In Could 2020 I started an intermittent diary, a pocket book of infrathin sensations. I used to be housebound in a warmth wave in London, in a pandemic, with my spouse, A., and our daughter, R. S., who was then 4. I began to note what I used to be noticing on this diminished period: minuscule sensations, tastes. I used to be changing into obsessive about every part that was nonverbal. I began to hunt it out. I used to be entering into fragrance samples, which I ordered in batches from a fragrance store on the town, the perfumes all decanted into miniature atomizers and despatched in clear plastic sachets; and likewise pure wines I purchased on-line, outdated music, tarot playing cards, the espresso I used to be consuming, the chocolate I used to be consuming. I took photographs of flowers as they pale. I used to be frightened that if I attempted to write down down these impressions within the journal I used to be retaining for the novel I used to be writing on the time they might get misplaced. So I started a separate pocket book. It was a really small pocket book, made by a Japanese producer, that I’d purchased and had by no means recognized what to make use of for. Writing in it at all times felt like defacement. However now its miniature dimension could possibly be helpful. Every new entry took up half a web page.
The extra I wrote, the extra I began to consider what these impressions represented. I made a decision that the class of expertise I used to be describing could possibly be prolonged to something that lingered—tiny scraps from my studying, stray bodily recollections. I got here up with totally different definitions for what I used to be after: old style phrases like nuance, or timbre … I favored nuance as a result of in Barthes’s lectures, collected in The Preparation of the Novel, he describes nuance because the follow of individuation. “Nuance = distinction (diaphora),” he wrote, after which added a literary analogy: “one may outline fashion because the written follow of the nuance …” On the extent of fashion, he continued, nuance constituted the essence of poetry, the style of minute particularities; on the extent of content material, nuance represented life.
Life! I missed life very a lot.
Anyway, this infrathin diary lasted about six months, perhaps rather less. Then the urgency of those emotions and of recording these tiny sensations started to dissipate and was overtaken with a brand new obsession, or a brand new model of this nonverbal investigation. I began manically shopping for paper and ink and coloured pencils and pens—to make small drawings and diagrams. And so I deserted that pocket book and commenced one other.
La Perdida, O Pando 2018, citrusy, salt, chamomile, then what? A skinny mineral sourness.
Codello grapes.
I hate all descriptions.
Possibly this may turn out to be all names and nouns.
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Chanel’s Cuir de Russie—ylang and jasmine and iris, which in some way produces the phantasm of leather-based. However then there’s additionally Rien by État Libre d’Orange, aldehydes then frankincense, incense, labdanum, which additionally produces leather-based however this one in some way fizzing, prefer it’s at a stage above actuality.
I don’t know how one can write this. I’m wondering should you may do an essay on fragrance writing for instance of the issue (impossibility) of all criticism: one thing summary contaminated by folks’s associations (the mad on-line opinions of Rien, which appear to be describing a fragrance that’s fully totally different to the one I’m smelling).
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Barthes—The Grain of the Voice: “speaking about music with out adjectives”
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Air du Désert by Tauer—Amber, cedar, vetiver, with petitgrain, coriander, cumin, rose, and a strong thought of incense, or myrrh: if, that’s, I even know what myrrh smells like. (I don’t.) One thing so wealthy about this, so matted—I’m wondering if what I really like is that this complication, sense of one thing dense and inextricable. (The attract of the burnt.)
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Mendittorosa—Le Mat. Pepper and cashmere wooden, then rose, clove, geranium, with immortelle, nutmeg, patchouli—one other fragrance that’s heat and bitter on the identical time. A rose that sweats.
Gesualdo’s Madrigals recorded by Les Arts Florissants. Chromatics, dissonance within the rhythm as a lot because the harmonics. (Are all these excitements to do with layering? I imply, the fragrance and the music share the identical construction: one thing uncovered layer by layer?)
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Whereas this one (Bogue–Mem) it’s as if this can be a type of oscillation, whereas so many different perfumes are a development. Technically an oriental fougère—lavender and roasted barley; beneath, civet, ambergris, castoreum, with little moments of petitgrain, mandarin, then ylang, rose, geranium, vanilla, mint; and at last cedar, benzoin, rosewood.
It’s in contrast to anything I do know.
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One other fragrance by Bogue—Maai. Once more, one thing that uncovers in overlapping layers: a chypre that begins aldehydic, peppery, then turns into floral—eucalyptus, petitgrain, rose, and at last oakmoss, myrrh, labdanum (I’m copying this record out)—however so wealthy and so minute: candied fruit, ylang, cloves, cypress: one thing sticky, soiled, about its magnificence.
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Monteverdi’s Madrigali: polyphony and the invention of the concerted fashion—the play with voice and devices that turns into opera. A definition I simply learn someplace and may’t bear in mind the place.
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L’Artisan Parfumeur—Timbuktu—this time vetiver with sandalwood and incense and cypriol: the other, in a means, of every part else: sparseness, cleanliness, separation of components. So perhaps it’s extra boring.
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4 perfumes at the moment. I really feel sick. All of it started with Nicolai’s New York Intense: petitgrain citronnier, bergamot, perhaps orange, then a deep pepper, clove, cinnamon that ends in oakmoss, incense, civet and musk: one thing deeply wealthy, regal about it, a way of being encased. This was adopted by Ormonde Jayne’s Ormonde Man: juniper, bergamot, and pink pepper, then vetiver, cedar, sandalwood, musk, with oud and black hemlock. Right here it’s as if the association expands in waves. I then determined to match this with Ormonde Jayne’s Isfarkand—like a primary variant on Ormonde Man: lime, mandarin, pink pepper, then cedar, vetiver, oakmoss: much less enveloping, sharper, barely extra woody and likewise abrupt. And completed with Ormonde Jayne’s Black Gold, which begins like Isfarkand with out the pepper: lemon, mandarin, bergamot, then goes nearer to Ormonde Man, with oud, sandalwood, but in addition patchouli. It shimmers. (However how? What do you imply by shimmer?) It creates whole presence, and perhaps this phantasm of presence is what these tastes or perfumes can supply—as should you can enter a brand new thought of a world or your self, the way in which I inhabited this cloud whereas strolling the canine within the useless park.
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Lea Desandre singing Vivaldi arias – her voice has this woozy chromatic high quality, as if one thing baroque can also be supermodern. Possibly all pleasure is to do with sincerity or at the very least potential expression. These arias: idealised struggling.
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Vetiver Extraordinaire by Frederic Malle, a pointy vetiver that has this little halo or encompass of cedar and lemon. Can these sensations every have a distinct tempo? This feels very quick, very sharp, one thing that exhausts itself in a single inexperienced outburst or motion.
Then I get it once more and it smells completely totally different. WHY IS THIS?
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Monteverdi’s Incoronazione—the voice dragging in opposition to the devices: abrasiveness amongst the sweetness. Every part should catch, should take (timbre/nuance).
Possibly that is all a definition of the phrase nuance?
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Zoologist—Hummingbird—it begins tutti-frutti, with cherry, plum, pear, violet-leaf, then enters a wealthy tender blur of ylang and mimosa and lilac, till ending on coumarin, musk, sandalwood – and I prefer it very a lot, however on me, not A., which should imply that as traditional every part, even nuance, is determined by context. And that one factor this diary is about is a return to an androgyny I assumed I’d misplaced.
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I at all times liked how small I used to be. I liked the adjective mercurial.
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YSL—Rive Gauche—powdery, floral, and it’s dazzling as a result of it’s so kaleidoscopic—a rotation of various components.
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Theresa Hak Kyung Cha: “I’m at all times shocked once I see a accomplished work of one thing that I’ve finished, all finished piece by piece, and between jobs and breaks, in sleep, between arguments with Richard, all of the maniac frustrations of those jobs, joblessness, poverty states …”
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Nuance is identification (presence) and the absence of identification (fleeting).
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L’Artisan Parfumeur—Dzing!—is it doable to have comical nuance? Certainly sure, like this cardboard circus, one thing like that circus made by Calder, leather-based, fur, wooden, talc, iris, caramel—all peppery and heat. (Like Jasmin et Cigarette by Etat Libre—the acrid scrumptious smoke of it, lingering amongst the jasmine.)
Papillon—Dryad: tremendous elegant, nevertheless it seems that magnificence is boring.
Nicolai—Eau Mixte—the juniper on this made me instantly consider martini—no, made me desire a martini. I miss martinis in darkish bars. However that’s not what I wished to say. I wished to say that it appears it’s unattainable for abstraction to exist.
Frederic Malle—Geranium pour Monsieur—a nuance is a sequential procession—I’ve stated this already, nevertheless it’s what I preserve pondering. Or, I prefer it when the sequence is overlaid on itself, which is why it’s so shocking how a lot I like this fragrance—however maybe the reply is its stickiness.
I can’t consider any higher means of describing stickiness than stickiness.
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Nuance as what you bear in mind: scattered, sparse.
Frederic Malle—French Lover—What makes it alluring is its arduous, chilly, leafy astringency, incense, pepper, galbanum, oak moss, which fits to a woody amber: nevertheless it’s an amusement, not one thing that convinces.
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Frederic Malle—Une Rose—the pure lipsticky synthetic pinkness of it.
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August Kleinzahler in “Music XXII”: “I’m a timbre queen … I particularly go for early keyboard devices, precursors of the trendy piano: harpsichords, clavichords, fortepianos, differing amongst themselves not solely as to how their mechanisms work and primary sound, however by the classic, instrument-maker, provenance, supplies between like devices, i.e., in the way in which {that a} Stradivarius or Guarneri violin has its personal specific and differing sonic traits.”
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In Plato’s Cratylus, I simply learn someplace, Socrates describes the distinction between the human and the divine as between the sleek—leion—and the tough—truchy. Like Dante on tough/furry and easy phrases.
Goatish tragedy; “tough furry beasts” (Some Like It Scorching): tragikos bios.
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Chet Baker’s voice in Chet Baker Sings: lightness, floatiness, whole smoothness. And but I like it.
Barthes: “The ‘grain’ is the physique within the voice because it sings, the hand because it writes, the limb because it performs. If I understand the ‘grain’ in a chunk of music and accord this ‘grain’ a theoretical worth … I inevitably arrange a brand new scheme of analysis which will definitely be particular person … however by no means ‘subjective’ …”
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Elmo Hope Trio—is velocity at all times pleasant? Possibly. I really like this airplant tendrilly motion from block to dam.
Masque Milano—Occasions Sq.—Crazed rose, lipstick accord, hazelnut, one thing gummy, like sweets, low cost sweets, tuberose.
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E V-M—Paris Evaluate—The picture of Bolaño’s depth, of E V-M’s depth: Piglia’s description of the key and occluded story in Kafka: purity of dedication, intelligence, playfulness.
Possibly that is all a pun on the concept of the word.
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Musil in The Man With out Qualities: “The sunshine within the room now resembled a hollowed-out silver dice … And at that second one thing occurred to her—it didn’t appear to return from her will however from outdoors—: the surging water past the home windows out of the blue grew to become just like the flesh of a sliced fruit and was urgent its swelling softness between herself and Ulrich.”
Derek Jarman’s Glitterbug. Filming like sketching (Sasnal)
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Tacita’s postcard arrives: Shite Zeit, Anus Horribilis, faecism, miracolo de merde, mer de merde. Out of a baroque black and white cloudscape, a shit descends.
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Every part is about one thing that develops over time. La Garagista’s Vinu Jancu—so floral, difficult. Right here the orange wine has a layer of acidity with one other layer of honey, rose, violet, fig leaf. Hedgerow consuming.
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Chocolate sorbet, hazelnut gelato.
You see? It was at all times going to finish up as simply nouns.
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William Lawes, Consorts to the Organ. Lawes and dissonance: the negotiation of instability: motion between alien elements (Mem, Maai)
Billie Vacation—“Advantageous and Mellow”—on Whitney Balliett’s CBS present, 1957—Lester Younger’s solo, and B.H.’s face—the great thing about the instantly private.
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Thomas Adès’s thought of magnetism, detached to any break with tonality: ‘I don’t imagine in any respect within the official distinction between tonal and atonal music. I believe the one option to perceive this stuff is that they’re the results of magnetic forces throughout the notes, which create a magnetic pressure, an attraction or repulsion.’
Morton Feldman on Beethoven: “It’s not a lot how he will get into issues that’s fascinating, it’s how he will get out of them.”
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Separation of components – to separate could be a means for every aspect to accumulate no matter is supposed by life.
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Transitions/juxtapositions (fluid, edge)—Adès: “A factor turns into doable which makes one other factor doable which wouldn’t have been doable with out it.”
Fetish notes—hinges of ambiguity.
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- making her teddy sing comedian songs.
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Malted milk chocolate from the Saint Vincent Cocoa Firm—jammy, figgy, custardy—all of the phrases approximate, requiring the havering suffix—y. (Which you at all times like.)
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Definition of a diva—in Koestenbaum: “public, creamy, and colossal”!
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Residue: “I can bear in mind seeing her as soon as within the opera of Didone, however can say nothing of her efficiency, all I can recollect of it being the care with which she tucked up her nice hoop as she sidled into the flames of Carthage.” Richard Edgcumbe on Caterina Gabrielli, quoted by Koestenbaum
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The cartoon blue of hydrangeas, with no grading or combination in it.
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Thom Gunn’s essays on Robert Duncan: as if the pleasure is all in a refusal of a sure modernism. Lushness, as an alternative.
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Radikon—Sivi: one thing I’m now starting to grasp: the chypre-like construction that’s in every single place, in perfumes and wines and chocolate and occasional: stone fruit turning into citrus. So this one bores me.
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A.’s legs on my shoulders, my cock in her, seeing it, watching it—the feeling of such depth, such heat—her pinkness, my redness. Like you possibly can say: it appears uncooked nevertheless it feels tender.
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Fanny Burney, April 1788: “transactions, reflections, emotions, and needs.”
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Raisins Gaulois—Lapierre—Gamay: whole pleasure, as if the style transports—on this case to Paris in some idyll of romance—a tiny restaurant, fixed consuming, with no future ache or disappointment implied.
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Complication is depth, is time: one thing turning into one thing else.
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Colour and style. Espresso from El Fénix in Colombia—pink bourbon: jam, peach, watermelon—pink colours for the pink berries? Espresso from Boji Kochere, Ethiopia: blue—fizzy blue, melon gummies, milk tea
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However how one can create this type of nuance in a piece? You possibly can’t. Nuance must be assumed, or hoped for.
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Within the early morning, my hand between A.’s breasts. How the breast feels on the again of my hand.
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The issue with anybody studying this may be to make them learn as slowly as I attempt to think about these adjectives.
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What are these notes besides an try and get better a earlier self—or one thing else, a permitted feminization, perhaps.
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{The catalogue} of Xenakis’s drawings from the Drawing Middle years in the past: the colours, the strains of his arborescences, grids, clouds.
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Peonies fading from crimson to pink to cream to ivory to white.
Adam Thirlwell’s new novel The Future Future shall be printed later this 12 months. He’s an advisory editor of The Paris Evaluate.
