Norne fills me with wonder. It has Wagnerian ambitions. There is quiet outrage in assembling of such bleak and neglected things. The use of such pure ‘forest’ absolutes is truly beautiful. The absence of any discernable structure makes the composition quite unnerving. Everything coalesces into an incantatory fusion of arboreal alchemy. There are moments as it lies on the skin, breathing, when I wonder if I can really wear it? But inexorably as the flesh pulls it down, Norne becomes veiled and foreboding, rolling across the senses like morning fog on leaf tips and insect wings. I lay in the dark with it sticky and green on my skin, I could feel it like a presence in the gloom. My mind drifted, it smelt like a wooden cabin left to oblivion in the woods, walls falling into the forest floor. Turpentine and creosote, muddied dust, and burning pine. It haunts the senses. I haven’t something this avant-garde and …creepy for ages.
And then what is left after six or seven hours is perhaps the beautiful thing of all, the softest mossy imprint on the skin of a remarkable scented journey. Like waking from a slumber of a hundred years, the flesh smells sweetly vegetative, candied almost, a hint of angelica, emerald dust, medicine, linctus, a memory of needles. Norne is a dream of dark extremes and awe. It is forever night in the forest my darlings and no-one is coming to find you.
”-
The Silver Fox: Verdigris Cathedrals: ‘Norne’ & Slumberhouse.
This is scent, but I understand the intensity of the writer’s feelings.
from Stowe Boyd http://stoweboyd.com/post/125340547002
