Like This - Tilda Swinton

Audio. The inspiration between Tilda Swinton's Fragrance - Like This - from Etat Libre D'Orange.

"I have never been a one for scents in bottles. The great Sufi poet Rumi wrote:

If anyone wants to know what "spirit" is, or what "God's fragrance" means, lean your head toward him or her. Keep your face there close. Like this.

This is possibly my favourite poem of all time. It restores me like the smoke/rain/gingerbread/greenhouse my scent-sense is fed by. It is a poem about simplicity, about human-scaled miracles. About trust. About home.

In my fantasy there is a lost chapter of Alice in Wonderland -- after the drink saying Drink Me, after the cake pleading Eat Me -- where the adventuring, alien, Alice, way down the rabbit hole, far from the familiar and may be somewhat homesick - comes upon a modest glass with a ginger stem reaching down into a pale golden scent that humbly suggests: Like This."

Tilda Swinton

Category:

Education

Tags:

• perfume
• fragrance
• tildaswinton
• poetry