I don't really know how to concisely describe what a "mindset" is for me. If I were to try, I'd say it's not any explicit thought(s); rather, a sort of an overarching tone that frames my moods.
Both my music library and older fragrances I wore are a trip back in time for me, and I know I'm not alone in that one. Some music albums throw me into some older mindset depending on where I was in life when I was introduced to them; the same, if not more so with different smells people wear nowadays.
What smells and sounds take you back? And where do they take you?
Are there any you still cling to or visit often? Perhaps you listen to or wear a fragrance now as a remembrance?
Whenever I smell incense, it reminds me of my friend's house from when I was a kid back in Abu Dhabi. My next door neighbour was Palestinian, and I would spent far more time in his house than I would in my own. It got to the point where I was pretty much an extended family member; and his mother (a typical mother hen figure) used to cluck about me as much as her own two sons... And scold me in the exact same way she'd scold her sons as well. My sister (Jen) used to hang out with us quite a bit, actually, and I remember their mom saying "Oh my God, Jen, I'm so glad you're friends with Rashed and Kareem! You don't know how bad it is to only have sons! They fight, they're smelly, they're loud, Ya Allah!" But anyway, they always had an incense stick burning in their house. So whenever someone burns incense I'm reminded of that time.
In a different context, I've had a similar experience with rattling wood smacking metal. Spinning rifles in Junior ROTC after culminating a few years of drilling has be in a haze hearing anything remotely the same. Thanks for contributing and a belated welcome to Hubski! noise is already tied up in a ton of experiences and lessons.
Most will never experience it, but there's nothing quite like the smell of a healthy, busy beehive. Very complex and hard to describe, but extremely pleasant. Honey and beeswax and flowers and earth. It's mid-winter here but now I have a desire to crack the hive open anyway (it's unusual to open a hive in the winter).
Yeah, they hunker down and don't forage as much. Also since they aren't as busy, they get grumpy faster. Best time to open a hive is a fine Spring day when they are busy as, well, bees :-)
Who knows? It doesn't freeze here, so they do some foraging all winter, here. Colder places they only fly to collect water occaisionally in winter, and spend a lot more energy (honey) generating heat with physical activity.
There's one sound that, despite experiencing it alone, brings me and one friend back in time to when we were teenagers and our friendship first started. mus_gloom_b.mp3 This would play in the game Star Wars Galaxies when it started to rain, I spent _a lot_ of my time on that game just sitting around enjoying the rain and talking with friends. Several of my teenage years and defining moments were spawned from that game, if I had never played it I would be totally unrecognisable to me now. But play that little snippet and it takes me straight back, to both the good times and the bad. You see, that snippet became bit of a ritual. I accidently found a relief for my depression in my teenage years, I would play a short playlist of three songs which I found would take me through grief to acceptance and a feeling of being in touch with the rest of humanity and it's misery.
I feel you on the "overaching tone" description. Lavender takes me back to when I was about 6-7 years old, sitting at home, on the deck with mum and dad; we grew a bunch of lavender to the side of the deck and the smell will always give me a pleasant nostaglia kick to a time where I had zero qualms with the world! Deep Heat instills me with a rather confusing number of "feelings". It's the undertone for every rugby game I've ever played - anxiety, camaraderie, adrenaline, pain, exaltation and many more. If I smell it in the gym before or after my training sessions I'll immediately get a little burst of energy and the world seems a little brighter with fond memories of thrashing my body up and down a park. Vanilla will remind me of the times I spent drunkenly playing Battlefield with my good friend when we were students. Wednesday was pint night at our local and we would gear ourselves up to be in social settings by playing the game and drinking for every death. He always had a vanilla scented candle or plug-in device in - he says it's a follow-on from his parents place, so now when I visit his family in pleasant surroundings I'm often brought back to tipsy giggling and gunfire. Music is a whole 'nother world as far as tones and moods go. Far too many to write down here without rambling away but one that suddenly leapt to mind was the Final Fantasy 7 Prelude music - here My brother and I first got the game by chance when Mum was in the city and she saw it in a game store, thinking we might like it (we were avid but budding gamers and Mum was always keen to see us try something different) I was 7, my brother approaching 9. Never played a game that struck so many different chords as this - the music will jolt moments where he and I would play and endeavour to beat the ridiculous bosses (for a 7 year old) and all the bonding that occurred.
Kroil. It smells like success. It is the lubricant that WD40 wishes it could be, a penetrating oil that doesn't evaporate and leave you fucked. It is one of my earliest somatic memories, the odor of my grandfather's shop, where I first learned to take apart cars at the age of four. And the sound of the pressure cooker, with the weight augmented to increase the pressure to account for our 7200 ft elevation. That's beans, cooking.
Thank y'all for sharing. Funny how for some there are defining sounds or smells, yet so many more of the opposite to recall. Can't help but smile at some of these descriptions with my own similarities, especially TFG's, and some fun gaming experience's back in Miami with friends like Fove's. One that stands out for me was my grandpa's Old Spice aftershave. I'll never forget him with that smell around. I don't have much memory of him, since I was younger when I spent the most time with him. But I later found that one of my brothers began wearing his smell in a sort of memory of him. Also... because Old Spice's marketing came up with the brilliant “If your grandfather hadn’t worn it, you wouldn’t exist.” ad, my brother naturally fell for it. And, well, so did I since we both really only had that to remember him by. Most of his belongings got spread around to older members of the extended family.
Music is of great importance in my life - so much so that I can recall where it came from: a person, a moment in life, a random encounter... I still associate Ty zh mene pidmanula, a Ukrainian folk song, with dancing with my paternal grandmother, a Ukrainian, when I was three. I never remembered the moment - the footage suggests that I was very uncomfortable during the moment - but I bear dear memories about the old woman, so the song stays with me. Or that time I fell in love with a girl while riding home from the uni, listening to Noisia's Lilith's Club. For a long time, every time I listened to this song, I relived the moment in the bus when I saw her pretty smile. Or that mission in Far Cry 3 where you have to burn the weed while Skrillex & Damian Marley's Make It Bun Dem plays in the background. Loads of moments like this. Don't get me started with smells.
Damn that first song caught me by surprise. I loaded it, tabbed out of it and let it run in the background and it hit me like a folk-truck! Then my flatmates poked their heads in and found me like this http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fEXyKe5WLmk/UZ0uDdCJrCI/AAAAAAAAL_o/kS5Jzlu7IDE/s400/gandalf.gif