Don’t know why this crossed my mind, or if it’s even true, but it seems to me that music doesn’t smell. For such a powerful, visceral, emotional art form, that’s a strange thing. But I think it’s true.
Name me a music that smells – cause I can’t think of one.
Oh, there’s music that stinks out loud, but I’m not talking about judgments of taste.
I go to a museum, somehow a painting has a smell to it. Sculpture? I can smell it. Pencil shavings, charcoal, they all have an olfactory component.
Theatre – I can smell the actors.
Movies – well, there’s popcorn isn’t there?
Poetry, books, that musty smell, that inky smell.
Various musical instruments have their smell. Woodwinds, brass have metallic smells, their cases have slight moisture in them, slightly mildewed. Guitars, violins, etc., they’ve all got that old wood musk, old varnish tang to them. Pianos with their polish and their wool felt smells. The musicians themselves? Sure, they smell.
But once the music is in the air, the notes themselves don’t carry the smell. The notes are super-fresh, clean, devoid of smell. It’s not bad. It’s just profoundly curious.
Profoundly curious to me 🙂