Wednesday, July 12, 2006

Have I lost my senses?

My favourite body cream describes itself like this: "like a cool northern breeze, sephora white gently caresses you in its soft, smooth, snow-white textures: sensuous, tender body care enriched with cotton milk, known for its nourishing and softening attributes".
The modern world and its technologies have allowed us to experience the world in different ways than our predecessors, there's no doubt about it. Some things are easier, especially when it comes to communication - it's faster, cheaper, easier, possible in many ways. It brings people closer to each other, but also some might argue more distant, since many interact mostly with machines than other people. But even in this case, technology makes things a little easier...
For instance, photography allows us to keep an image of something or someone close to us even if that thing or person isn't physically in our reach. It must have been quite amazing when photography appeared - imagine what it would be like without it - people that were apart would forget each other's faces so much easier.
Perhaps they could remember someone or something by the way it smelled and these days the possibilities are the same in this field, since they still haven't invented a machine that records smells (or have they?). Maybe if we have a bottled perfume, we can keep a scent within our reach, or maybe we keep those scents in our memory, since those are two very close dimensions.
With tape recorders and such we are also able to maintain sounds, voices, melodies of people and things that we could otherwise forget as well and never be able to recall again. That's quite a big advantage as well. We can record someone's voice, the sound of waves, of birds singing, a song played by a band in a concert...all kinds of possibilities.
If you have a video camera you can also capture things moving and mix the sight and the sound, keep it forever in our "memory" (in this case, an exterior memory).
When it comes to taste there is nothing to help us preserve memories but our own mind, just as the scents. This is even harder because there are no bottles where we can keep tastes...We still have a strong memory of tastes though, as it is connected to the scents.
But when we talk about touch it's a whole different story. Our memories are not as clear as with the other senses and there isn't a way to keep touch sensations in our memory for longer...unless we chop a piece of some object and keep it in our pockets. Maybe this happens because touch is a very underrated sense in our world - we give the eyes and ears a very high priority and don't pay much attention to the touch, which is a shame. But what I'm trying to say is that it would be nice to have some kind of method to recall touch because even elaborated descriptions like the above don't give, in this case, justice to the act of applying that body cream. It really is something else - so even if we try to remember it, it's always a surprise when we touch it again. And I'm not just talking about body cream here...

7 comments:

lady miss marquise said...

I love that just even a hint of one particular smell can bring memories flooding back... I like the randomness of it, you can be walking down a street, or through a crowded mob and *bam* - there it is...

x said...

when you touch the keyboard and you know where your fingers are going without looking, it's because your hands remember.
There is memory in touch. I like Sephora creams. I have vanilla.

Devil Mood said...

Lady: Absolutely, it's something very "animalesque" that we have.

Chloe: lol that's true but I think that's more of a physical memory than touch - it's like riding a bike! Oh I love all that Sephora variety :)

Anonymous said...

good thoughts here!

Meow (aka Connie) said...

Great post, and oh so interesting. Our senses are incredible things, aren't they.
Hope your week is going well.
Take care, Meow

Devil Mood said...

Day: I thought it'd be better to put them "to paper" before I forgot...

Meow: I'm glad you liked it. :)

Devil Mood said...

Maddy: Yes, I knew touch was your favourite, so I thought of you writing this. Where have you been? Are you okay? :)