ISSUE #15: IMPRESSING PEOPLE

Leaving an impression. It’s what we do.

Like a blindstamp or embossing or a watermark, we press into other people and something is left. It just happens, escape is impossible. Grandfather looked cool in his blazer but grandmother had cool in her heart. Both made an impression, indelible. Only one of them scored the family history.

To be a star meeting a schoolteacher. To conjure a circus into a city. To design people-replacing software. It’s a world of imprints, each saying something about us. And about what we touch. Even the trash makes its mark, ancient and new.

When exiting the room, what fingerprints remain? We are always leaving an impression, whether it’s raised like a welt or a silky depression along the palm’s lifeline.

To write…

…that, too, is to leave an impression.

An interview series devoted to artists who also work in coffee or tend bar.