Creativity Quote by Richard Thompson

Thompson’s line is a quiet manifesto for songwriting as stagecraft, not diary-keeping. “Visual and tactile” is a musician reaching past melody into the body: he’s talking about songs that don’t merely describe a scene but make you feel the doorknob’s cold metal, the bar’s sticky floor, the sudden speed of a bad decision. The intent is immersive. He’s not chasing prettiness; he’s trying to engineer presence.

The phrasing matters. “Try” signals craft over mysticism, an admission that vividness is built, not granted. “Kind of” undercuts any grand theory, the modesty of a lifer who knows the trick is hard and the audience can smell pretension. Then there’s the sly violence of “put you into the action.” Not “invite.” Not “let you watch.” Put. The subtext is control: the songwriter as director, using detail, rhythm, and narrative pressure to move the listener where the story needs them. Thompson’s best work has that quality of lived-in specificity, where a relationship or a moral choice isn’t abstract but happens in a room you can picture.

Contextually, this sits in a British folk-rock lineage that values narrative and character, but Thompson pushes it toward cinematic immediacy. It’s also a rebuke to background listening culture. He’s arguing for songs as environments you enter, not content you consume. In an era of playlists and passive streams, “tactile” is almost defiant: pay attention, because the song is about to happen to you.