Quiet

reading smell
quiet 

Scent and Color

In Brave New World, Aldous Huxley imagined a future where people would go to concerts to experience "scent and color" instruments where each note transmitted enticing smells of sandalwood and other perfumes and projected pictures on the ceiling. 

- from Color: A Natural History of the Palette, Victoria Finlay

on this site search Synasthesia, Scent Aria for related articles

 




photo: Brown Texture Lura Astor

I liked the smell ...

A well-known writer got collared by a university student who asked, "Do you think I could be a writer?"

"Well," the writer said, "I don't know .... Do you like sentences?"

The writer could see the student's amazement. 

Sentences? Do I like sentences? I am twenty years old and do I like sentences? If he had liked sentences, of course, he could begin, like a joyful painter I knew. I asked him how he came to be a painter. He said, "I liked the smell of the paint."

- Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

Palette: by Lura Astor

a good recipe ... includes generosity, sensuality, surprise

"Today, 60 basic ingredients constitute 80 percent of all fragrance formulas.

....Of course, I can create perfumes in the classical manner, or in the baroque, narrative, figurative, abstract, minimalist, and so forth. But above all, I believe that all fragrances should have form, distinction, imagination, generosity, sensuality, and surprise so that perfume is not simply reduced to a product, an object, or a commodity."

-Jean-Claude Ellena

with a lovely fragrance creation history, currently the exclusive in-house perfumer for Hermès, from his book Perfume: The Alchemy of Scent 2011

When I think of the number of words used in daily communication,
the number of ingredients needed to make a fine meal,
it makes sense that it's how we use ingredients
in a fragrance formula
in order to capture perceptions.


assemblage: Put the Fizz In detail Lura Astor

Love Ya Would Want to Smell Ya

Love ya

would want to smell ya

my remix of Love ya, wouldn't want to smell ya.


painting: Perfume of Desire  Lura Astor

Nature - and Another Thing

continuing from my previous post

Many Medications Affect Our Sense of Smell.

When our sense of smell is out of equilibrium so is part of our own balance.

Affecting smell? Definitely birth control, hormonal medications (search on this site). Definitely anti-depressants, anti-anxiety and weight loss medications, viagra, steroids. People who care-take see the symptoms first hand.

For years I've used performance and teaching skills to increase my ability to guide people how to smell and analyze smell more - for lay people, not for industry standards. I use art points of view. Also, I smell in color and until a few years ago assumed every body does. I've since learned that people smell in a variety of ways including: in a fog, in textures, in zones, analytically in numbers.

I look forward to more people accessing this sense in ways that enhance their life, beyond cliché.


photo: pill head, common use