How am I doing?
I talked with some friends about associations our brains can have with certain concepts or people. I have a friend who sometimes describes certain people as colors. As in, they might know someone who gives them a red vibe. I don’t think he sees it like an aura and I don’t think it’s Synesthesia either. I think it’s just the human brain’s need to categorize things in neat little boxes.
I’ve heard it said that pattern recognition is what makes humans survive and proliferate as successfully as we have. Our ability to observe, memorize, and classify concepts and relations between them is a big part of what makes our brains swole. 💪🧠
I think that’s why art, in all its forms, is such a big part of our lives. We tie emotions to perceived light, vibrations in the air, and one can argue, even chemicals on our taste receptors. From there, it’s not so farfetched to think that a person’s personality or aesthetics can be described as a color. I don’t have this association, however.
What I do have, is memories associated with smells! More specifically, there are video games I associate with certain smells. One of them is ‘Grand Theft Auto: Vice City’, which I associated with a specific brand of laundry detergent. Every time I smell something similar, a whiff of perfume passing by, an acquaintance’s hand soap, or a laundromat using that brand, I immediately think of Tommy Vercetti’s low-resolution Hawaiian shirt. To explain, let me take you down memory lane.
When I was around ten, we had some neighbors my age who I hung out with sporadically. Truth be told, I had a bit of a crush on the girl who lived there. Funnily enough, I think I was attracted to her because of her unique voice, which I believe is also one of those pattern-recognizing oddities. She sounded like she’d been smoking cigarettes for 40 years, but was only a few years older than me.
Anyway, these neighbors owned a Playstation 2 which they placed in the attic. We would sit on the wooden floor, no chairs of any kind, behind a big CRT television, playing GTA. In the same attic, was the laundry machine. The strong odor of that laundry detergent is now inexorably tied to Grand Theft Auto. I have other associations like that. The smell of dry hay, for example, makes me think of playing Rayman on my Game Boy while in the car on holidays.
Supposedly the part of your brain that deals with smell (the olfactory bulb) is directly linked with the part that deals with emotions (the amygdala), and the part of memories (the hippocampus). So, it makes sense that that stuff gets jumbled up together. Smell generally makes me feel déjà vu quite often, but I haven’t categorized anything as concretely as the above two examples.
Do you have any smell-related memories? Or better yet, video game smells? Let me know on Discord! I still don’t know what brain connection would make you think of anyone as red though.
What am I doing?
Other than ruminating, I finally bit the bullet and started recording and editing a YouTube video again. I also did some leisurely programming for the faux Pokémon game I mentioned last week. I’m definitely going to continue on that for a bit, but I should be careful not to let that consume the rest of December. My planning is quite tight, as I’m supposed to record 2 more videos, as well as finish writing 2 blog posts.
It’s starting to look a little unrealistic since I’m also going back to ye olde home country for the holidays… I might have to push out my January deadline a little bit. There’s not so much riding on it anyway, I guess.
Why am I doing? (this)
I’ve also been thinking about doing some vlog content. Specifically about the process of setting up a company and giving updates on whatever thing I’m programming. I haven’t been focused on getting my “numbers up”, so to speak, but if I want to have a shot at doing this for a while, I will have to start taking my social media presence seriously.
In fact, to get started, I would love it if you share the newsletter with your friends!