Smell and Memory

My roommate made coconut red lentil soup the other night.  She started by sauteing the onions with the spices--curry and cinnamon.  The smells were so rich, so warm, so inviting--it was an instant pick-me-up after my second consecutive twelve hour workday, transporting me to warmer, more exotic places.

What is it about smell that is so directly linked to mood and memory?  When I was an undergraduate studying French literature, I must have had to read Proust's iconic madeleine passage--the one where he dips it in tea and is instantly transported back in time --in at least three classes, in one context or another.  Here is the relevant passage:

No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory – this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me it was me. ... Whence did it come? What did it mean? How could I seize and apprehend it? ... And suddenly the memory revealed itself. The taste was that of the little piece of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray (because on those mornings I did not go out before mass), when I went to say good morning to her in her bedroom, my aunt Léonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of tea or tisane. The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it. And all from my cup of tea.




Here it is, this time unabridged, in French; the relevant passage begins under the heading "Le texte celebre de la madeleine".  (I'm also struck by the contrast of the English to the French--it's a cliche, but to me, it rings true-- the French language is seductive, rich, smooth.  But I digress into reveling in another of the senses).

The distinctive, instinctual memory associated with smell is for me evocative of places as well as time.  Perfume mixed with cigarette smoke = streets of Paris.  Sage = hiking in California. Fresh baked bread== home, mother, love, all things domestic.  Bleach = comforting cleanliness.  Herbal Essence shampoo= college, showering in the late afternoon to avoid the morning rush in the dorms, my old  fuchsia bathrobe.  Beer plus food deep-fried plus smoke = Czech pub.

How fascinating are the strange connections in our human brains: associating smells so intensely with memory is powerful and creativity-inducing, but it's also limiting in the sense that it colors perceptions of new events and therefore inhibits our ability to make impartial observations.  This, I think, is part of what makes being human so interesting--our very flaws are so often inextricably linked to our greatest capacity.

Best of the Violin

Quick notes on favorites:

I don't always love Beethoven,as I feel he can be overblown and rambling, but still he is worth listening to for his inimitable ability to capture joy and triumph over darkness (see the ninth symphony for both the best and the worst of Beethoven).  One of my favorite pieces from Beethoven is the third movement of his violin concerto, positively soaring in its climax: listen to this Heifetz recording, starting from 7:00.  Turn it up LOUD!  My favorite way to listen to this is in the car, blasting it.  Beethoven was not meant to be played timidly.

I want to like Brahms more than I do, although I really do love his violin concerto, especially the slow movement, so beautiful that it stops your heart.  The most glorious section begins right at the soloist's entrance at 2:25, although it's ultimately more satisfying if you allow yourself to listen to the entire orchestral intro that precedes the entrance, as it builds so magnificently.  Oy, at 2:36 or so--the gradual rise, the beauty of those singing high notes!  Words fail me.  

Both of these are far beyond my technical range now or even when I was practicing regularly and taking lessons up until the age of 18 or so.  But here's the second movement of the Bach Double Violin Concerto, also stunning, but less demanding, one which I have actually performed with my little sister.

I have also played this.   Mozart was a pretty good match for me stylistically at the height of my technical prowess.  But watching Hillary Hahn, one of my favorite violinists, perform this with such effortless grace, I am astounded by the gaping chasm between her ability and mine.  So here is the principal and lasting result of many years of lessons and unfortunate embarrassments stemming from my laziness: I have come to love this music.  Worth it, I think.  

Me as a Violinist: Crappy, but Happy (Mostly)

When I was 12, a family from church asked me to play the violin at their son's baptism.  It was a relatively minor thing: I was to play the descant to one of the most popular songs in the hymn book while the congregation sang along.  I had done it before, so I blew off practicing even once with the pianist.  As we began, I played only one note before I realized something was disastrously wrong.  At first I thought the problem might have simply been that the piano and I hadn't tuned to each other (I know, I know--any musician reading this is cringing at how awful it was that I didn't even bother to do that), but then I realized that the problem was much worse--we were in different keys.  I did what I could to transpose what was written into the correct key, but the panic at having to do it unexpectedly, plus the initial missed notes, threw off my performance and resulted in disaster.

Unfortunately, I have lots of stories like that.  There was the time (age 15) that I didn't practice at all for an upcoming orchestra seating test where we would have to defend our placement within the orchestra by playing selections from the repertoire for our upcoming concert. The conductor started at the top of our first violin section and asked the top two musicians to both play, and then the rest of us voted with closed eyes for who we thought had played the best.  The idea was that a stronger performance by a person seated lower in the section could bump someone out of his or her seat.  This continued down to me, seated squarely in the middle of the first violins.  In one of the most humiliating moments of my life, I played so poorly that I was bumped all the way to the bottom of the section.  I can still remember the shame burning my cheeks--and the tear I was unable to prevent from escaping--during my next lesson as my teacher berated me for embarrassing him with my poor showing.

Clearly, I do not have what it takes to be a professional.  Beyond my lack of discipline and the satisfaction I find in achieving middling results, I suffer from crushing fear.  A conductor for a youth orchestra I auditioned for once told my mother I needed as much audition experience as she could get for me because I had been "shaking like a leaf."  I play only in church these days, a venue renowned for its combination of high support and low expectations, but I still sit down after a performance with shaking hands and a rapid pulse.

But.  BUT!  There is something to be said for what I have experienced when public performances haven't ended ignominiously.  The nervousness that can be so paralyzing heightens the senses, and when a beautiful arrangement, dutiful rehearsing, and skillful accompaniment all come together, there is an indescribable sense of joy.  At the risk of being obnoxiously melodramatic, I would even say I feel synergy with the universe.  That crescendo in feeling that comes with the most expressive music--that is the closest thing I have ever felt to pure unadulterated bliss.  It sounds self-aggrandizing, but I move myself.  There is nothing like being in the middle of an orchestra or a choir and hearing the sound rising all around you while knowing that you yourself are an integral part of that beauty.  In all of my limited experience, it is the closest I have felt to heaven.

Nostalgia

Seven+ years after leaving graduate school, I finally cleaned out binders filled with articles from class and independent research.  Into the recycling bin went hundreds of articles on linguistic-y topics: everything from case studies of bilingual children to descriptions of phonological processes to meta-analyses of English language programs.  In other words, all of this stuff that was genuinely fascinating, that I spent two years of my life delving into, I have not once touched since.  As much as I love thinking about language, language learning, educational policy, constructions of culture, repercussions of tests--I just haven't reread any of it since then, and now all of it is pretty dated.

It's amazing how you can become so immersed in something that quickly gets superseded by the rest of life. You devote hours and hours of concentrated attention--and then it fades into the background.  Thus went trumpet-playing, mathematics, Latin, Chinese.  What next?

Fitter, Happier. .

For the third year in a row, my annual physical revealed a vitamin D deficiency, with this year's number lower than ever.  This is somewhat ironic, given that the other predictable pronouncement by the nurse practitioner is that I am dangerously fair-skinned (fairer skin being linked to relative ease at vitamin D absorption from the sun).  I blame this unlikely dual misfortune on my scrupulous sunscreen habit, which the N.P. assures me I should continue in order to protect myself from the likelihood of skin cancer.  In the meantime, however, she has finally prescribed me a ridiculously high vitamin D dosage in hopes that I'll finally stop blowing off her advice to take a supplement. So far the added seriousness of having a prescription has worked, and whereas I used to diligently take my OTC-level dosage of vitamin D for only a couple of days before succumbing to the suspicion that it didn't really matter that much, I've now been going strong for five weeks.

Beyond the prescription, my dedication was in large part fueled by my internet reading on vitamin D, which lists the symptoms and complications of a deficiency as including everything from increased risk of cancer (this time NOT skin cancer--you can't win) and osteoporosis to difficulty sleeping, depression, and even weight gain.  I relish the thought of the effortlessness of popping a pill resulting, potentially, in being thinner, more cheerful, and more energized.  Articulating this fantasy to myself evoked the Radiohead song "Fitter, Happier"  Yep, that joyless song probably accurately captures the likelihood of finding such an easy fix.  Oh, well.  Here's hoping for the placebo effect.  That's a thing, right?

Thinking about God

At the moment, I'm reading Blake Ostler's Exploring Mormon Thought: The Attributes of God, which addresses Mormon theology and how it fits in with other Christian theologies.  Mormonism has some striking differences with traditional Christianity--the emphatic way we highlight that the trinity consists of three separate personages, the inclusion of the Book of Mormon in the scriptural canon, the historical practice of polygamy, and the (currently not widely professed) view that human beings have the potential to become as gods.

Before this I had read virtually no theology; while I had read some of Augustine's Confessions and excerpts of Aquinas in college, in the context of my class we were viewing the texts more for how they approached the ineffable than for any theological conclusions.




As I was reading Ostler, at first I found I was distracted by the impression that he was trying too hard to invent a systematic theology where no such thing existed.  For example, he acknowledges the widely documented Mormon view that God did NOT create ex nihilo ("out of nothing"), but simply organized matter that already existed and that therefore he cannot force separate "intelligences" (which can refer to either individual people or even to matter) to act in any particular way--therefore they have free will, separate from God's ability to act upon them.  He then attempts to reconcile this with seemingly contradictory scriptures like D&C 88:47--"God hath given a law to all things by which they move" (implying that God is the ultimate cause behind all other events brought about by other agents)--by stating intelligences have power to cause certain events to take place, but that God must lend them his power for this to occur.  The intelligences therefore can act as free agents, but only with God lending his power simultaneously--something Ostler calls "concurrence".  An interesting and creative conclusion to be sure, but definitely not something that must be universally arrived at, since it is not at all clear if this is what is meant by Mormon scripture or if it is what Mormon prophets had meant to convey.  While one could argue that God may reveal truths without the complete understanding of his mouthpieces, there remains the question of whether this is even God's intended conclusion from combined Mormon discourses and scriptures.  In other words, all interesting ideas, but not necessarily convincing and certainly not conclusive.

But then I realized that this systematizing of unsystematic utterances about God into a coherent theology is itself the discipline of theology, which is what Augustine and Aquinas and all the other theologians were up to themselves, taking biblical record, some of which is clearly self-contradictory, and trying to reconcile it with logic and what was known of science and philosophy.  On the whole, Mormons have not always been friendly to such attempts, perceiving efforts to define theology from non-prophetic sources as inevitably tainted by human interference . Certainly the task theologians undertake is audacious--but is it worth doing? Does it add anything to the spiritual life?

My own thought is that reading arguments about the nature of God seems to do little to convince me about one view or another.  I'm honestly really unsure about things like whether God is ultimately infinitely omnipotent or if such a thing is even possible (or desirable) and he is instead "maximally potent"; the more I read, the more I find new questions arising.  But I've decided that I like reading theology because the way I experience the world and discover my beliefs is not just through inspired feeling, but by reasoned thinking and analytic reflection.  In years past when I ignored difficult and thorny theological questions, it essentially meant that I was shutting off an important part of myself to God--and therefore my relationship with him felt boring and stagnant.  And writing that feels blasphemous, for I cannot believe that God himself is either of those things.  So while I am very unsure if I agree with Ostler's conclusions about what Mormon theology is--or even what it should be--I'm very much appreciative of the exercise of considering these questions. Thinking about God turns out to be a devotional activity for me in much the same way that prayer and church attendance are; I'm turning my mind towards him in the same way I've always known to turn my heart.

Fear

Fear.  Oh, I hate it so.  It has both kept me awake and haunted my sleep.  I have missed out on what should have been fun or exciting moments because of worry, distress, anxiety--all words to describe subtle variations of fear.

November, 2002.  When the NATO conference came to Prague, our language school, across the street from the US Embassy, closed for the week.  A friend and I decided to go to Krakow. Despite a long delay while changing trains near the border, it was a pleasant journey. The city itself was breathtaking, not too full of tourists because of the chilly time of year. On the first night, we finished dinner fairly late and headed back to our hostel on the outskirts of town past the Vistula River.  It was a weeknight in a mostly uninhabited part of the city, and the streets were dark and deserted.  We were talking and laughing when we noticed two men in the distance heading our direction on the opposite side of the street.  My friend made a comment about feeling nervous, and while I'm not normally easily spooked, I clenched my bag tighter.  As they drew nearer, they suddenly changed direction and started crossing the street as if to confront us directly.  I couldn't speak and I couldn't react--I found myself suddenly unable to move at all, with a desperate prayer in my throat--"Please, please, please don't let them come too near--don't let them touch us.  And if they do, please let it be just our money they want."  They grew closer, they were near, and without a word, they passed silently by.  My friend let out a relieved laugh.  "I really thought they were going to attack us!"--but I couldn't speak.  We got back to the hostel, and I was too stiff with fear to even make my bed--my hands were useless.  I had to just sit for 15 minutes or so while the adrenaline finished its rush through my body.  It was an odd overreaction--I'm not exactly sure why I had become so terrified, although maybe the experience really was as menacing as it seemed.  More than ten years after the fact, my memory is not so clear.

Most disturbingly, my own body had betrayed me.  I couldn't have run, I couldn't have fought--I had frozen.  I was useless--worse than useless--at defending myself.  In nightmares, I have felt my legs turn sluggish while trying to run away, as if moving through jello.  But at least I could move--here I had become totally helpless, and I couldn't consciously will myself back into control.  I don't fully understand why that happened, but the two or three times that I've been truly fearful in my life have all had the same result.  I have heard of fight or flight--but freeze?  What on earth could be the biological explanation for the usefulness of that?  According to wikipedia, "many animals freeze or play dead when touched in the hope that the predator will lose interest".*  Yikes.  I don't like to consider my survival prospects if I ever encountered real danger; fortunately, my few scary moments have always turned out to be false alarms.

(*Another source suggests that "tonic immobility may be useful when additional attacks are provoked by movement or when immobility may increase the chance of escaping, such as when a predator believes its prey to be dead and releases it."  So maybe my body just knows I'm a crappy runner and an even crappier fighter and thinks, "eh--playing dead is the best defense I've got." )