Music is personal in a way the other arts are not. You may not have a favorite painting, but you probably have a favorite song. My thirteen-year-old daughter is experimenting with different musical genres, discovering what she likes and what she doesn’t. She isn’t forming her “musical identity.” She is forming her identity. Period. The music we choose to listen to says more about us than the clothes we wear or the cars we drive or the wine we drink. Music reaches us when nothing else can. A ray of light in the darkness. William Styron, in his memoir on depression, Darkness Visible, describes
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