Nosy Interview: Roland Satterwhite

Roland in Zeta Oph: Runaway Star, © NASA, JPL-Caltech, Spitzer Space Telescope

Roland contacted me after Ayla Peggy Adler's interview was posted, nominating his sister, Zanna, who he describes as having an amazing sense of smell, for an interview (Zanna, I hope you'll share what you're smelling one of these days). He was kind enough to submit to a nosy interview himself (one  hazard/benefit of nominating anyone is that I will definitely ask you what you smell like, too). Visit Roland's web site here, and check out his Facebook page to learn more about his music and upcoming performance dates. 

What do you smell like?
it is hard to answer the question what i smell like. but mostly i smell like my armpits because i usually don't wear deodorant, unless i'm going on a date, or know that i'll be nervous....i like my armpit smell.  the truth is that i like it more, the longer i don't shower, but i love to shower, so it usually doesn't collect more than 24 hours. My dream is to have BO that is as good as some people i've met.  I can't figure out if it is their diet, or their genetic makeup.....i think cumin/curry is the flavor of BO that is my favorite...you know what i mean?

What do you like to smell?
i love the smell of:  
gasoline,
paint thinner,
permanent marker,
cow shit, 
straw bales,
pencil shavings, 
graphite dust, 
stinging nettles,
blackberry bushes,
railroad ties,
wet asphalt after a long dry spell,
i love the smell of outside--after emerging from an underground car park, which for me is nauseating,
gillette shaving cream,
smell of my armpits in the morning if i slept long and well,
a lot of pakistanis i know,
the senegalese guys at mariana's restaurant on reichenberger street,
onions frying in olive oil,
tomato plants,
pine needles,
book binding glue is deliciously whiffy,
puget sound (Puuuuuuuuget sound),
the lungs of a lover,
any cotton that has spent the night outside,
rain,
my old polyester shirt,
bleach, when it is faint,
her shampoo, when a woman with long hair jogs in the opposite direction,
cumin

Nosy Interview: Kathleen Rooney

Kathleen sits in Zodiacal Light and Milky Way, © Babak Tafreshi (TWAN)

Kathleen Rooney is a nosy nomination courtesy of Elisa, her frequent collaborator. Kathleen is an inspiringly prolific poet and essayist; a founding editor of Rose Metal Press; and, so I've heard, a consistent wearer of dazzling frocks. Her latest book, the novel in poems Robinson Alone, comes out this very day! 

What do you smell like?
I wish I could be sure. But just as it’s almost impossible to tickle yourself, it’s almost impossible to smell yourself. Or at least it’s almost impossible for me. At the moment, I smell like Tendre Madeleine, which is what I’m wearing today because it’s a good fall smell. But I just emailed my husband, Martin Seay (who happens to be one of the best-smelling people I know) to see what he thinks I smell like and he said, “I think you smell like dryland herbs being lightly crushed under the hooves of a juvenile bighorn sheep.” Then he added, “To be clear, you smell like the herbs, not the sheep. I just added the sheep because the herbs needed to be crushed by something.” I’ve had other people tell me I smell “clean” and like “cut grass” or “green plants,” so he seems to be onto something. Also, typically, green scents don’t work well on me, so maybe that’s partly because I’m already “green.”

What do you like to smell?
Skunks, cool damp basements in the summertime, and birthday candles that have just been blown out
(which I always associate with the smell of ghosts). When I was little, I thought that gray hair smelled like smoke. I also love—and have always loved—to smell my sister Beth, who is three years younger and my best friend. We used to share a room, and when we were small and traveling as a family we’d usually share a bed, and I always felt comforted by having her near and specifically by smelling her. She’d usually fall asleep before me and I would feel reassured by being able to lean over and smell her hair, her scalp. She still is one of the best smelling people in the world to me. Funny smell story: when Beth was pregnant with her first baby, Rose, before she and her husband had told anyone, I knew by smelling her. She had me and Martin and her in-laws all over to our parents’ house in the Chicago suburbs for dinner (without telling us why, and it wasn’t unusual because we get together often). When I came upstairs into the kitchen to hug her, I could somehow smell that she was pregnant and knew that she was going to announce it. We made eye contact and she looked at me all, “Don’t spoil the surprise,” and of course I didn’t, but it was an amazing feeling to be able to know something so major without being told in words. Now, not surprisingly, I love to smell my niece, who is 14 months old and smells quite a bit like Beth.

Nosy Interview: Jessica Langlois

 Jessica blows bubbles in the M81 Galaxy Group Through the Integrated Flux Nebula, © Nicolás Villegas

Jessica Langlois marks the first Nosy Nomination! Jessica was nominated by our mutual friend Elizabeth, who described her friend Jessica as "a terrific and thoughtful writer." Though I haven't met Jessica, I've grown fond of her through her blog, A Supposedly Fun Thing, where my favorite recent post is the sensory-superrich Walnuts, Artichoke, Nettles, Maroni. Follow her on Twitter @langloislane. 

What do you smell like? 

There was a while, in 2007, when I always smelled like maple syrup. I’d be tented into downward dog in yoga class, then turn my head to the left, dipping my face into my armpit, and breathe in deeply (pranayama!), thinking of pancakes. My friend Steffy Sue had shown me that eating sprouted fenugreek seeds had this effect—nature’s deodorant! Or, alter-odorant. So for most of 2007 I had a little covered box growing fenugreek sprouts in my pantry, rinsed twice daily.

Eventually, this got to be too much of a hassle, so I went back to smelling like cookies. At least, this is what my boyfriend, Aruna, tells me I smell like. Snickerdoodles,he says, sugar cookies with a sprinkle of cinnamon, like the freckles on my cheeks and shoulders. It is very sweet and flattering to be told you smell likecookies, but I’m guessing these pheromones are programmed only for Aruna. To the rest of the world, I believe I smell kind of like most people—tart and sour after three days without bathing (uttanasana!); I do live in Berkeley, after all.

What do you like to smell?

1. Coffee and Charlie perfume. It’s what my mom smelled like when I was a kid. Cross-legged on the floor of her bedroom, I’d watch her get ready for her secretarial jobs, all Snow White with her shoulder-length hair in large, mahogany curls and her lips bright red. I breathed the bitter coffee and sweet perfume; it was the smell of glamour.

2. Cigarette smoke smells like kissing (high school), and Acqua Di Gio and CK One cologne smell like sex (college). All first times, first feelings. I actually don’t like the smell of cigarettes or strong cologne at all. At the tutoring lab where I work, I sometimes want to hang a sign at my station saying “Scent free zone!” like a new-agey jerk. But Acqua Di Gio and CK One still make my mouth rush with water, like walking to the club in the West Village at 1am with a fake ID and low-rise jeans, and summertime dates in minivans to multiplexes. I feel foolish and embarrassed when I step into an elevator with one of those colognes—at once, eighteen again, my face burning red and heat between my legs.

3. Then there’s night blooming Jasmine and woodsmoke. Berkeley smells that sidle up to you—suddenly there and then gone—as you’re walking the quiet, fog-rubbed streets. And clean laundry. That smell belongs to Vienna, to my mother’s best friend’s apartment. Small rooms, white curtains billowing out onto the hot summer cobblestones. Of course, there’s the garage smell—gas dryer, car exhaust, rubber beach balls—which is my grandparents’ old house. Afterschool and summers at their neighborhood pool, plucking strawberries from the cracks in the sidewalk… always passing through that garage. (Do I only smell things in summer?)

4. My Grandmother. I found her smell recently. On a set of towels she no longer needed and gave to me. The towels’ smell, like Grandma, is crisp—no florals, no perfumes, no frills—but has a musty softness, like warm sun on aged wood. It’s probably just the brand of soap Grandma uses, or laundry detergent, that I’m smelling, something (like her Gordon’s gin for her four o’clock martinis on the rocks) that she hasn’t changed in thirty years. Except, I remember the same smell in the cream carpet of their old house, in the polished wood of the Seventies’ bookshelves with snap drawers, in the tweed TV room couch. It could be a trick of my mind, the memory of this smell, a longing for a tether to those artifacts of my childhood. Or the smell in the towels could truly just be… Grandma. Crisp at first, then soft.

Nosy Interview: Your Nominations

Your magnificent nose in the Celestial Still Life © Leonardo Julio & Carlos Milovic

If you're reading this, I'm curious what you smell like, and what you like to smell. And I welcome your nosy nominations. Whose smell experiences are you nosy about? Whether you've been interviewed or not, if you have suggestions of people you'd like to see sniffing in outer space, please get in touch.

It's been one year since I wrote Nosy Girl's first post.  Since then, I've shared forty-four Nosy Interviews in this space! And I'd like to keep getting all up in the olfactory business of dear friends, talented writers, internet crushes, inspiring perfumers, friends of friends, artists of all kinds, renowned weirdos, relative strangers, and actual strangers for years to come. (I really would like to conduct Nosy Interviews on the bus if it didn't creep so many people out to be asked about their odor by a nosy stranger.) Thank you all for reading, smelling, and sharing.