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You Can't Go Home Again, but I Tried

2026-09-01 · story · John · 4:45 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Philosophy & meaning (also: Projects, Personal life, Science & nature, Books & writing) · mode: Personal essay · tags: self promotion, fundraising ask

John recounts catching a whiff of his boarding-school dorm room in a department store, explains why scent triggers memory yet resists language, and tells how Sun Basin Soap's makers created Memory, a soap close to that smell; home is the place you can't get back to, but also where you are now.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — A department-store whiff of John's boarding-school dorm room

  • ★★ About a year ago, walking through a department store, John caught a whiff that for a moment transported him back to his boarding-school dorm room, on the couch with his roommate. — 00:00:00
  • ★ John says the dorm smell was wonderful, clean and fresh, because his roommate, if not John, was one of the most hygienic people he has met. (playful) — 00:00:15

00:00:29 — You can't go home again; Vonnegut on home; scent as a brief way back

  • ★★ John tried to return to the smell by walking through the same part of the department store again and again, but it did not work. — 00:00:29
  • ★★ Kurt Vonnegut (quoted): John cites Kurt Vonnegut: home is not some far place but Indianapolis when he was nine, with his family and pets, and there is no way to get there again. — 00:00:29
  • ★★★ John says you can't go home again, but through scent he has brief moments where he can get there again. — 00:00:50

00:00:58 — Why scent provokes memory: chemoreception and the thalamus

  • ★★ John says chemoreception, the precursor to smell and taste, probably evolved in organisms even before the sense of touch. (hedged) — 00:00:58
  • ★★ John says most senses pass through the thalamus, but scent goes directly to the brain's emotion and memory parts, which is why it provokes memories more intensely than sight. — 00:01:05
  • ★★ John says scent is notoriously hard to describe and for him most resistant to language: without a real-world analog like oregano or Coca-Cola, you end up in metaphor and simile. — 00:01:20

00:01:27 — Scent resists language; Rachel Syme; John's rabbit hole of air fresheners and writing

  • ★★ John notes that his own 'clean and fresh' is not a smell, nor are bright, repulsive, cool or sharp. — 00:01:35
  • ★★ John praises New Yorker writer Rachel Syme, whose writing about smell lets readers actually smell it, which he calls borderline magic that almost no one else can do. — 00:01:45
  • ★★ Falling down a rabbit hole, John bought air fresheners to find one embodying the smell, and tried to describe it perfectly in writing, but he is not Rachel Syme. — 00:01:55

00:02:14 — Asking LJ and the soap makers; Good Store, Sun Basin bars, new conditioner bars, millions for the MCOE

  • ★ John's attempts at describing the smell came out as 'what if Irish Spring soap smelled better'. (playful) — 00:02:14
  • ★★ Remembering he knows people who turn smells into language, John called LJ, CEO of Good Store, to connect him with the makers of their soap. — 00:02:20 · Good Store
  • ★★ John says he and Hank are unpaid interns for Good Store, a coffee, tea, socks, underwear, cleaning-supplies, soap and shampoo company. (playful) — 00:02:35 · Good Store
  • ★★ John explains that Sun Basin makes soap, shampoo and body shave bars so people need not use heavy plastic bottles of liquid. — 00:02:50 · Sun Basin Soap
  • ★ John calls Sun Basin's bars the best soap in the world and invites doubters to ask commenters. (playful) — 00:03:00 · Sun Basin Soap
  • ★★★ John announces that as of today Sun Basin Soap also makes conditioner bars, which smell lovely. — 00:03:05 · Sun Basin Soap
  • ★★ John says Good Store donates 100% of its profit to charity. — 00:03:10 · Good Store
  • ★★ John says Sun Basin Soap has donated millions of dollars to support the Maternal Center of Excellence at Koidu Government Hospital in Sierra Leone. — 00:03:15 · Sun Basin Soap, Maternal Center of Excellence, Koidu Government Hospital, Sierra Leone
  • ★★★ John urges viewers to get their soap, shampoo and now conditioner at Good Store. — 00:03:25 · Good Store, Sun Basin Soap

00:03:41 — The Memory soap; the torn-down dorm; home is also where you are now

  • ★★ John asked the soap makers to come close to his dorm smell; after he described it they sent several soaps, and one, Memory, smelled very nearly right. — 00:03:41
  • ★★★ LJ asked to sell the soap and John agreed, calling it his favorite soap; Memory is now sold at Sun Basin Soap. — 00:03:55 · Sun Basin Soap
  • ★★ John has not been in that dorm room for 30 years and never will be again, because it was torn down long ago. — 00:04:15
  • ★★★ John says that if he lives another 30 years and Good Store still makes the soap the same way, he will be able to smell his present. (hedged) — 00:04:20 · Good Store

  • ★★★ John concludes that home is the place you can't get back to, but also the place where you find yourself now. — 00:04:27

    “home is the place you can't get back to, but it's also the place where you find yourself now”

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: Memory Soap · nostalgia · olfaction · Sun Basin Soap

Also: People: Kurt Vonnegut · LJ · Rachel Syme

Projects: Good Store

Organizations: Indian Springs School · Koidu Government Hospital · Maternal Center of Excellence · The New Yorker

Concepts: chemoreception · limbic system · metaphor · thalamus

Places: Sierra Leone

Products: Coca-Cola · Irish Spring

Also centred on nostalgia: Like a Snake Swallowing an Egg: Thoughts from Florida · Hanging with High School Hank · Zero Severed Hands: On Star Wars and Making Things

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