I know you're late for your next parade.

My birthday is this week and I already got my first present, which was a Fresh Sugar Kisses Mini-Lip Duo from Sephora as part of my membership. Yes, I'm counting that. I love going and getting my free gift, and no, I don't care that it's a trap to get me into the store in the first place. You know what I say to that? "Pop, pop!" FN1.

I also bought myself the Caron sampler pack at Luckyscent, and a few other things I'll be telling you about soon. I'm thinking about getting one of the London Blooms LEs from Jo Malone, so I'll probably have something about those up this week.  I stopped at a counter last week and I can't stop thinking about the Peony & Moss one...

Yesterday at work one of my fellow cubemonkeys brought in a T-Pain mike which autotunes your voice for our boss to use during the staff meeting since she can't talk loud enough for everyone to hear. I don't know what was weirder: that he did it, or that she proceeded to use it. But I digress...

The tulip heads are struggling to emerge on the Hill, despite us having some ice and snow the last couple of days. For the last twelve years, I've known Spring was on the verge of arrival by watching for those tulip shoots. I don't know what I'll be watching this time next year, but I do have a list of scents I will be wearing into the hope of seasonal renewal.

Newly added to the list? Providence Perfumes Co. Hindu Honeysuckle is described as being "From India With Love... Revered for its lush aroma, honeysuckle symbolizes generosity and kindness. Notes of sweet Indian Jasmine Sambac meld with green vetivert, musk ambrette, rose and coriander. Crisp bergamot belies the sweetness of honeysuckle."

Hindu Honeysuckle is a terrific Spring scent. Not overly sweet, this is a nice rich floral scent. It's almost...lemony at the open on me, surprisingly light and cirtusy for the musk base. It's not at all creamy like some of the other honeysuckles I've tried and there is nothing foodie sweet about it. Instead it is reminds me of the feeling of playing on your back against the warm ground as crystalline sunlight falls through the tender leaves of newly budding trees across your face. What I like most is the tartness; it manages to be lemony floral without smelling like astringent or cleaner. I think for me what saves it is the heavy warmth of the musk. A truly fine warmer weather scent, somehow delicate and still strong. Sillage is low to moderate on me, and the longevity was fantastic! I could still smell it on my skin eight hours later.

Available direct from the perfumer, you can get 1oz (33 ml) for $115.00 or a 6ml travel atomizer for $26.00. Samples also available and recommended. 3.5 of 5 nods.

~ ~ ~

Another surprising spring scent? slumberhouse Sana. I was thinking of it just last weekend when I was driving around the Oregon Coast in the freezing rain and loving every minute of it.

If you’ve ever listened to Rachel’s “Selenography” while driving through the crushingly scenic roads that wind through the woods along the Oregon coast late at night you’ll have an idea of the things that inspired Sana. Absolutely gender neutral (though I like to imagine the right woman wearing this), Sana is an atmospheric perfume that revolves around a chord of tagetes syrup, fir balsam and suede. Behind this is an ethereal smattering of magnolia, thorns, honey, red raspberry leaf absolute and sweet birch.

The open smells strong of a medicinal sticky wood resin and dry pencil shavings.  There's something else almost peppery.  I didn't get an honey, really, but a lot of thorns and birch and a little but of magnolia.  The red raspberry leaf, if you get any, should come in as this faint sweet highlight.  At least it did for me and only when I was mentally looking for it.  It is a strange and lovely scent, but not traditionally oceanic or beachy at all.  Keep that in mind when you try it.  Still, for me it reminds of the cold wet Spring of woods of coastal Oregon, which was strange and lovely. Low sillage on me, Sana wore close to the skin for 4-6 hours.  3 of 5 nods.

Sana is available here 30ml for $75.00. Samples also available.

What are you smelling for spring my lovelies? Has any warmth hit your climes yet? What do you think I should get for my birthday?

"Time.
Thought I'd make friends with time.
Thought we'd be flying.
Maybe not this time.
Baker, baker, baking a cake.
Make me a day; make me whole again."
~ "Baker, Baker," Tori Amos

__________________
FN1. Is anyone else really excited Community returns to NBC on March 15?

Six seasons and a movie!

Favorite coupledoms in Movies/TV/Books

Dear reader,

Do you know what a 'shipper is? It's someone who gets super into relationships in pop culture and feels very strongly about the fates and futures of said relationships. I, dear reader, am a shipper. I'm not hardcore, per se. I don't write fanfiction to create alternate universes where my couples get together. I don't wear 'TEAM' t-shirts. But I do strongly identify with a fictional relationship occasionally and root for that relationship.

So in honor of it being Valentine's week, and because I am feeling especially sappy this year, here is a list of a few of my favorite 'ships from movies, books, and television, along with a (sometimes unconventional) song for them and a scent or two.

~~~

1. Debi Newberry & Martin Blank, Grosse Pointe Blank

You know the story. "Spring of '96. Two young lovers with frightening natural chemistry. A girl sits in a seven hundred dollar prom dress on the front steps of her house, waiting for the most romantic moment of her young life. Boy never shows up. Not until now." Debi and Martin are wonderful because they lead us to believe those that loved us once, and loved us best, might still love us again. Even in an ugly callous cynical and sarcastic world like the one of Grosse Pointe Blank, love conquers all -- in fully-automatic style.

Martin: "I'm sorry if I fucked up your life."
Debi: "It's not over yet."

Song: Peter Gabriel, "Let My Love Open the Door (To Your Heart);" Neko Case, "This Tornado Loves You"
Perfume: I always think of Debi (half) ironically wearing CK Obsession to the reunion. Is that weird? Martin does have obsessive recurring dreams about her... Martin doesn't wear anything. Someone might smell him coming.

~~~

2. Jane Eyre & Edward Fairfax Rochester, Jane Eyre

Now and forever, Jane and Edward will stand out in my mind as two sad and broken people who find each other and, despite great obstacles of circumstance and social convention, rebel against everything in defense of their love for one another. Is their relationship problematic? Sure. Could I forgive Edward if I were Jane? I don't know. I only know that when she hears his name on the wind, she goes to him, and I am glad she does.

Songs: Depeche Mode, "Somebody," The Decemberists, "Hazards of Love"
Perfume: For Jane, Guerlain Mitsouko; For Rochester, Guerlain Habit Rouge.

~~~

3. Nora Grey & Patch Cipriano, Hush, Hush series

I wasn't sure how I felt about Patch initially. He ran hot/cold and was often mean. way meaner than Daniel was to Luce in Fallen. It's hard to resist roguish, though. Is it wrong when I mentally picture Patch, he's basically Jess Mariano? But you know, more of a '50s tough, and angelic. I like that Nora doesn't always trust him and isn't always willing to listen. I like that she makes her own decisions. Over the course of the series, Nora grows into one of the bravest female protagonists I've found in YA today. I'm excited to see how the series resolves.

Songs: Lou Reed, "This Magic Moment;" The Smiths "There is a Light That Never Goes Out"
Perfume: Patch is supposed to smell like "mint and earth," so I'm tossing CB I Hate Perfume Black March onto the list, but I admit I also associate Il Profumo Patchouli Noir with Patch and Nora.

~~~

4. Ethan Wate & Lena Duchannes, Beautiful Creatures

Ethan & Lena - you want to talk about two kids who will break your heart? Here they are. The most wonderful thing about this series is that the stories are told from Ethan's perspective, and he's the devoted and wounded one most of the time. Lena is confused, wild, willful, and non-conformist. And even when they're apart, their love is strong enough it could reconfigure time and space, even tear the world in two.

Songs: The Band Perry, "Walk Me Down the Middle;" Alison Brown, "Every Day I Write the Book;" The White Stripes, "Sugar Never Tasted So Good"
Perfume: Lena's scent, rosemary and lemons, which always makes me think of Miller Harris Fleurs de Bois, because it's meant to be a warm weather scent and it is always hot in Gatlin.

~~~

5. Bella Swan & Jacob Black, Twilight

Yeah, yeah, Edward is forever, he and Bella are both eternal sparkly diamond parents. Call me a heretic, but to me the more interesting relationship isn't the first person you love who screws you over, abandons you, and breaks your heart. It's the person who comes after them. The person that says "Yes, I see how broken and messed up you are. That's okay. I'll love you, anyway." That's the person who restores my faith in humanity, my hope for a better love tomorrow. You know that Garth Brook's song, "Unanswered Prayers"? I love that song. Because Charlie is right - sometimes you have to love what's good for you. Or at least, here in the non-sparkly world, you should.

Songs: Soltero, "The Moment You Said Yes;" Linda Ronstadt, "When Will I Be Loved;" Natasha Bedingfield, "Pocket Full of Sunshine"
Perfume: I always think Bella must smell like food since people want to eat her, but if we focus on the non-blood drinkable parts of Bella (Are there any?), then I want to give her and Jacob a warm, sunny scent reflective of their warmth and Bella's desert origins, like Tauer Perfumes L'Air du Desert Marocain or  Olympic Orchids Arizona. (Too on the nose?)

~~~

6. The Doctor & Rose Tyler, Doctor Who

They traveled through time and space, exploring both together and saving the world.  They literally bent (and sometimes broke) the laws of the universe to find one another even when it seemed. Their isn't just a love for the ages, it is a love for all ages, all times, all dimensions. He's her mad man in a blue box; she's his Bad Wolf. Enough said.

Songs: Lykke Li, "Unrequited Love;" David Bowie, "Modern Love;" Beatles, "Here, There, and Everywhere"
Perfume: I want to put Rose in something excellent like By Kilian Back to Black, but she's probably wearing Burberry Brit with those overalls. And I can't scent the Doctor, but I  know Esscentual Alchemy Natural Perfumes has taken a delightful stab with Time Lord, found here.

~~~

7. Elena Gilbert and Stefan Salvatore, The CW's The Vampire Diaries

I know, I know. Believe me. Damon and Elena means more Damon, and who couldn't use more of that?  Damon is so hot sometimes I think my eyeballs will literally melt out of my head. But when it comes to Elena, I'm going to have to say that she was a healthier, happier person with Stefan, and Stefan was a less Ripper/slightly more broody version of himself. The love each other and they're better for and with each other. We're all going to have to deal with that.

(Which leaves Damon conveniently available....right?)

Songs: Fiona Apple, "Slow Like Honey;"  Feist, "1-2-3-4;" Iron & Wine, "Such Great Heights"
Perfume: Elena is so innocent, but I can't help but imagine her running around Mystic Falls in Agent Provocateur. Okay, maybe she only wears that only when she starts running around in one of those ridiculous Founder's event ballgowns.  The rest of the time she probably rocks something like Prada Infusion d'Iris. Stefan probably wears something youthful and full of denial, like Davidoff Cool Water or Thierry Mugler Angel AMen. (And I like to imagine Damon wearing Bvlgari Black, and his songs for Elena have to be Chris Issak's "Wicked Game" and Ok Go's "A Million Ways to be Cruel".)

~~~

8. Logan Echolls & Veronica Mars, Veronica Mars

Oh, Veronica and Logan. How I love to want to kill both of you for being stupid.  If ever two people were a disaster of epic love proportions, it is you two. You hurt each other over and over, and yet there is not a moment after the kiss on the balcony that I cannot see you together. It just seems cataclysmically meant to be.

Logan: "I thought our story was epic, you know? You and me."
Veronica: "Epic how?"
Logan: "Spanning years and continents. Lives ruined and blood shed. Epic!"
Veronica: "Come on. Ruined lives? Bloodshed? You really think a relationship should be that hard?"
Logan: "No one writes songs about the ones that come easy."

Songs: Mike Doughty, "I Hear the Bells;" Blair, "Hearts;" The Be Good Tanyas, "In Spite of All the Damage I've Done"
Perfume: Veronica wears Jovan White Musk (Okay, this is a cheat KBell wears it herself, and I can't not think that when I mentally sniff her.) For Logan, something warm and sexy and not necessarily traditional - Costume National 21 or CB/Alan Cumming's 2nd Cumming.

~~~

9. Buffy Summers & Angel, Buffy: The Vampire Slayer

One girl in all the world... and one vampire redeemed find love against all odds. It's written in the stars by the Powers that Be.  Some day, hopefully in the not so distant future, she will stop carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders. And when she does, the monster she made a man will be waiting. (I mentally retcon the Angel/Cordelia fiasco. When it comes to Angel and Buffy, there can be only one.)

Angel: "You still my girl?"
Buffy: "Always."

Songs: Urge Overkill, "Girl You'll Be a Woman Soon;" Bat for Lashes "Siren Song;" Tom Petty, "Angel Dream (No. 2)"
Perfume: Serge Luten Bois de Violette, which I cannot justify. I don't even know where Buffy would come by such a thing. I just feel like she would. Or maybe Atelier Grand Neroli? Sweet and not necessarily innocent or fragile, but hopeful nonetheless, particularly in those early seasons.

~~~

10. Sydney Bristow & Michael Vaughan, Alias

In the first three seasons of this show, their love was so amazing and palpable and yet played with such restraint and subtly that I could not get enough of it. There is this scene from the first season that completely sold me on this relationship. Sydney is having an awful time.  She calls Vaughan and they meet on a pier pretending not to be together.  Overcome, Sydney starts sobbing, and you can just tell it is killing Vaughan he can't hurt her or help her or make it better.  Then Sydney reaches out and takes his hand, even though she's not supposed to and its dangerous and stupid and could blow her cover and get them both killed, because she cannot help herself. Even though  she can't even look back at him, and it doesn't matter because...he's her anchor.  He's the thing that keeps her in that moment from giving up.  From that moment on you just know somewhere deep inside, no matter what happens, they'll find their way back to one another.

Songs: Peggy Lee & Benny Goodman, "All I Need Is You"; Beatles, "I've Just Seen a Face;" Robin Thicke, "When I Get You Alone"
Perfume: Sydney might where a lot of different scents with her costumes, but she strikes me as a classic sort of girl -- Chanel No. 5 or Worth Je Reviens, maybe? Something that screams classic and elegant and refined, but not too noticeable - a great cover for the dangerous, adventure-loving spy in us all.

I have a tough time scenting Michael Vartan because I feel like, having spent a huge portion of his formative years in France, he'd have some strong personal preferences.  Vaughan, on the other hand, probably wears something very work-a-day government handler, like Old Spice. Boring, conventional, reliable, but also...attractive.

~~~

That's my list.  What couples for you 'ship, dear reader? I see Titanic is being re-released in 3D soon.  Who wants to tell me what they think Jack or Rose would wear?  Wish I'd done Tara & Willow from Buffy instead? Any Luke Danes/Lorelai Gilmore fans out there? What about Wash & Zoe from Firefly? Or Brian Kinney & Justin Taylor from Queer as Folk? (I will never forget that dance scene.) 

Inquiring 'shippy minds want to know.

Happy Valentine's Day from Feminine Things.

Happy Valentines Day!

From my little corner of the world to yours,

I wish you all a happy Tuesday with those you love,

both near and far.

Brunch and a trip to buy the newest
Buffy Season 9 comics -
our version of a V-Day date!

Jo Malone's Red Roses Chronicle - my gift to myself.

And congrats to our winner, ccdouglass!

Thanks for being my bloggy valentine.

Please email feminine(dot)things @ gmail(dot)com so I can send you your lovely gift! And thanks to all those who entered.  More drawings to come!

Is there room for more perfume writing?

Blogging: A Mission Statement

Pat at OlfactaRama had a great post about the general rumbling among fragrance bloggers regarding the 'glut' of new perfumer reviewers/writers/bloggers. I've seen this rumbling around for a bit now, most recently in sort of warning piece/guest post by Vanessa Musson of Bonkers for Perfume, at Now Smell This! entitled "5 things to think about before you start a perfume blog," and then a follow-up post, "The Sequel: 5 Things I Have Learnt From Perfume Blogging."

A mission statement?
You know that's right!

Now I don't want to pick on Vanessa. She is not the first, nor will she be the last, to talk about perfume bloggers or the number thereof or what makes a good/bad blog. Also, I think she had some interesting and useful things to say. FN1. But I do want to talk about this whole "why are you blogging/should you be blogging" thing because I've been wanting to comment on it for a while, and I didn't want to write a thousand word manifesto in someone else's comments section.

Okay, maybe not a manifesto.  It's more like...

A mission statement.

That's right people. I'm about to go all Jerry Maguire up in here. FN2. In fact, let's run with that as a theme, shall we? FN3.

I hated myself... no, I hated my place in the world.

Let me tell you why I started Feminine Things. I was in law school. I was miserable. I had leveraged my future to the hilt to earn my degree, only to find out that I hated my classmates/future colleagues and my industry. FN4. I hadn't written anything fun or interesting in a while. I felt as though my logic-driven studies was literally sucking the creativity out of me through my pores.

At the same time, I met Angela from Now Smell This! through our respective jobs. I told her I was thinking of buying myself a bottle of perfume for my thirtieth birthday. She brought me some samples.

So that's what oakmoss
looks like...

I summarily lost my mind and began buying tens of samples. FN5. I kept trying to keep straight what I'd tried and hadn't, what I liked best, why I liked one thing more than another. I didn't know anything about perfume.

 I had never heard the word "chypre." I couldn't tell a gardenia from a jasmine, a leather rose from a powder rose. I couldn't pronounce most of the perfume house names. I didn't even know what the big houses were.

But I had some free time. And I needed to keep track of what I was smelling. And I needed a writing prompt to help me begin writing again. I figured, "What could be harder than writing about the way something smelled for people who couldn't actually be present to smell it?

So I started this blog.

If this [points to heart] is empty, this [points to head] doesn't matter.

Let me tell you how little I had to go on. I didn't own any non-Body Shop/Bath & Body Works perfume when I started. No one linked to me. No one. My friends didn't even read my blog. You know how much I cared? Not even a little.

Those sunglasses are to hide
my tear-filled eyes.

I didn't start the blog to get readers. I needed a place to think and reflect and write. I needed, some days, a place to scream.  I needed a place for me.

Perfume inspired me. It was overwhelming at first.  I would put something on, and BAM! The perfume I was smelling made me feel...everything.

I would smell a scent and it would remind me of my deceased grandfather, and I wept. Another would remind me of the smell of gardenias in my grandmother's backyard...and I blubbered for an hour. A scent reminiscent of my old high school boy friend? More tears.

Basically, I cried a lot.

But I also wrote a lot. I remembered how much I liked words, liked the texture and feel of them in my mouth as I read my writing back to myself. I loved the vivid images perfumes evoked, the random pop cultural connections that would spring into my head when I sniffed at my hand, and just how damned happy I was. My perfume made me so happy. Still does.

First class, that's what's wrong. It used to be a better meal, now it's a better life.

They get free samples in first class?

Even over a year later, I didn't have anyone sending me samples. FN6.   I didn't have any awards. I didn't have any invites to be part of special blogging events. I still didn't have any links to other bloggers. I didn't even have someone to swap with because Angela and I had both left our positions and, sadly, didn't see much of one another.

 I was spending all my disposable income and then some on samples, but there was no way I could keep up with blogs like Now Smell This! or Perfume Posse. So I didn't bother trying. I bought sample sets from The Perfumed Court so I could learn the difference between a candied violet and a soapy violet, if anyone could make a decent orange scent, what constituted a boozy scent, whether I'd ever like anything other than a rose. New releases - who cared? I hadn't even tried Patou Joy or Guerlain Mitsouko yet.

I read a few books about perfume, but mostly? I just smelled, and then I wrote about it. Then I'd smell some more, and write about it. I'm not promoting blogging with blind ignorance.  I'm just saying, everybody has to start somewhere, and you should never be so afraid of looking stupid you miss an opportunity to learn. As I blogged, I trusted my instincts and my own impressions of the scents. You know why? Perfumes smell different to and on different people. They evoke different memories. They elicit different connections. What smells like a funeral to me may smell like heaven to you.  I think both reviews are probably correct.

Was I writing what my esteemed colleagues were? Nope. As far as I could tell, everyone else had a lot more knowledge of the industry and a lot fewer pop references, no one else was using song lyrics for titles, and I didn't see anyone else occasionally freaking out about feminist politics. Did I have "a new perspective to offer"? Ha! Who cared? I was writing again. It felt terrific.

This April 15 will mark four full years of blogging about perfume. I haven't stopped yet, and I have no intention of doing so.

The key to this business is personal relationships.

One thing that keeps coming up in posts about the 'crowded field' of perfume blogging is the idea of "lost readership" and " fluctuating traffic" and "shouting into the void."

Largely these things seem like nonsensical concerns to me. I admit to being flattered by readership. Who isn't? I admit I like comments. But mostly, I write this blog for me. Maybe it's the writer in me that thinks it's a good idea, but I prefer to give credit to the historian.

When I was in college, I read A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812 for a class. This work by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich is one of the best books you can read about American life in the period in large part because it reflects the thoughts and feelings of the daily life of a real person as they were living it. This is history gold, people! It doesn't get more primary source than that.

 Do I think I deserve to be the speaker for our times? No, I do not. But I suspect Martha Ballard didn't think she would be either. Part of the reason I write this blog,  and part of why I write and document my life to (quite frankly) an absurd degree (you really should see my scrap books of movie tickets stubs - not even joking), is because part of me thinks, "What if I end up the Martha Ballard of the early 21st Century?" You never know who the Angel of History's eye will fall upon in the rubble. If it's me? I'd like there to be plenty of material for that intrepid historical scholar to work from.

And to that end, I try to document the work I've enjoyed reading around the internet here, and on twitter, FB, G+, and the like. I like to share things with people, to talk about them and read them. And I like to give inspirational credit where credit is due, even if the inspiration is to blog at length about how I disagree, whether that be related to perfume or not. Discourse is intensely valuable and immeasurably rewarding, particularly when it challenges us to (re)consider our own assumed postures. I am grateful to those who prompt me to bring pen to paper, fingers to keyboard.

Plus, being nice? Kind of the golden rule.

Hey, I don't have all the answers. In life, to be honest, I failed as much as I have succeeded.

This isn't my first blog. I started a livejournal back in the late 1990s, then I had an independent blog I designed myself that was hosted on a friend's server for a few years. Before that, I wrote in spiral bound notebooks. FN7.

Can I be your ambassador
of perfume kwan?

I'm not really in the beauty industry, and I doubt I ever will be. I still don't know as much about perfume as a lot of other bloggers. You know what I learned on Castle two weeks ago? How to properly say the name of a perfume I actually own. FN8.

I keep going anyway, learning and trying and collecting. Will I keep writing Feminine Things for a while? I like to think so. I see no reason for stopping. And even though I do have all those things now - awards and event invites, links and followers and commenters and even, yes, the occasional free samples to review - I would still keep writing here if I didn't.

Most flattering to me, though, is that you keep reading, and others find my work valuable.  This blog ended up on a couple of Women's Studies syllabi in courses on feminism and the beauty industry in the last couple of years.  I actually got to send a message to one of the classes that used my blog.  As someone who has made a life of studying sex and gender in popular culture, it touches me to think I might help someone else learn and grow.

Truthfully? I never track my traffic. I didn't even know about this wikio/Ebuzzing thing until I read Vanessa's follow-up piece. Google ranks sites? News to me. I like it when people post on my drawings, because I like to give pretty things away. Other than that? I might as well be writing letters to myself.

When I went back to look at my very short initial post today, there was a comment on it, one I never even replied to. How great is that? Three days in and I had a reader. One reader. Perhaps it's her I'm still writing to.

When I write the words, dear reader, I am literally imagining you out there, reader, and I hope you will hear me when I say the following:

Words are tools; writing, a learned skill. The more you use them, the better you get at writing. Whatever inspires you to write, write about that. If it's wine? Start a w(h)ine blog. If it's shoes, go with that fetish. If it's making up funny, misspelled statements to apply on photos of cats, I hear there's a market for that. It's a big old internet out there, and I am not in any way afraid of losing my reader to you. I can't. They live here, in my head.

You complete me, dear reader!

So if you've got something to say about perfume, I want to hear it! If you've started a scent blog you don't see listed in my sidebar of bloggers, tell me. Provided you aren't a spamming troll, I'll be happy to add you. I can't promise I will always have time to read everything you write and comment on it, but if you inspire me to think or talk or write, I will give you the internet love you deserve. And I truly hope you do it better than I do, even if you start your very first post tomorrow.

Who knows - I might even learn something.

Leave a comment to be added to the blogroll.  Or just to say you love/hate/indifferent me, sweet reader.  For deep down in the spidery corners of my ventricular chambers, I feel the same about you.

But I love my wife husband. I love my life. And I wish you my kind of success.
______________
FN1. For instance, I, too, regret not going with Wordpress. Though if I move now, I'm probably going to Drupal Gardens. Because this Bitch? She hearts the cutting edge technologies. (Given that, I still don't know why I ended up on Blogger. I think because I was broke and it was free. Thanks for asking.)

FN2. Dorothy: "I loved your memo, by the way."
Jerry: "Thanks... actually, it was just a Mission Statement."

Bonkers!

FN3. Also, if you all don't like this post, please don't golf clap me off stage left with my sad little fish in hand. Plus, Tom Cruise is actually bonkers, so I think it works thematically. Also, I love Cameron Crowe, so you can all suck it.

Wait -- am I not supposed to be telling readers to suck it? Damn, I'm bad at this.

FN4. Loved my coursework and my profs, though. Holla to my Lewis & Clark faculty, what? What! Seriously, though. I really should have just gotten a Ph.D. in Legal History or Legal Philosophy.


FN5. Yes, tens, not hundreds. I was broke, remember?

FN6. I actually don't mind paying for samples.  I appreciate that materials are expensive and most of the perfumers I buy from are independent small business owners who need to recoup/cover their costs.  I'm just happy they let me have the samples, instead of selling by full bottle only.  I couldn't afford to try much perfume if I had to buy full bottles just to try them.

FN7. I still write long hand in notebooks.

FN8. Seriously. It isn't fracas? As in "to cause a"? I am terrrrible with French. Ah well. I might sound like a stupid culturally-illiterate American, but at least I don't smell like one.

The Will of Instinct.

On Amanda Palmer, Nirvana, and the Language of Violence in Popular Culture

**TRIGGER WARNING.**

This is not about perfume. No, this is about AMANDA FUCKING PALMER (aka AFP), and intimate violence and sex/gender politics.

I remember the first time I heard Nirvana’s “Polly.” I was, I don’t know, fourteen, I think, but already deeply familiar with the idea of being trapped in a cage by someone violent who thought they loved you. FN1. I remember having a visceral and negative reaction to “Polly” in the same way I had negative reactions to the fetus tree imagery in “Heart Shaped Box.” I remember thinking at the time that Kurt was an angry dude who did not like women, and who seemed to blame his feelings of inadequacy as a man not on patriarchy and misogyny, but on the women in his life and at large. I distinctly remember having an argument with a boy I was dating over this feeling and being completely without the language I needed to express my reactions to some of Nirvana’s work, particularly “Polly,” in a coherent way.

Let me say that I know very little about the Patron Saint of Grunge. I haven’t bothered to study him. So when I talk about all this, I’m not talking about Kurt, the man, or Kurt, the artist’s intent made real. FN2. FN3. I’m talking about how I, as a young abused girl without the language or strength to describe what was happening to me, had been happening to me, was continuing to happen to me, seemingly with the world’ s knowledge, permission, and tacit approval, felt about his work in the moment.

To me, Kurt seemed angry, and the angry in his music appealed to me. The chords that struck me as wrong, however, were the thinly veiled digs at women, the idea that women were a “tar pit traps” or leeches, sucking the life out of otherwise good men, as if women are the enemy and not the trap of rigid gender/sex roles. It’s the same gut level reaction I have to a lot of Kerouac’s work. Any time I hear the words, “pretty girls make graves,” I want to punch someone in the face.

It’s possible that Cobain, and Kerouac before him, meant to put a spotlight on the ways misogynists justify their wholesale use and abuse of women rather than representing a position the artists themselves held. Certainly the history of the song’s origins provided by Nirvana’s surviving members seems to imply Kurt was more interested in understanding the psychology of someone who brutalizes another person at the intersections of sex, violence, and control than identifying with them.

Who Killed Laura Palmer?
"All you good people..."

The problem with this kind of approach to feminist critique of violence is that the work sits out there afterward, speaking for itself, without a narrator standing by to anchor it in context. It finds its way into the bedrooms of girls like me who hear it and only hear  the world’s (at the time) most popular band reveling in a kind of sadism she is beginning to know personally. I was that girl, the girl who hears the words and thinks to herself, “Is this how the whole world is? Is no one stopping what is happening to me because the things my abuser tells me are true, and this is just the natural order of things?” No amount of in-depth documentary histories or "VH1 Behind the Music" interviews or tell-all biographies will ever change the visceral experience of hearing "Polly" and thinking, “I am trapped, just like her. I’m going to die here. I’ll never get out.”

That is why I am so GLAD there are women out there like AMANDA FUCKING PALMER who take work like this, reframing and reclaiming it to show how terrifying and violent and awful and tragic and sickening and inhumane the ideas lurking beneath the riff are,  no matter how they are intended by the artist to be taken by the listener. Much like Tori Amos’ chilling rendition of Eminem’s “ ’97 Bonnie & Clyde”, AFP’s newly released video for her cover of “Polly” is heartbreaking and so resonant with real life that it took me less than one minute to find multiple examples of the ‘fictional’ events in the video happening to women here in the first world in the last two to three days. FN3. FN4.

You can see the video here, in all its disturbing and terrifying realness.

I sobbed when I finished AFP's video the first time through because all I could think was, “This is what I’ve always imagined feeling/happening when I heard this song.” Polly, the caged bird/girl, attempts to appease until she can be free, focusing on nothing but surviving one more moment.  She is like an amalgam of Twin Peaks’ Laura Palmer and Waldo, the caged Myna bird who is one of the only witnesses to Laura's kidnapping.  Both Laura and Waldo end up dead, sacrificed on an altar of patriarchal culture that still believes women can be kept like pets, treated like animals, and are worth nothing more than their purity, their womb, and their service to male pleasure.

The difference between the “Polly” story in my head and AFP’s video is this: I never imagined Polly escaping, never thought a woman like Amanda would be there to save her if she tried. I cried in part because it was a better ending than I ever imagined for Polly, and I am grateful to Amanda Palmer for giving it to me, new salve for an old wound.

Laura: The Will of Instinct.

There is one line from “Polly” that chills me to the bone because it has always rung entirely true for me: “It amazes me, the will of instinct.” The Will of Instinct. The drive and desire to survive, to move on, heartbeat to heartbeat, waiting for one chance out between two worlds, Madonna or Whore, life as a victim or death. The Will of Instinct. To keep going, to keep pushing, to never give up or slow down or give in, to have any sense of self-worth or pride or strength to fight after another brutal day.

The Will of Instinct.

I admire the generations of intimate violence survivors who have stood up and continue to stand up and fight for their lives and their humanity for so many reasons, but most of all, I admire that they keep fighting. And I admire awesome feminists like Amanda FUCKING Palmer for taking the language of the abuser hiding in our culture as entertainment and focusing our attention on it, showing it in all its horrifying and terrible truth.
_________________
FN1. To be perfectly clear, because I think clarity is important, I can only partially identify with the personal experience of this story.  I am a child survivor of domestic violence and have personally experienced being held against my will while my life was repeatedly threatened. I am not a rape or molestation survivor, though I have experienced enough forcible sexual contact in my life to give me the tiniest silver of a fraction of understanding of what the survivors I do advocacy work for have been through. I have known and loved many survivors, though, and I have lived with them through the aftermath.  I can tell you it is brutal and awful and can destroy a life, and every person who survives to go on and thrive and be good and decent is a testiment to human resilence.

FN2. There are clearly feminists who think Kurt is awesome and had a ‘feminist world view.’ The line that kills me in this article, btw, is

Many of the women interviewed initially found “Rape Me” an unsettling song, but eventually came around to seeing it as Cobain’s clumsy but well-intentioned attempt to incorporate feminist theory into his worldview.

Riiiight. Those feminists just needed to get to know Kurt personally and/or transcend their personal, visceral reactions to his songs to see that his works were absolutely intended to be feminist. I must have missed that memo while someone was beating the crap out of me.

FN3. Okay, no. The thing that kills me most is the ACTUAL ARTICLE TITLE. "Nirvana's Secret Feminism." Wow! How progressive! You're a secret feminist. Does that come with a decoder ring and spy magnifying glass?

FN3. I actually wrote an entire paper about the Tori Amos cover in college I had so much to say about, so I won't go into it in depth here. To keep this short, let me say  I acknowledge “’97 Bonnie and Clyde” differs from “Polly” in a number of ways, the most important being that Eminem was actually expressing a desire to kill his (ex)wife. Whether Cobain intended to exercise internal demons through verse or to spotlight systematic violence against women is something only he would know, though it seems he intended the later, making the intent of his work more closely aligned with Amos and Palmer than with Mr. Mathers, even if it ultimately fails to translate to into that kind of critique in the form it was recorded and presented by Cobain himself.

FN4. And let me point out, these are just the stories that make it into the newspapers and AP wire and only represent a tiny fraction of the women being kidnapped, raped, and murdered all around the world as a matter of course, for war, for male pleasure, for male power, and for profit.