“The role of the artist is exactly the same role, I think, as the role of the lover. If you love somebody, you honor at least two necessities at once. One of them is to recognize something very dangerous, or very difficult. Many people cannot recognize it at all, that you may also be loved; love is like a mirror. In any case, if you do love somebody, you honor the necessity endlessly, and being at the mercy of that love, you try to correct the person whom you love. Now, that’s a two-way street. You’ve also got to be corrected. As I said, the people produce the artist, and it’s true. The artist also produces the people. And that’s a very violent and terrifying act of love. The role of the artist and the role of the lover. If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see. Insofar as that is true, in that effort, I become conscious of the things that I don’t see. And I will not see without you, and vice versa, you will not see without me. No one wants to see more than he sees. You have to be driven to see what you see. The only way you can get through it is to accept that two-way street which I call love. You can call it a poem, you can call it whatever you like. That’s how people grow up. An artist is here not to give you answers but to ask you questions.”

THE OLDEST ROLE of scent, predating its use as a cosmetic, is as a vehicle to the realm of the spirit. And why not? Smell has always been recognized as the most ethereal of the senses. Perfumes are here but not here, of substance and of air, literally conjured out of spirit. Fleeting but embedded in memory, they embody both the evanescent quality of earthly existence and the possibility of eternity. As perfume seems to be the soul of the flower, so the spirit in man has seemed, in all ages, to be the elusive, immortal essence of his mortal body. All that is sacred in the human seems to be most poignantly hinted at in perfume.