vomiting in public

A peculiar thing happened recently. A few weeks ago, when I was going through a rather turbulent (both exciting and anxious) patch, I was overcome with nausea. I was at my desk at school, just back from dinner. I don’t usually vomit. In fact I remember trying to remember, in that moment, the last time I threw up without alcohol being involved. But I couldn't. I recall recalling that I’m not the kind of person with a weak stomach, that I don’t have the type of body that expels its contents easily. Walking, half running, to the school bathroom I was thinking about the absurdity of it all as my stomach pushed at my throat, begging for its release.

Vomiting, blushing, sneezing, coughing, crying, smiling- these are the remnants of our instincts. These are the external actions we do not own and activate willingly. (too untrue to say like that?) Of course there is urination, defecation, and the passing of gas- but these we can somewhat control, at least for the majority of our lives. Crocodile tears and alligator smiles… It’s interesting that we use animal imagery to describe such distinctly human behavior. When was the last time you ran in fear for your life? Or had to stalk and kill your meal?

[By the way, today I saw a bird of prey (falcon/hawk/eagle?) kill a pigeon mid-flight, swoop down to pick it up in its talons a second after it hit the ground, dead! Needless to say, it was amazing.]

Our human lives, through thousands of years of evolution and progress, have developed into existences of relative comfort and convenience. Safe and secure in our warm houses, we shiver at the thought that bad things do happen, that hardship actually exists, that life can be precious and precarious. We rely on the hope that ‘they’ (crime, hate, violence) will not, cannot, happen to us (and also the ominous having less/lacking wants). We feel content (do we?) that we only have to fear the simulated emotion and artificial friendliness of our peers. Seeking authenticity but largely unable to judge.

Andy Warhol, famed queer pop artist and entrepreneur, lived as big as he made and created as much as he consumed. He showed us that we can and do exist somewhere between life and art, reality and fiction/image, production and reproduction… proved that the lines we’ve drawn around ourselves can be pushed, obliterated, and redrawn at any moment. In any case, he was and continues in his death to be a mythic figure. It is interesting that he was very aware of his day-to-day memories and their containment for future recollection. He sought to keep them by preserving smells.

“My collection of semi-used perfumes is very big by now, although I didn’t start wearing lots of them until the early 60s. Before that the smells in my life were all just whatever happened to hit my nose by chance. But then I realized I had to have a kind of smell museum so certain smells wouldn’t get lost forever.” (A. Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again), p.151)

Was his scent museum a way to preserve his personal self/ private identity? Was it something for only him to have and know intimately as his life became increasingly public and his image the territory of others? Was it simply another instance of his interest in the mundane and banal, discarded and forgotten? Or was it a narcissistic show for posterity, a part of his legacy-in-the-making? Perhaps a little bit of both? Are we all like this, roaming between our private and public selves, our past and possible futures, looking for meaning in the incidental? (or should it be looking to separate significant from irrelevant, distilling them from one another?)

Smell scientist Avery Gilbert has this to say on the more technical side:
“Memories fade and get harder to find amid the mental clutter of a busy life. For a given smell, the odds that it will produce a riveting flashback shrink with each resniffing. That special scent becomes less special, its links to the past grow steadily weaker. Warhol’s solution was ingenious: he would wear a cologne until it built up strong emotional connections, then retire it to his personal smell museum. Once out of active rotation, the cologne’s memories were locked in, never to be confused with others. The Warhol wear-and-retire method was unusual but effective. By not switching back and forth between scents, he avoided the loss of memorablility that psychologists call interference.” (Gilbert, p. 205)

Interference in psychology can be described as the following:
“A prominent theory of forgetting at the behavioral level is anchored in the phenomenon of interference, or inhibition, which can be either retroactive or proactive. In retroactive inhibition, new learning interferes with the retention of old memories; in proactive inhibition, old memories interfere with the retention of new learning. Both phenomena have great implications for all kinds of human learning.” From Encyclopedia Britannica, online here.

Inhibition:
from the Oxford English Dictionary:

1. The action of inhibiting or forbidding; a prohibition (with reference to some act expressed or implied), esp. one formally issued by a person or body possessed of civil or ecclesiastical authority.
2. The action of preventing, hindering, or checking. Now esp. in Physiol.
3. Psychol. A voluntary or involuntary restraint or check that prevents the direct expression of an instinctive impulse; also colloq., in looser use, an inner hindrance to conduct or activity.

And from Wikipedia:

“Social inhibition is a conscious or unconscious constraint or curtailment by a person of a process or behaviour that the person may consider objectionable in a social setting. Inhibitions can serve necessary social functions, reducing or preventing certain antisocial impulses from being acted on. Inhibitions vary greatly from person to person, and may be closely linked to a person's confidence. An extreme lack of inhibition may be antisocial and a symptom of a mental disorder, such as hypomania and mania. On the other hand, a high level of inhibition may also create personal problems, including an inability to feel or express certain emotions.”

The same scents smell different on different people. The individuality of our bodies, our skin oils and sweat and personal odor, mix with the bottled perfume to produce a unique fragrance that is inimitable day to day, hour to hour. Perfumes are designed and created, for the most part, with a structure that can be likened to a pyramid. This pyramid expresses both the character and time of the perfume. The top notes, at the pyramid’s peak, are the most striking scents- the notes you notice and recognize first. These notes, also called head notes, are the most fleeting and are the first to disappear with time. The middle notes are next in line, propping up the top notes. Also referred to as heart notes, these linger beyond top notes. Base notes are the foundation of a fragrance, serving to carry the scent and give it its lasting essence. These three notes together form what is called an accord. (give examples of typical notes, elaborate, etc)

A beautiful (successful?) accord is very elusive and when found, can bring a perfumier much fame. See Chanel No. 5. Presently, the perfume industry seems to depend more upon marketing and celebrity cache than the design of the actual fragrance. (elaborate)

One fashion house, Comme des Garcons, is refreshingly daring and (post?)modern in the construction of their perfumes. Often referred to as “anti-fragrances”, their work plays with and interprets candidly notions of beauty and desire, amongst other ideas.

See the following online reviews of some of their fragrances:

Comme des Garcons, reviewed by fragrantica.com
8 88, reviewed by hintmag.com
Odeur 53, reviewed by The Independent