Wrote today’s newsletter from the Lisbon Airport, fueled by espresso mixed with Coke over ice. There’s no better way to debrief on a week in Portugal. Tonight, I fly back to France, though I’m in Paris for the weekend.
WHAT I’M INTO
Press Play: Summertime Clothes by Animal Collective
How cared for are you? Our friend’s girlfriend made her a playlist for Lisbon so we played it on our countryside drives. She included this song that immediately transported me to the summer before college when I’d listen to Animal Collective and think I had better music taste than everyone. I did. This is the perfect song to kick off the proverbial summer (real summer starts in June, MDW is fake summer). Sweet summer night and I’m stripped to my…
Borrow from ur local public library: Silk by Alessandro Baricco. Or if you’re reading it in French (I am), Soie by Alessandro Baricco. It was originally published in Italian. A short, but powerful read, the historical novel tells the tale of Hervé Joncour, a young silkworm breeder in Lavilledieu (north of Marseille) whose worms are dying. He goes to Japan for a clandestine Japanese silk egg operation and falls in love with his supplier’s wife (mistress? sex slave? unclear). Don’t worry, he is also married. Joncour and the Japanese woman never speak, but he is deeply in love. Whatever his definition of deep love is. Sometimes, it can be easier to play out desire and obsession with the idealized version of someone we didn’t seriously date. There’s less mess when you only get to know someone’s best sides.
Baricco opens the book by mocking Joncour’s girly occupation:
On était en 1861. Flaubert écrivait Salammbô, l’éclairage électrique n’était encore qu’une hypothèse et Abraham Lincoln, de l’autre côté de l’Océan, livrait une guerre dont il ne verrait pas la fin. Hervé Joncour avait trente-deux ans. Il achetait, et il vendait. Des vers à soie.”
Men used to go to war.
Anti-Algorithm News: “The Private Life of Perfume” by Guy Trebay (Town & Country)
Growing up in LA, I looked forward to the first jasmine bloom every year. Jasmine, jacaranda, and citrus flowers told the scent story of our family neighborhood walks. Olfaction is so important to me. Personally, smell beats the rest of my senses in triggering the most souvenirs. My dad’s aftershave as he kissed us goodbye before school. The notes of cinnamon and nutmeg from Dog Keith Moon’s paws when he was a puppy. The mix of magnolia, tree bark, grass, and gasoline one Sunday afternoon after a speeding car lost control and crashed into our front yard. I have a sensitive nose.
Trebay writes about his visit to the area colloquially known as the “Jasmine Trail” in India. When we think of fragrance and perfumery, we often think of France. But India has had a major influence on global perfumery. I learned a lot from this piece.
WHAT I’M UP TO