Smells and Bells

In class, we've discussed how many religious rituals usually involve some medium of music. The presence of music in these events helps to bind these communities and bring them closer together. I think that the Wheatones, an all female acapella group on campus that I am a member of, is involved in rituals that bind groups of people together. In as itself, the Wheatones meet in the same room, around the same time, four days out of the week. The purpose of the group is to create music arrangements and perform them using only voices, compared to instruments. We then learn the music through repetition and critiquing, and are usually offered to perform at events such as Relay for Life, nursing homes, children's museums of science, etc. When we are asked to perform it is usually to set the atmosphere for an event, or to unite the attendants of the event in one anthem. In this moment, everyone listens to the same tune in solidarity and potentially shares some of the same thoughts. ...

The sixth sense has always seemed like an unfathomable thing for me. What first comes to mind is relates to communicating with ghosts, demons, or the afterlife. My mind goes to telepathy and understanding what others are thinking, or what their intentions are. I think the sixth sense is an umbrella term that sums up phenomena similar to this that otherwise can't be explained. My current understanding is that the sixth sense isn't a magical ability that one in a thousand people are gifted, but that everyone has an indescribable feeling  about something. This intuition and gut feeling may not have any evidence to back it up, but there is some kind of force in the individual that allows them to pass judgment on whatever situation they're in. Gut feelings tend to be surprisingly accurate, and people are constantly advising to "follow your gut," because you're the only one who can decide what is best for you. In the book "The Righteous Mind: Why Good ...

During the first week of May, we started a new unit: Touch. First, we had a massage therapist employed by professor give a presentation about her line of work. We also read The Deepest Sense by Constance Classen, which gave a history of touch in the Middle Ages. The masseuse’s presentation covered how she first got into the field, as well as how different massage therapies work on a patient. A memorable part of the presentation was the raki energy exercise with Ann and her sore shoulder. Three people got up, placed hands on her back, and directed positive energy at her shoulders. When they were done, Ann said her shoulder felt better. How? I could write this off as a placebo effect, but touch, after all, is the deepest sense. Touch is emotionally interconnected to our well-being, studies show babies need touch to develop healthily. In a theoretical sense, the raki energy exercise seems plausible because touch facilities the connection between two bodies, transferring warmth and go...

Sometime in April, we discussed sight in Hinduism, specifically, darsan. Diane Eck’s book, Darsan, helped us understand the divine image in India, how sight embodies the holy experience.  Although I learned that we have the potential to smell infinite scents, 70% of our body’s sensory receptors are in our eyes. I think sight is so overwhelming that it acts as the bridge to connect all of our sensations together, to understand scent comes from objects and instruments produce sound. Being able to observe the world is the way we begin to understand.  It’s difficult to overstate the importance of sight in our everyday lives, I am able to type this reflection by seeing my words. How is sight used in ritual? I think sight is the primary sense used in orienting ourselves in a setting. You use your sight to determine what is reality and what is illusion. In this sense, it can be difficult in Western contexts to know when you’ve “found God” in a visual sense, as well as an emb...

Some week in April, we had the the drag co-op, House of Larva, make a presentation to our class, as well as host a performance in Emerson, titled Lowlands.  The House of Larva is a drag house that incorporates social commentary, gender subversion and lip-synching in their shows in attempting to express "the ugliness of Queer identity." Lowlands explored how an alternate society cannot escape the influence of imperialism, as well as patriarchal and heterosexual power constructs. During the show, the Empress of the Bitchfaggots was required by Benwa Breedwinner to sacrifice a bitchfaggot, Fanga Sphinx, so that her empire may prosper for another 1,000 years. After relishing in her power, she falls in love with the soon-to-be sacrificial victim. Moreover, she’s required by her all-encompassing overlord to train a special operative agent to defend the Bitchfaggot empire, who is modeled in the image of American military masculinity. After failing to sacrifice a victim on the altar...

During the week of April 2, we had Professor Allen come in and talk about ethnomusicology, specifically his research in India exploring art music and devotional music. In addition, we had the Sound group make a presentation about their insights on the sense. I learned from Evan that there are microtones in our music that we hear but can’t discern, such as how a piano key connects to three strings to make the sound of a single note. Microtones can be used to differentiate music of different cultures due to the preferences of a group of people have towards a specific scale. We saw an example of such with the band King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard and their song, Rattlesnake! In addition, we saw a man spell out words with an Overtone Analyzer (a computer application which I downloaded after), and how our brain makes sounds by syncing different frequencies in both ears, called binaural beats. Something  reminds me that there is so much knowledge about music that lies below ...

The week after spring break, the class entered a new unit: sound. We did this by reading the first chapters of Women, the Recited Qur’an, and Islamic Music in Indonesia by Anne Rasmussen. Qur’an recitation is a widespread practice in Indonesia when women recite passages from the central holy text of Islam. This ritual takes place in secular and religious settings. Rasmussen cites five contexts where Qur’an recitation is practiced. The first is  khatam al Qur’an , where the entire Qur’an is recited by thirty women at the same time. Pondok pesantren is when girls in boarding school learn recitation as part of their education. Qur’an recitation is also a staple of the college curriculum, where it is taught at a more advanced level. Women can then prepare to competitions in small groups, which is the fourth context. The fifth is the hafla-al Qur’an , a competition where recitations are judged by a series of experts, and prestigious prizes are awarded to the most talented Qur’an reci...

                     One of the most fun parts of this class has been entertaining the notion of a “6 th Sense”. A subject which was jokingly breached on the first day for a laugh has now become the subject of some analysis by the class. This semester, we attempted to find an answer to the question, ‘what is the sixth sense?’. The answer to the classical interpretation of that question is ESP, or perhaps some form of supernatural extrasensory-perception. While this is an interesting subject worthy of much Kripalanalysis, what I find more intriguing about pondering the sixth sense is the idea that we may be lumping more than one sense into the five categories we’ve established. For example, the sense of pain is a very separate experience from touch. Although pain is exclusive to touch, it activates a unique part of the brain not engaged in experiencing ordinary touch sensations. For this reason, would it not be appropriate ...

                     One image which unfortunately stuck with me from my time in elementary school was the “Tongue Map” from health class. For the uninitiated, the tongue map is a graphical representation of where the different “flavor receptors” are located on your tongue. This image sections of bitterness, sweetness, saltiness, and sourness, and clearly illustrates the idea that humans use one part of their tongue to experience a specific flavor. However, the science behind this illustration that has so captured the publics imagination is false. Apparently the confusion began as a result of a study performed in 1901 by David P Hänig. His study revealed that certain parts of the tongue were more sensitive than others to specific flavors such as salt or umami. While this element was scientifically sound, the diagram he put out to accompany his findings seemed to highlight different regions of the tongue as responsible ...

          In The Deepest Sense , one of the ideas I found most intriguing was trying to imagine the sensory experience of the working class in Medieval Europe. Classen examines many aspects of communal living and the ways in which our sense of touch made it possible for us to exist in the society of the time. Our sense of touch was even more vital to survival back then because it was the main way for us to interact with our world. I hadn’t ever considered it before, but Classen made me aware of the vision problems many people suffered through during this time. Without corrective eyewear, many people were forced to live their entire lives without seeing properly. Obviously, in this environment, one’s sense of touch becomes even more significant to appreciating the world.            Her description of this historical sensory environment reminded me of certain elements of the King Arthur story, and made me reconsider...

In class, we had members from the group House of Larva come in and speak about the drag performances they put on. They showed us some clips from previous shows, and told us that there would be a show that night, along with a workshop the following day. Although the performance was incredible, I enjoyed the workshop the most. Only a few people attended, so it was more intimate and made the experience a lot more personal. The workshop constantly made me conscious of myself, my life, and my body. We did exercises that made us apply how we interpreted the gender roles to be in our society. One of my favorite exercises were when we were told to touch certain parts of our bodies like our tailbones and hip joints. This exercise was the most engaging because it made people interact with themselves and become more conscious of their bodies. We then sat certain ways on the floor so that we could feel these parts of our bodies, and moved around the room so we could feel them move as well. ...

Just before Spring Break, we read several articles about taste in Christianity and Judaism. The article that was most frequently discussed was “‘Taste and See that the Lord is sweet’ (Ps. 33:9): The Flavor of God in the Monastic West” by Rachel Fulton. The article discussed various approaches to studying taste in religion, from analyzing recipes, exploring alternative translations to scriptures, and the psychology of flavor. Why is God sweet? One explanation that our class came up with is that a sweet flavor is the result of glucose being present in the food, the simplest form of energy. The rush of energy and pleasure that comes from eating something sweet is to create a positive association with gaining nourishment and staying alive. How can that be a bad thing? Fulton believes it isn’t a bad thing to be transformed by food, but that our Western notions of health and dieting make us fear getting fat. A controversial sentiment she shares towards the end of the article is that A...

          After reading Carolyn Korsmeyer’s Savoring Disgust , I had a different understanding of why people are attracted to things that they should find repulsive. In her book, Carolyn talks about the “paradoxical magnetism” of disgusting objects. This is the idea that an aversion to something can inspire a person to linger on the thought of it longer or be unable to look away from it. Korsmeyer analyzes this phenomena in great detail in her book, however the element of her take on disgust which I find most interesting has to do with odor . In the world of perfumes and cologne, it is widely known that some of the grossest smells are the most attractive. Korsmeyer seeks an understanding of why humans have this behavior, and claims that the original reason we developed the disgust response to odors is connected to our evolutionary inclination to avoid non-edible foods. Many of the traits of disgust within food are actually signs of expiration and decay, so ...

I was not able to attend the House Of Larva Show so I decided to look into it myself a little more. To be able to understand some of their other shows I looked on their website. I saw some of the stuff they showed us in class and some stuff I don’t think they did. About Page: I found it cool that The House of Larva had their first show at. School bar. I just can’t really imagine watching a drag show at a bar so I thought it was really interesting. From what I understand House of Larva doesn’t put on the same show more than once. I think I remember them saying that in class. I was a little confused by thins though because I would have thought that they would want to get their messages out to as many people as possible. Current Project Page: Their show they are working on now takes place in outer space which was s turn I wasn’t expecting. I personally love space stories so I would be interested to see this show In class Discussion: I thought I was neat that they incorporated part of ...

We know the five major senses- touch, taste, sight, smell, and hearing- and we know that there are many senses beyond those ones we tend to limit ourselves to- like your sense of pain or temperature. But how many other senses are there?  Which one is our sixth sense? In The Deepest Sense , I was most fascinated by the chapter on animals. Because they had a good example for what I believe is the sixth sense that ties society together. That is, one's sense of justice. Justice is something that you perceive, and it is something that is perceived by the rest of nature, or at least our closer relatives in the animal kingdom. In that experiment, one of the monkeys was upset by the injustice of the other monkey getting better treatment. This is the cornerstone of every great society- the distributing proper treatment of people and the earth. When there is great inequality, people rise up, because they sense that justice has failed them. Sure, sensing ghosts is probably the most wel...

I’ve been playing tennis since I was a little kid. It is one of the most difficult sports when it comes to staying mentally tough. Thats why a lot of tennis players are a little insane (; Over the years I have developed a sort of routine that can be tied with religion. Before every match, especially away ones, I listen music with my beats headphones. I have done this since I began doing USTA tournaments in middle school. During the match I have a pink towel that I go to each time we switch sides. I also don’t like to take off pieces of clothing unless I get wicked hot because I get a little superstitions. In between each point I go back to the fence and take deep breaths and encourage myself and not let anything get in my head. When it comes to the senses they all come into play while I’m on the court. I can SEE my dad pacing in the background. I can HEAR my loving teammates cheering for me regardless if I will or lose a point. I can SMELL the new tennis balls when a can ...

People can take senses for granted a lot of the time. During this class I have wondered repeatedly what it would be like to miss one of the senses. I think that if I had to give up one it would be smell. I know that with giving up smell I would also be giving up a lot of my ability to taste but I would still be able to taste the basic sweat, sour, salty and etc… I wouldn’t want to not have my sense of touch because I can’t imagine not being able to feel loved ones anyone. Their tough is comforting and I rely on it so much. When I was in grade school we did this experiment once requiring us to live out a day as if we couldn’t see. We had to wear blind folds for hours to get the experience. We had to have someone help us with homework, help us get around, help us prepare food, and more. This experiment helped me to realize, as a young kid, that some people have it a lot harder than I do and it only took the loss of one sense. If I were to lose my sight I wouldn’t be able to tennis wh...

                      At the academic festival I experienced all of the senses. Smell-when I walked into the room with the buffet I could smell the lashed potatoes and the bread! All the food smelled amazing and I couldn’t wait to taste it Taste-My favorite part of the meal was the bread. I got to take it home after and I decided to try Nutella with it and it was the best idea I ever had. I wish I knew how to make it so I could give it to other people Hearing-I loved listening to the stories around me. President Hanno sat at our table so I got to learn stories about Wheaton I hadn’t heard before. I learned that he had to find a way to tell the students over the summer that their famous duck had died. I thought it was so funny that he had to find a way to announce the death of a duck to his school. Sight-I loved looking around and seeing all the different types of lighting in the room. There was multicolor string light...

My partner for the presentation, Emily, and I presented about smell after reading about it in The Natural History of the Senses. In my Brain, Mind, and Behavior class we were not able to go over the Olfactory(smell) system due to not having enough time. I wanted to know about it so I took upon myself to learn how the system works. Olfactory transduction takes place at the olfactory hair cell. An olfactory receptor is bound by a matching odor molecule, also known as ligand, thus depolarizing the hair cell which then excites the mitral neuron to fire. The mitral neuron axons project to the amygdala and the hippocampus which are parts of the limbic system. This is one reason that smell can trigger strong memories. Watson, Neil V., and S. Marc. Breedlove. The Mind's Machine: Foundations of Brain and Behavior. Sinauer Associates, Inc. Publishers, 2018.

After reading the Sight chapter in The Natural History of the Senses I wanted to explain what I know already from another class I take. I take Brain, Mind, and Behavior and in one of the sections we learned about the different sensory systems. I don’t know why but vision was one of my favorite senses to learn about in this section. I learned about different periods in development and how there are critical and sensitive periods. A critical period is a limited time in which an even can occur like the development of synapses in the brain for certain functions. There is an experiment done by David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel that really interested me about the development of the visual cortex. They took a new born cat and covered one of its eyes for about a year to see if the synapses would still develop. When they took off the cover the cat was blind in that eye. The cat did not develop sight after it was taken off though. There was a critical period where the eye needed visua...

Why do some people prefer to have something sweat, some salty, and some sour? We talked about how people can perceive taste differently after reading the Taste chapter in The Natural History of the Senses. I wanted to know more about why that is. Genes play a big role in an individuals preferences of taste. If an individuals parents do not have a high sensitivity for lets say sweetness it will take a larger quantity of that type of molecule to sense or experience that taste. On the psychology side children can develop preferences based off what they are exposed to yearly in their life. Let’s say a child is exposed to really spicy food when he or she is really young. They will most likely continue to eat it as an adult. People can also learn to associate a flavor or even a specific food to how they were feeling when they ate it at one point in their life. Lets say I ate a entire bag of potato chips one day and then got immediately sick. Subconsciously I would associate me...

After reading Authors of the Impossible, The Paranormal and the Sacred it reminded me of the time in Haiti where I had my own paranormal experience. We were a group of about 20 people. It was mostly kids and a few adults. We were there on a mission trip with my church in Hingham. We were visiting one of the families near by. Some of their children have this condition that causes them to not be able to walk correctly. By the time they are teens they can no longer walk at all. When we got there I felt a kinda dark vibe coming from the area. We gave the people food and we sang and danced with them. I don’t want to say I didn’t enjoy the time we had that afternoon with that family, because I did, but it just felt off. Later that night the other kids and I were all talking about how it felt really weird there and they felt a dark presence. Our priest, Father Sinisa, said that he was pretty sure that they practiced voodoo there. Voodoo is “A black religious cult practiced in the Caribbean a...

"Spices and perfumed oils do not endure over long periods of time, however, and the destruction of incense, through burning, is integral to its employment" (Green, 5)  After reading this, what struck me as interesting wasn't the actual fact, but rather, by conclusions to be made about the power(s) of scent and its limitations. Is the power of scent reliant on its state of temporality? This idea was further elaborated by the scientific notion of scents dissipating from our perceptions after a certain period of time. This corresponds with the phrase of spending enough time in a monkey exhibit, you no longer smell it. The longer you stay in an area and experience a particular scent, the less you experience and eventually it begins to fade into oblivion. The same can be said with certain skin receptors which are only activated once and then are only activated again when another touch or a change of touch occurs. The same applies with all of smells. Eventually we all get...

All the presentations that had to do with taste this semester really shook up my understanding of how my much loved linguistic mouth muscle makes do diligently delivering sensations synaptically. I was surprised by how little my tongue tastes, but also by how influential that little snippet of information is. The miracle berries were neat! Mostly glad I can knock them off my "things the internet told me to try" list. But the experience was invaluable, and set up for what else I was to learn about my taster, that tongue. I remember the lemons basically tasted like one of those gummi candy lemons, even  though I am usually akin to those dogs you see in gifs freaking out after being given a sour sample. Dogs, of course, don't have the same taste buds as humans. Yet sour is a universal dislike among humans and canines.  If a creature has the same sense of taste as a human, does that mean it enjoys foods the same way? Wild canines and felines both have similar group meal...