Module 3 ABs-Part II

Owen, David.  "The Dime Store Floor." New Yorker, January 25, 2010.

 There is a certain nostalgia that this article by Owen expresses when he tells the story of some childhood landmarks through smell memories.

Some memories come about when one smells the smell that reminds he/she of a place from memory and then proceeds to take you back to that place.  Others are found in that place still itself.  It is not just memory that it triggers, but emotions and anecdotes.  One smell can set off a series of emotions, thoughts and memories and can be quite transportive.

• In his reference to the Dime store of childhood, in addition to the smells associated with it, the author recalls the fact that this Store also represented the "first distance destination" he was allowed to venture upon via bike, and his past troubles with a bully enroute.
• The smell of paint in a museum reminded him of the overalls he wore and the embarrassing hole his mother fashioned for ease of bathroom use.
• Some smells fade, but are replaced by new.
• Some smells, though possibly unpleasant, can remind us of something good and happy.
• Owen discusses the passage of time when he remarks on the clean smell of present day runners versus how when he was young, the smell of hair products reminded him of sex, so where we are in our lives, and experience shapes our smell memories.

I am struck by how many unpleasant smells can still make me feel happy and fill me with wonderful memories, particularly those of cigar smoke and too much men's cologne.  Smell is such a string smell that it can make a not-so-good type of smell a happy memory.

I am left to wonder, is it the memory that is stronger, or is it the smell.  Can a smell be physically trapped within a space, and for how long?  Is it really there, or are we imagining it?  Is this type of memory through smell contingent on the other senses to exist?

Tonkiss, Fran.  "Aural Postcards:  Sound, Memory and the City," in The Auditory Culture Reader. Edited by Michael Bull and Les Back.  London:  Berg, 2003.

 Tonkiss looks at sound with the modern city as its backdrop and surmised that aural memories can be one of  the strongest amongst the senses.  Sound is what makes a city a city.

• It is interesting when Tonkiss says that we more or less have control over the "size" of our city space when we choose not to listen.  The space becomes "smaller, tamer, more predictable."  It almost becomes something other than a city.
• Tonkiss says we "speak" our city merely by how we are, live, and travel through it.  It is like another page of the cognitive map, as explained in the Lang piece on Cognitive Mapping, we are creating beyond the visuals.
• Aural Postcards is a term for what Walter Benjamin created for us in his writings where he referenced the sounds of his travels in his storytelling creating landmarks and memories of where he had been or what may no longer be there.  Benjamin believes that hearing may "be the sense of memory." 
• Metonym:  defined as aural fragments that speak of something larger.
• The SILENCE of a city is explored and explained as means of keeping time still or like uncovering a secret.  That moment of silence in a city is so rare that it becomes unsettling.

As a child who grew up in the suburbs, but who has spent much of her adult life in the city, the idea of sound as such a strong component of memory and sense of place is very clear.  But in my rural home, it is not quiet.  There is much chatter about, but it is different and not as loud as the city, but it is very constant.   The sound is birds, crickets, owls and people and cars are the backdrop of my day.  The deepest silence I have ever heard was in an ice storm where the quiet is equally eerie to what is described here when Tonkiss discusses a quiet city.  And the memories become just as distinct.