Over a decade ago I bought Gal violet soap from the duty free shop at the airport in Madrid and it was a very unusual violet smell. It was cleaner, brighter and more tart than violet usually is and it seemed to have the sparkle of andehydes. At that moment I knew all I had to do was find that fragrance in a perfume and I would have the perfume of my dreams. Imagine the joy I felt when I found out that Gal also includes a perfume in their violet line. I ordered it but when it arrived it was the sweet, cottony, candy violet typical of all the rest of the violet perfumes that I truly liked but did not obsess over like the violet scent of that soap. Because I love the smell of the black locust trees when they are in bloom every May, I had been on a long quest to find a black locust soliflore which was also an impossibility as it seems that only in Russia do that appreciate these honey sweet white flowers hanging like bunches of grapes from full size trees. As a perfumer I set out to make my own black locust soliflore but since there is no absolute available, I had to recreate it by looking at a chemical analysis that had been made of natural black locust absolute, And it took quite a number of years before I was satisfied with it because it was only during one week of the year that I could work with it and tweak the formulation as I compare its smell to that of the actual living blossoms, which it something that both perfumers and those critiquing soliflores should both do a lot more often than they do. Since there were no black locust soliflores I decided to try all the perfumes on the market that have a major black locust note and Frederic Malle's Une Fleur de Cassie was among them. I love the transparent way Frederic Malle and his chosen group of master perfumers go about creating these masterpieces where cost plays no role in their creation. Just by looking at how many masterpiece perfumes have been ruined by brutal reformulations to cut costs and/or comply with regulations it stands as sad testament of creative genius stifled and not allowed to bloom in full grandeur because of costs or regulations. At least Frederic Malle removed all the cost restrictions. 

When I took my first whiff of Une Fleur de Cassie from a 5ml decant I had ordered I was immediately brought in touch with that wonderful tart violetty floral olfactory nirvana that had alluded me since I last had a bath with the Gal violet soap. Like I have said, it's fresh, clean and much more tart than violet or orris notes and it has the tingly sparkle of aldehydes. To me it's how I imagine violet sweettarts would be if there were such a thing. Even though I still love Serge Lutens' Muscs Koubläi Khan I did vow to myself that this would be my signature scent if I ever could find it in a perfume and I am pleased to stick to my word.

Train the orangutans at the Oregon 

Primate Center to master the abstract 

expressionism style of painting. As 

soon as they can render a reasonable 

facsimile of a “Jackson Pollock,” 

supply them with art materials for 

the making of signs and banners for 

the 1972 National Democratic Conven-

tion. If the Republican Party wants 

to hire your primate sign painters, 

use your discretion.

Although we will pass your suggestion along to our 

Convention Director’s office for future reference, your idea 

unfortunately may be precluded by a previous commitment 

to the chimpanzees at the Miami Zoo who have apparently 

mastered Miro.

Assemble all former drug addicts,

alcoholics, and convicts in America,

give them a paint brush with a handle

large enough to accomodate their col-

lective hands, and have them drag the

brush across stencils of the Fifth

Amendment placed on Penn Central rail-

road tracks. Use psychedelic colors 

combined with red, white, and blue.

Engage Avedon to take life-size photo-

graphs of your 735 members in gestures,

or poses, which simulate the religious

paintings of El Greco. Drymount the 

photographs to the inside section of 

refrigerator and freezer doors made by

your society.

Build a 75’ wide conveyor stage

from New York city to Los Angeles.

Search flophouses and cloisters

for fallen movie stars and bar-

tenders, costume them in Renaissance 

garb, and pay them $10 a day to per-

form vignettes about the sex lives 

of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo

as the stage moves across America.

Sell your Las Vegas casinos 

and use the proceeds to con-

struct a giant jet, with good

north light and crap tables,

capable of holding America’s 

artists, retired military

personnel, and circus aerial-

ists. Fly flight patterns 

reminiscent of Japanese 

calligraphy over former World

War II retention campsites

while showing movies starring 

Guy Madison.

Paint your student body with acrylics

of varying hues, press the painted

students against surf boards covered 

with watercolor paper, and plant the

boards upright on any street lacking

palm trees.

Thank you for your suggestion. We find that when the 

students smile — as they do on occasion — it cracks the

acrylic paint and everything comes unglued.

But thanks anyway.

Assemble your faculty and student

body in the auditorium of your

“magic mausoleum,” provide them

with magic amrkers, ballet slippers,

and Mickey Mouse ears, and send them 

out to color every submerged object

within a 3,000 mile radius of your

campus. Next, collect, grade, and 

exhibit the objects in movie theater

pop corn machines during the showing 

of Walt Disney movies.

I have passed your project on to Allan Kaprow who has

assumed the responsibility for carrying out your proposal

and I’m sure he will report the results to you when the 

project is completed. Our whole faculty and a good part 

of our student body has responded to the project with 

much enthusiasm.

Place your Art Museum and Marquand 

Art Library on one end of a see-saw.

Hire a herd of elephants to jump on

its opposite end so that the buildings,

and their staffs, land in Ashtabula, 

Ohio, and remain there for one week

dispensing knowledge. Repeat the pro-

cess until every American city of 10,000

inhabitants, or less, has been visited.

Initiate a new line of Pop Art automobiles by

stamping out the bodies in the shapes of current

celebrities beginning with a horizontal 

Ralph Nader for the first 100,000 cars of the 

line. For the second series stamp out 500,000

bodies in the shape of General Charles DeGaulle

with emphasis of his strong facial character-

istics. The auto bodies’lengths should

duplicate exactly the heights of the celebrities,

for example, if Nader is 5’10” tall the first

series should be 5’10” from bumper to bumper.

Use your discretion for other specifications.

please change the receiver

shapes so that those phones customers who wear 

earrings do not have to remove them to answer 

the phone.

Fill the Grand Canyon with Hunt’s tomato

paste which has been dyed ultramarine blue.

Then, with proper earth moving equipment,

scoop out large sections in relief from the 

top layer going down at least forty feet

below the surface. After this has been

completed spray the mass of tomato paste

with clear lacquer to make the largest nutri-

tious earthwork relief in the world.

Melt the coinage from union dues collected

during a one year period. Next, coat the

Capitol building in Washington, D.C., with

the melted metal so that the coating is at

least three feet thick. Assign union members 

to polish the building daily.

Find colossal Mayan statues which depict 

mothers nursing their infants. If none

can be found, make statues of your members 

nursing their babies and bury them at the

Mayan sites of Copan, Chichen Itza, and Tikal.

Beginning with your June, 1970, issue of

Playboy, enlarge the “Playmate of the Month”

centerfold so that it measures 100 by 100 

feet. Instead of showing the full figure, 

show only a detail selected each month by

members of A.S.P.C.A. or the La Leche League.

Assemble every fashion model shown in

your magazine for the past ten years,

dress them in my red, white, and blue

Poncho-Ponchos © (plural clothing using

Velcro tape so that two or more persons

wearing Poncho-Ponchos can attach or

detach themselves at will), and dispatch 

them in chain-like fashion to stand guard 

around America’s most important art treasures.

If I saw them in the street I would run them over so

fast,

a herd of them in the middle of the street.

Yellow and greening all over my windshield, just

cause I told them I loved em.

The broad died

turned over to ask where I went and they killed her.

8:47 am in the morning, those birds never say

goodbye

I’m only thirteen and all these bastards are in herring

glasses.

I stopped by the old place yesterday, they tour the

building down and made it into a club. One you can 

hit with.

Performance

Elegance

Art

Nonsense

Uniqueness

Talent

Museums were, and are, part of an organization of the public sphere aimed at taking hold of and defining the interests, culture, pleasures, daily practices, and “highest aspirations” of a public. Why do people go to museums? what does the museum promise? In the words of Philadelphia Museum publications: “happiness,” “ideal beauty,” “liberation from the struggle imposed by material needs.” How can one make good the museum’s promise? A docent might know. She’s the museum’s representative. As a volunteer she represents both the class interests embodied in the museum and its philanthropic purpose: the public good. She’s in identification with the board of trustees.

As Jane Castleton, I articulate what the museum wants. But against this museum discourse, I want to introduce what Jane wants, what I want: specifically, the point at which it exceeds what the museum promises, or takes it too literally, or takes herself as its object. The split between her discourse and the museum’s is conditioned on her position in the institution: as a woman, as a non-expert, as a volunteer—not a high level patron. This split is a wedge I hope to introduce into the chain of identifications, visitor/docent/bourgeois patron

It is not in suffering, in adversity, that my optimism finds a stumbling-block, but in the ugliness and maliciousness of men.

The great danger is letting oneself be monopolized by a fixed idea. Goethe managed to avoid it. Neither Tolstoy nor Barrès did. At a certain age the field of vision frequently narrows. ‘Convictions’ are bad; I hope to purge myself of them

To what a degree the same past can leave different marks - and especially admit of different interpretations.

The gifted young Italian poet and essayist, Lauro de Bosis (1901-31), became an active anti-Fascist and, learning to fly for this purpose, flew over Rome on 2 October 1931, scattering leaflets addressed to the population and to the king. Chased by pursuit planes, he vanished at sea on the return flight.

The son of F., my tailor, provides me with a wonderful start for a theatrical character while I am trying on a suit: 

‘It needs to be full here,’ I tell him.

And he says at once:

‘Yes, full . . . while being slightly . . .’

And he does not finish his sentence.

I imagine this quirk, much more deeply rooted and hence much more powerfully comic than a purely verbal quirk, and more revealing of character: each of his thoughts is accompanied by its shadow; he agrees with a reservation, but a reservation that remains vague and only half formulated. He says:

‘Obviously . . . yet on the other hand . . .’

‘Yes . . . but nevertheless . . .’

The characters of tragedy are always, more or less, idle people. It is hard to imagine a Hamlet harassed by the need to earn his living. The ‘to be or not to be’ is a fruit of leisure.

To be sure, I have already known periods of slackening enthusiasm, and I know that I got over them; but at that time I was young. Is there enough space left ahead of me, henceforth, to spring forth anew? For all the impetus acquired in the past does not seem to me of any help for what I now want to write. And this is above all the reason for my silence. I am in this sanatorium to rest, to take care of myself, to find out what I am still worth and whether or not I can still dare.

My desperate waiting, despite everything, takes on the colour of hope.