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for old men. What a movie! Just great and what a beautiful state Texas is. Swimming in Lonestar state memories yesterday.

And this after a day full with boxing, mailing  and writing a text. A text that explains what I did with the poem of Heather. The W.-factor helped. First he read the poem, watched the picture I did on canvas and then he read how I addressed the poem with words. And he sniffed a fragrant picture that goes with the poem. A composition that is like a fragrant mirror of words. In a sense.
I will send this fragrant picture to Heather the next days. What a lovely, inspirational game this was. It helped me to focus a little bit.
I guess, more is to follow then on Heather’s pages  later in March.

Talking March…. tatata!

Now it is official. The perfumer is announced on the Luckyscent web page and newsletter. Hurry up registering…here: http://www.luckyscent.com/tauerentry/
I wish you all a weekend full of fragrant discoveries.

(picture: Andy last year at Luckyscent)

First a message from the technique: There was a server trouble at my hosting company, yesterday morning until after noon. But know things are up and running again (we hope…).

Second a take home message from this server trouble:  Olala…we have become dependent on this artificial nerve system. Thinking further: There are just a few lines connecting me with you. These lines are sea cables, node points, and they are unprotected, just sitting there on the ground of the sea. I have a hard time imaging all these cables being down there, the home of worms and Jellyfishes……hello Jellyfish!
And this reminds me of my chat with the journalist (which one?….I think Tages Anzeiger) where we were musing about local perfumers, 300 years ago, sitting in their little houses in Paris , making perfumes for the few, many of whom may have lived around the block. Of course, as Swiss guys, we did not think “Royals” but rather bourgeois, happy citizen living in pre-revolution Paris. Well…sort of happy.
People like me and many others like Ayala or Vero or Konstantin or Jenny (The world villagers are waiting for yours, Jenny!) are what these perfumers around the block have been; we sit in our little houses, make fragrances for the few, many of whom may live in far away places, but they are very close thanks to a couple of sea cables. I have a hard time imaging life without …bye bye Jellyfish, this message is now on its way up using the land line again!

I have to wait for another month before getting into the plane that will bring me (for an astonishing price) to LA, with a stop in Montreal. But after quite some arguing with my inner self,  I decided on what to talk about, i.e. what scents to present March 29, after noon until 5 pm.

Of course, we will have a bottle of the Incense rosé there. And two, three incense extracts.

Then I would like to show some roses, like the rose absolue and the rose steam distilled and some stuff you might want to use when constructing the rose in a fragrance.

And I would like to show the rose chypre I am working on, in a 10-20 % dilution. Because I find this fragrance the longer the more exciting!
Thus, we will talk roses.  Who is coming?

A plane leaving a condensation line on a blue sky over the Gemmi, Feb. 2008, while the guy taking the picture dreams of flying to LA

And while I am dreaming, maybe you want to read Donna’s review of the Incense extrême on the Perfume-smellin’ Things Perfume blog. (I am flushing full of joy…)

This weekend was devoted 100%, in its entity, totally to saying bye bye to winter, under the bluest sky you can imagine. Thus, time to think about larix…. and boughs and woods.

More fragrant posts later. For today: Enjoy some sights from the Alps.

Alps over Leukerbad

Fir tree in snow

Larch forest over Sils Maria

Larch tree details

water source

and finally, my lunch place, where I was eating all alone, watching my nose tip and enjoying a spectacular view!

I haven’t slept a lot the last two nights….couldn’t leave the canvas sitting there.

For my little project (for and with Heather…) that came right in time, giving me the perfect excuse to run away from Incense rosé in boxes, waiting for the final polishing, the ribbon….Anyhow, for this project that basically is a piece of text inspiring me and others to think, I figured out I might first start with a canvas and oil, to clear the mind, and think about the (few) words.

By mid March you will get an idea about the poem…..In the mean time I am curious, what you think.
Thus, from time to time I took a picture, documenting how an abstract idea in the brain finds its way onto the canvas…

The white paper is now patiently waiting for my playing with scents…. but first some happy boxing and fiddling around with ribbons for the Incense rosé.

What a funny week.
starting….

red appearing….

getting there….

well, sort of….

Regular readers of this blog know that every post here has its hidden second line of thought and a deeper meaning changing the world on a regular basis, except maybe forthose posts that I write between 6 in the morning and 12 at night, Monday through Sundays….

Thus, a little picture,  of a willow bough, starting early to bloom under a fantastic blue sky.
And a link to a blog, recently RE-discovered. Memory&Desire
Here you will find the reason for my thinking boughs lately…”March we’ll enjoy a unique gathering of distinguished perfumers who have agreed to provide us with a poetic view of each one’s creative process. ” Please visit Heather’s memory&desire, ad free and full of poetic lines.

Ah well… didn’t use my oil COLORS yesterday. Ended up in B&W contours… Thinking musk and Labdanum resinoid

  (Picture: Willow under a blue sky in Zurich, February 2008. Nature is well  ahead again)

While moving on and go beyond thinking about black wet wood and rather think AIR FROM DARK AND DRY TUNNELS, with some rust and dirty dust (C12 aldehyde, vetiverylacetate, cedrylacetate, vetiver, a touch patchouli, a hint methylcedrylketone?….) and

answering mails and doing some fixes on the shop and paying bills on-line and
packing Incense rosé

there was not much time to do anything else.  But I visited the cellar and brought my oil colours with me to let them warm up for later this week.

Being creative is a stay in a slaughterhouse. You come up with little shiny bulbs, idea bubbles, that grow on a cosy planet, branch out, form a black forest of flowers after a while, suffocating the earth beneath and get cut to make room for the next little bubble growing into pink flowers.
Continuing to think about the little experiment (see yesterday’s post, too), I see blue eyes. Time to cut deeper.
Picture: Cut tulips in a glass, Zurich 2008

I was asked to participate in a project, dealing with fragrances, imagination, visualization maybe and texts. I do not know how much I am allowed to tell you here, thus I assume I can not give you more specifics about the project so far.
But what I can tell you so far: Thinking about black,  wet black, wet black wood. But wait….things are much more complicated than I originally thought. Thinking also dirty corners, many people, stuck together, on their way to the light. Well….we will see and you shall see the result in a couple of weeks, at least as text.
In a  sense we are talking input- output here. You remember my post on Steve Reich’s “city life”?.

Input = sound of a special kind including vocals

Output = Aldehydes!

Another form of output: if I do not have yet another interview, I want to do a visualization on a canvas, a rough sketch, in order to complement this project, linking words, scents and colours/shapes. And all of this under a clear blue Zurich sky. Dream weather these days in Switzerland….
(Picture: Amaryllis in front of a blue February sky, 2008 in Zurich)

Out of the fog, clear view and soon, we hope, spring flowers all around us….
(Picture: Foggy condensation pattern on glass door, Zurich 2008)

Well, the exciting day with many mails popping in, hellos and sample requests is over. Back to normal again. Hallelujah.

Besides folks saying hello, I had another visit of a journalist yesterday. Timing was pure coincidence, though and the interview/chat yesterday went very well. I am getting use to it ;-)
Yes! Another interview. This time for a big Swiss magazine. But this time we did not only talk but did some sniffing, too - for instance rose absolute and rose essential steam distilled oil which are: TOTALLY different and quite educative in a sense, showing what man can do with flowers. I will come back to these two again.
Thus, we face a new day today in Zurich, with happy bottle pouring. Today we are talking Incense rosé.

With the ribbon arriving yesterday I have now everything in place to start putting the juice in to bottles, the bottles into boxes, the ribbons around the boxes. With every box I feel like getting LA a little bit closer. Can’t wait for some desert air anymore. And big city air. And….

(picture: A little detail (right corner) of the Incense rosé flyer)

A whiff desert night….

it turned out to be a wonderful, charming article in today’s Tages-Anzeiger, last page, starting

“Andy Tauer creates perfumes. He mixes them up in a little room at his home in Höngg [Quarter in Zurich]-and sends them quite often on long journeys.

A big parcel sits there, on the floor of the living room, that an early spring sun dips into warm spots of light.  Weight 25 kg, it says on its top and next to it you find the address: Los Angeles. Next to the table sits Andy Tauer in Jeans and T-shirt, the bright eyes attentively behind the fine glasses, and drinks coffee…….”

What more can you wish? Fragrant greetings from Zurich

(picture:  the long article in the Tages-Anzeiger with the picture of sniffing Andy)