Sunday, July 11, 2010

If I Can't Make A Perfume Then I'll Make An Album

Aiiiight, it's out there on the iTunes, y'all. My aromachemical/perfume-inspired album, If I Can't Make A Perfume Then I'll Make An Album. Go buy it here. To support my struggle. And if you don't buy it for me, then buy it for Mark Baratelli, who improvised the piece called Caramel Furanone 3%. Or Nils Harning, (min fästman, by the by) whose voice is used in Harningal (the theoretical aromachemical that bears his name). Here's the link.

Interesting that after I'd sent the album to CDBaby and all, it occurred to me: "....but I CAN make a perfume!" Not meaning that I'm such an amazing and imaginative perfumer that I could make the next Red Delicious or Fergilicious Eau Fraîche (did you see what I did there?), but rather in this sense: Why CAN'T I make a perfume?* Everyone's doing it; the chemicals are available; you don't need a 100-acre factory in New Jersey and 700 billion dollars in an a marketing budget to introduce a fragrance. You don't need Saks or Bloomingdales or TJ Maxx or anything like that. Not when you have facebook and the interwebs. (to go further--why does it even have to be a perfume? It could be a home fragrance, or, rather, "olfactory art." Not unlike the sonic art I've done. I think you see where this is going. I think people saw where this was going years ago, before I did...) But anyway, yeah. I just wanted to point out what I saw as the ironing there.

A shame I finished/lost interest in the project before I could do Cyclopidene, Cyclal C, Indolene, Koavone or Labienoxime 10%, but hey. That's just how it be happen, yo, 'n stuff. Besides, I have a feeling I'll be making more audio pieces dealing with smell anyway. I mean, how could I go through life without ever doing a piece inspired by cis-3-hexanol or Stemone? Glerp. Yes, glerp indeed.

Now go buy the album. For my struggle.

Beep!

*Quick note from a regular 30something to any aspiring anythings: If something's important to you, there are ALWAYS going to be people (sometimes everyone you know) telling you that what you want to go can't be done. That it's crazy, that you're living in a fantasy world. I haven't achieved much, but I can't remember anything that I did achieve that anyone believed in but me. Listen to people when they're ripping your ideas, and know that anyone who's attempted anything heard the same. "You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus." -Mark Twain. I found that quote at the beginning of a chapter in a book by Michio Kaku. A physicist, not a motivational speaker. So there.