Beautiful. I love the idea of a smell walk. I love the idea of experiencing a space with a purposeful intent to focus on a particular aspect. Like I’m focusing on colour for my colour tourism explorations. Now I’m imagining walking a set route with my colour tourism eyes open, and then doing the same route but with focusing on smells. Could do it again with sound. Walking through a city as a chef vs a photographer are probably such different experiences .
There are smells from childhood that I can remember, but that I miss. But smells are really hard to recreate, so I just have their memory and the hope that one day I’ll be gifted another whiff of them when the right mix of floating molecules enter my nose!
Wonderful things bouncing through my after reading this. Thank you! ‘See’ you tomorrow :-)
I'm convinced most of us have a scent memory in the same way we have a visual memory (unless we have aphantasia). We can recreate the scent in our mind the same way we can visualise a memory. Maybe we just have to think about it harder as it's not one of our primary senses. But smell is SO evocative. When we catch a familiar smell unexpectedly, it can take us right back to a moment from the past.
I look forward to what bounces out of your brain, Vanessa! Looking forward to seeing you tomorrow. ❤️
I can’t remember the smell of my Granny’s pantry but I was instantly transported by this piece to the feel of the huge ( to small me) round plastic Tupperware biscuit tin with many different packets emptied into it. Such an exciting luxury!
I think my grandmother had the same Tupperware biscuit container! Slightly yellowed with age and with a persistent smell of once-slightly-too-warm plastic.
Hello, Miranda, I was alerted to this post of yours by someone who had read my lament at having a poor memory (both short- and long-term, unfortunately). Smell is something that definitely helps me remember bits of my life growing up. Your description of your mother's pantry reminded me of the dark and dank earthen basement in my childhood home, a place I was always afraid to go into. When I smell cold wet earth, it comes to mind since that basement was always damp and cold. Smells can trigger memories and memories can trigger smells. A neighbor had a lilac tree, and its branches hung over our driveway. So, in the spring and summer, my mother would often cut a branch and put it in a vase in our dining room. After a short while, the air would become heavy with the sweet perfumey scent of the lilac. I can almost smell it now.
Oh, the basement! You've just broken a memory for me with that description, Marie. We had a cellar under my childhood home that was exactly as you describe your basement. I was terrified going down there. It had open tread stairs and I was convinced someone was lurking underneath them, waiting to grab my ankles. That damp earth smell is so evocative, isn't it. But I'd take the smell of lilac over cellar any day.
I wonder how many of us had those cellars growing up and how many had their imaginations sparked by them. Thank you for such a thought- (and story-) provoking post.
HI Miranda, I have been sent this passage by a good friend, Josephine, as she thought I would love to read it! And I have really enjoyed it! As a maker of (really good) candles, and as a scent-storyteller, I see and hear people's reactions to the candles I make. Connecting with new people through scent is fascinating, as whilst I have memory through a scent, say Frankincense, I know that people who come to experience my scented candles, with have other tales to tell from their memories. Same scent...a myriad of stories.
I hope you don't mind me sharing a short passage from my website about 'scent-keys'...
"We are all familiar with those special moments when we are taken aback by a tiny sensory stimulus that evokes an emotionally intense memory from our past. Often the mind cannot define nor depict the scent, it often cannot isolate or even name the aroma – but it does have the power and strength to awaken our senses and transport us back to that moment in our life. It may be the scent of the lavender as you brush past it on a summer evening walk that reminds you of childhood holidays, or it may be the scent of wood-wax that takes you back to your school gymnasium or even the smell of the dusty books in the dark corner of the school library…whatever it is…it is special to you…it’s your ‘scent-key’"
I love the visual that a 'scent-key' creates for me. A big old rusty key ring, which has hundreds of keys on it...and that special scent...is one of those keys...
What a glorious image, Andie! I've always had a fascination with memory objects and how an item that has huge emotional significance to one person can be detached from that memory when it's detached from the person. I've never thought of smells in the same way before. Thank you for sharing that idea. Your description is very evocative.
Lovely to meet you too! I'm heading over to your profile now and look forward to reading more about scent keys. Miranda x
Oh my goodness! I can’t quite believe I’ve just read this Miranda!
I’m half way through a draft of another childhood experience and I’ve just started the paragraph on the scent - no scent is too sweet a word, the smell - that hit our nostrils as we entered the nunnery for catechism lessons... a most hated place then and now and likely the cause of my fear of religion in general... and certainly not a smell I want to recreate although it has happened...
I love your words on this subject, a beautiful coincidence of kindred souls maybe?
Oh wow. Definitely a kindred writing souls moment, Susie. Your catechism story sounds fascinating. Is it wrong that I can't wait to read your piece? Will you be publishing it soon? x
I really loved your descriptions! The connections smell can make in our brains are really something, isn’t?! When I moved away from my birth country I never thought I’d miss some of the things I miss, like the smell of a bakery that swallows you in the moment you step inside 🥰 nothing like that around here!
Do you not have bakeries where you are now, Susan? That would be a huge loss! The smell of a real bakery is one of the best smells on the planet. Can I send you a bread basket to activate the smell for you?
This was so lovely, Miranda. I have heard that smell is the only sense that can trigger the memory of something without having to first be processed cognitively. This feels instinctually true to me. There is a type of pine tree whose needles smell sweeter than most; when I smell it, I am transported back to the summer I lived in Lake Tahoe with my college bestie - the best summer of my life.
The summer before that, I worked in a card shop. The owner stocked the greeting cards very infrequently, so most of our customers were there to buy lottery tickets. I spent much of my summer cleaning the glass countertop with Windex. The smell of Windex has taken me right back to that shop ever since.
Yes, I've heard the same, Amy. It's been a while since I looked into this in detail but I'm pretty sure there is research that backs this up. I love these little flashes into our past that pop up, seemingly out of nowhere. I have a similar association to your pine/Lake Tahoe scent memory. My grandparents' New Zealand garden had a massive cedar hedge and I was addicted to picking off tiny pieces and snapping them to release the smell. There's a similar hedge on one of our regular dog walks and I can't help doing the same thing. On a dreary winter day it gives me an instant lift of sunshine and warmth.
Can I presume you don't seek out Windex to get your fix of card shop memories in the same way?
Ha! You presume correctly about Windex. I don't seek it out, but every now and then, I am somewhere near it being sprayed and it brings me right back. I love your cedar memory! Cedar is such a great smell.
This was both fascinating and really lovely Miranda! I had never considered trying to recreate a smell in my mind but I'll definitely be trying that now.
I do go in search of comforting smells sometimes, the most comforting childhood ones being bergamot and Fosters lager
I think I turned off my sense of smell when I was a teenager. I used to get migraines and smells were very painful. I blamed smells for causing the migraines. So now I am smell impaired. Sometimes I can catch a fleeting whiff of pine, when I walk in the woods. Oddly, I can smell a hot iron two floors away, so I can go down and turn it off.
I do need to retrain my sense of smell. There are some smells that are associated with color, like the smell and color of an orange stuck with cloves. And that is a smell memory of Christmas. It brings up memories of making decorations for the Christmas tree and making Christmas cards with my mother when I was young. I still like to make my own Christmas cards and tree decorations.
That's really interesting, Suzanna. I think your experience is and example of how we really can train our sense of smell - to develop it and suppress it. I've heard some incredible stories of professional "noses" in the perfume industry, who train their sense of smell to the point of hypersensitivity. And now I'm thinking of that extraordinary Ben Wishaw film "Perfume". That was a compelling bit of story telling.
The forever uncertainty of my schedules is a daily curse Miranda, I hope to post it as my next piece but when exactly that will be, dare I say... is in the laps of the gods! And having mentioned it, I’m now going to be wracked with worry about disappointing you.!
Beautiful. I love the idea of a smell walk. I love the idea of experiencing a space with a purposeful intent to focus on a particular aspect. Like I’m focusing on colour for my colour tourism explorations. Now I’m imagining walking a set route with my colour tourism eyes open, and then doing the same route but with focusing on smells. Could do it again with sound. Walking through a city as a chef vs a photographer are probably such different experiences .
There are smells from childhood that I can remember, but that I miss. But smells are really hard to recreate, so I just have their memory and the hope that one day I’ll be gifted another whiff of them when the right mix of floating molecules enter my nose!
Wonderful things bouncing through my after reading this. Thank you! ‘See’ you tomorrow :-)
I'm convinced most of us have a scent memory in the same way we have a visual memory (unless we have aphantasia). We can recreate the scent in our mind the same way we can visualise a memory. Maybe we just have to think about it harder as it's not one of our primary senses. But smell is SO evocative. When we catch a familiar smell unexpectedly, it can take us right back to a moment from the past.
I look forward to what bounces out of your brain, Vanessa! Looking forward to seeing you tomorrow. ❤️
I can’t remember the smell of my Granny’s pantry but I was instantly transported by this piece to the feel of the huge ( to small me) round plastic Tupperware biscuit tin with many different packets emptied into it. Such an exciting luxury!
I think my grandmother had the same Tupperware biscuit container! Slightly yellowed with age and with a persistent smell of once-slightly-too-warm plastic.
Hello, Miranda, I was alerted to this post of yours by someone who had read my lament at having a poor memory (both short- and long-term, unfortunately). Smell is something that definitely helps me remember bits of my life growing up. Your description of your mother's pantry reminded me of the dark and dank earthen basement in my childhood home, a place I was always afraid to go into. When I smell cold wet earth, it comes to mind since that basement was always damp and cold. Smells can trigger memories and memories can trigger smells. A neighbor had a lilac tree, and its branches hung over our driveway. So, in the spring and summer, my mother would often cut a branch and put it in a vase in our dining room. After a short while, the air would become heavy with the sweet perfumey scent of the lilac. I can almost smell it now.
Oh, the basement! You've just broken a memory for me with that description, Marie. We had a cellar under my childhood home that was exactly as you describe your basement. I was terrified going down there. It had open tread stairs and I was convinced someone was lurking underneath them, waiting to grab my ankles. That damp earth smell is so evocative, isn't it. But I'd take the smell of lilac over cellar any day.
I wonder how many of us had those cellars growing up and how many had their imaginations sparked by them. Thank you for such a thought- (and story-) provoking post.
HI Miranda, I have been sent this passage by a good friend, Josephine, as she thought I would love to read it! And I have really enjoyed it! As a maker of (really good) candles, and as a scent-storyteller, I see and hear people's reactions to the candles I make. Connecting with new people through scent is fascinating, as whilst I have memory through a scent, say Frankincense, I know that people who come to experience my scented candles, with have other tales to tell from their memories. Same scent...a myriad of stories.
I hope you don't mind me sharing a short passage from my website about 'scent-keys'...
"We are all familiar with those special moments when we are taken aback by a tiny sensory stimulus that evokes an emotionally intense memory from our past. Often the mind cannot define nor depict the scent, it often cannot isolate or even name the aroma – but it does have the power and strength to awaken our senses and transport us back to that moment in our life. It may be the scent of the lavender as you brush past it on a summer evening walk that reminds you of childhood holidays, or it may be the scent of wood-wax that takes you back to your school gymnasium or even the smell of the dusty books in the dark corner of the school library…whatever it is…it is special to you…it’s your ‘scent-key’"
I love the visual that a 'scent-key' creates for me. A big old rusty key ring, which has hundreds of keys on it...and that special scent...is one of those keys...
Lovely to meet you!
Andie
What a glorious image, Andie! I've always had a fascination with memory objects and how an item that has huge emotional significance to one person can be detached from that memory when it's detached from the person. I've never thought of smells in the same way before. Thank you for sharing that idea. Your description is very evocative.
Lovely to meet you too! I'm heading over to your profile now and look forward to reading more about scent keys. Miranda x
Oh my goodness! I can’t quite believe I’ve just read this Miranda!
I’m half way through a draft of another childhood experience and I’ve just started the paragraph on the scent - no scent is too sweet a word, the smell - that hit our nostrils as we entered the nunnery for catechism lessons... a most hated place then and now and likely the cause of my fear of religion in general... and certainly not a smell I want to recreate although it has happened...
I love your words on this subject, a beautiful coincidence of kindred souls maybe?
Our sense of smell is a powerful collector!
Oh wow. Definitely a kindred writing souls moment, Susie. Your catechism story sounds fascinating. Is it wrong that I can't wait to read your piece? Will you be publishing it soon? x
I really loved your descriptions! The connections smell can make in our brains are really something, isn’t?! When I moved away from my birth country I never thought I’d miss some of the things I miss, like the smell of a bakery that swallows you in the moment you step inside 🥰 nothing like that around here!
Do you not have bakeries where you are now, Susan? That would be a huge loss! The smell of a real bakery is one of the best smells on the planet. Can I send you a bread basket to activate the smell for you?
This was so lovely, Miranda. I have heard that smell is the only sense that can trigger the memory of something without having to first be processed cognitively. This feels instinctually true to me. There is a type of pine tree whose needles smell sweeter than most; when I smell it, I am transported back to the summer I lived in Lake Tahoe with my college bestie - the best summer of my life.
The summer before that, I worked in a card shop. The owner stocked the greeting cards very infrequently, so most of our customers were there to buy lottery tickets. I spent much of my summer cleaning the glass countertop with Windex. The smell of Windex has taken me right back to that shop ever since.
Yes, I've heard the same, Amy. It's been a while since I looked into this in detail but I'm pretty sure there is research that backs this up. I love these little flashes into our past that pop up, seemingly out of nowhere. I have a similar association to your pine/Lake Tahoe scent memory. My grandparents' New Zealand garden had a massive cedar hedge and I was addicted to picking off tiny pieces and snapping them to release the smell. There's a similar hedge on one of our regular dog walks and I can't help doing the same thing. On a dreary winter day it gives me an instant lift of sunshine and warmth.
Can I presume you don't seek out Windex to get your fix of card shop memories in the same way?
Ha! You presume correctly about Windex. I don't seek it out, but every now and then, I am somewhere near it being sprayed and it brings me right back. I love your cedar memory! Cedar is such a great smell.
This was both fascinating and really lovely Miranda! I had never considered trying to recreate a smell in my mind but I'll definitely be trying that now.
I do go in search of comforting smells sometimes, the most comforting childhood ones being bergamot and Fosters lager
Bergamot and Fosters. That's a fascinating combination, Nanette. There must be a story behind that?
I think I turned off my sense of smell when I was a teenager. I used to get migraines and smells were very painful. I blamed smells for causing the migraines. So now I am smell impaired. Sometimes I can catch a fleeting whiff of pine, when I walk in the woods. Oddly, I can smell a hot iron two floors away, so I can go down and turn it off.
I do need to retrain my sense of smell. There are some smells that are associated with color, like the smell and color of an orange stuck with cloves. And that is a smell memory of Christmas. It brings up memories of making decorations for the Christmas tree and making Christmas cards with my mother when I was young. I still like to make my own Christmas cards and tree decorations.
That's really interesting, Suzanna. I think your experience is and example of how we really can train our sense of smell - to develop it and suppress it. I've heard some incredible stories of professional "noses" in the perfume industry, who train their sense of smell to the point of hypersensitivity. And now I'm thinking of that extraordinary Ben Wishaw film "Perfume". That was a compelling bit of story telling.
My husband says he can smell me across the room--in a good way! He likes the way I smell.
The forever uncertainty of my schedules is a daily curse Miranda, I hope to post it as my next piece but when exactly that will be, dare I say... is in the laps of the gods! And having mentioned it, I’m now going to be wracked with worry about disappointing you.!