Parfum
水調歌頭 | Prelude to Water Melody, after Su Shi.
Su Shi (1037–1101), better known as Su Dongpo, was a poet, essayist, calligrapher, painter and statesman of the Northern Song. He was exiled repeatedly for his outspokenness - to Huangzhou, to Huizhou, and finally to Hainan - and it was in exile that he wrote his masterpieces, this among them. Despite persecution and the loss of his wife, he never lost his humour. The closing couplet is the one everyone knows: I only pray our life be long, and our souls together heavenward fly.
Inspired by the poem, this is a minimalist portrait of the bittersweet solitude of drinking alone under the moon: impermanence, nostalgia, lost friends, the fleeting nature of the thing.
The upper notes evoke a cool breeze and a bright moon, the ethereal sensation of drinking in moonlight. The lower notes come slower and warmer, sandalwood and orris acting as the turn, like moonlight through a veil, for a long and sleepless night. Regret is the eye of the whole composition: intense and resigned at once, castoreum at its centre evoking warm tears, set against the sweetness of osmanthus. It concludes in tranquillity, moonlight bathing the mountains and the heart, cashmeran mimicking the silky touch of cloth. Self-comfort and solace.
Borneol. One of the four traditional Chinese incense materials, often burned in eternal lamps. Here it stands for the bitter chill of moonlight and the endless night.
Castoreum. A rare animalic material, used in Traditional Chinese Medicine for hysteria and insomnia. The perfumer uses it for the warm sensation of tears welling. Together with borneol it produces a distinct ink-like aroma, which he later realised was an unintentional homage to the ancient practice of blending borneol and musk to make Imperial Ink.
Composition: set out thematically rather than as a pyramid.
- Moon: Borneol, Olibanum, Frankincense
- Liquor: Maotai accord, Wormwood
- Wind: Oakmoss
- Sleepless: Sandalwood, Iris
- Regret: Osmanthus, Castoreum
- Serene: Cashmeran
Perfumer: Tianle Feng, 2024
inci list: Alcohol, Parfum (Fragrance), Aqua (Water), Alpha-Isomethyl Ionone, Dipropylene Glycol, Pogostemon Cablin Oil, Santalum Album Oil, BHT, Benzyl Alcohol, Dimethyl Phenethyl Acetate, Coumarin, Eugenol, Denatonium Benzoate
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