I buy therefore I am - this bankruptcy of ethos; this bane of postindustrial humanity that drives the system and which the system forever generates. An icy hell of desperation, this misunderstood pursuit of happiness. No bliss. Bliss is elsewhere. Bliss is care of the self, as the Greeks taught it, as Foucault rediscovered it. Nurturing your soul lovingly, growing, mindful of yourself and therewith able to become mindful of the world, not its mindless devourer of ever unstilled appetites. Bliss is rose, smell of rose, and yes, the art of a rose transformed by the gift of a craftsmen into scented sculpture. Perfume as pursuit of beauty, pursuit, for years perhaps, within the soul no less than amidst the scent organ. No management briefs, no algorithms, four weeks and a three-cent budget. There is no hope on the floor of the department store; there your nose will find fourteenhundreed new reasons every year to give up. Hope is to seek out the few keepers of the flame, those of calling, of vocation and devotion. Dominique Dubrana, Josh Lobb, Dawn Spencer Hurwitz, Ayala Sender, Antonio Gardoni and all of like spirit: resistance of the aesthetic, aesthetic of resistance! Inhale deeply, inhale in slow time!
