The title may be deceiving. Taste, smell, hearing, touch, and sight are what we’re going to talk about, and how each of these abilities has registered specific memories that we can recall at will.
Among my earliest remembrances are of the cooking done by both of my grandmothers. Thoughts of Mommie’s chicken and dumplings, always served with hot water cornbread, as well as Big Mama’s tea cakes make my mouth water as I write this. Just the smell of lemon brings back the taste of my Aunt Eunice’s lemon pound cake, blurring the line between the senses of taste and smell.
To this day, I keep two ancient bottles of Mother’s perfume on a tray in our bathroom, occasionally removing the caps to once again smell her familiar fragrance. The sense memory inevitably conjures the feeling of a silk dress or scarf or the sound of her heels walking across any uncarpeted floor.
Like many others of my generation, I prefer to listen to the music of years ago, even though I like much of today’s music. But I have no memories associated with it. Some songs from my school days or my early years in Dallas recall places no longer here and activities in which I would no longer dare to participate. Certain other songs are affiliated with one certain person, perhaps a dear friend long dead now or an early crush, bringing those feelings and people almost close enough to touch.
Speaking of touch, I can remember the nubby fabric of Big Mama’s sofa and the soft leather of Mommie’s coin purse. We all have touch memories of holding someone or something that has very special meaning to us.
But with all of those interrelated sense memories, more of my brain is taken up with the picture book of sight. I can still see all the faces, all the spaces, all the traces when retrieved from that internal database. The rooms I lived in, the classes I was taught in, who sat in front of me in Government, who sat beside me in Chemistry. The way Karl looked when he picked me up for our first date, looking like he should be somebody’s husband and instantly knowing he was going to be mine. (Bless his heart, he really didn’t have a chance.)
All of these images that all of us have are like an old-fashioned slideshow of photographs that are real but not physical. It is the actual photographs of others that allow us to see things through their eyes that we have not seen with our own. This is the basis of photographic art, which has been known to bring awareness, shift attitudes, and change behavior.
The ”Migrant Mother” series by Dorothea Lange contains perhaps the most recognizable photographs from the Great Depression, recording a time of great poverty in the United States and humanizing those most directly victimized by the times, resulting in a move toward social change.
Photographs from the time of the Vietnam War brought images to Americans of a South Vietnamese police chief almost casually executing a Vietcong fighter in broad daylight in front of a photographer in Saigon. “The Terror of War” is a photo taken of villagers fleeing a napalm attack, with a naked and badly burned nine-year-old running and obviously screaming in agony. A photo was taken at Kent State following a war protest, which ended when the National Guard opened fire on the protestors, killing four students and injuring nine others.
For those who aren’t familiar with these photographs, they are easily found on the internet. For those who are familiar with them, I suspect you retrieved them from your personal slide show.
Based on what I’ve seen on traditional and social media this week, pictures of the demolition (destruction?) of part of the White House have been banked in the sight memories of many individuals. There’s been much talk and commentary about the ballroom, the government shutdown, history, architectural integrity, inflation, healthcare costs, Argentina, and Marie Antoinette.
With the East Wing of the White House looking like something gutted by a tornado or a hurricane, these photos are seen easily as a visual metaphor for the current administration. It’s bad optics combined with an out-of-touch, tone-deaf, tasteless project that smells to high heaven.
Oh, well, maybe it won’t be all that bad. After all, that redo of the Oval Office is something else. Something else, indeed.
