Being Remade Through Music

Students tend to spend hours a day plugged into their tunes. Their musical lives may well be their spiritual lives. It makes them feel more vital, vigorous, intense. Usually it's about getting your emotions packaged for you, quieting the static inside, fabricating an exciting identity (the gangsta, the hipster) to counteract one's commitment to a life of secure banality.

Most music listening, like most reading, is passive. It's about girl watching rather than woman wooing, which is a tougher game. Schopenhauer says that most reading is letting other people think your thoughts for you. I'd add that most music listening is about letting other people feel your feelings for you.

Feel them for yourself, I say. Then shout them out loud. And sing them too. Do it for your own pleasure. It doesn't matter whether anyone is listening.

Mark Edmundson writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education