Perfume blogs and websites I, The Wit

The Web is loaded with sites dedicated to the study/love/criticism of fragrance. Google "perfume blog" and you get over a half a million results. Some review fragrances, some list new offerings and others just chat about the relevance of perfume to their lives. There are message boards dedicated to fragrance and aficionados world wide gather to discuss, sell and swap their collections of perfume which range from department store staples to exotic niche brands to rare vintage specimens. I have my favorite sites and have belonged to message boards. I look at the sites daily and plot future purchases, after all when it comes to perfume more is truly better.





There was one site that stood out from the rest. It stood out because the perfume reviews seemed less concerned about base notes, top notes and heart notes as they did about the mood of the fragrance and the connection between a perfume, literature, culture and memories. I found this blog because of perfume but it, The Wit of the Staircase, was about much more than fragrance. The late Theresa Duncan wrote about books, movies, current affairs and cities. Being from Michigan myself, I enjoyed the Detroit related content as well as the the impressions of another transplanted Midwesterner about New York City and Los Angeles.



Despite the fact that anointing yourself with expensive fragrances is a very elite sort of thing, most perfume blogs and message boards are rather leftist in political orientation. Either the participants do not see $150.00 bottles of fragrance as the sort of extravagance their politics would seek to eliminate or restrict, they see themselves as likely to be exempt from consumption restrictions, or they are merely economically illiterate with respect to the severe socialism they advocate. Theresa Duncan's tastes were of the most expensive variety and her politics were leftist to the point of paranoia. She wrote about some nonsense called Project Monarch which from her perspective would establish GW Bush as, you guessed it, KING! I suspect that there are plenty of loonies out there with similar delusions but they did not write about fragrance and I am not disposed to seek them out for their entertainment value. And I have not heard of many others who have carried the delusion to the point of suicide.

I have no reason to believe that Theresa Duncan was not a suicide. Sure, you can find madmen out there who would like to believe that she was killed for being anti-Bush and anti-Scientology but given the number of live vocal people who share this view the notion seems psychotic. There is a similarly wacky idea floating on the web that Duncan and her boyfriend Blake are still alive and that the suicides were part of an elaborate game. Sad.

To be honest I do not know why Theresa Duncan killed herself or if she really meant to do it at all. I do not mean that it was "arranged" as the maximalist is not a conspiracy kook, but it could have been an accident, an intended "cry for help" that was not discovered in time. If Theresa had survived the overdose of diphenhydramine, tylenol and booze she probably would have been stunned by her own actions. Drinking has a way of making sad people even more hopeless and depressed. Good old alcohol is a depressant. Combine the depressing effects of alcohol with a growing paranoia about the government and Scientology, a stalled career and your 40th birthday and the results can get ugly.

Why the conspiracy theories? Yes, there are a lot of delusional people out there but I believe that the prevalence of conspiracy theories is more connected with a need to deny that bad things can happen to basically good people and in the case of Holocaust deniers (except for those antisemites who know the facts but want to undermine the victims) that evil things can happen at all. In the case of the Duncan Blake suicides the need to deny their tragedy is rooted in "if it could happen to them it could happen to me...so it didn't happen at all".

Consider Theresa Duncan. Theresa was beautiful with her golden locks and Metro Goldwyn Mayer type face. Every picture I have seen showed a slim, ageless and graceful woman who was as stunning on the subway platform as she was in formal dress. She was relatively successful, very bright and had a handsome talented artist boyfriend who was, by all accounts, in love with her and as loyal as a Golden Retriever. The conventional wisdom says "people like that don't commit suicide" and the inner workings of most people say "if I looked like that and had her life I would be deliriously happy". The inner workings of most people also ask "since I don't look like that, I have an irritating job and my husband and I are hardly the stuff of legends, why am I NOT miserable?" That question is difficult to contemplate so we go back to the "people like that don't commit suicide" premise and come up with alternative scenarios and some of these can be pretty fabulous and convoluted.

The truth is that even lovely and talented people can become depressed and can fall prey to substance abuse. Sorry deniers, it's true. Try considering the possibility that you actually have some inner strength.

As for Jeremy Blake's suicide. It shouldn't have happened. The survivor's guilt and grief that follows such a severe loss was predictable. The articles I've read state that Blake was seen as being at high risk for suicide. The sad and tragic thing is that well-intentioned friends felt they could orchestrate an ad hoc suicide watch and protect him from his grief. I don't blame them for failing, but they failed. This was a job for a 24 hour staff and professionals. A psychiatric unit was the place for Blake until he was over the shock of Duncan's death and had stabilized.

That said, the Wit of the Staircase was a joy in its early days. The writing could be fabulous and the social commentary could be witty and insightful. Duncan was obviously well read and was able to successfully connect literature, history and pop culture into an inspiring, thought provoking read. It is a dreadful shame that everything derailed in the end and that tragedy engulfed her.

I miss The Wit of the Staircase.