The scent of imagination

[sathari]

Over in the welcome post, synecdochic  and I had a bit of a discussion about scent and imagination/synaesthesia, as a result of which I promised to post the following questions for the comm to play with!

- Do any of you have synaesthetic effects around your perfumes and other scented things? (For those who aren't feeling like clicking links, synaesthesia is when you have two or more senses that overlap or interact--- some of the most common ones are associating colors with letters or numbers, although just about any combination is possible--- the link is to a book called The Man Who Tasted Shapes, in which an MD was inspired to research synaesthesia as a result of a friend who could tell that chicken was undercooked because "it didn't have enough points on it". In this case, we'd be talking about sounds, colors, textures, etc., that your perfumes and other scents call up for you--- or other scent-related overlaps: did you buy a perfume because it smells like your favorite song, for example, or your favorite color?)

- Relatedly, do any of you associate particular scents with fictional characters (ones you follow in others' work, ones you work on yourself, ones who are both, etc.?)

I'll post my answers down below as an example, if anyone's curious.

(Suggested tags: meta; maybe something related to "things we relate to scents" or "ways we experience scents")

Comments

[synecdochic]

Hee. Yeah, I have too strong a scent-memory with it to have it stand in for Midgar for me. I never thought I had fabulous scent-memory until I started working through all this BPAL. (The one I'm wearing right now -- Brimstone -- has gone through several stages of "bonfire at Pennsic at midnight when it's blazing brightly enough to light up the whole camp", "bonfire at Pennsic at 2AM when it's died down some", and "bonfire at Pennsic at 4AM when you're the last person awake in your camp and really should just bank the damn thing already but you're enjoying the last little bits of it too much to let it go", and is now at "bonfire at Pennsic at 7AM when you stumble out of your tent to discover it rained and the stones around the firepit are wet and ashy". Not just any bonfire: a bonfire at Pennsic. Earlier on I swore I could hear the drums.)

[sathari]

Wow, that is really amazing! And fascinating how well that scent actually moves through the evolution of a specific kind of fire--- it's not like, "Okay, right now it's doing 'bonfire at Pennsic at midnight' and now it's '4th of July fireworks'" or something else random, it's actually replicating this specific sequence of experiences! (That... seems like the sort of thing the folks at BPAL would actually be trying to do, even if it's not a guarantee because scents interact with our own body chemistry etc.!)

[synecdochic]

Ha, yes! There have been a few things I've smelled in this quest that have invoked a very specific sense of time and place -- in some cases bringing back memories and experiences I thought I'd completely forgotten. (I do not have a very good memory.)

I'm bidding on an imp collection on eBay right now that has something in it that might work for Midgar. Mind you, it's an extremely discontinued, extremely rare scent that regularly goes for a lot of money when bottles of it even come up, so in some ways I'm hoping it won't work. Heh.

[sathari]

That is very cool--- I know scent is supposed to be a strong memory cue in general.

Oh, wow--- the whole rare-and-discontinued thing is just ugh, so I am simply going to wish you luck in a very generic way, as in luck with a good outcome, whether it's having the scent work or not, whichever would be best! (I have feelings about some of the things that got discontinued from BPAL over time, including at least one layering that was absolutely perfect on me. Sigh.)

[synecdochic]

Ha. Yeah, I am resisting acquiring decants of LEs and discontinued scents SO HARD. I know myself; I know how easily I could turn this into a Pokemon game.

[sathari]

My own BPAL collection, admittedly a few years old, is a testament to the fact that this is a good idea. (I don't so much have the "gotta get 'em all" feelings as the "must hoard multiples of soon-to-be-discontinued things I love" feelings, which is just as bad if not worse!)

[elialshadowpine]

I've definitely had scents bring back memories of a place/time. I also have music do that, especially if it's something I was listening to a lot during a certain time period. Tori Amos's From the Choirgirl Hotel and Boys for Pele make me actually re-live the summer I spent writing like a madwoman, down to being able to smell the humid summer air.

Some of the dragons blood scents bring back memories of the first year I was with Storme and I was burning a lot of dragon's blood incense for ritual work, and it brings back all the emotion of us being first together and desperately madly in love and the manic highs and depressive lows and augh. It can be almost overwhelming, but I love the scent so.