©Nick Brandt-Creative direction and digital editing for Xerjoff Ivory Route by a_nose_knows
Three weeks. Three weeks they’d be living in darkness, three weeks in the galleys and wrapped in nothing but sweat, sometimes singing bitter songs of odd measures and sometimes drifting into what some explained with the aid of devils, and some others-with the inners of the mind. Off they’d go, taking turns in exhaustion but continuing the swinging side-to-side, like dummies in a massive trance of waving fellows. And, when they’d come to their senses, they’d blink. Above them, some sea captain would squint and blink, too; horizon above deck, horizon below.
©Nick Brandt Creative direction and digital editing for Xerjoff Ivory Route by a_nose_knows
Everyone describes the first blink after darkness as the brightest, the clearest, and most sharp; novels were written, wars started, civilizations torn on the brink of a wink—and ever since we woke up into humanhood, truth, it seems, has been instantly accepted if a simple condition is present: that we consume it NARROW. Scientists transverse planes; videographers stop-frame; painters tilt heads and close eyes; tasters gather their lashes to allow other senses through; dancers flash flesh through plackets; jewelers everywhere slit and cut and look to beauty through nothing but mere lines of vision.
We all, every day, thin-slice.
©Nick Brandt Creative direction and digital editing for Xerjoff Ivory Route by a_nose_knows
Is it experience that taught us to trust the light at the end of the tunnel? Is it practical optimism? Is it spiritual hope? Is it, maybe, the ever-expanding need for sharp focus? What makes us all, regardless of where we’re coming from or where we’re going, accept, seek, and believe—conceptually—that the squint has all the answers? And why do we not differentiate between the small (“blink of an eye”; “gut instinct”; “acting on impulse”) and the big (“overall feeling”) pictures, no matter how wide the blur or fragmented the dispersion?
The subconscious, as it goes, can recognize patterns and connections long before our brain does. Why, or how, we don’t know; but our gut instinct, directed by impulses driven to us from the depths of our forgotten life past, jumps into overdrive and—whether we listen to it or not—has opinions. There have been studies on it: looks into blindfolded war-winning decisions; progressive measurements of the minute amount of time we need to look at a couple before we know if they have a future together; instinctual rejections of fake art; accurate reactions to some incomplete historical truth.
Give us the truth in 3d splendor, and we may waiver; serve it through a narrow slit, and we’re sold.
©Nick Brandt- Creative direction and digital editing for Xerjoff Ivory Route by a_nose_knows
Xerjoff Ivory Route, if I may, is a monolith. Massive and compact and hard to grasp, it’s hence far from easy to measure, and fast to disperse focus; thin-slice it, and it starts clarifying, much like computer-generated renderings of realities we can’t immediately touch. The opening is massive and explicit: condimented wads of wooden sticks are tied together with coumaric vines; smell is static and blurry in a blend that’s careless but curated, accurately balanced, and closely defined. As you look, detailing can be guessed but only becomes apparent when, surgically, one slices through the layers and ponders, full-stop. There’s a green layer laden with earthy patchouli and a sweet, fat herb (tulsi)? there’s a tea-like layer with wafts of black tannins and warm mulling spices; there’s a resiny layer twisted with terpenes and tarry notes; there’s a translucent, discrete layer of marmalades and fruity tobaccos.
Around it all, the unyielding feeling of raw, painfully clear-cut juxtapositions; a daunting awareness that all can change focus… in the blink of an eye.
Official notes: spices, patchouli, allspice, sandalwood, basil
Other perceived notes: orange!!!, vanilla, tar, cardamom, black tea, dust, leather, sweet marjoram or tulsi, woody notes, black pepper, frankincense, labdanum, papyrus, cherry tobacco
Disclaimer: Xerjoff Ivory Route tester provided for my review at my request. Thank you much. As always, opinions are my own.
– dana sandu, Editor
Ivory Route. Photo, creative direction and digital editing for Xerjoff Ivory Route by a_nose_knows
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