About

My name is Charlie. I live in Upstate New York. Lots of details about why I’m writing this blog and how my perspectives have developed will reveal themselves through the posts on this site. But here’s a stab at a concise summary:

I’ve worked in politics (mostly communications) for my whole professional life. I had used food and cooking as a creative outlet for most of that time. I love to cook and eat and explore. But a few years ago, I had a medical episode that severely restricted my diet. I needed something else to enjoy. My path into fragrance started with My Musky Uncle Reno.

I don’t like doing anything half-assed. I also don’t like speaking about things that I don’t know enough about. I’ve lurked on the fragrance forums for these years, never feeling like I had the experience or knowledge to add value to the discussion. I, of course, have always had opinions about what I like and what I don’t like. But, just like when looking at a painting in an art museum, I have no business saying that painting is good or bad without some context. I don’t want to speak without experience.

I’m now at a place where I think I have enough experience in smelling things, and enough knowledge from reading and discussions, to share some opinions. I’ve built a large collection and have smelled thousands of fragrances. I also have not even scratched the surface of what there is to know. But I think I have had enough experience that I’m able to identify what I don’t know.

I’m writing this blog because:

I want an outlet to share the ideas I have about perfume.
Everything is political, so perfume is political too. I want to explore that.
I think I can do it regularly. I don’t like blogs with posts once every month or two. Consistency is important and I think I can achieve that.
I think it can add value. I’m not going to write review posts. I want to explore ideas, trends, history, creation, art.
I have nothing to lose. This isn’t a job. I don’t need to make any money from it.

So, no pressure, low stakes. This is just a place for me to have fun. If one person reads it and engages or learns something or teaches me something or has fun with it along with me, then we have a net positive in the universe and that makes me happy. If no one reads it, that’s ok too. My wife and my mom probably will.

The name. I hate the kitsch. But I didn’t want to just name this after myself. I thought about my experience with perfume so far, and “incessant” is an appropriate adjective (addiction might be more accurate, but there’s no play on words in it). And the URL was available. So, goofy made up word it is.

The logo. When I got sick and had to occupy myself with things other than cooking, in addition to perfume, I also got into houseplants. I had a lot of plants when I was a kid. Bonsais and cacti all the time. They’d be fun for a couple weeks, but I’d promptly kill them. Probably by overwatering. Like perfume, I had a thing about plants in my mind from my childhood. Now that I’m writing this, I think I’m realizing that perfume and plants might be two things that I didn’t do so well as a kid but could learn and do the right way, fully, as an adult. Deep.

Anyway, I needed a logo for this site. I am a communications professional, so branding matters to me. I looked to plants. I thought about “incessant.” That led me to how plants reproduce. Flowers are an important part of perfumery. Flowers reproduce, incessantly, by creating pollen that comes out of the stamen. So, that’s what the logo is supposed to be. I’m not a trained graphic designer. I’ve just always had to figure it out. Forgive me.