Dogs of Smell & Tell: An Interview with Stella the Terrier

The many moods of Stella the terrier as she sniffs
a variety of fragrance blotters on March 4, 2020.

Stella isn't a typical Smell & Tell fan. She walks on all fours, has a superior sense of smell, and is quite curious when encountering novel scents. Stella has an interesting habit. She likes to smell fragrance blotters her owner brings home from Smell & Tell. Her reactions vary, but they’re always colorful. 

Thanks for agreeing to be interviewed by our dog interpreter. One of our readers wants to know how you manage bad smells?

It depends. What smells unpleasant to a human nose tells a slightly different story to a dog nose. Going on a smelling jag in the park is like reading a good book. You don't want to stop until you've figured out a smell, and all the smells underneath that smell, so you know the whole story. Somewhere along the way you come across something unusual or threatening, like the smell of fear. Then you have to figure out where it came from, and if you should stay, run away, or stand your ground and bark your face off.

       Stella relates to the conundrum in "Should I Stay or Should I Go" by the Clash

Have you ever followed a scent trail straight into trouble?

Following a scent trail doesn't work if you latch onto a skunk. Young dogs learn this early on, others get a case of amnesia the second time around and walk straight into skunk spray, whining and crying like an amnesiac when it's happened before. A single skunking was enough for me. Getting cleaned up afterwards isn't glamorous. The combination of hydrogen peroxide, baking soda and Dawn dish detergent makes me smell like a demented lemon. Some of the skunk odor lingers, which doesn’t go over well with my friends.

Are there smells that you find overwhelming?

Things that make me feel like I can't breathe really get to me. The acrid odor of vinegar humans use to make pickles, the smell of bleach when someone in the house is in cleaning zealot mode, things like that. I loathe smoke. Smoke from a fireplace can be tough on my lungs. You won't find me close enough to get my fur in a singe, that's for sure. It's bad enough that I smell wood smoke on my fur the next day. Smelling like a piece of bacon isn’t the same as eating bacon. It's confusing.

Do you have a favorite smell?

That depends. I really enjoy smells when I have a chance to investigate them in the yard. I like playing by myself because I can chase a squirrel up a tree without interference from other dogs, and smell whatever I like. Walking on a leash can be fun as far as sniffing things, but it's subject to human whims like stopping and chatting with neighbors, or being forced to meet other people's dogs. 

To answer your question, I love the smell of being with other dogs in the dog park. You get to smell your friends, which is a combination of their unique dog smell, and smells from where they've been and who they've been with. On the whole, it's the smell of kin. Why humans don't smell each other more often is beyond me. They should take up reading books about Dr. Richard Feynman and his nose-forward ways. 

Stella the Jack Parsons terrier as a pup. She'll be 13 
on March 23, 2024. Image courtesy of Kirsten Segal.

Why do you like sniffing fragrance blotters from Smell & Tell programs at AADL?

It's like smelling a human version of a dog park crossed with a forest, a garden, the elements, a scent lab, and a chef's kitchen with a hint of je ne sais quoi. Smelling fragrance blotters from Smell & Tell is like smelling a world inside a world to infinity. I sniffed something interesting from the Brian Eno Smells program in 2020. I was captivated by a strange tuberose perfume called Nardo by Madini, and kept sniffing to figure it out. 

Then it happened. I saw my reflection in a window and didn’t recognize myself. I barked at the stranger in the glass, and was compelled to roll on the perfume blotter and pursue it. It took a few minutes before I snapped out of it. I adore and fear the smell of Nardo perfume because of this. I have a confession to make. Sometimes, when I want to understand a smell better, I lick the perfume blotter or smell through my mouth while baring my teeth. I can’t tell you why, but it works for me. I am a dog after all.

Notes & Curiosities:

Is there a logical explanation for Stella's reaction to Nardo perfume? An educated guess says that the presence of indole molecules may have something to do with it. Indole is present in mammalian feces. Its fecal-like qualities are noticeable at higher concentrations. Interestingly, indole smells like flowers at .01% (200ppm), and shapeshifts into fecal, mothball and horse-like odor qualities at .01%-1%. George S. Clark described this binary as "a Dr. Jekyll and Hyde nature" in Perfumer & Flavorist magazine. Indole signals insectivory and attracts pollinators, which is why it's vital to chemical communication in plants like jasmine and tuberose.

 "Indole presents a dual organoleptic profile, or, to state it another way, a Dr. Jekyll and Hyde nature.” Ah, mais oui. Serge Gainsbourg relates to the Jekyll-Hyde duality.

Nardo by Madini is no longer distributed in the U.S. by Talisman in Seattle, Washington. Fear not, perfume lovers. Madini perfume hasn't disappeared. Parfumerie Madini is located at 5, bd. Pasteur Tangier, Tangier-Tétouan-Al Hoceima Morocco. “The perfumery is owned by Sidi Madini and is a family business that has been passed down through his family for more than 500 years," according to a listing in Fodor's Travel. 

Smell and Tell: Brian Eno Smells

A journalist was interviewing musician/producer Brian Eno in candlelit room when the artist opened a faded lime-colored metal briefcase filled with “an array of phials” containing raw materials used in perfumery. The year was 1982 and the article was titled “An Evening with Brian Eno”. This was the first interview where the subject of scent became the main topic of discussion—it wasn’t the last.

Brian Eno is a full-on smellaholic who continues to collect raw ingredients used in perfumery for private enjoyment and inspiration. What is it about the art of perfumery that continues to fascinate the renowned founder of ambient music? How does Eno’s passion for smells shape his creative output? (Hint: if you download his Bloom app on iTunes you’ll find a breadcrumb trail of synesthetic clues).

What are Brian Eno’s favorite smells and why do they have the impact that they do? Recode your concept of creativity. Get inside Brian Eno’s olfactory mind and find out what happens when normal instruments are abandoned and disconnected events are smelled in circuit.

The Smell and Tell series of art+science programming is led by Michelle Krell Kydd, a trained nose in flavors and fragrance who shares her passion for gastronomy and the perfume arts on Glass Petal Smoke. Smell & Tell builds community through interactions with flavor, fragrance and storytelling. The unique and popular series celebrates its eighth anniversary year in June at the Ann Arbor District Library and is ongoing.

Smell & Tell: Brian Eno Smells
Date: Wednesday, February 19, 2020
Time: 6:30-8:45PM
Location: The Ann Arbor District Library, Pittsfield Branch
Address: 2359 Oak Valley Drive, Ann Arbor, MI 48103
Phone: 734-327-4200
Admission is free and is sponsored by AADL
Link to Event: https://aadl.org/node/398023

Notes:
Recommended reading for insight into a collaboration between Brian Eno and Maurice Roucel that's curious and mysterious: Brian Eno, Maurice Roucel and the Perfume of Unfinished Business.

Brian Eno Smells debuted at the Ann Arbor District Library in 2018. Attendees and new fans of Smell & Tell at the library wanted an encore. Et voila. There's a new smell added to the scent flight; a perfume that a woman Eno encountered declared as aphrodisiac. Eno associates it with biblical Nard (Spikenard), but it's something completely different. You'll have to attend the program to smell Nardo and find out what it really is (I have it and production is officially discontinued).

Lesson? Don't rely on aphrodisiac lore when you get a sample of of Nardo perfume from a woman in Ibiza: "...a woman I met in Ibiza gave me a minute bottle containing just one drop of an utterly heavenly material called Nardo (I later came to think that this was probably spikenard oil, extracted from a shrub growing at between six and eight thousand feet on the Himalayas and used by wealthy Indian ladies as a prelude to lovemaking)." Tsk-tsk, Brian.

Brian Eno, Maurice Roucel and the Perfume of Unfinished Business

Brian Eno and perfumer Maurice Roucel collaborated on a fragrance project in the late eighties that never came to fruition. Sounds like the perfume of unfinished business, but decades later, no one is talking about it. That's a shame because an existing fragrance opportunity that intersects with music and technology is right under their nose—and the fragrance industry's.

An interesting fact surfaced in the Spring 2015 edition of Noble Rot magazine. Brian Eno (musician, composer, producer and all around polymath) revealed that he collaborated with Quest perfumer Maurice Roucel on a "sex" perfume back in the day. That was just for fun.

Eno refers to Roucel as a friend, but what doesn't surface are details regarding how the two became acquainted (Roucel currently works for Symrise). Putting the pieces together makes the case for artistic collaboration in the present using technology that didn't exist when the two originally worked together—an app that incorporates music, color and fragrant inspiration.

Brian Eno

Brian Eno was immersed in learning about perfumery at Quest during Roucel's tenure there (Quest was acquired by Givaudan in 2007). The perfumer and the fragrance company aren't mentioned in Neroli's liner notes, but what took place in this time frame is.

The deduction is not squelchy. Neroli (1993) is an ambient album inspired by the essence of orange blossom and Eno's passion for collecting ingredients used in perfumery (a picture of his fragrance kit packed with vials accompanies liner notes in the 2014 reissue of the CD).

The CD liner notes contain an excerpt from a radio interview Eno did with WNYC's John Schaefer, the host of New Sounds. They reveal that Eno was working on a commercial perfume project with a large fragrance company, and that he made monthly trips to the company's office in Paris to gather experience and knowledge. The timeframe is the late eighties.

It would make sense for Eno to withhold the name of the company he was working with in a taped radio interview. The fragrance industry is notoriously secretive. A non-disclosure agreement may have been signed, but if it was have the terms of the NDA expired? Does it matter where the project picks up if Roucel is now at Symrise? Is Eno interested in revisiting something he abandoned in a new timeframe with new tools? These questions and more are worthy of consideration.

Maurice Roucel via Editions de Parfums Frederic Malle

Roucel was working for Quest in 1989 and though he isn't mentioned in Neroli's liner notes, his participation can be deduced if one reads “An Evening with Brian Eno” in The Complete Music Magazine (1982), “Scents and Sensibility” in Details magazine (July 1992) and “Ode to Perfume” in Noble Rot (2015).

Eno's fragrance industry references are always Quest and Roucel, but the liner notes for Neroli, which are dated September 18, 1989, require further exploration. Content from the New Sounds interview doesn't match Neroli's liner notes verbatim and a deeper "industry" reveal is in the liner notes. So why the blip?

Shadow of Neroli by Michelle Krell Kydd

Eno's interview with New Sounds was broadcast on October 18, 1989 under the title #375: Ambient Music with Brian Eno. The content of Neroli's liner notes isn't the "edited" broadcast that aired on New Sounds. It would be interesting to hear the uncut version, but the past is gone and it's 2018—time for Eno and Roucel to combine their métiers and visit uncharted territory.

The Bloom app created by Brian Eno and Peter Chilvers is a natural starting point. Bloom's haptic interface plays a sound every time a finger taps the touchscreen. Each tap generates a colored sphere and corresponding sound. Successive tapping creates multiple sounds and colors that are playfully synesthetic. The background color is set by the user as a "mood". Each mood on the Bloom app is named after an ingredient used in perfumery—there are 12 of them.

Screenshot of Bloom App on an iPad

Bloom's 12 fragrant "mood" settings are: Neroli, Vetiver, Ylang, Labdanum, Bergamot, Orris, Ambrette, Benzoin, Tolu, Cedar, Civet and Skatole. There are no smells in reality or virtual reality, though one could easily hack that with a collection of diluted aroma materials from suppliers like Eden Botanicals, Enfleurage NYC, Perfumer's Apprentice and White Lotus Aromatics.

Two product lines are immediately possible. The first is a collection of finished fragrances based on Bloom's mood settings. That's 12 perfumes Maurice Roucel can make and everyone knows he brings sexy back like it never left the room.

The second opportunity is a coffret containing each of the "mood" materials in dilution. This would encourage the development of a personal lexicon for smells, and indulging in scent layering to create perfume accords on skin.

The coffret addresses Eno's observation of fragrance as an "unlangued" sense. It's an opportunity to move through subjectivity into objectivity via learning to evaluate raw materials used in perfumery. Et voila. Glass Petal Smoke has just provided a fragrance brief for Brian Eno and Maurice Roucel.

One is reminded of writer Italo Calvino's words when considering the possibility that Eno and Roucel—two highly respected artists that are well versed in distinct disciplines—will never collaborate again:

…the phials, the ampoules, the jars with their spire-like or cut glass stoppers will weave in vain from shelf to shelf their network of harmonies, assonances, dissonances, counterpoints, modulations, cadenzas: our deaf nostrils will no longer catch the notes of their scale.
        —“The Name, The Nose” from Under the Jaguar Sun, by Italo Calvino

Let's hope perfumer Maurice Roucel (a 2012 Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres recipient) and polymath Brian Eno pick up where they left off, and don't leave us with dead air.

Notes:
Thanks to WNYC Associate Producer Caryn Havlik for assisting Glass Petal Smoke in locating #375: Ambient Music with Brian Eno on the New Sounds website when the date cited in Neroli's liner notes didn't correspond with the date of the broadcast.

The liner notes referenced in this article are from the 2014 reissue of Neroli on CD at All Saints Records. It is currently sold out.

A perfume accord is the basic character of a fragrance consisting of three or four blended notes that create a new aromatic impression. It's like using a mirepoix in cooking; the sum in flavor is different than the individual ingredients that comprise it.

A generative audio-visual installation utilizing Bloom made news last February, but smells weren't included in the communal mixed reality experience shaped by Bloom and Microsoft HoloLens.

"Brian Eno Smells" took place on February 21, 2018 at the Ann Arbor District Library, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I introduced the Bloom app at the Smell & Tell and 40 people smelled Musk Ambrette while the Bloom app operated in Ambrette mode. The purpose was to encourage personal olfactory lexicon via intersensing, a form of multisensory learning. You can read about the Smell & Tell event here. Special thanks to Christopher Porter who covered the event as a journalist and participant. Porter rocked a stylish coif a là David Bowie on the cover of Low, one of three albums in the Bowie "Berlin Trilogy" that Brian Eno worked on.