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Popular Culture Review
At the same moment as smoke is olfactorialy detected, it may also be
visually tracked, tasted in the air, as well as heard in noisy exhalations of
satisfaction. Going back to breath and its habitual circularity, I note again that it
is unusual for people to mark their breath unless they have been doing
something physically strenuous or if they are marking it under medical
instruction. Cassie, a non-smoker, explained to me that when she is with Laura,
her best friend, she finds it hard to have a normal conversation with Laura when
Laura is smoking. I also know Laura, have smoked with her, and have never
found her to be conversationally difficult. I asked Cassie why she felt this way.
Cassie said:
Well, when she smokes, all I can hear is puffing, when she
was having her cigarette, and I have to kind of wait to finish
what I was saying until after she lets that breath out. When she
talks to me, she waits until she’s exhaled to finish what she is
saying; sometimes it’s mid-sentence, and it’s like a very stilted
conversation with someone who has just run a marathon. It
isn’t like that at all when she is not smoking.41
Here, Cassie’s attention is drawn to Laura’s breath, as is Laura’s, which ceases
to be a habitual unmarked process, and effectively dissolves the basis on which
Cassie and Laura can unreflexively and habitually speak to one another. As
Polanyi notes, speaking requires a corporeal disattendance, a focus away from
the act of speaking, and a focus on the sociality and intercorporeal cooperation
of conversation, in order for conversation to proceed in a habitual manner.42
Katz describes talk in these terms as a kind of ‘disattended singing.’43 Attention
to exhalation effectively breaks up the capacity for disattended habitual talking.
Cassie had mentioned her problem to Laura; and Laura had felt ‘hurt.’
Touch is also critical here. I have alluded to the ways in which touch is
involved in smoking in terms of the capacity of smoke to link personal bodies in
Indonesia, and in the case of the post-coital cigarette, which reflects and extends
intercorporeal relationships made through touch. Touch to the cigarette object
itself is also involved in the sensual knot of smoking practice. Megan pointed to
the dissolving boundary between cigarette object and her own hands when she
spoke of her attempts to ‘look sexy and elegant’ as she smoked. Megan said, ‘I
always smoke long cigarettes, super kings, and lately, I have been considering
using a cigarette holder.’44 When I asked her why, she looked disapprovingly at
her hands. ‘My hands are really pudgy, and my fingers are short and squat,’ she
complained. ‘When I hold a cigarette, like this,’ she said, holding up her
‘smoking fingers,’ my whole arm looks longer, and I feel more elegant. It’s like
wearing false eyelashes, for that illusion of length.’ ‘What do you do with your
other hand?’ I asked. ‘Champagne flute,’ she replied instantly. ‘Long
stemmed.’45 The holding of cigarette object in the short fingers of the pudgy
hand effectively extended these shortcomings into the longer reach of Megan, as