Reactionaries, who want a real tree onstage, and not the essence of a tree, if the libretto says there's a tree.
"He was a big calabash," Chamoiseau tells us, in the collective voice of the market vendors, "embracing within himself both flower and fruit, and just as a single mango bespeaks the essence of the tree, what he was, we were".
Earlier this year, they created an air purifier with a green plastic sprig scented with the essence of fir trees, and rugs with the patterns of insect wings.
My favorite is No. 087 by N. Hoolywood & Stephen Nilsen, with essences of Hibo tree, motor oil, Hinoki wood and nutmeg.
She talks about binary trees, Hercules cutting off the heads of a mythical hydra (each severed neck grows two new heads, which is the essence of a binary tree), and a fractal pattern known as Sierpinski's Triangle.
But it was too late for changes, and what came with the monkfish - wonderful in texture but bland despite some oversalting - was a foamy liquid apparently (it could have been anything; or more likely nothing) infused with essence of Herefordshire pine tree.
Inside the 12-metal shell is an "emulsion of the essences of 44 trees, 52, flowers, 36 waters, 32 bloods and 120 hopes".
But these days, when people talk about essential oils, they're likely referring to the little vials of liquid essence of lemon or tea tree that you can buy at grocery stores or yoga studios, or from a distributor like Carla Cohen.
The oil was superb, the green and fruity essence of her own olive trees.
He quotes Spinoza on the eternal - it's now, it doesn't lie before us - and joins that to an acute sense of place, finding the essence of somewhere in an olive tree, or even in the dust and stones.
