I am so impressionable, if you touched me I would probably retain your fingerprint on my skin.
I’m kidding, but barely. What I read, watch, listen to, & see really colors how I see the world. (This is probably true of everyone but I might have it to such a degree that the Victorians would perhaps have a term for it, something like weak minded) My kids experience this, too, since there are times when I think their friends’ voices, words, and inflections spookily emerge from their mouths. I try not to call them on it too often because, really, I understand the pull.
This tendency shows up particularly when I read. Just a few examples:
~ When I read The Girl with a Pearl Earring, I had the overwhelming need to pay attention to small details of my daily life. To chop vegetables into uniform pieces and appreciate their color, as she does in the book. To make laundry doing a meditation, a daily sacrament. I didn’t really reach such heights of existentialism but I did pay more attention to the beauty of every day details.
~ Another book I read for a book group years ago took place in Egypt and the main character, a woman, meticulously went through a face moisturizing routine every night. If I delay wrinkles at all, it will be thanks to that book; I’ve been very well moisturized ever since. Interestingly, I can’t remember anything else about the book but her bedtime routine made a lasting impressions. (Let’s all hope corporations don’t start doing product placements in novels; they would be far more effective at influencing me than movie and television placements.)
~ I love a good mystery or spy novel but I have to intersperse them with other things. Otherwise I start looking at the world as a scary, suspicious place. I question motives, glance in my rear view mirror suspiciously, and feel a general sense of doom.
~ I loved all of Madeleine L’Engle’s books as I was growing up, especially the Austin family series. When I think about the Austins–the warm raucous kitchen, loving relationships, interesting dinner conversation–I can still conjure up the exact feeling I hope I create here in my home.
~ Of course when I was younger, I became a spy with Harriet, started planning running away to a museum to find the mixed-up files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, wanted braided hair like Laura Ingalls, the list goes on.
As someone who writes, this can be boggling. What is my voice? I read so many terrific books and blogs that it’s inevitable that I pick up others’ mood and tone. Sometimes I sound kind of funny one day (well, I try! I said kind of), sincere the next, folksy another day, formally didactic the Friday after that. The effect is expressive schizophrenia, I’m afraid. Hopefully you don’t get whiplash.
So…what has left its impression on you? Have any books seeped into your life?
And how do you find your voice?
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