Can you really smell a ghost?

I was sat working at my computer the other night and my nostrils were met by an overpowering smell of flowers. No - I do not have flowers near my desk or, in fact, in my house at all yet the smell was so distinct, as if someone had placed a fresh flower underneath my nose and kept it there, lingering, moist and fresh. I looked all around me expectantly (though what I expected to see I can't say) and was met with nothing apart from the vacant air. Where did this sweet smell come from? Did I imagine it? Why did I imagine it?

My mind naturally (as it is in my character to) reflected upon hearsay regarding ghostly phenomena and ways in which they make their presence noted. I remembered a story of a woman whose sister had died in childhood but was comforted by the fact that she smelled the sweetness of peaches at intervals throughout her life, as a sign, she said, of her sister's presence.

A prominent psychic magazine offers an explanation for this:

Science has proven that scent and memory are very tightly connected. Those close to you may wish to let you know they are present without sending you into a panic with the sight of a full-body apparition or making you question your sanity looking for the source of an unseen voice. Using a scent that you are sure to notice or that can instantly trigger a past event is a gentle way for spirits to communicate without causing alarm.

The most commonly reported odour associated with spirits is the smell of fresh flowers. Rose, lilac, and jasmine, three distinctly different aromas, are attributed to the ghosts of those who have recently passed. Sometimes a floral scent can be connected to a loved one with a particular fondness for a certain flower instead of someone who just crossed over.

Mamet Mamet

I'm just about coming to the end of a long affair with Mamet. I've been teaching his 1992 play Oleanna for the whole academic year and have my last class tomorrow. My ideas regarding this work as well as my interpretation of the themes and issues presented by Mamet have changed dramatically over the course of the year and I'll explain why...

First of all, for those who are perhaps unfamiliar with Oleanna, here is a brief synopsis: written during the late eighties/early nineteen nineties and amidst the emerging media hype surrounding cases concerning sexual harassment, Oleanna relates the story of a university professor and a student. At the play's start, we feel as though we are witnessing a simple tale teacher-student relations: John, the professor is going to help Carol, the student who does not 'understand' his lectures and who is, as a consequence, failing the course. Somehow, during the course of the play and as a consequence of both characters' actions, John is accused and will be charged with attempted rape, will lose his job, his house and all promises of securing tenure at his place of work.

Power struggles

Without wishing to spoil the plot for those who have not yet read or seen Oleanna, I wont go into anymore detail except to say that Mamet's evocation of these characters considering the play's context is very astute. Criticism of the play tends to lean in favour of one or the other character as being 'in the right' and justified in their actions but I feel that such arguments miss a fundamental point. The play is about the uses and interpretation of language and of the characters' actions between the two characters and in a way that cleverly mimics the contemporary accusations of sexual harassment and what is deemed to be politically correct or not, Mamet illustrates the difficulties of such interpretation. In other words, and perhaps rather obviously, if everything boils down to subjective interpretation, no-one can ever be right and no-one can ever be wrong. The publicity surrounding the play regarding extreme audience reaction cleverly taps in to the media induced hype of the early nineties' obsession with political correctness and sexual harassment and replicates this mania through a very cleverly structured play that seems to highlight the futility of taking the moral high-ground in any scenario.

David Mamet Society

The futilty of Nostalgia

Danse Macabre

deatDeath's dance



I'm currently researching representations of death in literature and as a starting point am looking at La Danse Macabre. La Danse Macabre was a late medieval allegory of death's universality; no matter what status you hold in life, death unites all. Most evocations of this macabre message were illustrations which depicted the personification of death (usually a skeleton) leading a row of dancing figures from all walks of life into oblivion.

An explanation for the emergence of such macabre imagery in this period can be explained by the horrors that accompanied it. The Black Death being the main recourse to death's omnipresence to the average late medieval citizen. The relationship then of death with something as seemingly trivial and joyful as dancing is representative of a desperate desire for some amusement during this time of disease and death and seems to be a paradoxical urge for Carpe Dium with death, despite death.

La Danse Macabre in literature

In the medieval Mystery Plays, La Danse Macabre is didactic. Examples show death in dialogue with one of the plays' protaganists, advising them to be at all times prepared for Death and to submit to death in a brave and artful way. (see Ars Moriendi)

A modern evocation of this tradition:

Lipstick traces?

One upon a time there were loads of them, but as the years have ebbed away as has this creature who haunted the shadows of cities across the country. No longer do we have sightings of this pale-faced skeleton aspirer, eyes blacked out with thick kohl, skin laced with glitter and t-shirts emblazoned with DIY spray painted slogans of suitably intellectual quotes in the vein of Nihilism. It's virtually impossible to find this delicate and sensitive creature who, characterised by hair of abyss-black and back-combed to dazzling hights, styled with Coca-Cola would stand outside Waterstone's or Spillers in Cardiff looking sad yet thoughtful, shrouded in leopard fur and 'waiting' for something though they knew not what (probably their next vodka)

I remember them with nostalgia, probably because I was one of them. But where are we? Where did we go and why did the Manic Street Preachers hit a nerve with people like us, messes of eyeliner and spraypaint characterised by a definite costume of juxtaposing glittering frivolity and self loathing?