My olfactory memory works backwards. Smells don’t invoke memories in me. But visual images and words invoke vivid memories of smells, often smells I don’t like.
When writing, it really helps to be able to describe things in terms and ways that other people can relate to.
The way my brain processes smells is one of the reasons I don’t like images of bare shoulders, believe it or not. When I see a clean, bare shoulder in a photo, I smell the soap or lotion that may have been used on that shoulder, and for me it is usually a sharp and unpleasant scent. I know it’s all in my head, but I can’t seem to get over it.
Most people really enjoy fragrances, and think of them as a way of communicating with other people and as a way of controlling the comfort level of their environments. They are also seen as at least important as photos, if not more, for building memories and bringing them back. To most people, aromas, fragrances, odors and smells are all part of the very fabric of enjoying life and being human.
To me, except for the rare few that make me hungry, they have always been a form of chemical warfare. And I’m not allergic to anything! I just find smells to be generally unpleasant and distracting. Sometimes they give me a headache, but that’s usually due to stress and tightening muscles to try to ignore the smell. Very few people seem capable of empathizing with this, so I find myself in constant conflict with most of the rest of the world.
This is also one of the reasons I despise bananas.
While I can’t stand the smells of poop, BO or rotting food, the fragrances commonly used to mask them are actually painful to my nose. Citrus, however, is mostly OK. Though, lemon in baked goods usually makes me think of Pledge, now… But almost all floral scents are appalling, and if artificial are painful. Fruit scents smell of rot. Red onions smell of the worst compost and are painful, making many restaurants offensive and unappetizing to visit. And I really have a hard time convincing myself that the rest of humanity is not insane and sadistic.
This is a big obstacle for writing prose! Because, almost instinctively, I don’t write about fragrances the way other people talk about them. This means that when writing prose, particularly fiction, I typically don’t describe a scene in a way that is quite so vivid for most people as many other writers do. I don’t relate to my audience in that way.
Comics, on the other hand, work the way I think! The way you evoke a smell in comics is by drawing something that typically has a fragrance, and I can absolutely relate to that.
This isn’t the actual reason I started drawing comics originally, but it’s one of the reasons I’ve stuck to it instead of going back to writing prose.
It may also be one of the reasons I’ve developed Carl as a character the way he is. It seems that I evaluate smells on the basis of whether or not they are appetizing to me. And that’s not based on foods I grew to like as a child or that are a comfort to me. It based on a more visceral reaction, the processing of what might be poisonous and what might not be. There are many foods I cannot eat because my gag reflex with them is just far too high. This isn’t always about smell, but it is strongly related to it. Anyway, I have a lot of food anxieties that really restrict my diet, and I find myself evaluated the smell of non-food items as if they are food or could contaminate my food. Believe me, this is really strange to me, too! It’s just what I do.
Carl has heightened olfactory senses thanks to his barbels. He can tell when something is edible to him. But unlike me he can trust his senses to make accurate judgments on this. Like me, he seems to have an insatiable appetite. Unlike me, however, he can eat just about everything, and his body knows it.
Carl’s eating habits weren’t just a cheap joke. He started life as a role playing character. When I made him, I looked forward to imagining myself as his character doing things I would never do. Carl is, essentially, a superhero.
One Reason originally appeared on Drawing Contraption on 2013/09/01.