Unlike "doing", "keeping on" involves a disruption, a reflection, a small stop and at least the option to stop.
Continuing" is a fork with a stop sign, it is "doing" with a time factor and thus a process that takes time.
To move on, one looks back at oneself on all sides and from all angles. One looks into the past and into many possible futures. It is this process that is described in terms of 4 smells and the sum of them all.



The 4 smells reflect the 4 points of view that can be taken at the same crossroads:
The first angle, and therefore number 1, is towards the linear past and reflects what the first olfactory cells smelled. We are smelling our way back to the Cambrian stage 3, about 520 million years ago, where smelling was already taking place before the development of brains or the sense of sight. Lancetfish are the modern survivors of an ancient chordate phylum that were and are not equipped with a visible olfactory organ, but with 40 olfactory receptors. They used this to navigate their way through their aquatic environment, usually just above the seabed, and fed on plankton. So we are smelling into the most distant past that our olfactory cells can give us, onto the seabed and in the absence of human life.


In 2008, NASA had the idea to produce the smell of space in the laboratory together with the chemist Steven Pearce; the result was the perfume "Eau de Space", which has been available for purchase since 2020. This perfume is enhanced by the olfactory experience of ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst, who wrote: "For me, space smells like a mixture of walnut and the brake pads of my motorbike".


Number 3 brings the perspective back to earth, to a situation full of options. This is scented by the plasticine Play-Doh, which many know as a child's toy. Fearlessness of failure, one's own action as an active tool to shape something: the smell of PlayDoh, an "anything can happen" as a smell.


The 4th smell is to bring speed into the bloodstream, to flow adrenaline. The gaze goes into the future. We smell espresso, cappuccino and black tea. At the same time, the molecules of powdered coffee bind other smells and neutralise them. A new start is possible.


Keeping on