Smells and Bells

  Sound and Unity/House Music and Togetherness     When thinking about how sound is used for healing, I always think about the music therapy I had to attend in residential. Every week, me and the other patients would be forced to tap out how we felt that day on a rain drum and pick a song to psychoanalyze. It was my least favorite hour and a half of each week, worse than the awkward group therapy or lowkey scary donkey petting. It was boring and cringey and didn't make me feel closer to the other people there with me. If that was all I considered when thinking about how sound brings people together, I'd think it did a pretty ass job. But outside of those grueling sessions, music played a very different role for us. One of the other six patients loved house music. He'd bump it so loud through his headphones that we could all hear it and we'd dance together.  It was silly and fun and took our minds off harder things. This little ritual brought me so much joy and brough...

  There are often sayings or phrases that show up in pop culture and on the internet which have no clear origin and seem to be passed around from social media to social media, providing new words for a centuries old feeling that still resonates with the current generation. A recent one that resonates with me is “I am a museum of everything I have ever loved,” describing how every interaction we have had, the music we listen to, the food we enjoy, the things we find beautiful (either now or in the past) influence who we are and how we express ourselves. While this by nature encompasses every sense, I’m choosing to write about expression through visual cues (heavy on the “museum” aspect).       To adorn my walls with images, art, and physical items brings me an immense amount of joy and comfort. I have always appreciated visuals, from paintings to patterns to the iridescent wings of the figeater beetle. It comes to a point where I feel I need to extract some of th...

Our skin is the largest organ on our bodies, and is the barrier between us and the outside world. We experience most of the world through feeling it (physically.) A warm breeze on our faces, the soft prickles of the grass, someone else's skin on our own. Without touch, most of the world would be lost to us, and we would be lost to the world. Touch connects us to one another. Whether it's a handshake, a hug, a pat on the shoulder. We touch to greet, love, reassure. It acts as a way to convey something to someone. We perform small acts of love for ourselves by means of touch: brushing our hair, washing our faces.      Touch is vital in experiencing the world. As Ackerman acknowledges, it is terrifying and alienating to lose our sense of touch, she uses being numbed for surgery as an example. Losing such a vital aspect of what makes us human, does that make you less than human?      Touch keeps us alive. Being able to sense a hot stove, a sharp knife, freezing...

            I doubt that it’s an entirely unique assertion for me to make when I comment upon my difficulty recalling memories from my childhood. While many individuals in my immediate social sphere of friends and family tend to readily be able to reminisce upon childhood moments in vivid detail without any sort of delay, I’m often unable to contribute much to any conversations about my upbringing, except for bare bones details about where I went to school or who babysat me, devoid of any concert knowledge as to what defining character building moments/events “little Ethan” may have experienced in his early days; I just sit off to the side, twiddling my thumbs in ignorance, while my parents (thankfully) fill in the blanks about my character as a youth. With this having been said though, this past summer I had an (unexpected) experience that ran quite contrary to my own preconceived  perception(s) about my brain’s capacity for recollecting foundati...

I really don’t know how to write about hearing and vision but ever since I could remember, I love just sitting by the window, looking around and hearing everything any opportunity I had to be able to watch people. Hearing them talking with their friends, or  on the phone. I love hearing their the way people walk different because of their shoes hit the pavement. hearing the different car engines while they drive to their locations, then also hearing birds talking to each other and seeing the bugs flying. This time of year is one of my favorites cause I get to see all the leaves change and it’s a new beginning, seeing people drive-by, wondering what they’re up to. Hearing and vision are such important aspects to life and taking it all in. It brings me peace to sit back and listen to the world bustle about everyone so consumed in their own head hearing their own sounds. I like seeing how everyone expresses themselves differently in their outfits the way they cut their hair what they ...

       I have only gone into a Yankee Candle three times in my twenty years of life. It's always an overwhelming experience because of just how many smells are just wafting into your nose all at once. For someone who is sensory sensitive it's always a lot.  The aggressive smells of florals and, depending on the season, pumpkin or gingerbread. Its everywhere and its most popular during Christmas when people wanting their house to smell like spices and whimsy. But when I went for the third time last week I noticed something the colors of the candles usually are associated with the picture or the person it's marketed to. For instance all the candles that are very focused on being marketed towards women, with scents involving flowers or beaches with pastel coloring. In a traditional sense its clear they were directed towards women, and I hate to give into gender norms but I did enjoy the smell of a few of the candles. But while there I noticed something none of the ...

    On Hearing and the Lack Thereof:   By Alex Lincoln, Class of 2029   So, my dad has got deaf in one ear as I grew up, and it makes in incredibly hard to communicate with him. I can be trying to tell him something are get his attention, and will receive the dreaded "What?" in return, like if I repeated what I said louder and slower that would magically let him understand me. Now, while I admit that I am not the most gracious with him about this, it does harm his case that he will weaponize this when he doesn't want to be talked to. Or, he will repeat what he thinks I said, but fill in whatever blanks he didn't hear with nonsense words. That's why I think that hearing is the most important sense for communicating. Because when it's faulty, your communication becomes incredibly aggravating, if not impossible.