compare this
(Impostume on music and identity formation)
with that
(Tom Ewing's experiment in self-de(con)struction through taste deletion)

the first is adolescent, a narcissism that nonetheless looks outward hungrily towards the world if only in search of mirrors

the second is a drastic attempt to grow up/grow out of that mode of tortured identification (Impostume's "Certain stuff is just not you; it doesn’t provide the dreamspace, the theatre in which you can act out your ideal-ego")

the first has as its likely destination a Miss Haversham-like scenario... the Ideal, forged in adolescence (not necessarily biological adolescence) becomes less frequently supplied as music follows its own wayward course.... gradually you're taken out of the market for new music

the second promises no end to desire... the self as empty, capacious and refillable as an iPod... indeed because the investments are not intensely bound up with a self-making project, there almost has to be a continous circulation of new objects to compensate... thrill-power replaces the violence of cathexis