Review of Thanatopsis by BPAL
May. 1st, 2014 11:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lunabee34The Catalog Description
A meditation upon death. Inspired by William Cullen Bryant’s poem. A deep, solemn earthen scent containing pine, juniper and musk.
The Forum Reviews
The forum reviews are mixed on this one with relatively equal numbers loving and loathing. Many reviewers peg Thanatopsis as a masculine scent. Many mention smelling musk or a civet note. Some identify an underpinning of myrrh. Others lament that the pine is too reminiscent of PineSol. Maribouquet reports that Thanatopsis smells like “an old musky lumberjack,” and Ilex inexplicably describes it as “sweet tarts; sweet tarts of Death.”
Our Reactions
Emma (11): “This smells like an old lady. I smell pine and juniper, and it sorta smells like Antony.” (And she washes it off.) Some of you might remember that Emma believes that Sam Carter from SG-1 smells like pine trees and the outdoors. After we tested Thanatopsis, she tells me, “I think this is what Sam Carter probably smells like.” I was surprised because 1). I do not think Sam Carter smells like this at all and 2). I figured Emma had been talking about a more sunshiny, green herby, fresh tree smell for Sam. “No, Mom,” she tells me. “This is what Sam smells like after she’s been rolling around in the dirt in combat on some forest world.” Oh, okay then. That makes sense. :)
Gran: Goes to powder almost instantly on her
Me: This oil is very dark in the imp, coffee colored. I’m a bit worried. LOL Initially, this smells very earthy. In fact, it smells exactly like dirt—that sharp, acrid bite of freshly overturned wet earth. This is not the black, loamy dirt of a fertile field, though—it’s the Mississippi dirt out in the woods behind the house I grew up in—that yellow or red or beige dirt buried underneath years of accumulated pine straw. I smell something sweet, and then the pine and juniper jump out at me. This smells like my forearms are sticky with pine needle sap. The trees eventually fade quite a bit, but it continues to smell exactly like dirt with something sweet and resiny underneath. I love this. Hard. Apparently I really want to smell like dirt. LOL Thanatopsis lasts and lasts and lasts. On the first test on Saturday night, I could still smell it the following afternoon after showering that morning. I think Emma is right that something in Antony is also in Thanatopsis, and I think it’s the musk. There was something sweetish in Antony that made me almost, almost like it before it went to powder on me, and I’m guessing it was musk. I tried layering it with Incantation today, and it was glorious. I am going to have to get big bottles of both those fragrances. :)
The Fic
Oh, man. What to do with this fragrance? William Cullen Bryant’s beautiful poem reads in part:
Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim
Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again,
And, lost each human trace, surrendering up
Thine individual being, shalt thou go
To mix forever with the elements;
To be a brother to the insensible rock,
And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain
Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak
Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould.
And this is totally His Dark Materials, the kind of afterlife the dead eventually find in Pullman’s series—a merging with the atoms, a return to the elements. I find it a little horrifying, personally, the thought of simply stopping, though. The notion that one moment you are thinking and the next you are scattered into a patch of sunlight really terrifies me; on a narrative level, I can appreciate the beauty of becoming one with the cosmos, but how much of Lorraine can remain when a girl's spread so thin, you know?
Thankfully, this fragrance is also Hagrid tromping through the Forbidden Forest to harvest rare plants for the care of magical creatures. He digs into the earth with his hands, careful not to crush the roots of the night-blooming star rose, a rucksack of juniper slung across his back.
But it is also Wicket and Leia hiding under the log on Endor. Leia’s got a smudge of dirt on her face and the almost overwhelming scent of crushed ferns wafting up from her clothes. The furry guy smells like juniper berries and coniferous trees and something warmly sweet. Leia kinda wants to hug him. Maybe she will if they manage to shake these Storm Troopers.
Or it’s Ronon in that dream from “Doppelganger,” Sheppard shoveling damp earth on top of him until Ronon can’t breathe. Dirt has worked its way into his pants, his boots, underneath his vest. It’s so heavy on his body that Ronon can’t move. He’s pinned to the ground by the weight of the world, all the worlds, all the places he’s run from and to.
But most of all this is John and Dean and Sam on their knees at the crossroads, an uninterrupted line of Winchesters scrabbling in the dirt for a chance to turn back time, to turn spilled blood and broken bone back into something whole.
So, yeah. Thanatopsis contains multitudes. LOL
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Date: 2014-05-02 07:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-03 01:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-02 11:54 pm (UTC)This smells like my forearms are sticky with pine needle sap. This is pretty much how I felt about it, and I couldn't get past that at all. It was just PIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINE. I'm thrilled you like it, yay!
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Date: 2014-05-04 01:13 am (UTC)I truly loved this one; and it was divine layered with Incantation. I am starting to see the appeal of layering. Neither Envy or Embalming Fluid on their own are strong enough or last long enough for me, but together they are yummy and have some staying power.
I can understand being overwhelmed by the pine; that note quieted down fairly quickly for me, thank goodness.
no subject
Date: 2014-05-05 01:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-07 12:42 am (UTC)[BTW, guess what I'm reading right now? Fruits Basket arrived; I've got the first three volumes in my hot little hand.]
no subject
Date: 2014-05-07 02:57 am (UTC)