When I was a little kid I used to listen to the oldies station on my portable radio under the covers at night when I was supposed to be sleeping. Insomnia kicked in early for me, around age 9 or 10, which is when this secret nocturnal listening started. In a way I was lucky, a lot of old pop music never became antiseptic or trite for me, the banal soundtrack of secretarial pools and supermarkets, because my memories of those songs were connected to these lonely nights under the covers. A song like "Reach Out (I'll Be There)" by the Four Tops would excite me and terrify me, and still does. The intensity of emotion in this song was something I'd never experienced, it produced in me a thrilling sort of disorientation. I felt like I was being given an illicit glimpse of emotional states that were the special territory of adults. I didn't know what to do about the frightening need of Levi Stubbs, or the aching loneliness of Otis Redding. It made me believe certain things about the essential emptiness inside people, this longing that can never be erased or satisfied. Wishing for what you can't have, investing everything in hopeless harrowing desire. I got a crash course in the abjection of wanting, with my ear pressed to the speaker.

I think people form these sorts of emotional convictions early in life, and then it's a matter of looking at things in such a way that your beliefs are reinforced. Experiences force adjustments to an extent, but then the kinds of experiences you seek depend somewhat on these prior emotional convictions.