Brian Eno-Perfumes

Brian Eno on his fascination with scent, perfume and the difficulty in finding objective language for olfactory truths.

Scents and Sensibility

I started thinking about smell in 1965. At art college, a friend and I made a little collection of evocative aromas, housed in about fifty small bottles. There was rubber, naptha, motorcycle dope, cuir de russe (used to make leather smell like leather rather than dead animals), gasoline, ammonia, juniper wood. In 1978, in a neglected and unlikely part of London, I discovered an old pharmacy that was crammed with oils and absolutes.

Embrace the pleasures of our most primitive and unlangued sense. Being mystified doesn't frighten us as much as it used to. And the point for me is not to expect perfumery to take its place in some nice, reliable, rational world order, but to expect everything else to become like perfume.

Like sometimes I'm with a woman and I can suddenly think of a smell that I hope might be right for her. I made a very successful one recently, I was very pleased with it.
I have to actually sleep with them.