creating scents

on never ending trials

today’s picture shows you a sketch, 300×400 pixels, of a gardenia, an ideal illustration, created from an archetypical memory of what a gardenia might look like. Next to the screen on which I painted it sits a formula, version 8.1, printed on paper from excel that waits to get mixed today.

Hopefully, I will find the time to do so before my interviewer comes over after noon: A visitor from Hongkong, a writer for a magazine there. A visit to which I am totally looking forward to and I am keen to show my place where I actually mix trials. A chaotic place, organized by an line of thoughts that an outsider does not get, probably.

Anyhow: I am going to mix another version. The trouble, my trouble, to find the right form for the gardenia centric scent are actually quite typical for me. It is pretty rare that a few trials are enough to come to a pleasing solution. Usually, I work for a year or more on an idea. So…. where’s the trouble with the versions I have so far?

One issue was fixation, making things stay, for a while at least. I did a version 8 that addressed this issue rather effectively, and I loved the dry down that is a bit dark and not too sweet, but I hated the opening, and I will use what was good there, in a version that I labelled 8.1 , which is basically a hybrid between version 5.6 and 8.0. I brought in a new player: Coumarin (think Tonka beans) , and will shift some proportions and then I will see where we are heading. In the mean time, things got rather complicated in this formula and I am optimistic, as always: Before mixing and smelling the result the world is all bright.