Blake
For our seventh conversation we sat with Blake, a digital artist from Tangerang who calls himself someone reborn. Three dark events arrived at once: loss, betrayal, and ruin. They drained his world until only black and white remained. What brought the color back was not the sky but a scent, which became a new language for a soul learning to live again. We spoke about jasmine as both grief and acceptance, the white florals he wears now, and why he would rather be known by the trail of scent he leaves than by his body.
Amy Winehouse and Jinjer, soul and steel, with late-night blues to keep the work company.
I managed to be reborn from three dark events that arrived at the same time: loss, betrayal, and ruin. They left my life in only black and white. What pulled me back was fragrance: a new language for a soul learning to live again. Now I carry scent as my identity, and I let the world know me not by my body, but by the trail I leave behind.
Your relationship with fragrance
Perfume helped me recognize myself again. Through scent I found a home in people who could accept me, understand me, and walk beside me, a new home born from a shared love of fragrance and the places a scent can take you. For some, perfume is only a smell. For me it is proof that even from the darkest time, a person can still find the light within themselves.
Proof that even from the darkest time, a person can still find the light within.
A scent that takes you somewhere
For some, jasmine is just a small white flower, soft and calming. For me it has always meant more. Jasmine has long been tied to funerals, scattered over earth that has just taken someone in, the last escort between living and leaving. Many read it as a symbol of grief, of endings. Maybe they are not wrong, because I have known the kind of death that is not of the body but of the soul. In that time, jasmine was a mirror: a gentle scent carrying the memory of loss, of something that once lived and then left. But the more I knew it, the more I understood that jasmine is not only death. It is also acceptance. It reminds me that I was once buried by the dark of life, and from there I learned to rise. To live again.
What you are wearing now
My rotation right now leans into white florals: For the One Who Hears by HoM Haute, Blake Swan by Lixie, and All of Me Loves All of You by Cadence Privé.
A daily ritual
Most days it is just me at the laptop with hot coffee and the scent of jasmine, a random blues track keeping me company through the night's work.
On good taste
Good taste only appears, and can only be enjoyed, by you, because everything you love becomes the best taste for yourself. Do not be ashamed of your own choices. What you think is good may not be good in someone else's eyes, and what you think is bad may not be bad in theirs. Everything has its good and bad sides, and in the end it comes back to your own choice.
One belief you would defend
Do not be afraid to fail. Our failures are a form of upgrade, leveling us up for what comes next.
Life is not about choosing black or white. It is about understanding why the two were made to stand side by side.