SCENT MEMORY: An Exercise Through Time and Smell

Scent is the most elusive of our senses—intangible, invisible—yet it holds the extraordinary power to transport us across time and space immediately.

One breath of blooming honeysuckle and you’re barefoot in your grandmother’s backyard. A phantom whiff of a discontinued perfume and you’re twenty years younger, making out with a stranger at an art film house. (No? Is that just me? lol).

Unlike sight or sound, scent bypasses logic and immediately connects us to the deepest parts of ourselves. Our lives are stitched together with these invisible threads, forming a scentsual (see what I did there?) map of who we’ve been, who we’ve been with, where we’ve wandered, and how we’ve evolved in the journey.

This exercise is an opportunity to explore our memory and also capture a sort of timeline of our lives. Grab your journal or simply a note pad and allow the memories to come forth. 

1. Start with Now: What scents surround you in your daily life today? Your perfume, your tea, your home, your partner, your pet.

2. Go Backward in Time: List as many scent memories as you can:

• Perfumes or colognes you’ve worn—or others wore—that still linger in your memory. Can you remember what year it was? Where you wore it?

• The scent of your childhood home, a holiday kitchen, scents from gardens or parties or people.

4. Create Your Scent Timeline: Arrange your scent memories in chronological order. Notice any themes—seasons of life defined by patchouli and peppermint, or lavender and lemon. What patterns do you see? 

Has the exercise reminded you of a piece of yourself? Also… if you’re having scent nostalgia, did you know you can order small samples or decants of MANY MANY perfumes, including discontinued fragrances? Check out eBay and The Scented Court to find yours! As a visual artist, I also love painting some of my scent memories, perfume bottles, etc. 

Here is my own timelines:

Make this exercise YOURS.