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Laimė Kiškūnė / Photo by V. Kriščiūnas

LRT.lt

"Scents are not just perfumes: every phenomenon has its own scent. From a thunderstorm, to fresh snow, to a person, to their state of mind. And our brains can read those scents", says Laimė Kiškūnė, a perfumer and scent artist. She wishes everyone to smell consciously more often and to trust their intuition to "read" the scent.

- What scent are you most interested in at the moment?

- I am an explorer, always interested in something, this time in the smoky scents that have attracted me since childhood. Some people associate them with unsafe, dangerous experiences, but I haven't had any, and I find them first and foremost very interesting in an artistic, aesthetic sense. Whether it's urban, city smells, or a bonfire burning, incense.

I'm also currently launching my new perfume, which is a mimosa. I have a strong fixation with this plant - I was very impressed by it in Provence, then in South East Asia, then in India, where it smells completely different. My son gave me a branch of blooming mimosa in the spring, and I discovered that the flowers picked from the branch smell completely different from those left on the bush.

I was truly surprised by this fragrance: its plasticity, stickiness, waxy greenness, associations with lilies, the aromatic ylang-ylang. It's truly floral, yellow-green, spring-like, powdery,a highly complex, somewhat baroque scent.

- Today, more and more, it is about knowledge that is born not only in the brain but also in the body. Smell is perhaps one of the most bodily ways of knowing, communicating, receiving information. But do people trust it enough to rely on it?

- This is a topic that has been around for some time in more intellectual discourse, but it's not yet part of everyone's reality. First and foremost, many people imagine that only perfumes and aromatherapy have scents, but the fact that the entire environment carries scents, and that this can be a key to understanding the world and defining our relationship with it, still remains on the sidelines.

The Western tradition of thought often regards senses as incidental, insignificant, and unnecessary. It forgets that art and aesthetics emerged precisely from senses, and that we are multisensory beings. Even Plato questioned the value of smell, arguing that it lacked clear concepts and was too abstract. St. Augustine, in frustration, asked if it was shameful to believe that one could experience God through the nose. For centuries, there has been a hierarchy of senses, suggesting that some, like sight and hearing, are noble and sophisticated, while touch and smell are considered too immediate, animalistic, and subjective. This view persists because, supposedly, there are no precise ways to describe smell or measure it.

Finally, Friedrich Nietzsche began to defend the sense of smell, without rejecting the notion that it is indeed very instinctive and animalistic. After all, we are animals ourselves, so to dismiss this sense is absurd. When discussing smell, he mentioned the term "flair" – an intuition that is the greatest value of smell. It is not necessary to judge it rationally, to name it, or to like or dislike it, whether it smells pleasant or foul.

The most beautiful thing about exploring smell is that place of intuition, that space between experience and the voice of reason. Nietzsche's theory of the intuitiveness of smell, as I put it, was confirmed by another theory that emerged in the 20th century, that smells are a complex communication system. All species - animals, plants, fungi, bacteria - communicate by means of smells, and so do humans. Experts in various fields are trying to delve deeper into this area, and the theory is evolving and is likely to gain more momentum. All living organisms do indeed live in a single aromatic bubble that connects us like a network.

- Is it true that intuitively we are more likely to choose scents that reinforce what we lack on a psychological level?

- We do indeed choose perfume as a complementary element, that is to say, an element that complements us. For example, when it's dark and cold, we naturally want spicy scents; when it's dry and hot, we want moist, fresh scents; when we're overworked, feeling tired, feeling depressed, we want to smell bergamot or other citrusy fragrances. The signals our body sends out are the regulators of our psycho-emotional state.

I always say that we should choose the perfume that smells best on me, on my skin. People are, of course, influenced by advertisements, but when they buy a perfume that has been widely advertised, they just put it on the shelf and rarely smell it, because they just instinctively dislike it.

- What perspective towards fragrances and perfumery do you think is most lacking in Lithuania?

- Probably what I have already mentioned, that scents are not just perfumes: every phenomenon has its own scent. From a thunderstorm, to fresh snow, to a person, to his state of mind. And those smells can be read by our brains. A few molecules of smell are enough to give us valuable information about a space, a situation, a person. I suggest that we smell consciously more and more often and do not try to decode the information with our minds.

Only fragrance blending is a profession, while everything else related to olfaction can become an area of exploration for anyone. Even in business or relationships with others, scent can indicate whether it's worth engaging further. However, we often engage our minds too quickly, where its competence does not extend. I have experienced many times that it is actually the nose that correctly "informs" right from the start, but the mind, which kicks in too quickly, overlays unreal projections.

I would really like to finally bring the sense of smell out of the sidelines, give value and status to scent, and remind everyone that it is the only sense that provides direct information about the world. This would require an education program on olfaction from an early age. Children need to receive a non-stereotypical, more meaningful understanding that helps them develop better relationships with the world.

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