” You feel ? “It is with this question that Geraldine de Friberg launches each of the episodes of her podcast,” Nez à nez “, a “Invitation by the ears to feel the intimate and universal of smells, at the turn of an emotion, a memory, a place or a meeting”. During one-on-one with children, women and men aged 6 to 95, she evokes what smells suggest to them: loved or hated, feared, dreamed of, a smell that is lacking or inspires. “The olfactory cortex is located in the limbic brain which controls emotions and memories. So obviously, it’s Pandora’s box ”, she warns.
Smells are a fabulous time machine. “When I smell the peppers, it brings me back to the Basque Country of my childhood, to the smells of frying, ham in a pan, and fresh peas that we picked up in the garden”, remembers Claude, an 80-year-old epicurean, who hasn’t lost any of the scent “Of a lover” of yesteryear. Agathe loves the smell of cut grass, she closes her eyes “To feel it better” and derives great well-being from it. A scent ” joyful ” who the resource? That of the algae with which the young psychologist played dinner and which brings her back to the beach of Saint-Malo where she grew up.
Olfactory comforter
Meryem, a curly hair care designer, was moved by emotion when she spoke of her grandparents’ Moroccan garden, whose scents of orange blossom, jasmine, lemon and fig inspired her creations. “I love jasmine but it can be sickening. It’s a slightly dangerous smell, which has a very strong, very orientalizing imagination, with which you have to know how to play ”, confides the Franco-Moroccan quadra who hates the smell of the Parisian Saint-Lazare metro station and its “Individuality shocks”.
Hadrien likes “The smell of morning in the countryside” but the young Parisian boxer leaves immediately when he smells the perfume of his ex. Conversely, when she no longer feels it on her skin, Laurence puts on this powdery fragrance that she always keeps on hand. “My scent reassures me. It’s kind of my teddy bear ”, agrees this teacher of eloquence, just like Capucine, 6 years old, attached to the smell ” Magic “ of her mouse that she puts in front of her nose to fall asleep. “The heart full of smells”, Christian, 81, also has his olfactory blanket, “The smell of my wife and that of my children”. If this retired pediatrician were to transmit a scent, it would be that of a baby, “This very special smell, a smell of life that begins, full of promise and of a life that we would like happy”.
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