Move Over Music and Visual Art
Give Way to Perfume
Moses, according to the Book of Exodus, was instructed by God (appearing partial to myrrh) on how to make incense?
“But ask now the beasts and they shall teach thee, and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee — ” Saffron is now quoting from Job?
No, it’s wrong to suggest I’m a partisan for fragrant art, at least I haven’t been so from the beginning. I advocate on behalf of aromatics because it’s where I’ve arrived after decades of searching, and now, yes, I’m like a drumbeating exponent, because I can’t find another to closely rival plant perfume as a currency of vital wisdom.
“Or speak to the Earth and it shall teach thee — ”
Music is the language of love, dwelling in the realm of romance, justly celebrated as first citizen of that ethereal domain, while barely rooted, as if by tenuous superficial rhizomes, in the world of matter and motion. Whereas you can listen to sounds, you won’t see them, or touch them, as this affecting acoustic medium is made up of pressure waves, which have no mass.
“Nor are such transmissions strongly linked to Life. Bear in mind that the reverberating tones of abiotic ocean waves and atmospheric winds are arguably just as compelling as those emanating from living coyotes and crickets.”
The aesthetic analysis of music is like an exercise in chasing elusory shadows of butterflies, in that it requires nimble cognitive stretching and reaching, what with so much more fancy to account for than form to grasp.
“And the fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee — ”
No, no way am I biased against music. Not a chance will I be pitted against this means of expression that I hold so dear. Yet still, the resonant medium doesn’t much reconcile or bridge or traverse fields of knowing, rather it holds permanent residence in the heart and rarely ventures a visit elsewhere.
“And music is not in the business of Earthly endorsements.”
When I’m asked why the likes of so many fascists and sadists and other such sociopaths love music? as much as anyone? I explain that melodies and rhythms don’t take a stand, that in cases of concrete conflicts, music sides with no cause over another, advocating only for itself.
“That is, vibrational waves of music waver.”
The nature of this art form is so abstract that musicians, as a rule rarely broken, compose with an ear toward tangible structure, melodic and harmonic and rhythmic — as say, a memorable motif, a percussive pattern, repeating series of pitches, redundant combinations of tones, anything grounded, of substance to lend familiarity, to grab onto, to access.
“Schoenberg symphonies were known to incite abusive heckling.”
Notwithstanding those exceptions, which are scarce and arguably gratuitous, even the most experimental of musical experiments hardly betrays the call of music for intelligibility and order.
“Seeing and agreeing that hearing, once a leading way of perceiving, is appearing to be persevering, its preceding of seeing is simply meaning that seeing is seeming to be less anteceding.”
Next in order … is our perception of visual art, whereby our attention is directed, not to the electromagnetic energy by which an object is sensed, but to the concrete object itself, our eyes focusing upon a material thing taking up space in this physical World, a terrestrial entity that can be viewed and described, touched and held and tangibly scrutinized, its development traced and its contents inspected, as its constituting elements are overt, with properties that are outwardly apparent, with palpable substance that can be recognized and parsed, like solid meat for us thinking-bound to chew on.
“Yet again, visible artworks aren’t strongly linked to Life. Bear in mind that paintings of inorganic stars and seas may be just as engaging as those of metabolizing beings like orchids and horses.”
But creations from hues and shapes, on exhibit for viewing, have less potency for stirring emotions, for pulling heartstrings and shaking spirits. They are weighted down in a sense, so that artists are less beckoned to create visuals with structured or ordered patterns, but rather, are routinely seduced by the airiness of abstraction.
“Try this — hike a temperate rainforest stocked with millions of plants and fungi and microorganisms — you’ll notice that, no matter which way you look, the color green predominates. Where is all the expectable visual signaling?”
And so, gessoed canvases rubbed over by pigmented oils seem to invite extravagantly imaginative art criticism, while chin-rubbing and head-scratching loquaciousness by beholders at art gallery receptions is, can we say, cliché? — it goes with the show, not so?
“And again, just like music, the medium is inherently impartial, bearing no intrinsic calls to action, thereby leaving the door wide open for the ardent patronage by whatever immoral actor, whatever gangster or bankster or other such crooked character who loves pictorial art as much as the next malefactor.”
(Artists working in the different media, taken together, appear to triangulate between counterpoising poles, between the sensible and conceptual, the defined and rarified, pulling away from the extremities of Earthliness and dreaminess, where subjects are explicit or in spirit, to find some middle position.)
But perfume? An emissive fragrant agent can burn a hole in your skin and your soul both — how is that to reconcile outer and inner realities? to patch together that which is below with that above?
“Nature has neither core nor skin, she’s both at once outside and in,” this I recognize as Goethe.
Plant perfumes command center stage in our physical domain yet also unseal the hidden other, spanning that gap that is wider than the sky. Volatile oils are unmistakably present, impactful infochemicals with measurable mass, yet are also elusive, serving as substantive food for our forebrain thinking while at the same time instigating upon us the subtle stuff, the unmediated effects, taking a bypass route around the neencephalic thalamus and rushing head-on into the evolutionarily ancient paleocephalic limbic-system brain and endocrine glands, the seats of feelings and fancies and reminiscences … and mystery.
“Sound hasn’t any legs to stand on. Color is on a three-legged dinner tray. Fragrance is at once to Nature tethered, while floating unfettered.”
What other currency of information can rival this enigmatic behavior? to demand attention concurrently in the magisteria of chemists and priests? to be associated both with moral decay and devotional sacrament? condemned as hedonistic excess while consecrated as holy revelation? in which fragrant intoxicants are outlawed while aromatic demonifuges guarded? erotic unguents scorned while incense for religious rituals sanctified?
“Perfume principles incarnate materialized alongside the ideated etherealized.”
I trust our assertions are finally shaking through. Next, we’ll discuss that close alignment and mighty affiliation with Life, that has changed my life, to provoke on behalf of Life, the phenomenon of Life.
“In whose hand is the soul of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind.”
