Synthetics vs. Naturals

What? There's a debate?

To me it's like debating vegetarianism. Where's the freakin' debate? It's a choice, people. C-H-O-I-C-E, for whatever your reasons.

And who's to say what medium is best in which to create art? I remember several years ago reading an article about an artist who'd created sculptures with shit. Yeah, shit. Poo. Dooky. Doo-doo. Crap. Excrement. Critics razed this guy. Art lovers flocked to his show. He made loads of money and got his name all over the newspapers. And if I hadn't known the medium was crap, I might have looked harder, beyond the materials used, to the actual art, because honestly I can't say whether or not the sculptures themselves were aesthetically pleasing ~ to me.

So here we are, standing in the middle of a great Synthetics vs. Naturals debate that quite frankly just seems silly. A certain writer, with no obvious experience in the world of natural perfumery, has been bashing the use of all natural ingredients in perfumery from his lofty position in a well-read American newspaper. Natural perfumers don't like it. They don't like him. There are camps in the debate that say 'Let's go after the bastard!', others whose position is to leave him be and hope he'll just go away. One *almost* feasible response to this kind of bad press is to make something (a natural perfume) so extraordinary that he'd seem an ass to continue his hostile attitude, but this road is booby trapped. On the other hand, ignoring him seems the better option. No artist ever made great art with revenge as his medium (this is not the same as revenge as his muse).

How we ascend to that place in our hearts where joy and love and peace surround us is our business, even if it means adding a drop of aldehyde c-11. Choice and art. Art and choice. See? No debate.