Follow My Nose

November 11, 2019

Greetings from where I was scent,

I have an instinct about direction, nothing you should write down or emulate, just this feeling I have about turning one way or another.  I’m not saying it is good for getting to a particular place, but it has served me for wandering, for exploring, and for finding.

I left the hotel, one of the few places I’ve stayed where the doorman wore a top hat and introduced himself to me, and walked into the sun.  In other circumstances like these I might allow google to guide me, or perhaps ask Andrew, he of the top hat, but in not this moment.

I decided to follow my nose.  It is a silly idiom, (here I invite you to say ‘silly idiom’ out loud, and you will feel the silliness) but I acted on it, and then literally experienced it.  I have been in Nashville a few times, but I had no history with this part of town.  I walked along the sidewalk not knowing anything other than what I could sense in front of me.  It was after I smelled the tacos that I decided to follow the smells of the city. 

I walked past a pocket park, the faint odor of pot lingering among the street people there, and then spotted the place with the tacos and turned that way.  I walked further and turned, and then turned back.  I could smell cigars, which always reminds me of Don Cronin, somebody’s dad on the street where I was a kid.  I walked past a cigar bar, dark, but the boxes lining the shelves, and the whisky decanters on the counter were outlined in the dim light.  In the next block I passed more than a few people smoking cigars.  I wondered which came first.

It was not a distinct plan, I just turned where I noticed a scent that interested me.  Here was something nutty and then there was a corner where someone had just washed the windows and there was lemon and ammonia and then there was a woman wearing something musky.

I smelled something being barbecued, I never did find the source.  I walked on, buses seasoned the air, someone went by on a bike who smelled like they stood too close to the cologne bottle. 

I stopped in front of a tattoo parlor, wondering why the word ‘parlor’ has stuck the way it has.  I pulled the door and went in, took in the fragrance of oil and sweat and whatever take-out had been left in the trash by the door.  I asked the woman in one of the chairs about where I could get good coffee.  She suggested a place called Frothy Monkey and someplace else with a less interesting name.  Which really is almost everywhere else.

I sensed a bakery somewhere, or maybe it was just fresh bread at one of the sandwich places I passed.  I walked into the Dunn Brothers coffee shop and stood behind a line of people steeping in the lush aroma.  The ground coffee, something chocolate, something cinnamon.  I picked up a newspaper left on a table, just to see the headline, and was reminded of its unmistakable smell.    

I went out again, not ready to taste anything.  I had no idea I was close to water of any kind, but I smelled it before I saw it.  The dampness could have been the vestiges of rain, but the feel and smell of it was water.  Something of boats and mildew and docks, the slightly cooler dampness of the air, the stink of gasoline.  I’ll admit ignorance here, I couldn’t picture water in Nashville but like most towns that became cities it only made sense it would be nested on a river.  And my nose took me to the Cumberland.  I watched it for a moment, filled my lungs with that air and then turned and walked back up the small rise into the corridor of buildings.

I found Banker’s Alley and followed it up to Printer’s Alley, festooned with neon and gala signs celebrating the blues and honky-tonk.  It smelled of spent celebrations; old cigarettes, spilled beer, and the pungent odor of spoiled milk, or something worse.  Among this creased the unique stink of urinal cakes.

The city is famous for music, rightfully so, but whether it was the time of day or where I walked, or maybe my focus, I didn’t hear any.  I followed the scent of the city, from an outdoor café, people huddled over bowls of soup and big chunks of bread, to the smell of coffee again.  

I missed the where the coffee was at first, wandered down a street and saw a sign in front of boot store ‘Buy One Get Two Free’.  The doors were open and I got a whiff of the richness of the leather. I stepped in and breathed in the wood and boots and hats.  I had a flash of an old leather coat that somehow vanished from my closet at home.

A block later I pulled the door of The Well Coffeehouse and the aroma invited me to stay.  Beans were being ground, turned into the dark aromatic liquid, slowly forming in glass, poured into ceramic.  It felt inviting, smelled more like someone’s kitchen, a mélange of brewing and baking and that tinge of whatever burned on the grill.

I watched people come in, the fresh air still on them, couples woven together, busy guy with cellphone, friends rehashing some game they watched.  Each added something to the bouquet, a snatch of dryer sheet, a little aftershave, the mix of a dozen bodies in one room.

I sat at a table, my coffee reaching for me as I reached for it, and remembered just a few weeks ago writing about my sight, my most precious sense.  I laughed a little right then, and inhaled the robust essence in my cup, and absorbed it before the first taste on my tongue.  Every smell holds a memory, every memory has a smell.

Perhaps there are better ways to see a city than to simply follow your intuition, and whatever teases your olfactory.  I like a good map, or a good recommendation, or a companion who has an instinct for exploring.  But on this day, a cool sunny afternoon in Nashville, I was happy to trust the aroma the city provided as a guide. 

Hope this finds you sniffing about,

David