In music, man the muse finds delight in culture. Every musical form creates its own space. Although the boundaries of each of these premises are clearly defined, they manage to create an illusion of boundlessness and totality. A straight line runs from cradle rattle through teenage stereo to walkman and car radio. This musical educational trajectory aims at the highly individual design of personal reality.
Music serves as a public means of production for the manufacture of intimacy.
The discovery of a personal sensory space is an irreversible point in the shaping of identity. Any possible later fusions with favorite tracks refer to that primal scene's intensity, no matter what subsequent shifts in musical taste may occur. Once evoked, the promise contained in this possibility never loses its attraction. The recognition of a similar intensity in other musical forms is the driving force behind the metamorphoses of personal taste, a unique secret shared with millions of other teenagers, hippies, mods, punks, Abba fans, Africans, Hindus, ravers, Bach devotees, housewives, and metalheads. The technological reproducibility of sounds is a social prerequisite for individuality.