“…they put their fingerprint on your imagination, in your heart.”

Bruce Springsteen on songwriting:

“I said there’s other guys who play guitar well, there’s other guys who front really well, there’s other rocking bands out there. But the writing and the imagining of a world, that’s a particular thing, you know. That’s a single fingerprint. All the film-makers we love, all the writers we love, all the songwriters we love, they put their fingerprint on your imagination, in your heart. And on your soul. That was something that I felt touched by, and I thought, well, I wanted to do that.”

Makes me think of whose fingerprints are on my imagination. Lewis, Tolkien, Baum, to be sure. L.M. Montgomery, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Maud Hart Lovelace. Madeleine L’Engle. Anne McCaffrey. Fred Chappell. Shakespeare, in ways I am probably not even aware of. Homer. The spinners of the old tales collected by Grimm and Lang. Noel Streatfeild. Thomas Hardy made some deep impressions during that one phase in college, but time has worn them fairly smooth. Austen. Most recently, Byatt, whose dark Children’s Book I cannot seem to shake off. Oh, Stephen King, no denying it: especially The Stand. Flannery O’Connor, but more Mystery and Manners than her stories. John Fowles, The Ebony Tower: that pair of weasels, the terrible ribbon of red. The Secret Garden. (Now I’m darting back and forth in time.)

Hmm, my mind always runs first to books. Filmmakers and songwriters would require more effort of thought. But, yeah, Springsteen, absolutely. Roll down the window and let the wind blow back your hair / Well the night’s busting open, these two lanes will take us anywhere…