Re: upper class instincts
Tim O'Connor (tim@roughdraft.org)
Wed, 11 Mar 1998 19:03:31 -0500
> Please, Tim, for me as well as the other pianists and recording
> engineers out there--don't forget the desolation of Tchaikovsky, or of
> Chopin, or the sweetness of Debussy, or the sublime madness and pensive
> hush of Satie, or the mathematical intellectual struggles of Bach and
> Mozart.
>
> I agree with you, Tim, but you mustn't forget the ears for images. Or,
> perhaps most explicitly, the scentmakers. Scent is the most
> image-evoking sense. And food, and clothes as well.
>
> But music. Music.
Yes -- I should well have listed all the senses -- not only the obvious one
-- and appreciate your impassioned response!
As far as scent goes, I would say that Patrick Suskind, in Perfume (which
looks like a cheap, cheesy book in its wretched paperback cover), created a
masterpiece in the literature of scent. This is not a sly, ironic remark.
Just in terms of the obvious, many of us have spoken about going back in
time. Suskind reminds us that going back a couple of centuries to a city
would be to have one's nose assaulted by the smells of the time --
excrement, sludge on the street, unwashed people, horses all over, and so
on.
----tim