“A musical work always has an impalpable zone with which we can only come to grips through the mediating influence of works that we have already assimilated. They don’t necessarily have to be works that we identify with, but ones that we draw close to and observe—in other words, love—because they seem more richly impregnated with history than do other works, and because we find ourselves more freely able to invest them with what is perhaps the unrealized best of ourselves, and with a more open expression of our musical unconscious.”
Luciano Berio: Two Interviews (1985), bolding mine
This idea of finding ourselves within the work of others ties back to my earlier post about remixing and the influence of others’ creative work. But it also goes further by arguing that association is a means of identifying ourselves – or getting to know ourselves.