Wednesday scent of the day 12/17 :: Now Smell This

It’s Hump Day plus Wright Brothers Day and Maple Syrup Day. Birthdays: Ford Madox Ford, Penelope Fitzgerald, Art Neville. What fragrance are you wearing?

So AJ Liebling talked to Édith Piaf in 1947, and asked her if she still had “wonderful sad songs” to sing…

“No, I don’t feel the old songs any more. I have evolved. I was never really a pessimist. I believe that there is always a little corner of blue sky, nevertheless, somewhere. In those old songs, there arrived invariably, at the end, a catastrophe. But now I have one called ‘Mariage,’ which is quite different. It begins in the cell of a woman who has already murdered her husband. She reviews her life, she hears the wedding bells, she sees herself in the arms of this man whom she has killed, an innocent young bride. It’s very beautiful.” As for herself, Mlle. Piaf said, she has never married and never killed anybody. “For me, love always goes badly,” she said. “It is perhaps because I have a mania of choosing. I don’t wait to be chosen. That places me in a position of inferiority. And I always choose badly. So the relationships turn out badly. Sometimes only two or three days. But I’m always optimistic.”

So for Mariage, I’m in vintage Guerlain Shalimar. It’s what I’d wear to my murder trial. 

Reminder: 12/19 is Édith Piaf’s birthday. Scent an Édith Piaf song, or honor Édith Piaf with your fragrance in any other way you see fit. 

And for those of you who like to plan ahead, see Scent of the day ~ Friday community projects 2025, where I’ll try (but usually fail) to have the next five or six weeks mapped out in advance.

Note: image is the cover of the Intégrale 2015 Limited Edition Box Set, available in vinyl and CD if you can find it. 

* See Edith Piaf’s Thousand (Delightful) Ways to Bum You Out at The New Yorker.

Bonus watch, with apologies if you have to sit through an ad first: Édith Piaf singing Mariage. You can find the French and English lyrics here.