LANGUAGE AND OLFACTION

It is a great pleasure to introduce a new contributor to this blog! Jesse Hardy joins Azar and me on the Perfume Project Northwest team as we continue to bring you a benignly eccentric mix of our free-ranging thoughts, mostly about perfume. Jesse has written articles for Basenotes and contributed many expert reviews to a number of other perfume websites where he goes by the name LovingTheAlien. His first post here is a thoughtful exploration of the ways in which language can express olfactory perceptions.

LANGUAGE AND OLFACTION

There is a pervasive belief in Western culture that smell is of little importance. At worst, it is dismissed as a rudimentary relic of our quadrupedal past; at best it is considered a subjective, indefinable sense. From Plato to Kant, Western philosophy and literature have ranked olfaction dead last in the list of important human senses. Aristotle believed that individual scent elements could not be discretely identified, but merely identified by association with corresponding emotions. More recent studies of olfaction have revealed that scent, more than the other senses, is processed in the limbic system – the “lower” region of the brain, responsible for much of what constitutes our “id” – as well as the “higher” cortex. This finding has only reinforced the idea that scent is an ancient, rudimentary sense, inextricably tied to our past, when we (presumably) sniffed each others butts and identified possible mates by smell.

Despite its primitive origins, or maybe because of them, our olfactory capacity is laughable compared to that of our other mammalian friends. Dogs have roughly 220 million olfactory receptor cells and well over 1000 olfactory receptor genes, while humans have only about 5 million receptor cells and about 350 olfactory receptor genes. Nothing is more demonstrative of our pitiful, devolved sense of smell than the common belief that we lack even common language to describe our sense of smell – only that isn’t true.

Recent research into non-Western perceptual language has demonstrated that several Southeast Asian languages have a repertoire of abstract, non-referential words to describe odors. In these languages, scents are identified as freely and with as much consensus as we can describe colors – and this applies even to smells that have never been encountered before. The Jahai dialect, for example, includes many basic, non-derivative terms for odors. The direct ramifications are incredible: language can communicate odors after all!

This should hardly come as a surprise to the particular crowd that reads this blog. Many of us have spent years developing our ability to identify and name specific odors in fragrance and, more importantly, have participated in discussions of these characteristics. If there were no language to communicate scent, how could one explain the existence of increasingly numerous perfume forums and blogs where communication relies on words? Scent can easily be communicated to people familiar with it, even to the extent of the receiver being able to translate, more or less accurately, encoded scent vocabulary into a mental “image” of the information. For instance, can you imagine the scent of Fracas with vetiver? How about orange blossom and rubber?

The broader implications of specialized vocabulary dedicated to describing odors are significant, particularly to the olfactorily inclined. If our sociological understanding of olfaction is wrong in assuming that smells cannot be named and communicated in the same way colors can, then how sturdy are our physiological and philosophical understandings of scent? Is our established understanding of olfaction a result of the WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) phenomenon?

The reality is that statistical and empirical data on olfaction are not overly-WEIRD, but are often construed in a frankly unscientific manner to validate established beliefs. Olfaction is delegated to the marginalia of scientific research and treated as a curiosity in the same way that research on sexual behavior was in the 1940s. The Kinsey Report challenged traditional beliefs about sexual behavior, but was old news for the sexually liberated, and one can sense a strong resemblance in modern research on olfaction. Perfumers and aroma chemical manufacturers have been using the science of olfaction to develop products that are widely considered to be novel, but our sense of smell and the research behind it are far from novel. With any luck, the “discovery” of abstract olfactory language will pique the interest of the scientific community and lend legitimacy to those researchers willing to challenge traditional beliefs on olfaction, Until then, readers, stay olfactorily liberated, and encourage others to do the same!

[Photo of Jesse (channeling Harry Potter?) courtesy of Jesse himself; olfactory receptor diagram from an educational website; other photos adapted from Wikimedia]

IF I JUST BOUGHT YOUR PRODUCT, WHY WOULD I BUY IT AGAIN?

Unfortunately, when I work on my websites and some other applications I have to leave pop-up windows unblocked, and I don’t like to have to switch between the blocked and unblocked states depending on what I’m working on. As a result, I see lots of ads everywhere, but have mostly learned to ignore them. In a way they’re instructive because they have taught me something about ineffective advertising strategies.  

The strangest phenomenon of all is that of pop-up ads for an item I just bought a day or two ago. It’s happened over and over again. I buy a 250-foot roll of Parafilm (a material that I use to cover flasks during processing), and suddenly everyone in the world wants to sell me a 250-foot roll of Parafilm. If I wanted more than one, would I not have bought multiple rolls in the first place? I can see the possible utility of advertising items related to the one purchased, but not the identical one. If I bought Parafilm, maybe the supplier should advertise Erlenmeyer flasks, magnetic stir plates, beakers, or other lab equipment. I might even see something I needed or “needed”.

The same goes for perfumes and cosmetics. If I buy an item at an online retailer’s site, suddenly ads for that exact item pop up all over the place, usually from the same retailer from whom I ordered. I fail to see the logic behind advertising retrospectively. Shouldn’t the advertiser try to anticipate the customer’s needs and wants instead of trying to sell the same thing over and over?

I’m sure this maladaptive advertising strategy is driven by software robots with no common sense, but surely the people who implement it and choose to use it should be expected to exercise some common sense. At first I thought it was a coincidence, but I’ve now seen it happen over and over again. Have you experienced this backwards advertising strategy? Can you think of any rationale for it other than ease of programming? 

[Billboard adapted from a photo on Hopkins Medicine's website; dog chasing tail from The Daily Mail, push-pull sphere from Wikimedia]

HAPPY 2015!

First of all, a big thank-you to everyone who has read the blog over the past year despite my erratic schedule of postings. Thanks to everyone who has helped support my work as a perfumer. Best wishes to all for a healthy, happy, productive, and successful new year that brings you whatever you most desire.

One of my traditions here is doing a post that looks back on the past year and forward to the next. It’s trite, I know, but it always seems like a good idea anyway. For the sake of the readers, I’ll go light on my “other lives” and focus on the perfume-related track.

The past year saw the launch of two new floral scents, African Orchid, a tropical white-flower scent based on the fragrance of an angrecoid orchid, and Sakura, a light cherry-blossom soliflore. It was also the year of Peace-Love-Perfume, with the release of three commemorative scents for the Facebook group headed by Carlos Powell. Just under the wire in December came Woodcut, which I’d been working on for a long time, ever since the day when I passed by the construction site with the newly built fence. I agonized for a long time about what to call it, but when the right name finally came to mind, the rest was easy.

I traveled a lot, participating in the San Francisco Fragrance Salon, FRAGments in Los Angeles, several out-of-town orchid (plant) shows, and my first-ever holiday pop-up shop. I’m getting much better at organizing for these events, I keep more stock on the shelves now so I don’t (usually) run out, and I’m getting better at handling increased production. It’s been a good year all around, with Blackbird a finalist for the Art & Olfaction Awards, and Woodcut named one of Cafleurebon’s “Best of 2014”.

I don’t make New Year’s resolutions because “resolution” sounds so rigid and final, as if it’s a rule to live by. Instead, I set goals, which may shift one way or another as I approach them. My goals for 2015 are to:

1. Improve my websites with up-to-date photos and descriptions, addition of some new products, and more frequent routine maintenance.

2. Never announce new products in my newsletter until they’re listed for sale on the website. More than once I’ve been guilty of writing about items before they are listed, so that people are disappointed when they go to the website looking for them and they're not there. This goal goes hand-in-hand with No. 1, and also involves better newsletter management.

3. Take a critical look at my line and figure out which fragrances to discontinue and which to keep. Because there is constant pressure to come up with new releases and I can only handle so many (I am not  BPAL or Montale and do not want to be!) I need to figure out which are the perennials and which are the annuals in my garden of scents. An upcoming post will deal with this question and solicit suggestions and nominations for permanent status and elimination.

4. Try to simplify, organize, and cut down on distractions. I still spend a lot of time looking for fragrance materials that are stored in a disorganized way, compulsively checking e-mail and Facebook, and other unproductive behaviors.

5. Try to post something here at least once a week. It’s not that hard, I just have to make the time and maybe enlist the help of more guest writers.

6. Do some marketing. I’m fully aware that this is my weakest point in running the perfume business. The goal for 2105 is to start sending samples to bloggers and other potentially interested parties, and add a few more wholesale accounts.

That’s enough to start with. If I make any progress toward these goals, 2015 will be a very good year!

[Janus, detective, and stage hook images adapted from Wikimedia.  Orchid photo is mine.]