‘Smellies like team spirit’
Paul 'Nobby' Davies
The Creative Elder | Coach | Mentor | Confidant | Storyteller | Curator | Collaborator | Artist | Consultant
How your nose can boost creativity?
The Hyper-Observer (Hyp-Ob) is always attuned to the world at any given time.
Searching out the new but also constantly referring.
‘What’s that smell?’
The sense of smell is firmly?linked to memory which can evoke powerful emotional reactions.
As a Hyp-Ob you can boost your creativity by learning?how to enhance your sense of smell.?
One day that olfactory memory could lead you to a breakthrough idea.
Home Sweet Home
I have very fond memories whilst growing up.
The lovely smells of my?Ma’s cooking drifting in from the kitchen.?
You could tell what day of the week it was.
Roast on a Sunday lunchtime.
Bubble & Squeak Monday dinnertime.
Tuesday was Shepherds Pie.
Faggots & Peas Pudding for Wednesday supper.
Cheese & Tomato on toast for a Thursday tea.
Fish most definitely on Friday.
Saturday teatime, Jacket Potatoes.
Not forgetting the smell of the Condiments, Malt Vinegar, White Pepper,?OK sauce.
Ok sauce was made in a factory down the road, until one day it caught fire.
Smoke billowed into the air laden with the fruity, spicy concoction. That was a smelly day!
Somehow it coated the local area in droplets of sauce that stayed around for ages.
Then the smell of my Pa’s bottle of Guinness before dinner & the occasional cigar after.
Also, the daily smell of washing & cleaning
The dusty odor from the Hoover, Pledge furniture polish, Zoflora disinfectant & DAZ washing powder.
“Who’s got any smellies?”
My Pa was a salesman, he was always immaculately turned out and smelled like an advert.
Colognes and aftershaves were on TV all the time and Pa had a collection in the cabinet.
During this period, he would be…
…’A man of Action!’ - Tabac.
… experience ‘The mark of a man’ - Old Spice. Although he didn’t go surfing at weekends!
… and ‘Splash it all over’ - Brut.
But the one I really loved was?Acqua di Parma, picked up on a trip to Italy.
I followed his footsteps picking up a bottle in Rome many years later.
My own scented journey has hit the high notes and low notes in many ways.
Hi Karate! - Cheap and Nasty
Denim - It said, ‘I wouldn’t have to try too hard!’ Well I did and it didn’t.
Aramis - Now this was really growing up and was used as an aftershave, yes after shaving!
The changing room after football matches in my late teens and early twenties would hear the cry.
“Who’s got any smellies?”?
All sorts of cheap Christmas gift scents were thrown back & forth.
But your best ‘smellies’ remained at home as you didn’t want Wadds, Boy, Spen, Noos, Fitz or Franky wasting your Paco Rabanne.
So, you could say ‘Smellies like team?spirit.’
As my career started to take off so did I.?
Jetting off all over the world on holidays with mates and girlfriends.
Another flight another duty-free fragrance.
CK One, Eau Savage, Kourous,?Fahrenheit, Joop!,?L'Eau D’Issey, Armani, Dunhill, Dior, Gucci & Hermes.
That line-up looks like the team sheet for an AC Milan starting XI from the 80’s.
A?fragrance has three types of notes.
The first scent you?‘experience’?is a?top note.
Next is the middle note, these are the scents?left after the top notes? have?dissipated.
Lastly,?comes the base note, this appears when the fragrance warms to your body temperature.
The true scent of the fragrance would be the infusion of the middle and base notes.
How do you smell, I’m not going to but…
A?Sumerian?proverb, allegedly the oldest joke on record, was first told way back in 1900 B.C.
It really isn’t worth repeating as it has lost its hilarity in time and translation but I’m informed it was basically a fart joke.
The sense of smell or to give its correct name?Olfaction, is the sense that perceives?smells.
When an odor enters the nose, it attaches?to a receptor?inside the nasal passage.
Nerve signals are sent through the olfactory system to the brain.
These signals have many functions including:
Influencing ingestive behaviour by detecting food and?taste quality.
Spotting?hazards?such as fire, chemical and microbial threats.?
Identifying?pheromones?that play a key role in relationship choice.??
Up until recently it was estimated the average human could detect 10,000 odors.
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Research conducted?Leslie Vosshall?at Rockefeller?University puts that figure at least one trillion.
But to make things a little easier, scientists have categorised the ten basic smells that a human nose can detect, these include:?
Fruit - all non-citrus fruits.?
Citrus - lemon, lime, orange.
Fragrant - florals, perfume, cologne, and rosy smells.
Minty & Peppermint -?eucalyptus,?camphor.??
Sweet -?chocolate, vanilla, caramel, and malty?
Toasted and Nutty?- popcorn, peanut butter, almonds.?????
Woody and resinous - pine or fresh cut grass, musty, mouldy, burnt, smoky.
Chemical?- ammonia, bleach,?petrol, paint.????
Pungent - blue cheese, manure, sweat, onion,?garlic.
Sickening or Decaying - rotting meat,?sewage, burnt rubber,?gas.
Art and fragrance?
The arts have at various times used smell and odors to invoke responses or description.
The 1938 Surrealist Exhibition,?Marcel Duchamp?roasted coffee to introduce the visitors?to“the?smell?of Brazil.”
Japanese artist Takako Saito?created?'Spice Chess'?in 1965, little wooden boxes containing spices replaced the chess pieces.
Norwegian?artist Sissel Tolaas, has captured the smells of over 50 cities, including New York, Berlin, Istanbul, Shanghai, and Mexico City.
Artist?Peter De Cupere, built a cloud filled with the scents of?air pollution?forcing people to have a intense response to his art.
Smell-O-Vision, injected 30 odours into a movie theatre when triggered by the film's soundtrack.
Aroma-Scope is a more up to date movie odour sensation which previewed in Spy Kids 4.
And of course, references to odours in movies?
“You wear L’Air du Temps,” “But not today.”?-?Hannibal Lector?in The Silence of the Lambs.
“Say?hello?to my stinky little friend!??-?Ace Ventura.??
“Ain't he sweet? Smells like a petunia.” - Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
“Genie, wake up and smell the hummus.” -? The Genie of the Lamp in Aladdin.
"I love the smell of napalm in the morning" - Robert Duvall as Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore in Apocalypse Now.
A few fragrant works of literature to dive nose first into.
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Süskind - An incredible book that describes the stench of 18th century?France.?
Toast by Nigel Slater - Charming and memory provoking.
The Secret of Scent by Luca Turin - Lyrical and scientific.
Songs that mention in title or lyrics smells or fragrances.
Smells like teen spirit - Nirvana?
I Smell Trouble - Ike & Tina Turner
I Think I Smell a Rat - The White Stripes??????????????????????????????????
Mine Smell Like Honey - R.E.M.
That Smell -??Lynyrd Skynyrd?
Follow your nose
To trust your own feelings rather than obeying rules or allowing yourself to be influenced by other peoples opinions -? Cambridge Dictionary.
Following the clues until you reach a satisfactory solution is a Hyp-Ob type principle.
Enhancing your sense of smell can be achieved with practice.
Take a look at this film by Dr Kate Mclean, Lecturer, Artist, Designer, Researcher.?
She has developed a way of mapping neighbourhoods and cities through ‘smellwalks.’
I really loved her description of one odour encounter with a postbox.
“It’s not quite teenagers bedroom but it’s very close!”
Look around your home and pick out three everyday items that have a distinct odour.
For instance: Shoe polish, Lemon, Toothpaste, Coffee, Ketchup, Soap, an Old Book.
Spend 5 minutes with each item smelling it.?
Long deep inhalations and short sniffs with breaks in-between.
Incidentally, deep breathing elevates positive emotional moods and a higher sense of calm, which both enable creative thinking
Note down what you can smell, does it provoke any memories, thoughts, emotions?
Does it prompt an idea, an alternative use, a combination with something else?
It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t immediately turn into a song, story, invention, or idea.
The exercise is to just observe, Hyper-Observe and to log the experience in their creative data bank.?
Because If you’ve got stuff in your head that others don’t have in theirs, you will create things that others won’t.?
Input In = Output Out?
And that is something not to be sniffed at.
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