The Nose is Mightier than the Pen

Greetings Friends,

Another glorious spring day north of the 49th parallel, and another day out and about at another Starbucks.

Just a quick addendum to my last post referencing the documentary "Super Size Me": another fascinating nugget of trivia provided by filmmaker Morgan Spurlock was that there were 83 McDonalds stores on the island of Manhattan when he made that film. I wonder how many there are now? Further to that, I wonder how many Starbucks stores there are in the Greater Toronto Area, and how many geeks like me sit in them guzzling caffeinated beverages, tapping away on their laptops? That will be a discussion for another day.

Today, I'd like to share with you my most favourite writing topic: fragrance. I love writing about fragrance; how it makes me feel, what sort of memories it conjures, how it is made...you name it. I'm a regular contributor at the blog Perfume Posse, and you can look for me there every other Friday sharing my fragrant meanderings with an extremely knowledgeable and intelligent audience. I'm blogging there this Friday April 16, so be sure to stop by and read my post. I've got something very cheeky up my sleeve.

I love writing about fragrance because it is a most challenging topic. It goes way beyond "that smells good" or "that smells like total crap". Creating a fragrance is a complicated scientific process that I don't know much about, but I do consider myself well versed in the end result. And, I'm not shy about voicing my opinions. The genre of "fragrance criticism" has a huge following on the Internet with countless blogs. Even The New York Times has a resident perfume critic, Chandler Burr, with his blog, Scent Notes. Thank goodness they didn't give it to Frank Rich; the former "Butcher of Broadway" would probably have turned into the "Slasher of Madison Avenue".

Fragrance is an extremely subjective topic because not everyone is going to wear the same one, the way we don't all wear the same clothes or drive the same cars. It is an intensely personal choice and reflective of who you are. It can also transform you into someone else, depending on which one you choose. There are infinite possibilities; that's what I love so much about it. On any given day you can be whoever you choose to be, without any schizophrenic repercussions. I prefer to be thought of as "mercurial". It sounds much more normal.

I'd like to share two essays from the Perfume Posse archives that I'm particularly proud of. You can read one here, and the other, here. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them.

Nava