Empty stage on the premiere of Je Joue donc Je Suis by Morgane Gauvin in Dubai

The room seeps into darkness. In the silent hall, the audience stands still awaiting for their diva to jump onstage. The taxi dropped me off late that night and I rushed through the courtyard and the ticketing hall, in the humid and air of Dubai nights; like a shadow I ran in between the row of seats, between them like a ghost, to the backstage where she stayed. There I saw her, a maiden fair, her skin of white and hair of fallow-gold, flamboyant in her red dress she stood, lit only by the lightbulbs of her dressing table.

Mirrors there were on every wall and purple carpets on the floor. I entered the room and saw her standing down the steps leading to the stage. She did not acknowledge my coming. She was panting, her eyes closed, clutching the handrail with the strength of a child trying to writhe free of a nightmare. How long had she been there? I had asked the producer to put some music on – to let the audience believe this was all part of the show, the awaiting and the silence and this naked wooden scene. They were all impatient, in there with smiles on their faces hazelit in the dark – but in here were just us two, in utter silence and alight.

It had been a year since she played this part, a year since I directed her in Paris, a year indeed since I graduated from drama school and played a monologue in front of eight hundred people, a year since she ran off stage in the middle of her play, a year since I fled to her rescue and sent her back onstage. Of course she would be frightened… This public was to her estranged and it seem’d for an instant that she had forgotten her lines, her moves and even to her name. This oft happens in our trade: the heart races, the vision blurs, the stomach knots and one can feel the blood racing through one’s veins. The “trac” as we say in France – I even knew of an actress who would faint every night ere entering the stage. This one was petrified and naught there was in my doing to ease her pain. I remember of the heat, I remember of the sweaty air, of her make-up and powders, I remember of the mirrors and the colours, the purple and the hushéd roar in the theatre and the suffocating cloy of  Serge Lutens Un Bois Vanille. Her perfume.

I went up to her, whispered a few words in her ear as I had done before. We looked at each other and I bid her go. And she shone, a star born anew under the spotlights, honoured by a long standing ovation. I would never go onstage afterwards. I was 22 and this night she told me something that would forever change the course of my life…

Alexandre Helwani aka The Perfume Chronicles on stage: his fragrant awakening is Oriza Legrand Rêve d’Ossian

To speak of my perfume awakening would be to speak of my soul and even though I may not have seen many years, I have suffered through their harsh seasons. What is an awakening, even? Is it the fleeting minute when all, unwarily, makes sense ? Or the years of dolorous labour, the contractions of our bodies and lives and souls? For I never conceived perfume as a mere luxury and to speak of it would mean to open about the subtlest parts of my psyche, that which I myself can fathom but through mirrors.

As with most people, I discovered perfume through my parents. Of my childhood I remember naught but impressions: my mother’s kiss tasting of Coco Chanel, my waking up as my father groomed himself, leaving after him a lingering trail of Miracle and its unmistakable swirl of mossy cedarwood and a peppery zing of vetiver. I was nearing my twelfth year and my parents’ divorce; we had changed schools and I found solace only behind closed doors, when alone and in silence, my mind could turn walls into trees and dust into leaves and wander at peace of freewill.

A thing there was in my bedchamber that would fend off all evils, a haven of sorts, a small bottle of Dune, by Dior. I wore it not though most times I would unscrew the cap and breathe it in, a solar escape out of a grim household; its ambery sheen set ablaze against the silent birch trees looming in the garden; against the worn out fabric of a family broken asunder; against a childhood sinking into adulthood without asking. Dune’s embrace was fantastic as it drove me off to faraway lands beyond my imagination, to lands unseen by my waking eye nor vivid but in dreams. I saw an endless desert and peaceful wherein I would sit idle trying never to come back. Its heart, this narcotic sap of ylang-ylang and the somber song of patchouli like that of sands, dry and sunny, a mountain of sun and silence where alone I stood caressed by the brisk seaside air.

Prophetic as it were, I moved to Dubai that year and saw the desert for the first time. All deserts I saw, of sand and of frost, and they were naught compared to the hollowness of my soul. The sun of Dune had set on mine eyes and to this day I have smelt it not. Through this long night, I grew up by falling into myself – forlorn I fell, forsaking all I knew of the world and of me. There is something absolutely scary to uncovering the world with new eyes and to take a real look at oneself, only this look was not true for devoid of love as it were, it threw me down a hole from which I would have never escaped.

Coco Mademoiselle, EdP – Chanel by Jacques Polge 

If not for her. Like the Dune sun of sands, she entered my life, my father’s friend in Chanel clad. The first time I met her, she wore a stunning off-white ensemble and smelt of Coco Mademoiselle. She saw me… and shielded me, pathetic as I looked, she dressed me again and we would spend nights talking in her flat of life and of death – in the humid air of Dubai nights. I wore my first perfume thanks to her, Egoiste it was, by Chanel. I knew not a thing about it but its name burst open the doomy skies of my life like a bolt of thunder. I needed it. I heeded it. Not to become egoist but rather to tackle at the heart the self-deprecating demon that had ensnared my mind.

And it worked.

I grew up with this perfume, the perfume of my birthing into life. With it I became an adult all too soon, for seldom do teenagers wear Egoiste. It felt hot against the skin, consuming not only the flesh but most illusions or kindness, with a punch of coriander leaf and the tart citruses that morphed a ball of cinnamon licking a deck of dry woods, of sandal and cedar still warm from the spices. Through it I learnt to assert myself to the disliking of most and I started to fight back against the death that almost won over me. I wore it but a year and I could probably not wear it nor smell it ever again for it will conjure up such feelings I have now buried, such memories I am come at peace with. I now love Egoiste but long have I hated it, could not faintly smell it nor look at it. He was my former lover with whom I learnt all and who hurt me most. A year of passion and a year ended.

Ad for Égoiste, EdT – Chanel by Jacques Polge.

I went from Egoiste to Endymion by chance almost. Dubai and its souq opened the gates to a world I never fathomed to exist: spices and resins, frankincense aplenty under ounces of oud and mastic; sinewing streets filled with cumin and sumac, with curry, with amber, with saffron and myrrh. I still see as I close my eyes the wafts of smoke coming from under a closed curtain, Omani frankincense it was that burnt and thus to Amouage I went, looking for a scent that would pay homage to such marvel of nature. But seldom can teenagers afford a bottle of Interlude so as I left the store on a empty Tuesday night, I passed by Penhaligon’s and there fell in love with Endymion. With the story, with the colour, with the quietness that dripped from it and the charisma that it bestowed upon me. Much needed transition from Dubai to Paris, from the desert to the city, from the fires of depression to the glacial winds of liberty. Yet I erred and entered my drama school as a person new, bereft of my scent, bereft of my joy; as someone needing to reconstruct oneself entirely.

And this fragrance of burnt incense that pursued me…

It came to pass that after years of drama school and the publication of my first play, I lacked something still to be truly healed. My career bloomed at first, I was become the purveyor of fine incenses to many parishes in Paris and in France -for I needed money to buy some perfumes- and despite it all, I felt bleary. What I thought first a calling appeared to have only been an escape; escape from a world too bleak for me to bear – the stage was but another Dune wherein I felt hot again and alone under a blinding, everlasting sun. Whither would I go if not on stage? Like angel wings, it bore me out of a perilous den only to leave me now and vanish, like angel wings. For all the riches, for all the pride, for all the loves I had conquered with the heart of an Egoiste and the meekness of an Endymion were mirages in the deserts of Dune; for I was vain if I should lack purpose…

Now comes the hour of my awakening for it seems as though my heart had been carefully prepared and husked and refined in the furnace like silver glass. My comrades and I were sitting by a hearth in the countryside, speaking in verses and drinking wine as most dreamers do until one said, his legs restless with anguish: «”It’s been two weeks since I had a part, I need to play! ” At this very moment, I realised there was in my heart no burning desire to get back on stage – it came to me that I had read my life wrong since ever the beginning. My friend’s hands trembled, his face was pallid and he had not slept in days for so harsh was his unhappiness to be bereft of his only joy. What joy of mine could have been so intense, so vivid, so palpable that I could live no longer without it? Incense. Not a day went by that I did not burn frankincense and my forgetfulness in that matter would pave me bitter days, of anger and of grief. Incense I needed to be happy however that was hardly a calling – to love is to give and through incense I only received.

 Incense fumes in Alexandre Helwani’s living room

This epiphany shook me. I headed out of my friend’s house and weak it was and late also that I arrived at my choir rehearsal. I could not focus. I felt foggy again and my thoughts drifted away and my heart rushed as in a fright and the air felt heavy over my chest when I unsealed my lips and sung along a Latin hymn that said:  “Comfort ye, comfort ye.” This verse spoke to the very hollows of my soul in ways unfathomable and thenceforth I knew such was my purpose: to comfort and console and heal away the pains I had suffered and mend the wounds which scars I bore still. I knew it and knew it not; in my heart I knew it but had not understood it.

Oriza Legrand Rêve d’Ossian

Now, I told you of this actress and of the words she whispered to me that altered my doom but there is one last thing I withheld from you. A year had passed after my experience at the rehearsal and my meeting this woman, a year during which I had found an incense perfume I much adored: Oriza Legrand Rêve d’Ossian. My ego felt bemused by Antonio, the colourful owner of Marie-Antoinette who told me:  “This perfume’s trail will not follow you, it will announce you”. Never had I smelt an incense like Oriza Legrand Rêve d’Ossian before, so rich and so shimmery, dustlike but of gold, a starry rain of fiery drops, incense and clove, cinnamon and white blossoms, heliotrope and pine – sunrise and sundusk both distilled in a bottle, a secret fire made liquid, embracing and emblazing one’s skin. I bought it, I wore it and felt drawn to it ever closer everyday. Thus, I smelt of  Oriza Legrand Rêve d’Ossian when this actress approached me and all throughout the project I wore it, from the very beginnings to the premiere when she abandoned the stage and I jumped through the theatre and the scene and behind the purple curtain to bring her back. And I wore Oriza Legrand Rêve d’Ossian still after, when we parted ways, she to Dubai and I in Paris. And I was wearing it at last when she premiered two years later, in the humid air of Dubai night.

That night, after the audience had left the theatre, she told me: “Your perfume gave me the heart to go back on stage”. That night, I understood my perfume. I understood my purpose.  That night, with Oriza Legrand Rêve d’Ossian, I stepped out of my dream.

That night I cried.

That night at last, I was become myself.

Notes in Oriza Legrand Rêve d’Ossian include: incense, leather, pine, cinnamon, aldehydes, clove, opoponax, amber, musks, tonka bean

All photos by Alexandre unless otherwise specified, Oriza Legrand Rêve d’Ossian from his collection

Guest Contributor,  Alexandre Helwani aka The Perfume Chronicles

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