You just get the vibes of your surroundings and it rubs off on you.
I've ended up becoming my mother in some respects, despite my eight years of analysis!
We must believe that "emotion recollected in tranquillity" is an inexact formula. For it is neither emotion, nor recollection, nor without distortion of meaning, tranquillity. It is a concentration, and a new thing resulting from the concentration of a very great number of experiences which to the practical and active person would not seem to be experiences at all; it is a concentration which does not happen consciously or of deliberation. These experiences are not "recollected" and they finally unite in an atmosphere which is "tranquil" only in that it is a passive attending upon the event.
I think one probably absorbs things like a sponge and things emerge without your always being aware of it.
For an impression, I just find that I can do a lot of the people I love without much research, because I've already watched hours and hours of them on video and it seeped into my brain while I wasn't thinking about it.
I always thought I was more of a mommy's boy, because she was charming, talkative, a great storyteller. But as I dug back into my past, I realized I am exactly like my father on so many levels, although I never thought I inherited anything from him.
I do have a spongelike ear or mentality or whatever you call it, but it's probably a bit subconscious.
I've had people - I've seen people do routines that I knew they didn't take from me but they had - because for whatever reason I had stopped doing it a long time ago. There's no way they would have heard this bit. But it ends up being pretty much the same thing.
I'm not aware that I was consciously influenced by any director, though these things often happen unnoticed, submerged in the unconscious.
