“Pendant un an, j’ai tenu ce journal de façon assidue ou plus relâchée, décousue, sporadique, régulière, souhaitant partager quelque aperçu sur la vie d’un nez. J’imaginais que dans le désordre apparent de cette pensée ainsi exposée, au-delà des digressions ou des chemins de traverse, le lecteur entrant dans mes pas pouvait se construire une vision globale assez fidèle, significative, de ce qu’est la réalité d’un compositeur de parfums. Le fait est que beaucoup d’éléments de ma vie sont tendus vers cette forme d’expression particulière qu’est la composition d’un parfum. Mes pensées quotidiennes m’y ramènent souvent, en tout cas finissent toujours par y revenir, comme si j’étais tissé de cela. Les odeurs sont mes mots. Le maniement que j’en ai découle d’une logique, d’un instinct, d’un travail que je crois comparables à la démarche d’un écrivain lorsqu’il s’attelle à un livre. Je sais aussi que ce métier, parce qu’il est un art, est irréductible au langage et aux concepts. Avec ce journal, j’ai voulu simplement partager une expérience.“

sorry for those of you who can’t speak french but this book is “vraiment genial”, jean claude ellena is one of the big “nose” around, responsible for most of the great hermes fragrances as well as other none the less great fragrance for other prestigious maisons. through his writings, we get a glimpse about how romantic and different is his way to see the world. quite moving.

originally edited by hermes, the 150 pieces were coming in a special edition box with other things. i guess that must have been quite a must to have… well, we have the book now. by pp.

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average life of man: no more than 20 years

image courtesy of natural history museum

years ago i was at my favorite chinese dentist in california due for a filling and i asked this eloquent doctor of mine, why it was that even though i brushed twice a day and flossed i had to deal with cavities? i said a lion for example, does little of that and seems to be keeping his pearly whites? the answer was mind opening. he said “well… there are really two reasons. for one, man in its natural state consumes a fraction of the sugar humans consume today, but more importantly our organs and bodies have not evolved as quickly as mans life has changed at his own hands. in nature you would have died of a virus, if not eaten by a predator by age 20.” i for one would have been dead at the age of 8 when i got a strep-throat with a fever of 103. without todays available antibiotics, the infection would have reached my heart and i would have met my “baker” long ago. i was telling this story today, and jr looked this up. sure enough the average age of cavemen was indeed 20. you would have mated at age 13 and been eaten by age 20. so count your blessing as most of us are now on borrowed time. by dd+jr

CATEGORIES: earth related, mind candy, read

may 21, 2011: jesus is coming… everybody look busy


so there is no question we are living in desperate times, where centuries of social evolution and intellectual discourse has been turned into complacency, backwards ideology, business propaganda, and religious zealotry. were the quest for a better social system has been replaced with what lady gaga wore to her dentists appointment. i for one was actually looking forward to today, and i’m a bit disappointed! that said at around 1pm i did see someone suspiciously  jesus like, glowing under the florescent lights, at whole foods. on second take i saw him shaking his head in disappointment in the organic fruit isle, the same apple that brought man to this state was sitting there in full organic glory… and was on sale! i myself was at the fish market, pondering which toxins to cook up for my last supper? the tuna steak with mercury that we’ve laced our oceans with, or the contaminated radioactive konago from the pacific. i finally settled for some cheap wine and bread, at least that was semi-official and blessed by the boss. but all this is not the main concern. while we’re busy spending our future like a pimp with a stolen carte blanché (sorry graydon for butchering your quote) hunting down one religious extreme the other 2 seem to be spreading like wildfire. i guess if man has finally decided to take this ancient route rather than education and the relentless desire to ask questions, the end might as well be welcomed. if nothing, jesus can surely straighten out glodman sachs… and just maybe, even world peace? well, its still 11:53, we have a few more minutes… if you don’t see another post from us, you know where to find us… penthouse b, at the edge of heaven. B.Y.O.B ; ) by jlg

CATEGORIES: earth related, read

Quote of the day

Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries when they wrote these books. – Emerson

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what does o.k. really mean?


while the origins are disputed, historian, inventor of the red tape and famous architect AR.S, has this explaination to offer: “o.k. is a historic word used in multiple languages and across the world, its quite a phenomena in itself. it was originally used by U.S. airforce after multiple sorties to communicate the outcome of the fighters upon return. O.K. stood for zero (O.) killed (K.) which apparently only accounted for our boys and not the enemies and that, in such a case, was quite a positive outcome.” by dd+as

CATEGORIES: musings, read

what kind of girl do you have to be to date sid vicious?

incase you cant read sid’s handwriting: 1 beautiful, 2 sexy, 3 beautiful figure, 4 great sense of humour, 5 makes extremely interesting conversation, 6 witty, 7 has beautiful eyes, 8 has fab taste in clothes, 9 has the most beautiful wet pussy in the world, 10 even has sexy feet, 11 is extremely smart, 12 a great hustler by pl

CATEGORIES: music, read

fruitophobia: why i can’t stand fruit


a fruit and a woman’s hand… when i was a child, i’d be taken along on “friend and family” visits with my mother. this was sort of special as i felt i was being paraded around as the “good son”, granted there were no other male sybling. it was a bore to be sure… sitting around a bunch of women all much, much, older than i was, but the one part that i can clearly recall to this day, was that in each adventure, we would inevitably end up at some standard living room, with a fruit bowl proped on some low table at the center, and a sofa, and some chairs standing guard around it. my mother would settle into a low propped chair and go on talking to the host about all sorts of weather and i would often begin staring at the carpet and phasing out the sounds around me. time would drip away and id be lost in a gaze… usually around this point in the sequence of worldly events, the host would lean over the table and grab a few varieties of fruit, not missing a word from the ongoing conversation. the selection usually consisted of a pear, an orange, a banana, and on occasions a pomegranate. she would then proceed with pealing them one by one, cutting them into bite size pieces while the juice from the fruits would slide down her long red finger nails in slow motion, curving in and around her silver and emerald rings, and onto the plate joining the other fruits… and their juices. i would stare at this phenomenal across the table, through the sun-rays and dust particles from the long curtains. being a fussy child i would dread the inevitable, the moment where Id be offered a piece of that  magic brew… and that moment would come. out of politeness i’d be forced to oblige and pick up a pear, soaked in orange juice and pomegranate and rubbed against a banana, all at that familiar body temperature of the hosts hand, and laced with where ever her long hands had been. needless to say this effected me just a little bit… and forever deprived me of enjoying any type of fruit.

to this day if i’d ever eat an apple (it has been years since) i’d want it to be near freezing temperatures! by uh

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le corbusier – his true colors


amazing article by alice rawsthorn in the new york times about le corbusier’s wall colors, must read here, a couple of lines for lazies:

“by 1931, le corbusier had settled on a palette of soft pastels and brights to accentuate white, and arranged for them to be reproduced on wallpaper swatches by the swiss manufacturer salubra. esver the control freak, he specified exactly ho salubra should group the colors together to indicate which ones could be combined.”
…
“a book of all of the swatches made for corbusier by salubra from 1931 to 1959 was published by birkhäuser in 1997. a young chemist, katrin trautwein, the co-founder of kt color, then started to explore the possibility of manufacturing the paints and secured a license to do so from the fondation le corbusier.”


by ar+pp.

CATEGORIES: design, musings, perfect gift, read

bill willis – marrakesh




bumped into this extremely interesting article about the late marrakshi legend, decorator bill willis.
it’s in the new york times ( of course) and very well written by christopher petkanas for his column called “fabulous dead people”… how witty is that?
i could certainly tell you about mister willis but you should really read the article instead.
just to lure you a bit, mister willis lived the morocco of the 70’s around mister saint laurent, the stones, the getty’s and so on. he’s truly one of those larger than life character.
strange enough it’s rather difficult to find anything about the man on the net… so images are the same than nyt.
there should be a lot of documentation about his work in the great ivan terestchenko’s book about ysl and berge’s estates (pictures above are ysl’s marrakesh home) but i’m not sure which one can be credited to willis and which one can be credited to grange. by pp.

CATEGORIES: eye candy, read