11 Jun The smell of home

As I cycle home, it seems as though Amsterdam has the smell of a strong broth. I smell it each time in a different place: by Paradiso and at the bridge over the Amstel. When I get home and walk into the kitchen, I smell it again. It’s unmistakable: our kitchen also smells like broth.

Streetfood
Tonight I went to a Korean performance with my youngest daughter. It was a sensory journey. We were immersed in a large Korean metropolis through video images until we arrived at street level at a street food stall. That same stall is also on the stage floor in ‘De Brakke Grond’.

Jaha Koo, the Korean theater maker, tells how his grandmother hung cabbage leaves to dry in a shed to sell them after the fermentation process and earn a little extra money. One day, Jaha Koo, as a child, forgets to close the door of the shed during a game, and in one night, the entire process is irreparably disrupted. He looks at the audience with kind eyes while we feel the shame of the child he once was.

The smell of Kimchi
While Jaha Koo narrates about his youth and his travels to Europe, he prepares Korean dishes in a wok on stage. Generously, he pours oil into the pan, adds vegetables and herbs, and begins to stir. Wherever he travels, the scents of Korean cuisine accompany him. Gradually, the smell of Kimchi also enters our noses. At first subtly, but then increasingly insistently. By the end of the performance, the entire room is filled with a deep scent of fermented cabbage.​

The smell apparently lingers in my nose during the bike ride home, as strong as it was. For Jaha Koo, the smell immediately connects him with his grandmother, his family, and the place where he grew up. The theatermaker wants us to feel that you can feel at home anywhere.

The sea of peace and trust
In my programs, I talk about our basic feeling, similar to the home of Jaha Koo. I call this basic feeling: ‘The sea of peace and trust’. That feeling can be lost. Emotions are like waves on the sea of feelings. Sometimes they are joyful, heartwarming waves, at other times anxious, painful, or sorrowful waves. Waves roll out over the shore and come to rest again. However, if these waves keep rolling, we experience inner turmoil. If we know how to calm the waves, the sea of peace and trust remains.

Calm down emotions
To calm down emotions, it is good to first study their functioning and particularly to realize that we can inhibit or distort emotions with our thoughts. Then fear turns into anger or hurt into sadness. In the workshop ‘De Innerlijke Metamorfose in zelfbeeld en emoties’ you will learn to understand this process and bring emotions to rest.​

*This post has been automatically translated from Dutch