Smells and Bells

It is really difficult to name smells without just saying the thing that produces a smell. We don’t really have words for smells specifically. A floral scent is called that because it smells like flowers, “floral” is not its own word specifically for the scent. This becomes especially apparent when reading the names of candles and perfumes. For example, I own a perfume named “Velvet Moon”. That name has nothing to do with what it smells like, and yet I personally think it is aptly named. The perfume smells like cardamom, mahogany, beeswax, and black pepper. Is that what the moon or velvet smells like? Almost certainly not. But the words used to describe the scent have given me the association between those scents, velvet, and the moon. This is also true when the name of a scent doesn’t match what mid tells you something should smell like. There is a Yankee candle called “By the Pool” that is amber and coconut scented. That notably is not what pools smell like, so while the scent itself...

This semester was one unimaginable, unprecedented, and unconventional. The transition to online learning was something that I thought I'd never have to do in any of my classes, especially one that had a focus on the senses. I appreciated our weekly zoom calls and efforts made by groups to implement each of the senses through the computer screen. If anything, I thought that this experience brought us closer together as a class. Hearing everyone's sound, seeing their image, a story of a sixth sense experience, and even observing a slideshow of foods put something of importance to each individual student on display. As I said during our banquet last week, I thought that I knew all there was to know about sensation and perception being a psychology major. When presented with readings and being tested to dive deeper into thinking about what each sense means, I have grown in perspective. Although I had read the Song of Songs many times before, I had discovered a new point of view w...

Deborah Green's The Aroma of Righteousness elaborates on scents and their biblical origins and significance. In chapter three titled "Election and the Erotic: Biblical portrayals of Perfume and Incense", Green discusses the biblical origins and importance of rituals which inherently require and incorporate spices and incense. Two of which Green uses as examples are frankincense and myrrh. "The two spices that most often appear together in the text are frankincense and myrrh. Widespread use of these spices is well attested in the ancient world and long predates the Israelites. Egyptians used myrrh extensively for perfuming and embalming, while other civilizations, such as Mesopotamia, used myrrh for incense in cultic rituals, as a medicine, and as an ingredient in perfume."  The author explains that frankincense (or levonah) is associated with "white" since it is harvested in autumn when it is white in color. (Green 67). Myrrh derives fr...

Fish Smell is an important yet often overlooked part of our experience with the outside world. Smells carry a world of meaning that is largely undescribed. Fish smells like fish; and anything that smells similar is said to smell like fish. In a strange way, we only describe smells based on other smells, hoping that whoever we are talking to knows the comparison smell. Even if people disagree on whether or not a scent is pleasant or repulsive, the scent itself is assumed to be uniformly understood. Meow What is one of the first memories of the zoo? For me, there smell was always a distinct memory. The smell of a zoo is distinct but I cannot truly describe it unless I compare it to a farm or other place with certain animals. Smell exists in our memories in a peculiar way, extremely vivid and easy to recollect, yet difficult to describe. While I can forget what the zoo, I went to looked like, or when I went there, I remember the smell. When I encounter that smell again, ...