![QuercusAlbus]()
QuercusAlbus
2
Break on Through to the Other Side
I have been revisiting many fragrances recently that I have neglected for a long time. I am finding the exercise wonderfully successful - more so than I dared hope! I think I have been ^very^ constructively coached in the meantime. And with this particular one it is not even a case of finding much new in it, but more of ^refinding^ what I perceived in the first place.
I found something a little curious about this when I first tried it. I noticed that the reviews here are not very favourable to it. But I like the °tune° that this fragrance playeth! I'm not sure that I can argue that it is a ^great^ composition, but it ^does^ have a tune that I happen to like rather a lot.
I find the fruity sweetness of it buffered - which is to say, held back from becoming cloying - by a very subtle tobaccoleafy sort of note. And certainly °sort of°, as I find that I ^begin^ to perceive a tobaccoleafy note - but then it is not ^quite^ that, but something really quite unique to this fragrance, and that teases me a great deal, and in a very pleasant way, with my wondering how to define it!
Perhaps it is the note that is listed here as 'woods', or the 'leather' one. Or maybe this rather curious note÷accord÷quality has been °rendered° into notes-list-speak by these idiomata as mere conveniences, as I agree with a previous reviewer that it does not have anything that shows ^patently^ as wood or leather; but it ^does^ have that curious quasi-tobaccoleaf °quality° that I have been here describing.
... a few hours later ...
To be perfectly honest, I am sympathising more with the reviewers who are somewhat scathing of this, on the basis of having actually been wearing it all this time since I last put anything here. I mean ... it's a bit sort of, well, dead! It really isn't a very °sanguine° perfume, this one. It's, sort of, a bit of a °flat beer° sort of thing, IYKWIM. Feel like saying to to it "come on! get up! ^do^ something!". I think the people who have been scathing of it probably well-know what I am talking about. Yet, at the same time, I'm not retracting what I said in favour of it. I don't know whether it ^could have^ been made better in the respect just cited without compromising the interesting & positively distinguishing qualities described above: maybe it ^has to be^ a bit °unsanguine° in order to have those qualities - I don't know. But it has it's uses. I can quite easily forsee occasions when I'll use it quite happily.
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In connection with what I said about having rehabilitated or reinstated fragrances I have long-neglected, I would like to raise the following point - not so much to sidetrack duscussion about fragrances into discussion about mysticism, but to get worked-out between us what can be done when we find that we have fragrances that we now despise and scourge ourselves for having °wasted° minlet on.
There's an item of ancient wisdom that can be found in various places - ancient Chinese, Freemasonic, all kinds of mysticism - to the effect that when you learn ^anything^ - anything ^at all^ - you go through essentially three phases: first the initial joy & enthusiasm; then the grind, as the disciplines become irksome; then the consolidation of those disciplines, and a return to the original joy - but a joy this time °exalted° by the change in oneself imparted by the installation of a body of learning in oneself. 'Breaking through to the other side', I think one could call it. And I think it is so, whether it's a skill one has learned, appreciation of an artform (including a perfume) or whatever.
When I first started using fragrances I was wowed by all fragrances; then I learned to become critical, and had crisis after crisis as I °learned° disappointment; now, I think I am °breaking through to the other side°, and I am getting back to something like being wowed by all of them - something like, but actually better!
Top Notes 
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Base Notes 
Jazzy76
