In the late eighties, ceramic scent lamps were very fashionable. At the bottom you put a tea light in, at the top you put some water in a bowl to evaporate and then you added a few drops of scented oil. I actually only remember ylang-ylang, which created a numbingly heavy but insanely fascinating and erotic atmosphere.
Now I've smelled TAM DAO for the first time, and it has flung me back to that era unabated - sandalwood was, of course, the most popular scent for those little lights! May contemporaries correct me, but I think 90% of all young ladies had one of these in their chambers. No visit to the adored/adored creatures without a tea light flickering and occasionally, in the heat of, er, discussion, completely forgetting to light a new one after it went out.
It is also entirely within the realm of possibility that a not inconsiderable number of our younger perfumos were conceived to this very scent. Perhaps the sandalwood children could just get this almost incidental information out of their parents for me without any obligation...
But not everything was so romantic at the time. I had a colleague with whom I started an apprenticeship at the same time after graduating from high school. Sympathy at first sight, and M. was a funny, but at the same time also in itself resting person, with which one did not come at all into the proximity of an argument. Night-long discussions about God and the world, as they are just standard at this age.
Since just at the transition to the nineties the triumphant advance of the personal computer began and M. was not quite unfortunate from home, he had of course such a box in the apartment (wow, he had his own apartment, while all friends of the same age still had to live with parents!). So we spent many days and nights with the then brand new game MONKEY ISLAND! With the obsessive potential we both had, weeks went by before we had played through the game (there were no tutorials to be found online yet). And in the background, non-stop, the eternally simmering fragrance lamp with - sandalwood oil!
As life is then, we parted ways. I had my plans, and M. dümpeln so a bit in a "decent" job. Life purpose was not, but good money, and so he could then every weekend a little too much drinking over the villages and through the (small) cities and let it rip. Occasionally and with growing frequency then also on weekdays and in the morning.
At some point they stopped seeing each other, but I heard much later that he had been out too much with strange people. More, much more alcohol and plenty of drugs; his psyche only took it all to a certain point, and at some point he couldn't take it anymore. And then he didn't want to.
*
They say that someone still exists as long as a person thinks about them. That's what I'm doing, and I'm putting an imaginary stone on your grave, which I never saw, dear M.
*
TAM DAO is just that deep and warm sandalwood smell that reminds me of the intense time of that friendship, of growing up, of existential questions, of doubting and guessing, of unbridled curiosity, of an uncertain, exciting future, and also of another very long and very intense love story.
The perfume has a light, cypress and woody tone and remains relatively unsweet on me. Nothing distracting, everything fits and makes sense, to me it seems structured and transparent. Just as when you look back into the past, you can suddenly see clearly the path you have walked until today.
I did not even know until now that I can like sandalwood so well and have also experienced no fragrance of this orientation so emotional and moving. Wat nu? 10 points for the time travel, 8.5 points already for the fragrance - a bottling must be here to trace this fascination even further.
To the old times!
Mysore sandalwood
Cypress
Myrtle
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PedroCabral
Syddemizard
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