An Announcement

A Once and Future Genie

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– Where we were and where I hope we go from here

You may have wondered. You may (or not!) have wondered when the Genie would get her derrière in gear and start posting those reviews and musings again, checked the TAG Facebook page to see if you might have missed a post (no worries, you haven’t!). You wonder …

Is that it? 265 blog posts and <BAM!/POW!> – no more? No more rambling reviews that haul in everything from history to literature to … well, whatever I can think to throw into a review of that odiferous stuff of dream and emotion we call perfume?

Well, no.

As I’ve stated before numerous times, back in the day (2010, and I can’t believe that, either), I began my first perfume blog, Scent Less Sensibilities, as a writing exercise. The more you do it, the better you get, so both the saying and Stephen King’s On Writing go, therefore, if I could sink my verbal fangs into communicating what is in effect a wordless art, I might learn a thing or two about writing along the way.

I dare say I have. Writing about perfume taught me so much about writing, in fact, I applied every single trick I learned by the time the fall of 2013 rolled around and my first novel of over 780 pages was edited for publication from the ground up in a blistering five weeks, including proof-reading, cover compositing and final adjustments, which also taught me a thing or two about deadlines and my ability to fulfill them.

Here you and I are these four years later. You’re still reading, and I’m still writing – if rather less than I used to, not because the words have dried up, but because my time is no longer my own.

But what if it could be?

To that end, and all thanks to the Dude and his “you’re-way-too-good-not-to-get paid/far-more-people-need-to-read-you” attitude, I decided back in June to join Patreon and hook a paywall into The Alembicated Genie.

The paywall goes live on September 20^th. It would have been earlier, but Mercury Retrograde got in the way.

How it will work

Patreon is basically your chance to feel – if even a little – like a Medici. You – the Lorenzo or, say, the Eleonora de Medici – contribute a token sum to the starving artist, which would be me. For this, you will have five options:

The Subscription Option:

For a measly $5.00 a month, you subscribe to the latest TAG posts – meaning, the latest two. If there’s an interest, I can add a monthly newsletter with things like rebates and special offers, short articles on materials, spotlights on perfumers, Creative Directors and so on as well as links to other revelations from Planet Perfume. TAG has – and this still surprises me – 225 subscribers at the time of writing. If everyone subscribed through Patreon, I could not only finance TAG’s overhead, I’d also have created my very own student job. The job of edifying YOU, my readers, twice a week, and not only that. You would in effect be my employers, which really puts the onus on me to deliver the smelly verbiage twice a week, posted every Wednesday and Saturday. No more, because I’m also a student at the moment with a heavy work- and reading load.

The Gift Subscription

Maybe you like what I write and you read so much, you’d like to gift a subscription to a friend, colleague or family member. For the exact same price of $5.00 a month, you can do just that. Tell the world! Tell your friends! Or simply gift them a subscription and let them judge for themselves.

The One-Off

If a dedicated subscription is a bit more commitment than you’re able to handle, you have the option to pay $0.99 for reading the latest two reviews. That might be feasible so you can decide whether or not my idiosyncratic style and perspective is a good fit for you – or not. And it’s only 99 cents. I’ll wager you’ve blown far more than that on perfume, yes?

The Tip Jar

Once upon a storied time a long, long time ago, I used to busk with a friend on Strøget, the Walking Street in Copenhagen. We sang a capella whatever we could think of at the time, but I recall a distinct predilection for Kid Creole and the Coconuts songs, and ‘Gina, Gina’ in particular. The tip jar option is that virtual hat on the ground. Contribute however much or little you please, but for reasons of logistics I’m unable to control, the minimum is $1.00.

The Freebie

Paywall, schmaywall. Blogs should be free, you might think. They have been for this long – whether with advertising or without – so why stop now? This option is for you: Pay nothing. That’s right. Nothing. Because I garnered a reputation, such as it is, for something, and you want to know why, you just don’t want the obligation or the commitment of subscribing. So in the future, all reviews, musings and general fragrant blathering except the last two are free to read, to comment upon (something I greatly applaud/appreciate, and all comments get a reply), and to link to. (I will be notified if you do, and I’m more grateful than you know.)

The Filthy Lucre

I enter this perilous undertaking on the premise that I’ll be lucky to get five subscribers, if that many. I’m only too aware that I’ve lost a metric ton of street-cred and influence these past meagerly posted years, and I’m not sure I’ll ever get back to where I was in 2011-2012, but by golly, I’ll die trying. What I’m emphatically NOT out to do is score a bunch of free cash and leave you, my dearly beloved readers, in the lurch. In other words:

I’m not doing this for the money. I’m doing this for the motivation.

Say, I do land five subscribers – well, the way I see it, that’s $25 I didn’t have before – for writing about perfume. Any amount is x amount of dollars I didn’t have before.

Each of the four first options has a specific purpose ear-marked. The subscription and the one-off money goes toward overhead; web hosting (I no longer use WordPress hosting), domain upkeep, and blog templates, and the best ones are more expensive than you’d think. 2017 has been an expensive year in that regard, but I have some hopes things will run very much smoother in the future.

The gift subscription and tip jar options will go towards something equally vital to the purposes of TAG – a new computer. Four years ago, I crowd sourced a ‘new’ used 17” MacBook Pro, which has been a godsend for this writer. Four years on, I’m still profoundly grateful many of you made that happen.

Having said that, it was used. Like every Mac I’ve ever owned since 1997. It still works beautifully and without a glitch, but it IS nine years old by now, the frame around the screen has broken, and I’m no longer able to close it properly, and therefore, no longer able to transport it everywhere. (I suspect Janice Divacat and her annoying, forbidden habit of lying on top of the closed computer, something she well knows is strictly verboten.)

I’ve been given a Windows 8 laptop (which is big, bulky, and an Epic Pain) for school by the Dude, who is vehemently against everything Apple. I have no words for how much I loathe and detest Windows 8, and I can’t afford to upgrade to Windows 10. Even if I could, I’m emphatically NOT a Windows person, although I mean no slight to those who are.

As I’ve tried to explain to a linear-thinking, rational, stats-and-specs-obsessed, non-creative IT supporter, it’s not about the specifications. It’s about something else.

Since I began writing in earnest in 1998, I’ve written on Macs. Some were big and bulky and beige (my least favorite color), and two others were sleek, silver laptops. All could – and indeed still do – run my beloved Adobe package of graphics software (a necessity), MS Word and all the other bells and whistles.

So it’s become a habit and also more than a little superstition. Those two MacBooks I’ve owned since 2008 have made these very words possible. Closer to my point is this significant revelation:

A Mac lights my imagination on fire in ways Windows never, ever could. Not only that, I consider my MacBook to be an indispensible family member the same way I regard my iPhone 6. It engages my emotions daily, takes care of all the background stuff, and offers the shortest way from the A of ideas of the Z of execution in the most painless way possible. If that means I’ll be forking out an insane amount of money, then yes, I’ll pay for that lack of (daily) aggravation.

So the tip jar and the one-offs will go towards saving for this beauty. Like my battered 17”, it can do absolutely everything I’ll need a computer to do – for TAG, for my future books and stories, and for school. Also, like I said earlier, I’ve never unpacked a computer straight from the box to use, all shiny, fresh and pristine. I can take it with me everywhere. And – important for my personal sense of aesthetics, and to hell with stats and specs – it’s pretty. These things matter, or is that just me and my own demented mind? I might get it. I might not. But it would be at least a possibility, and I can hope for that.

Anything left over – and as I said earlier, I have extremely low-key expectations – will go towards keeping the Genie afloat in samples and/or decants for review.

The Future Genie

I’ve been sitting on a stash of what I dub Big Reviews. Meaning important perfume releases I can’t wait to edify you with. Some are stories, some are simply reviews, but all of them are proof of why I love to write about the art (which it is) of perfume. A few are brands I haven’t reviewed before, and that’s another tangent I’d like to go on – to review those brands who don’t get so much attention, along with some too important to ignore. I’ve found things to blow my socks off, and things to rile me up for being so uniquely horrifying.

I can’t wait to share them with all of you, can’t wait to discuss them, argue about them, and expand all our horizons in the process.

Speaking of process, YOU – yes, you! – are the most important part. I’d love to read what you might think and feel and say about all of this.

Watch this space – and let me know in the comments what you think!

Photo: A still from Fritz Lang’s 1925 film, Metropolis.

A Better Brand of Fishbowl

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– On the Genie’s absence, the changing state of the blog/vlogosphere and those all-important New Beginnings

Dear readers,

That I have you reading this still, even after being MIA with no reviews for so long, is an honor I’m nowhere sure I deserve. Therefore, I’ll start with the Big One:

Thank you from the bottom of my black and overflowing heart.

Yet for the longest time, it seemed my life was expanding in all sorts of ways that left no room for perfumes, for contemplation, or indeed for any kind of sensual appreciation involving words, bottled genies or meandering musings in the intersections of all three. I seemed to live in one mode only: pedal to the metal and predilections as well as perfumes be damned. Somehow, some way, there was simply Too Much To Do between waking at godless hours and sleeping, and perfume writing became yet another guilt trip I could beat myself over the head with for not doing, or I could just dump it altogether. (Trust me, I thought of it!)

But at a time when my writing is going other, more noticed places alongside other, far more noted writers, I came to realize a rather startling fact:

My life was missing a dimension, and maybe even all my writing, too. I still wore perfumes daily, still found myself almost automatically searching for context, for story, for texture and association, even as I now wore it solely for my own pleasure, and even focused on the perfumes I loved without reservations or inhibitions, the ones that felt like a second-skin extension of my own self on different days.

I rarely posted my SoTD on Instagram or Twitter (I gave up on Twitter for a time), I didn’t participate in the myriad Facebook groups of Planet Perfume, and in fact, simply removed myself from the conversation altogether. It wasn’t a conscious decision at all, it just happened that way. Lemming new releases, participating in splits and conversations about this or that creation, Keeping Up With the Hi’s and L’Eaus – all failed to fill me with even a sliver of excitement when I had other and weightier things on my mind.

This might have had something to do with certain emails and PMs I received castigating me for non-conformity, sucking up to brands and/or my particular brand of fragrant iconoclasm/bs. It was a knife straight in the aorta of all the cardinal sins a writer may be guilty of; vanity, narcissism or simply a sense of relevancy. Most of you are well aware I subscribe to the Room For Everyone School of Writing, but apparently, there wasn’t, if … ‘there shouldn’t even be room for crappy, hysterically overwrought writers like you who can’t just tell it like it is.’

Well … no. I can’t do that. I tried. I failed. I also for no reason at all forgot or overlooked emails I should have answered, and in general behaved like a massive, unprofessional flake. Maybe I should have been just a short-lived blip on the radar of Planet Perfume, here one year, gone and forgotten all these years later?

I also tried to ignore that small voice at the very bottom of my existential soup bowl that said and certainly felt I had failed YOU – for really, what – or even where? – would I be without you? As an individual, as a perfumoholic or as a writer?

Each and every one of you readers has made me the writer I am today. I say this without so much as a smidge of irony and my hand on my heart. Not only have you made me a better writer, you have made me a better, more well-rounded, less stuck-in-the-mud person. By not writing, by not reviewing, by not and by knots (the ones I tied myself into), I felt I had somehow failed everyone who had ever believed in me, in my idiosyncratic/weirdo approach to perfume writing that kept insisting on context, on texture, or on story.

For, as a job counselor stated recently in an unrelated context, the storyteller in me will o-u-t, even in situations it might not be entirely appropriate.

So far as I’m aware, that’s the hallmark of a writer, which indeed is how I choose to define myself above almost all things else. A writer of stories (mostly horror, for reasons best explained elsewhere), a lover of history, and a perfumaniac diehard who misplaced her iconoclastic/idiosyncratic/oddball/weirdo brand of magick trying to chase all sorts of dragons who would much rather roast me than revere me. That, too, has Got To Change.

As of this moment – noon on a chilly Easter Sunday that is gray, overcast and with a lot of rain promised later – I stand before you on the edge of a precipice called Reinvention. Over the course of the next few months, my life will be turned entirely upside down. Hinging on an upcoming interview, I hope to be accepted into a new and shinier career four years from now. I’m in the process of re-evaluating my living situation, my bad habits and even my wardrobe.

If that were all, that would be plenty, yet the headstrong Reinvention Tour doesn’t stop there, for two scant weeks ago, I submitted my first short story to my editor/publisher/fellow iconoclast friend to debut in a Danish horror/weird fiction anthology called ‘Project 1900’, which for me is a Really Big Deal. Ten writers – of which I’m one – were each given a brief and a decade of the 20^th century, and instructions to capture as best we could the temporal flavor of our chosen time.

I chose the 1970s and disco, chose to completely divorce myself from my own self-created mythos of God and Dev(il), and proceeded to go all-out in a brand-new direction. I don’t know how it will be/was received, and really, that’s none of my business anyway. The Dude is the only one who has had the story read aloud, and his first reaction was unprintable. His second – which followed the first – was an indication that maybe I didn’t suck as hard as I thought I did.

I fully intend to translate it into English and make it available as a short story to publish on Amazon later this year. And just to be clear: an under-the-radar perfume features in the story, as well as a super-famous (for 1978) one. Now, you know!

You can take the writer away from perfume, but …

Thanks to that Reinvention Tour, there will also be changes to TAG. (You might have noticed the new logo/header above). I’ll still write about my dearly beloved indies, the other iconoclasts and weirdos and non-conformists I so adore, but I’d also and very much like to continue into new, uncharted territory with other under-the-radar perfumes, the ones that don’t get a lot of free PR, the ones not even you sophisticats have heard about and the ones I’ve never even considered before. Two reviews for three smash hits (at least on my part) are currently underway in terms of research, since these will be stories, and all I can do is hope I rise to the occasions these perfumes have inspired.

Every once in a while, I’ll also add a short video summation of a review, not to give any of the perfume review bigwigs on YouTube sleepless nights (which won’t happen), but more as a bottom line reference. Or irreverence, I’m still not entirely sure!

Most of all, it’s time for an upgrade. Because you’re worth it. And because the importance of a better brand of fishbowl can never be underestimated!

Yours always,

The Alembicated Genie

A Note To My Readers

Ladies, gentlemen and fellow perfumoholics –

As you may have noticed in the course of these past few months, I have not posted as frequently as I once did.

In part because life got in the way, but mainly due to a most propitious and auspicious occurrence of a fateful kind that doesn’t happen often and which I have been sworn to absolute secrecy about. This has swept all other considerations and obligations away, and must take priority over everything else for a while.

No worries – it’s all good and the world will know very soon!

At present, I have three reviews of major new releases from favorite brands I shall try to complete over the course of the next month or so as my time permits. Believe it or not, perfume writing satisfies an aesthetic itch my other writing does not, and I have truly missed being able to review as I once did.

But most important of all, I wanted to inform you that you are neither neglected nor forgotten.

Simply that when opportunity came knocking… I had no choice but to open the door as wide as I could!

Thank you for understanding.

Have no fear – I shall return with wonders galore!

Fragrantly yours –

The Genie