lost in the rages of fragrance
- From “The Window” by Leonard Cohen
The Singer-Songwriter Scent Of Success
Ongoing readers may recall the post, Leonard Cohen & The Sweet Smell Of Indifference, which focused on Cohen’s vision, as reported by Sleep66:
Leonard once told me he was going to come out with his own cologne. It was going to be called “Indifference,” and its slogan was going to be “I don’t give a shit what happens”
That same post also included the Heck Of A Guy ad proposal as a means of furthering this venture.
It turns out that Leonard Cohen is not the only iconic singer-songwriter to consider developing his own line of cologne. The following excerpt is from Carrie Fisher’s book, “Wishful Drinking:”
Dylan wasn’t calling to ask me on a date. He was calling because this cologne company had contacted him to ask if he would endorse a cologne called Just Like A Woman. Now Bob didn’t like that name, but he liked the idea of endorsing a cologne. And he wanted to know if I had any good cologne names.
Do I look like someone who would be wandering around with a bunch of cologne names rattling around in my head?
Well, tragically, I did. I did have quite a few ideas for cologne names and so I told them to Bob.
There was Ambivalence – for the scent of confusion.
Arbitrary – for the man who doesn’t give a shit how he smells!
And, Empathy – feel like them, smell like this.
Well, Bob actually liked those!
The Dylan-Cohen Defecatory Disinterest Dialectic
The reader’s attention is called to the description of “Arbitrary,” the second of Ms Fisher’s designations winning Mr Dylan’s approval. The juxtaposition of that phrase, “for the man who doesn’t give a shit how he smells,” with Mr Cohen’s characterization of the mood evoked by his cologne, ““I don’t give a shit what happens,” readily identifies the hitherto undiscovered motif employed by both of the men most often acknowledged as the poet- lyricists of their time:
Does Not Give A Shit
The Consequences
The intuitively apparent mythicocloacal significance implicit in this shared theme mandates a re-appraisal of the corpus of work produced by not only each of these artists but also all those performers influenced by them.
It also opens up, of course, a synergistic entrepreneurial opportunity for a combined Cohen-Dylan line of colognes for the discerning kind of man who is governed only by his own insouciance.
