Gorilla Perfume ‘Euphoria’ and ‘The Sun’

It appears that I have unearthed Pandora’s box. The key was already in the lock, in my rush to bury it deep I must have forgotten to throw it in the river. I sat down at the edge of the pit I had dug, reached out gingerly and turned the key with a slick, well oiled click. The lock had not rusted shut then. Damn.

The first time I only opened the box a little way. Out rolled the mind twisting song of ‘Flowers Barrow’, flooding me with memories and emotions. I danced with it just long enough to pick up the wild rhythm, then resolutely closed the lid again.

Except that it won’t close. There is a golden strip of light escaping from the rim and I cannot look away from it. A fleeting scent keeps tickling my nostrils, then skipping away without revealing itself. So I ask myself what possible harm can come from taking another look?

“Beware!” Screeches my still delicate soul.

“Inhale and explore” emplores my nose.

“Step inside” invites Pandora’s box.

I am but a weak minded mortal. What choice did I really have?

The two Gorilla scents that beckoned me most enthusiastically were ‘The Sun’ and ‘Euphoria’. I initially didn’t choose them for review, opting instead for ‘Flowers Barrow’ as I knew this fragrance would be a challenge for me. It didn’t disappoint. I felt that I would be too easily won over by these other two zingy bottles of happiness. I adore bright, citrus perfumes, although I very rarely buy them because most have little to no staying power. I burn them up within an hour. I thought that if anyone could make a citrus with a concrete sillage, Gorilla could.

So. How to get my hands on them. Funds were low so I couldn’t order them online like I had with ‘Flowers Barrow’. As far I was aware Gorilla don’t do samples and I felt far too wary to make contact and ask for some. The only option left was to go into the shop. Actually step over the threshold and run the gauntlet of scent, bubbles and enthusiastic sales people. God! What was happening to me? Why was I even considering this? What if I had to have a conversation with someone I knew? What if I knocked over a whole pile of ballistics and everyone stared? What if someone tried to sell me something?

The part of the job that I found the most difficult was selling to people that didn’t want to be sold to. I could see it in their faces as soon as they walked in. Eyes down, heading straight for the products they wanted to have a look at, the barest acknowledgement of my friendly hello. Then, while I was desperately wracking my brain for a way to engage them in conversation that didn’t involve spewing the generic “can I help you find something?” Or ” do you need any help?” They would be hastily stuffing the desired product into yellow bags and heading for the tills, or else fleeing, scared and empty handed. I know how that feels from a customer point of view, but also from the other side. The pressure! You really do have to be a hardened nut to weather the storm of an unwilling customer without ending up feeling like you’ve failed.

I didn’t want to do that to the poor person who was bound to approach me when I entered the shop. So I was actually going to do this then was I? Oh boy. I really wanted to get a whiff of those perfumes…..

I go in wearing a suit of armour. Food shopping hanging from both handles of the pushchair, I try to do my best impression of ‘mum in a hurry’. The shop looks really great, clean, bright and buzzing with customers and staff. This is exactly what terrifies me because I remember the energy required to create this atmosphere. Rest assured Lush retail support, the guys in this shop are doing their jobs. Someone says hello as I pass and I really try to smile genuinely back, although it may have come out as more of a grimace. There are faces I recognise, which terrifies me further. It’s so stupid, this reaction. It is really, really over the top and unfounded, yet it is happening to me. I keep heading towards the Gorilla Perfume display.

There they are, all gilded and alluring. I can imagine that the Gorilla pop-up shop and the tour bus did these fragrances far more justice, giving them a proper stage to perform on. However the packaging is significantly different from the Lush sea of black pots to make them stand out. As I reach out my hand for the glass pipette sample bottle, I see a sales assistant approaching from the  corner of my eye. I knew this would be an inevitable part of the experience. It is her job to talk to me, as a customer. My hand starts to shake. There is a far off part of my brain telling me that I am being ridiculous, but the adrenalin is already pumping and I can’t seem to get myself under control.

“Have you come across these perfumes before?” The sales assistant asks me. She is polite and softly spoken and does not look in the least bit like a manically grinning monkey, as I always imagined I looked when talking to customers.

“Yes, actually I’ve come in especially” says my voice is a very calm and friendly tone. “Can I try ‘The Sun’?” I look at my hand holding the pipette. It is still shaking. I hope she hasn’t noticed. The conversation continues, I try ‘The Sun’ and ‘Euphoria’, we chat about my initial reactions to them. All the while I am watching from somewhere behind my eyes, in shock that I am doing this thing that I’ve been terrified of for the past three years, and doing it with apparent ease. I do have a limit though, I want to be able to review these perfumes properly, so when the sales assistant offers ‘Furze’ for me to try as well, it gives me an excuse to explain that I want to see how these develop, and if I like them I’ll come back. She lets me go and I am so relieved that I ask her name.

“Thank you Hannah!” I say as I turn towards the door. I really mean it too. Thank you Hannah, for not being terrifying, thank you for helping me to do something pretty difficult, even if you didn’t know you were doing it. I leave, and walking home I feel lighter. I also feel embarrassed. I realise I’m clammy and still shaking. My body heat is burning away the perfume really quickly. By the time I get home they are already fading.

I think I will need try these two again to get a more vivid picture. I can give my opening thoughts though, after all, that was the original purpose of my visit, even if I did get so worked up during the process that I pretty much destroyed the fruits of my labour.

Out of this citrus duo it is ‘The Sun’ that I can still detect on my skin, hours after I first applied it. It is a great, sticky orange boiled sweet of a scent, opening with the brightest burst of tangerine. It is just like pushing your fingernail into the firm, dimpled skin of an orange and sending forth a glistening spray of juice.

After the initial zestiness comes the sugary sweetness of orange squash and ice lollies. I like it a little less now, the sweetness is very sticky and I feel a bit like I’ve spilt orange syrup on my skin and let it dry. It also starts to disappear at this point, the scrawl of fluorescent marker pen fading to a haze of coloured pencil. At the last moment it is saved by the sandalwood which warms it back into existence.

That’s where it stays, a warm glow of orange with a slight creamy note of sandalwood. What I like about this fragrance is the absence of spices. To detect even a slight ginger or cinnamon note would ruin the whole scent picture for me. I was initially slightly disappointed by it’s simplicity though. I found ‘The Sun’ too straight forward. I love a good citrus, and it certainly delivers on that front. But there is no subtlety or nuance. No story to tell. I think however that this is the very point of it. Mark made this perfume during the long winter months when he was cold and miserable. He wanted to recreate the happiness he felt during a road trip with friends in America. The visions that came to him of a bright orange sun on a lollipop stick are totally synonymous with the finished perfume.

In it’s purest form, nothing is more simple than happiness. So this perfume delivers it’s promise.

‘Euphoria’ is the scent that still has a question mark at it’s end. When I put it on I had two very contradictory ideas of what to expect. I have seen it reviewed as ‘nice but not very unique’. I also read a great blog post from Confessions of a Creative about the Gorilla Perfume wrap party, where they filled an enclosed space with so much ‘Euphoria’ that people where describing it as being on an acid trip. So it was difficult not to have these images in my mind as I applied the dropper to my skin. The beginning burst of herby floral was really lovely. I am a advocate of clary sage as an excellent oil for relaxation. I like to put a few drops in a warm bath if I’ve had a long day. There was also a lovely little sparkle of grapefruit and a whisper of smokey incense.

When I came away from the shop it was ‘Euphoria’ that I thought I would find the most interesting. It seemed to be skipping around on my skin, alternating between happy herbal and something more profound, shrouded and melancholic. I was looking forward to getting home and focusing on this depth, but it had faded almost completely to lemon meringue by the time I got there. It might have been because my body temperature was simply too high for ‘Euphoria’ to stand a chance of lasting. Maybe I just didn’t put enough on. Or maybe this perfume is just one of those whimsical fancies that flitter away no matter how much you apply.

A state of Euphoria cannot last forever, but I would have liked the chance to experience it for a bit longer before coming down. I really need to go back and try this fragrance again. I don’t believe that Mark Constantine and his magical nose would create a perfume designed to heal and exult, then leave it unfinished. Or perhaps it is a sneaky trick to get you hooked so you keep on chasing the perfumed dragon in search of freedom and enlightenment.

I will have to come back for more, the box of delights is firmly wedged open and all the scented demons are loose. When I have worked up the courage I’m going in search of ‘The Scent of Weather Turning’, a fragrance that I have experienced before but has now faded from my memory. I am after depth and that one reaches for fathoms beneath.

Acting as my own therapist, using perfume as a tool, is an amazing and liberating journey. It is an immensely personal topic to blog about but I have been talking to myself for a little too long and having an audience helps to pull my scattered thoughts together with more coherence. Thank you to everyone who has read my work so far. I am having than exhilarating ride and I hope you are too.

Gorilla Perfume ‘Flowers Barrow’

This is going to be interesting. As I begin to write I am stealing myself to put this perfume on. I feel I need to work up to it. Look out all of you who aren’t into emotional ramblings, for this essay is about to become one.

I will find it impossible to review ‘Flowers Barrow’ without wreathing myself in the past. Too much has gone before, I cannot find my objectivity.

I should explain. I used to work for Lush and towards the end of my time there Gorilla Perfume made it’s eccentric re-entrance. Mark and Simon Constantine, the beautiful minds behind the brand, wanted to take a great, artistic step away from Lush and fragrance the world with a more diverse and eclectic collection of perfumes. I was around for the first launch but then the time came for us to part ways. So as Gorilla has evolved and developed I have experienced it from a customer perspective. Which is quiet a different trip.

When you work for a company like Lush you are literally dunked head first into a steaming vat of creativity, colour, scent and sensation. During working hours you exist in a super saturated, neon world which will insist on coming home with you at the end of the day. It is a full throttle, palpitating fairground of a job and you ride the scented bumper cars in your sleep. Then you have to get back on the next morning. And the next, and the next. Christmas starts in August. New products have parties thrown for them, campaigns involve wearing orange Guantanamo Bay style pants over your clothes and trying to stop angry pro-hunt supporters from trashing your shop. It is as unrelenting as a monkey with a pair of cymbals, grinning manically and chattering away about essential oils.

The company is inspirational, their ethos admirable/brilliant/crazy, the products ingenious. The job?  Shattering. The shop? An emotional sink hole. There are a lot of opportunities glimmering away within the company because it is so big, but grasping them is like trying to catch a tiny fish in a vast ocean. Attempting to chase a swift, rainbow tailed unicorn on a child’s tricycle. I was pedaling so fast, running on empty the entire time and by the end every single one of my fuses was blown. I was left feeling exhausted, ridiculous and unsure of who I was or what I was doing. The mad-eyed, anxious person in the mirror was rather worrying, both to myself and to my nearest and dearest. There was nothing left for me to give, I’d lost all passion for the job so I decided it was time to go. There were relieved sighs all round, some farewell drinks and then off it sped, that relentless, perfumed machine, with not even a backward glance. I was left gasping in it’s wake.

For a while afterwards if I walked past the shop the smell would induce a near panic attack. My heart would start to race and the adrenalin would flood through my body in a most unnerving way. I was a bit of a mess for a while, I think I just burned out and it took some time to get myself back together again.

So…. That was cathartic. Thanks for bearing with me.

A few years on and I have some perspective, I’m much happier and it’s time to re-acquaint myself with Gorilla’s latest batch of weirdness. I think I can keep the anxiety levels to a minimum but all the same I’ve decided to forgo the intense experience of having the perfumes shown to me in store. I might not have all the knowledge of the sales assistants anymore but I know the performance and I’d prefer to make up my mind in my own time, in my own space. It would have been fun to visit the Gorilla tour bus, had it come down to Devon, but alas not. So mail order it is.

I decided on ‘Flowers Barrow’ after reading an excellent review by The Silver Fox. I was also very interested in the imagery and history surrounding the fragrance.

 “Heed the sages, walk back in thyme

The air is filled with memories. Sprawling brambles and nettles have seized domain of these Roman ruins. Voices of roaming spirits whisper to each other around the fallen stones. Below the sea sings “Come, come, hush, hush” to the eternal, inevitable rhythm of her tides…   “

This conjures some pretty potent imagery and I was hoping to experience some sort of past life stirring, a connection with the pagan roots of the ancient site that inspired the perfume. Herein lies a conundrum. The picture had already been painted in vivid strokes, I had already imagined this scent to fit it’s description. Earthy, musty, crushed greenery with the tang of salt in the air, aromatic with herbs and sweetly bitter blackcurrant. So when I first breathed in the real thing, I found it to be so resolutely not what I’d imagined that I didn’t know where to go with it. It was rather like being given ice cream when I’d asked for tomato soup.

I have spent quite a while wearing ‘Flowers Barrow’, wasted quite a lot of words trying to make my experience of it somehow fit with it’s description. Maybe if I had been introduced to this fragrance from inside the company, been on the training course to better understand Simon’s choices. Maybe if I had allowed myself to be sold this fragrance by an undoubtably knowledgeable assistant…. but there will be lots of people buying this fragrance in the same way that I did, online. It is therefore perhaps more appropriate to review it cold, or so to speak. I’ve realised that I am just not going to fit this square peg of a perfume into its pre-prepared round hole. Scent is extremely personal and each individual will experience it differently. So I have decided to give ‘Flowers Barrow’ a different personification.

There is a house at the crossroads. An ancient cottage that leans shabbily beneath the spreading branches of the grandfather oak tree. People come here to leave their wishes tied to the massive trunk, bound around with red string and fluttering scraps. The cottage has high garden walls and over them drifts the sweetest smell of wild roses.

Sometimes, when wishes aren’t enough and a loved one is sick, someone will be brave enough to fearfully push open the wooden gate and step into the garden. Mumbling an incantation against evil, for these are a superstitious folk, the person creeps down the path between the rose bushes, stepping into a heady mist of scented petals. There are blackcurrant bushes heavy with berries, a cat watching from beneath the shady leaves. As the person approaches the cottage a trill of bird song erupts from the thatch.  Little brown house sparrows dart in and out from under the eaves, the wall stained grey and white with droppings.

The air is dry, it has not rained for a month and the scent of the garden and it’s inhabitant’s is palpable. The front door of the cottage stands ajar but it is dark within. The person can just make out bunches of dried herbs hanging from the beams and the glint of a copper cauldron sitting in the hearth. Another cat slinks out from the gloom and lifts it’s tail against the lintel to mark its territory. A witches familiar perhaps? Fear mounting in his stomach, the person turns to shuffle down the path and away from the strangeness of the garden.

On the lightest of breezes drifts the sound of singing. It comes from the side of the house. The person peeps around the corner stones and sees a woman, bending to fill her basket with the plentiful herbs that grow all around her. Sage, thyme, rosemary, camomile. There are vegetables too, carrot tops grow bushily in neat rows and red tomatoes sag from their willow frames. It is a beautiful kitchen garden. The woman herself is statuesque and broad shouldered, strong hands dusting dried earth from her skirts. Her skin is scrubbed pink and clean. There is a baby tied to her breast with a long piece of linen and another child sits in the dusty pathway, eating a pile of blackcurrants.

A mother then. Not an old crone. This eases the person’s fear. The woman looks up then and smiles, opening her arms in a welcoming gesture…. “Come to me” she says, “I will heal all”.

‘Flowers Barrow’ certainly is a mother earth of a fragrance, with it’s wonderful herbatiousness and sweet, milk powder ending. I found I had to go through some oddness to get there though, the initial power of it made me recoil. It was a bit like having a ton of dry pink petals dumped on top of me. I have noticed that quite a few Gorilla perfumes have this initial knockout effect, which can temporarily stun your senses.

This is a natural perfume and as such is startlingly real in it’s delivery. There seems to be nothing man made to subdue the behaviour of the different notes. At first they all clamour together in one great floral punch. It is also unbelievably sweet, which I wasn’t ready for. Not gourmand in the slightest, just cloying, throat tightening sweetness. After this comes the blackcurrant. At first it is a relief to detect this fruity, green leaf and I was expecting it to quench the initial dryness with dark juices. But it very quickly turns pissy, like hiding under the bushes in the park as a child, unaware that you are sitting in a cat’s toilet until your mother drags you out.

It is at this point that I consider scrubbing ‘Flowers Barrow’ from my skin. The overwhelming sweet floral dryness is making me angry and I feel an olfactory headache starting. However, when my husband walks past and tells me I smell lovely it is enough to stop my mad dash for soap and water. I should give it some more time.

Another 10 minutes and ‘Flowers Barrow’ is changing, softening, sprouting lovely herbs. The overall feel of the fragrance is still dry but now there is just enough savoury thyme and sage to balance the sweet rose and camomile. There is also a suggestion of fresh milk, although I cannot pin point where it comes from.

It is hard to reconcile the beginning assault of this perfume with its soft and gentle ending. By the evening I felt ever so comforted and soothed. I smelt like I’d taken a healing bath with herbs and petals floating in the water, then dried myself with the softest white towel. It was lovely. But to struggle through the opening stages to get to this point might be a little too much like hard work.

I would definitely agree with Gorilla that ‘Flowers Barrow’ is ancient and powerful. I wish that the herbs revealed themselves earlier in the development to cut through the sweet camomile, rose and geranium. The blackcurrant is only pleasant at the very end, when it is bearly detectable as a slight fruitiness.

With several re-applications I have noticed that this is quite a trippy perfume. It wreathes you in fumes and starts to twist your mind a little. I am wearing the tiniest amount dabbed on the insides of my elbows and I emanate ‘Flowers Barrow’ through the whole house. I don’t know how I would feel about wearing this fragrance out until I’d given it time to settle down. I wouldn’t want to induce visions-or sickness- in the people standing around  me.

I knew that I probably wasn’t going to fall in love with Gorilla Perfumes wholeheartedly. Mark and Simon Constantine have a very recognisable signature and I find the fragrances more interesting as pieces of art rather than wearable perfumes. It is also the case that any scent with that particular signature is going to induce a spike of anxiety in me, even years on. Call me sensitive but I think that when you incorporate a constant, strong smell into an already stressful working environment, things can only become more stressful. My senses were being bombarded constantly until I became raw from it.

So, ‘Flowers Barrow’, thank you for the ride. It’s been interesting. I’m still not sure what to make of you. I’m glad that I had a chance to experience you from the other side of the counter, but I think you are just a bit much for me. I am still delicate from years of olfactory overload. It’s not your fault, continue to sing your sweet herbal song and I’m sure many others will fall under your spell. Standing at the crossroads under the grandfather oak, I do not have a wish to weave into the branches. I will take another road.

Penhaligon’s ‘Gardenia’

I have been very interested in Penhaligon’s since I happened upon a concession stall in House of Fraser about 5 years ago. The uniform rows of glass bottles, dark wood and beautiful Victorian styling had me entranced and enchanted. I don’t think I really took a lot of notice of the contents of the bottles then, I was more fascinated with the stage they were set upon.

I really love Victoriana in all forms, particularly fiction and architecture. We lived in a Victorian terrace growing up and now I have a family of my own we live in one again. I don’t know what it is about these houses, they seem to trap memories very effectively and I have always felt like I have lived alongside all the past occupants,  their whispers and scents are there, barely detectable, like a thought that doesn’t belong to me. I don’t find this in the least bit creepy, it’s not there unless I look for it.

One of the greatest fascinations I have with the Victorian period is of opulence and extravagance, laced very tightly within the many ribboned corset of constraint. Within polite, upper class society it was what one didn’t say that mattered. Simply living was such a complicated dance, so many unspoken rules and subtle nuances. Tier upon tier of hierarchy, a gossamer fine web with a black widow queen perched in the centre.

But underneath- a billowing silken splash of crimson extravagance. Lascivious decadence abound. Absolute sin. Such a contradictory world to exist in and so many extremes. There was the filthy sackcloth of poverty hung on the same washing line as crushed velvet wealth. Bare- shouldered whores and buttoned up ladies. Faeces and french lace. I cannot begin to imagine living such a dualistic life. The stench of guilt would be overwhelming.

So it is that I come back to Penhaligon’s, founded at the beginning of this era of excess. I imagined that back then people wanted fragrance to excite and arouse them, to wrap them in a cloak of mystique. So wrapped up was I in the fictions of the time that my imagination was rather over stimulated. My first experience of Penhaligon’s perfume was surprisingly disappointing. The original fragrance, Hammam Bouquet, smelt so dated that I didn’t give it a second sniff. I proceeded to think the same of all the other scents and went away feeling let down. I hadn’t caught one whiff of the intense flamboyance that I was expecting.

Move forward some years and you’ll find me again, ordering a selection of minutely perfect bottles from Penhaligon’s as a Christmas present to myself. I desperately wanted to understand these perfumes and this time around I think I have a much better handle on them. Of course they smell reserved, at first. To illustrate let me introduce you to Gardenia. First produced in 1976, this fragrance is most identifiable as a quintessentially English Victorian lady. Penhaligon’s have a strong identity which is very much in keeping with the original inspiration of founder William Penhaligon.

Gardenia is a young lady. Well bred, clear eyed and glowing with youth, she awaits her first London summer Season with breathless anticipation. The first engagement is a garden party, the first dress, a frothy spume of white petaled lace. The day is clear and mild and as she descends the stone stairs into the garden she catches the scent of magnolia blossoms in full bloom. The grass is soft and springy beneath her feet, slightly earthy from a summer shower the night before. There are waiters circling with silver trays of delicate confectionary. She chooses a wafer thin vanilla biscuit and snaps it in half to eat daintily. As she mingles and converses she grows in confidence. She knows she is beautiful. The admiring glances bring roses to her creamy cheeks and she feels a little more brave, taking from a passing tray a minuscule rhubarb tartlet and a glass of champagne, although her mother warned her not to drink. She feels so refined, her pale fingers wrapped around the bubbling glass, the many layers of her skirt shifting so gently as she moves, like apple blossoms in a breeze.

The experience is so heady and exhilarating, perhaps a little too much so. The champagne is making her head spin and she cannot catch her breath, those dainty pastries sit heavily in her tightly corseted stomach. She excuses herself to go and sit on a stone bench, where the flower beds are tumbled with white roses and foliage. There is a gentleman also sitting on the bench. A suave, well groomed man with immaculately macassared hair. She wonders if it might be inappropriate to be seen sitting next to this unknown gentleman without her chaperone, but she feels a headache starting and worries she might faint, so she sits.

It is hot in the garden now, the sun at it’s zenith. The bench is shaded but it is humid beneath the blossoms. The man inclines his head as she sits and she notices his cologne, sandalwood and soap. She takes a moment to collect herself, embarrassed at her lack of stamina, how quickly she has become overwhelmed. Breathing deeply she tries to shake off the foggy sensation. Then she is suddenly, acutely aware that she being watched. Risking a sideways glance at the man next to her she sees that he is looking at her with his brown eyes. Looking at her in such a way that she is stunned, aroused, appalled. There is more lust in his eyes than she can even fathom, his gaze the full sun against her naked skin. She blushes red roses and the jasmine scent of her fine linen petticoats is visceral. She is riveted by that gaze, terrified and shiveringly awakened to his intentions…..

The chaperone bustles over clutching glasses of iced tea and the spell is broken, his eyes slide away from hers, he bows politely and moves away. The magnolia’s roll out their fragrant petals once again and she is left open mouthed and flushed. Ripe as a peach and a little bruised. As the world spins around her the party continues, as genteel as ever, yet now she is so much more aware…..

Experiencing Gardenia is like reading your first romantic novel. It is both innocent and slightly arousing. I found myself wanting more from the development of this perfume than it could offer up. I wanted more lust, a little more licentiousness. But gardenia is a girl with only the barest idea of what it is to be a woman and that in itself is beautiful. It is a virginal white bloom of a perfume that upon it’s journey is only slightly corrupted by its lustier jasmine and tuberose counterparts.

I am so glad that I gave Penhaligon’s Gardenia another opportunity. It is exceptional in it’s innocence and restraint, something that in modern perfumery is not popular. People want sex and skank, lust and hot bodies.

Gardenia alludes and imagines but she does not yield, she is modest and refined and a little buttoned up in her white petals. There is nothing to break her open.

This is a perfume for tea parties, for summers by the lake, for the innocent and young at heart. It is so very subtle and restrained that it’s beauty may well be missed by some. I want more from this fragrance. I am impatient for it to mature into a more full bodied version of itself, which of course cannot happen. Gardenia is a still life portrait of a girl who hasn’t quite grown up.

A personal Journey…

Scent is fascinating. It is elusive, magical, powerful. Sometimes there are no words to describe it. Scent is addictive, perfumery a kind of art. It is an invisible cloak to be worn as disguise, a mask to alter others perceptions of you. It is couture fashion, a painting without brushes or canvas. Fragrance is a memory, a comfort, a physical reaction. It is a second skin.

I am on a journey with no destination, only the search for a scentual epiphany.  I’ll just follow my nose and see where it takes me.

I may not always know the correct language to use, I’ll only know how the scent makes me feel. I will try to conjure a picture for you Perfume, my invisible friend, my enemy, my muse.

Come along with me if you so wish.