People often say to me, “OK, so you don't have mental images, but you still have all your other senses.” Yeah, well.. Not at all! I am also unable to conjure up a taste, a smell, or a tactile sensation. I literally fell off my chair, even more so than for images, when I learned that some people could taste cinnamon in their mouths or smell coffee in their noses just by reading the word, and that others could feel their hand running over the skin of their loved one without the person being present. For me, this is even more incredible than people being able to see images in their heads.
Madeleines
Like everyone else, probably through the same process as with images, I recognize the tastes, smells, and tactile sensations that certain materials or substances evoke. I know that a trash can stinks and how it stinks; I can recognize it by its smell without seeing it, but I cannot deliberately summon that smell. Is this really a problem 😉 ? I know that I like the taste of vanilla and I know the feeling of clean, fresh sheets. But it is impossible to evoke them when they are not there. The only sense I can mobilize “in my head” is hearing. I can mentally recreate any piece of music with the original sounds, whether it's a symphony or one of my favorite bands. Better still, I can also create music in my head with everything: orchestration (within my limits, of course...), sounds, rhythms. Luckily for me... On the other hand, I don't hear them as I would when I'm actually listening to a song; I know I'm recreating them in my head. I imagine it must be the same for the other senses when you can invoke them...
For everything else, again, I need a trigger, a Proustian madeleine. Because, of course, I have my own madeleines too, and certain tastes can bring back childhood memories: Christmas gingerbread men, honey candies, or bergamot tea, which inevitably remind me of my mother and Sunday morning breakfasts. A scent encountered in the street, the texture of a fabric, the smell of freshly cut wood—all of these evoke many things, but as I write this sentence, I am unable to smell these scents, taste these flavors, or feel these textures.
Thoughts
If the mention of a smell makes you smell it, if a simple description conjures up an image in your head, try to imagine reading Süskind's The Perfume... without either of these two faculties and still enjoying it. Is that difficult for you? Not for me. I devoured this novel, I understood it, I accompanied Jean-Baptiste Grenouille in his obsession, his disgust, his “hermitage” and his murderous march towards olfactory perfection, even though I couldn't smell anything and couldn't visualize the places, objects or characters. I suppose that for books like this, being able to evoke smells must be a huge plus, but how can I know? How can I measure the advantage?
On the other hand, given the emotional power of certain “madeleines,” I think I would hate to experience them involuntarily, unexpectedly, while reading, discussing, or daydreaming. I don't think I could handle it very well. It strikes me as a cluttered, messy attic, filled with memories, sensations, images piled on top of each other—a real mess. I wouldn't be able to think clearly or calmly in the midst of such chaos. I now understand the expression “clearing your mind” better. Until now, I had never understood why people needed to clear their minds. As for me, I sometimes need to slow down my thoughts, let them drift, daydream. I can be overwhelmed by my schedule, by an accumulation of tasks, requests, and problems to solve. But my mind is never cluttered with involuntary images or sensations, I am never assailed by my memories, except perhaps in the case of a strongly evocative “madeleine,” which is extremely rare.
Vertigo
So I gradually came to understand that, apart from visual imagery (seeing images, scenes, faces in your head), there was also auditory imagery (sounds with their qualities), tactile imagery (textures, atmospheres, hot/cold), olfactory imagery (smells), and gustatory imagery (tastes). And I may be forgetting some. When you think about all the possible combinations, having five, four, three, two, one, or none, each to a certain degree in the spectrum of possibilities, you realize that we all live in parallel realities that language attempts to unify, smooth out, and normalize in order to facilitate communication despite the differences that separate us. And that's where the real vertigo lies.
