PlayAlinda (Chronotope): the CONTEMPLATIVE, joyous one
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| Credits: Chrontope |
Not going to lie: my pretentious being almost had to fight with this one.
I just simply didn't want to accept the gentle brightness of this perfume.
Being the last one I tested of the issue, I thought I had a clear understanding of Carter's olfactory signature ( guesses were on aromatic, herbaceous and balsamic accords),
and Playalinda was the annoyingly good fruit-inspired exception,
and most of all, it had a bizarre and unsettling reassuring feeling.
Not that Carter's work is necessarily gloomy, but it seemed to this point to follow a story,
a well delineated storytelling trajectory,
predominantly made of contrasting, irruent emotions translated in mostly biographical olfactory analysis.
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| Woman Reading in the Reeds; Edouard Villuard; Credits: ART UK |
But it does so in a very subtle, profound way.
The first time I sprayed it I was re-reading Herman Hesse's Siddharta and later watched with my aunt Eric Rohmer's Green Ray.
It was one of my dad's favorite movies, and one of the last ones he introduced me to before unexpectedly passing away.
Both Siddartha, the movie and Playalinda came at a very strange moment of my life.
After a disgustingly painful process of loss acceptance, I had to face how in the past year I weaponized grief in my ordinary.
And Playalinda almost makes me believe in para-natural coincidences,
as if with its contemplative and calm nature could calm down my Napoleonic emotional and unstable soul.
A spray of Playalinda exercises a spell on me, subtly chanting that it all works out in the end.
It's not exploitative or blind positivity,
instead, it seeks for peace and self-love from an extremely empathetic, comforting perspective.
It's a sort of a cuddle, a mystical creature in its botanical peachy undertones and tranquility.
Playalinda doesn't have to be loud, or stereotypically fruity.
It perfectly captures the ripe stage of a mouthwatering juicy peach, a few days before going moldy.
It's the peach you're placing in your hemp basket on your way to a Baltic wild beach (or, for Carter, without any further appropriative narratives of mine, to Playalinda beach in Texas).
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| Sketch for Morning Splendour, Henry Scott Tuke (c. 1921) credits: ART UK |
Playalinda is a painting by Henry-Scott Tuke,
Sufjan Steven's most lullying love ballad,
loaded in the secrecy and mysticism of the ordinary with its emotional impetuosity.
It almost has a sound in it, with a sandy echoing background,
streaming gently with the surrounding air and calmness of the scene.
I am typing this on a gloomy late August day in North Italy, not too far from the river Rio.
And with incoming thunder and the sky packed in grey,
the scent is being transported with a gentle mountain breeze.
And it's simply magical.
I very much like how it doesn't evolve arrogantly,
and can still smell two hours later all the fine osmanthus,
the photorealistic peach,
and a tacit yet present jasmin sambac.
With these airy hints clashing on my skin,
the scent revives on my neck and accompanies me throughout the day.
Of all Chronotope's Autotheory Issue, I find Playlinda to have the most straightforward olfactory reading.
And this is exactly its beauty.
I don't know when I'll be able to place a new order from Chronotope,
but with Buen Camino, Playalinda is the one I am most regularly reaching for and have to start controlling myself over not enjoying it too much (especially considering Reggie hasn't tested any of it yet).
Its 2ml size is for now egoistically treasured in a kitschy shelf box on a library shelf of my beloved minuscule childhood bedroom,
being surrounded by pale rocks collected during a holiday on the Adriatic Coast,
and when I feel like I'm starting to enter a new mentally consuming loop,
I reach for a few sprays and feel at peace.
There isn't an olfactory facet in Playalinda that wouldn't invoke serenity.
It's so aware of its contagious gracefulness to be liberating.
Especially following the trapiness of Spite EdP,
or the contemplative research in Buen Camino,
Playalinda actually feels like reaching the end of a story.
I am very glad I followed this random pathway in testing out the line, and left Playalinda at the end.
- Poem II by Derek Jarman
MUSIC: Sufjan Steven's Futile Devices,
Time by Angelo De Augustine,
Tezeta (Nostalgia) by Mulatu Astatke
MOVIES: Green Ray by Eric Rohmer,
Takovskij's Nostalghia,
Derek Jarman's Blue
