Smells Like Nostalgia
I was listening to a Twenty One Pilots’ song today, and these lyrics jumped out at me:
“Sometimes a certain smell will take me back to when I was young
How come I'm never able to identify where it's coming from
I'd make a candle out of it if I ever found it
Try to sell it, never sell out of it, I'd probably only sell one
It'd be to my brother, 'cause we have the same nose
Same clothes homegrown a stone's throw from a creek we used to roam
But it would remind us of when nothing really mattered
Out of student loans and tree-house homes we all would take the latter”
How strange is it to think that some things have infinite meaning to one person and zero meaning to another? Like that smell that reminds you of your childhood. Someone else could smell it and think, gross – smells like old ladies and drugstore candy, but you could smell it and be reminded of your grandmother’s house and your overly serious grandfather who would occasionally crack a smile and sneak you chocolate even after you had brushed your teeth. It’s weird to think that that smell would trigger similar memories in your sibling’s subconscious.
Memory itself is weird. Like, you could be looking at a painting of a girl in a yellow raincoat and suddenly be jolted back twenty years to when you were five, stomping in puddles in your bright blue raincoat and matching boots. Or you could catch a whiff of a scent and be reminded of the laundry soap your aunt used on your cousins’ clothes, and how that smell would hit you every time you got a bag of hand-me-downs from them. The little hooks our brains use to retain memory are fascinating; especially the way they vary from person to person. You could tell twenty people to write about a memory they associate with “blue” – that’s it, “blue” – and you would get twenty different stories. One might write about a day spent sailing in the blue ocean. Another might recount a disastrous first date where the only good part was the delicious cordon bleu they ordered. We all have different experiences – even siblings won’t have the same exact memories. We are all individuals with our own personal perspectives.
