Walking with your nose
Circus sideshow act or scentsational soiree? Stroll down to find out
Hello again. How’s your walking and writing coming along? If you’re new to doing either then all it takes is ten minutes a day to try it. And hopefully these posts will help inspire you to take your first steps and words.
Walking
Lately I’ve been taking spontaneous, zig-zagging walks around my local neighbourhood of Bethnal Green, London. I set off intending to get somewhere, like the park or the post office, but quickly end up veering left and right and up and down side streets that I don’t need to walk along to get there. The reason? I’ve been following my nose. Specifically the intoxicating scent of jasmine in full summer bloom.
I love the smell of jasmine. It’s probably in my top three scents with one of them being the pine trees in Greece. Yeah, I know that’s pretty specific, but there’s something about the dry Greek heat that makes the pine smell explode. And my second is the fresh zip of lemon you get from rolling the fruit in your hands to release the oil from the zest. These scents are best found in nature. Many people have tried to recreate them – mostly in cleaning products, it seems – but they never really live up to the promise of the original fragrance, do they?
Smells are powerful memory triggers1, something known as The Proust Phenomenon2 thanks to the French novelist’s famous madeleine, which triggered memories of the narrator’s childhood village. And scientists have found that memories triggered by smells are often more vivid and emotional3 because they tend to be ones we don’t think of very often.
The smell of jasmine always takes me back to a cottage I lived in years ago in a small village in Surrey. A previous owner had planted a jasmine vine outside the kitchen and attached a trellis to help it scramble round the windows. Every summer during my time living there, I’d open those windows so the fragrance could flood the kitchen.
As I followed my nose around Bethnal Green, I remembered that cottage and the slow summer evenings sitting outside to eat, swooning with every drop of that jasmine. Eventually, my nose led me to Columbia Road Flower Market where I bought the plant you can see hanging in the photo above, so that I could keep the smell and the memory with me for a little longer.
For your walk, I invite you to follow your nose in search of a smell that triggers a positive memory for you. Here’s a couple of ways you might try it:
Think of a smell you love and go in search of it. This will probably be easiest with a food smell like coffee or bread because you can head to a market, bakery or cafe, or with something you’re likely to find outside in nature like freshly mown grass or flowers. But this is your walk so you can make this as easy or as challenging as you wish.
Go for a walk and see what smells you find and choose one you enjoy. This might take a little longer because there’s no telling what you’ll discover – which is part of the fun.
As you walk, you may want to capture your experience by taking photos, writing in your notebook or tapping a note into your phone.
Writing
Let’s combine smells and memories for this exercise. You can either use a smell you discovered on your walk or pick something you already know you love. The idea is to trigger a happy memory so you can focus on something positive.
Once you’ve chosen your smell pick one of these prompts and starting writing:
The smell of [chosen object] reminds me of…
The smell of [chosen object] makes me feel…
The smell of [chosen object] makes me want to…
You may find it helpful to be able to smell your chosen object while you write, so if it’s a nice day you could stay outside to do that in the place where you found it. Or you could bring the smell inside – for example, by making some coffee or having a bunch of flowers or some fruit beside you. I kept the jasmine I bought at the market near me while I wrote this post.
Before I sign off, I want to share a word of caution on tapping into memories. Smells can trigger negative memories as well as upbeat ones. So if that happens then it’s okay to stop and try again when you’re ready by using something you know will be positive for you. The idea of these exercises is to help you experiment with writing in a safe way, so it’s important to feel comfortable with whatever you explore.
Happy walking and writing until next time.
Sarah
PS The piece of art in the photo, which features the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, is by Alison Aye. She makes collages by hand-stitching things Londoners discard, which she finds and collects as she walks around the city. If you’d like to know about the piece you can read about it on her blog post. And to see how she creates her pieces you should follow her on Instagram.
Why Do Smells Trigger Memories? by Everyday Einstein Sabrina Stierwalt, published in Scientific American (online), June 2020
Smell and Memory – The Proust Phenomenon, published in The Psychologist (online), June 2021
This Is Why We Associate Memories So Strongly With Specific Smells by Claire Gillespie, published in VeryWell Mind (online) October 2021