Cathedral In Flames (Garner James)

In a perfect world all the cathedrals would burn, would go down, and stay down. I'm agnostic, formerly Catholic, not a believer in Jesus or any "nameable" god. Organized religion is a bad thing in my opinion, as it is little more than an unnecessarily complicated way of oppressing minorities and women, and driving patriarchal power into the heads of children so they can grow up to be servants of invisible men. There is nothing inherently bad about believing in god, any god, or trying to live after divinity with charitable acts and goodwill toward others, but to foist any belief system on the masses is an act of willful paralysis and ignorance.

My central issue with religion, particularly Catholicism, is its insistence on an afterlife. Think for thirty seconds - just thirty measly seconds - and come up with one good reason to want to go to Heaven. What could possibly be so great about spending an eternity in some fluffy incorporeal dimension full of sexless angels and "love" without reason? I don't care how much beauty and love there is, eventually I'd get awfully bored. Eternity is a long time. My soul is human. I am and always will be the essence of an Earth-bound mammal, and as such need variable tactile stimuli, pleasure and pain, love and hate, peace and bloodshed, corporeal contact with others, the physical touch.

When I was four, one of my first intellectual thoughts was that I was inexplicably relieved to be alive in the 1980s, a time of advanced medicine and rapidly advancing technology. This relief was profound, and guided me into my teenage years as a confused Catholic with a truly religious mindset - I was a believer. It took cancer and two surgeries to bring me back around to my sense of childhood relief, where I realized that I could not possibly be relieved to be born into a specific time unless I had an innate sense of a different and more difficult time to compare it to. Why would a child be relieved to have electrical appliances and synthetic fabrics to keep him warm, unless some part of his psyche was distantly attuned to not having those things at all?

Ten years later, I began to sense that there was an answer to the question, if no god, then what? Religious people are often taken with all that supposedly comes after death, but rarely seem to think that there are mundane clues about this outcome to be found in life. Religious clues are all sophisticated, moral, based on what sort of character you are. It's boring to suppose that the answers to the eternal questions of what happens after death are found in basic patterns of biological life. Yet that's exactly what I believe holds these answers: life itself.

Let's look for a moment at what we do as living beings. We eat, breathe, socialize, reproduce, shit and piss, combat diseases, love each other, kill each other, sleep, dream, age, and die. The patterns? We eat for energy to tide us over until we're hungry, and then we eat again. An endless cycle. We breathe in and out, another endless cycle. We make friends, lose touch with them, sometimes fight with and hate them, sometimes fall in love with them, this goes on and on. We'd perish quickly if we didn't shit and piss on a regular basis, making room for new food by getting rid of the old. We get sick, get better, get sick again, get better again. But most importantly, we sleep. We wake up. We get tired, and sleep again. Wake up, feel energized, live another day, then back to sleep.

Poe once said, "Sleep, those little slices of death," referring to the physically helpless, intellectually inert state of sleep our bodies require. In sleep, all is dark. Our minds flicker through their garbage, excreting excess psychic stimuli via dreams and nightmares. Sometimes this activity is so minimal that there is literally no cognitive record of the hours at rest. We simply close our eyes, and open them again seven or eight hours later, ready to face another day. We take for granted that sleep is available to us, or that we would die without it. But is sleep truly living? Why must all signs of life cyclically reduce down to their barest minimum to ensure survival?

I believe that sleep is a biological representation of the natural order of life, death, birth, and rebirth. In life, we sleep between days. In death, we sleep between lives. Not all of us, mind you - as in life, our outcomes after death are varied, with some simply vanishing into nothingness (feeling, caring, and regretting nothing as a result), while others are reborn as animals. Yes, the little critters in your backyard are alive, after all, and are sub-intellectual entities that sustain the ecosystem with pre-programmed instinctive behaviors. Still others are reborn as new people, but here is where my belief sticks to the basics. Instead of being reborn as new people, body and soul, we are simply reborn as new bodies, with the same essence of whatever carried us through previous lives. I believe this because I believe our "souls" are not unique to ourselves, but are rather the same common essence, pressed into different genetic structures.

Doubters of my philosophy should consider that we are composed of dead matter. Every microgram of ourselves is part of a complex structure of inanimate objects that neither think, feel, or perish. Human cells are composed of individual elements, all of them dead units animated by electrical impulse (itself a dead drive). Roughly sixty percent of our bodies are water. Simple water, dead as dirt, non-intellectual H20. Tissues, brain matter, the chemicals that comprise our vital systems, all technically dead. Ever taste your own blood? It tastes like metal, its high iron and mineral content. Liquid Earth flows through our veins. Taken individually, our biological parts are lifeless. Together they make us who we are, but that doesn't change the fact that we are essentially comprised of lifeless carbons. The only thing that animates us are our energies, intense electrical currents that interact with various chemical systems to produce movement, and behavior. When we die, our electrical systems shut down, and our already dead parts disperse, melting into the rest of this carbon-based planet.

Cathedral in Flames is the final perfume in the small lineup of fragrances gifted to me by Jim Gehr of Garner James, and it is a luxurious experience, something any thinking person should wear at least once in their lifetime. It smells of brisk citrus, silvery incense, something akin to chili pepper, and rich spices, with cinnamon the main player. As with all of Gehr's work, Cathedral is perfectly balanced, its woody incense lending sturdiness to the shimmer and shine of fleeting fruit rind and piercing herbal notes. It's perfect on an autumn or winter day, feeling both warm and solid, yet never wearing too heavily. The "hot" incense accord is likely the reason for the fragrance's name, and it's one of the few oriental accords I've encountered that I can wear several days in a row without losing interest.

This is what Copper Skies by Kerosene should smell like. That fragrance conjures images of acid chemical cleaners and cloying, chaotic eugenol, and is in no way evocative of golden autumnal days, but Cathedral in Flames is smoldering Earth in a bottle, crisp, natural, complex, and elegant. It's also designed to smell both masculine and feminine, its subtle floral notes lifting the fresh incense in a way that anyone can enjoy. Go forth into 2015 with courage to accept all that it means to be human, and enjoy this olfactory ode to mankind without missing what you'll never have.

Jupiter to Juno (Garner James)

Candis Cayne

Just the name of this perfume had me fascinated, and it was expanded upon in a note from Jim:

"Originally made for my brother's wedding gift. Entire wedding party wore this, and the entire wedding was gifted 5 ml roll ons."

So I guess it's literally based on the passing of a man to a woman in matrimony, in this case the perfumer's brother. What a lucky wedding party that was, to have this perfume in the air, because true to form, it is incredible. The complete ingredient list includes sweet orange oil, grapefruit EO, lemon EO, clementine SCO2, rose maroc absolute, orange blossom absolute, geranium bourbon EO, atlas cedar EO, oakmoss absolute, fir balsam absolute, patchouli SCO2, tonka bean absolute, vetiver Haiti SCO2, Allyl Amyl Glycolate, Methyl Pamplemousse, Linalool, Stemone, Lilial, Hedione, Citronellol, and Iso E. Of the scents I received from Jim, Jupiter to Juno is the breeziest, a distinctly casual affair that lasts an average of five hours on skin (six on fabric) with moderate application. My sense is that this fragrance was sent to me not so much as a showpiece (Jim has Black Antlers and Nature Boy for that), but as an indicator of how to use Iso E correctly and effectively. Of course, it is also a lovely composition.

JtJ begins with a super-sweet citrus accord, accented peripherally with orange blossom, setting a decidedly fresh, feminine, fruity, and "fun" tone. Its quality is breathtaking. The fragrance's heart accord is quite floral, but also woody, with the delicate sweetness of rose and orange blossom wafting lightly across drier notes of cedar, balsam, patchouli, and vetiver, with a bit of ambery tonka for warmth, and Iso E for lift and clarity of texture. Unlike most woody perfumes, JtJ's woods are blended softy enough to allow their grains to peek through the leaves, imparting a dusty quality to the scent. The base adopts this same smooth, softly grained tonality, and reminds me most of the simple woody base of Cotton Club by Jeanne Arthes. In fact, I have JtJ on one wrist and Cotton Club on the other as I type this, and though the two are different, their similarities are notable. The fruity Juno top notes segue effortlessly into the suave, aftershavey woodsiness of Jupiter.

To me, fragrances like this are olfactory gender prisms, beautiful but challenging for some to understand, and perhaps wear. Another example of such a scent is Joop! Jump, which is derived from Cool Water and Allure Homme, yet sits several notches higher on the floral scale, to the point of seeming downright frilly-femme at various stages of its drydown. At a wedding, surrounded by flowers and liquors and sweets, Jupiter to Juno is an easy one, as it blends right in. I'm comfortable wearing anything anywhere anyway, so it's not a big deal for me to wear this to work or to a restaurant with friends, but I could see how some men and women might be thrown for a loop by it. Maybe it's perfect for a hot date, maybe not. Maybe only to the movies, or on a Sunday drive. I think it's a brilliant exercise in citrus, floral, and wood textures, executed in a style consistent with a legion of laid-back twenty-first century blue jean juices. This one just happens to smell like a million bucks.

Nature Boy (Garner James)

If the world were to end, we should look to the perfumers to rebuild our cultures from the ground up, because the good perfumers, at their very best, can capture the beauty and mystery of planet Earth using mere wisps of loving inspiration. Jim Gehr is one such perfumer, but his talent surpasses mundane explorations of notes and accords that typically smell "good" in a conventional sense, delving instead into more challenging territory. Nature Boy is evidence that niche perfumery can be every bit as complex, sophisticated, and memorable as the best examples of designer fragrances. It is infinitely more complex, more legible, and ultimately more rewarding than giants such as Yatagan, Polo, Fahrenheit, or any one of the greats from the seventies, eighties, and nineties. Jim has asked me to not treat him with kid gloves in these reviews, because he can take constructive criticism and run with it. I'm sorry, Jim. There's not a single useful critique that I could possibly muster about Nature Boy. Your perfume surpasses most of what I have smelled, niche and designer, well over four hundred perfumes and counting. Let me tell you and everyone else why.

There is a very distinct evolution that occurs from the time this perfume hits skin, to the furthest part of the far drydown. Before I describe it, let me just list some of the materials used here. Nature Boy's naturals include Mysore sandalwood EO, Mysore sandalwood SCO2, castoreum, Haitian vetiver, Patchouli dark (aged ten years), oakmoss absolute, jasmine absolute, Choya Loban (a pervasive frankincense note), lavender absolute, bergamot mint, and labdanum absolute. Its synthetics include Evernyl, Iso E (Timbersilk), Muscone, Coumarin, Ambroxan, and Celestolide. There are a few other materials, both natural and synthetic, but I should leave some mystery here and just highlight how inclusive Jim was in crafting this formula. Now people may read my gushing, then read this list and say, "Well okay, he has said in the past that he doesn't believe the IFRA restrictions on these materials significantly effect the quality of perfumes in a general sense, and yet here he says this perfume with all these wonderful materials that have been over-regulated by the IFRA surpasses pretty much everything else he's ever smelled. What gives?"

That's a fair observation, and a fair question. What gives is that Nature Boy is a product of near limitless skill. There is no innate desire to please the masses here with a big product for department stores across the world. There is no short-sighted attempt to emulate, to join in the esteemed ranks of names etched in ivory, like Edmond Roudnitska, or Pierre Bourdon. There isn't even an adherence to any basic fragrance structure, be it chypre, oriental, or fern. Nature Boy is a product of introspection, private expression, the need to be different, yet successful. It smells of money, in the very same league as Eau Sauvage and Green Irish Tweed, yet it begins with the skankiest muck note, an odor Xacto-knived from a North American forest immediately after heavy summer rains, loaded with bittersweet damp greens, rich tree barks, stones, mosses, animal shit, and hints of white flowers. Applied liberally, Nature Boy is intimidating, a bit of a green Kouros. Its castoreum is full-throttle, and the labdanum is quite deep and sweaty. Testosterone incarnate.

Ninety minutes later, and a minty floral note emerges from the mud. It is demure, very much present, yet soft and sweet, lightened by something remotely similar to eucalyptus. An hour after that, and there's the Choya Loban, resinous, an intense vegetal green with a spiced evergreen exhale. In conjunction with lavender, it takes on a mild lilac effect for a while, before it rounds out with woodier tones and becomes part of an immense, vetiver covered amber. This note continues to dominate for fifteen hours. Solid. Longevity is incredible, the throw is at least five feet from the wearer, and the wearer can expect to enjoy a weaving in and out of two accords: sticky green incense and mossy, sweaty sandalwood, with just enough herbal freshness from the lavender on one end, and natural labdanum on the other to make it balanced and coherent. No easy feat. You'd think it would smell like a failed test-tube perfume, overloaded with naturals and lacking the spine to make any of its soggy greens sing. Instead it reads as a rich, smooth, textured fragrance, very much a product of unfettered creativity and brilliant calculations. In making something this complex, how did the man know when he had it? How did he know where to stop? How did he recognize this result as the perfect green perfume?

There are of course aspects of the structure that resonate as being "familiar" and aren't necessarily superior to similar elements found elsewhere. For example, the combination of sandalwood materials creates a very lucid, smooth-as-ice wood accord, definitely the best type of sandalwood. Arden Sandalwood focuses on this accord and really makes it shine more prominently, while other fragrances like Cotton Club, Polo Crest, and Green Irish Tweed exemplify the best use of the note. What makes the wood in Jim's scent special is its blending. The moss notes are on the wood. You smell them on the wood. Then you smell the animal funk on the moss, on the wood. Then the sappy resinous raw greens poke up, wafting through air like a humid breeze, and there's just enough sticky pine needle and velvety amber to blow my mind.

You can wear this perfume on a walk with a friend or a loved one. You can wear it to a black tie event. You can wear it to work. Spray it at seven in the morning before you leave for work, then come home at five, walk into your bedroom and into a silvery cloud of residual jasmine sweetness, that ghostly flower that ties the bow on this animal. From the deepest dregs of the Earth, the elements of God and Devil toil in a struggle for their claim on eternity. Nature Boy reminds you of that. We are children of nature, and fragrances like this awaken a yearning to return to Earth and be free.

Pandit (Garner James)

The best perfumery materials are perfumes unto themselves. Mysore sandalwood oil, oakmoss absolute, birch tar, rose oil, ambergris, Haitian vetiver, raw vanilla dilution, and orris butter are all rich and complex enough to stand on their own and carry the day. Jim Gehr's care package to me included a little corked bottle labeled "Pandit," which he said is an ode to Ravi Shankar. Why Ravi? Well it's safe to say Jim's a fan of the man's musical work, but Ravi was Indian, and Pandit is little more than pure Mysore sandalwood extrait. The Indian connection is pretty much the whole point of the fragrance, and of course it smells incredible, the pearl of all woods.

If you haven't smelled real sandalwood oil in a while, I urge you to revisit it. It's easy to forget just how lovely it smells. I think it's somewhat forgettable because it's definitely a "wood" smell with a smooth, buttery disposition that sends the mind to imagined places, and distracts from its essential odor characteristics, all of which are subtle. It holds a direct dryness that elicits images of soft, finely-carved planes, perhaps in an ornate 18th century French chapel, in the days when sandalwood was more abundant and used in the communion of human and divine spirits. Despite its transient effect on memory, sandalwood always comes right back to those who know it. It is to the sense of smell what bike riding is to adults: something that comes right back and brings a smile to your face. Pandit is an impossibly familiar perfume, and it's gorgeous.

I think it is one of Jim's rarer creations, a simple composition for personal use. It may or may not be available on request, but the little bit that I have will last me a very long time. Pandit is smoother than silk, as dry as a bone, and incredibly deep and nuanced, with a faint rosy twinge to its start, and a smoky musk in the finish. As a reference for Mysore sandalwood, there is nothing better. There are no designers, not Guerlain, Creed, Chanel, Davidoff, Ralph Lauren, Caron, or anyone else for that matter who ever used more than a smidgen of this stuff in their mass-marketed perfumes. There are quality grades to Mysore sandalwood, and the quality in this is tippy-top shelf. Pandit does not reference other popular or niche scents. It is simply a tribute to a talented musical inspiration, and the timelessness of India's exotic treasures.

Black Antlers (Garner James)

I want to thank perfumer Jim Gehr of Garner James for personally sending me five extremely generous samples of creations from his artisanal niche line. Jim contacted me recently as a fan of this blog, and I was excited to receive his care package, but I will be totally honest here - I didn't know what to expect. In the internet age, with open access to sites like perfumer's apprentice, anyone can buy materials, throw them in a bottle, shake, stir, and call himself a "nose." 

I've had a few people offer me their hand-made creations in the past, and I usually politely decline the offer. It's not that I don't want to smell new and interesting things. It's just that the likelihood of my giving honest positive write-ups of everything new and interesting are very slim, and I'm not into hurting the feelings of amateurs with my own amateur reviews.

Needless to say, things with Jim have been different on a few levels. First of all, he is not an "amateur." I don't really know what his training is, or whether it falls under the designations of "formal" or "informal," but it doesn't matter. His fragrances are, without exaggeration, amazing. Their quality of materials, carefully fine blending, and rich parfum concentrations speak to the painstaking craftsmanship of luxury products that ought to be outselling much of the mainstreamed nonsense out there today. 

He uses generous amounts of both naturals and synthetics (I suspect the naturals outweigh the synthetics in a few of the samples I received), and his style is apparent in every piece. These perfumes are made for men and women who seek versatility and appreciate wearability, but also value innovation and the avant-garde. I feel that his perfumes conjure strong associations to specific places, always positive associations, and his skillful handling of notes in Black Antlers achieves that effect.

Black Antlers takes me back to my beloved Ireland, where I spent a few years of my life. It opens with a mildy camphoraceous kiss of green woody notes, a tight accord of galbanum, lemon, cedar, artemisia, and anise. As it begins to dry, the woodsier notes step forward and become slightly Drakkar Noir-esque, while the mentholated anise re-balances itself to provide a cool canvas for invisible brushstrokes of firmer notes. 

By the middle of the day, a crisp cinnamon and labdanum heart accord emerges, its fizzier texture playing off of the scent's inherent smoothness. Transparent patchouli, creamy sandalwood, and a hint of musk comprise the base, the perfect denouement to this little masterwork. Jim will send me an ingredients list (he does not go for the typical marketing note pyramids), and I expect it will detail the usage of several expensive naturals. Black Antlers is like a stroll through the Irish countryside after the rain, with the ephemeral magic of spotting a "Giant Deer" in the trees.

For more information on how to acquire bottles and samples of Garner James perfumes, you can contact Jim on basenotes - he goes by "Wooznib," and you can also contact his brand's Facebook page, which I linked to above. If you are someone who appreciates complex, gentlemanly niche compositions with excellent note clarity and separation (lovers of Montale, Malle, and Creed take note), you're wasting time if you're not already messaging him.