Smell delivers involuntary memory more powerfully than any other sense

Evidence

Of the five senses, smell has the closest thing to the full power of the past. Smell really is transporting. Seeing, hearing, touching, tasting are just not as powerful as smelling if you want your whole being to go back for a second to something. Usually I don’t want to, but by having smells stopped up in bottles, I can be in control and can only smell the smells I want to, when I want to, to get the memories I’m in the mood to have. Just for a second. The good thing about a smell-memory is that the feeling of being transported stops the instant you stop smelling, so there are no aftereffects. It’s a neat way to reminisce. — Andy Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol, 530

Categorization

• XREF: Directly echoes Proust’s madeleine and the involuntary-memory literature on olfaction; connects to the existing note library on sense and memory. — connects to: Total visibility and memorialization destroy an object’s power to trigger involuntary memory — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on…, 172; A perfected sensory object can reorder a dulled inner life — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 1068
• SHARE: Send to anyone obsessed with perfume/olfactory memory — the ‘smell museum’ concept to preserve lost scents like the Paramount lobby fragrance is a striking idea.

Broader Connections

• Total visibility and memorialization destroy an object’s power to trigger involuntary memory #complicates (0.80) — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life, 172
• A perfected sensory object can reorder a dulled inner life #expands (0.75) — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 1068