At seven, music offered me a way to deal with what I was feeling but didn’t yet have the words for. I became obsessed. Every night, I would sit in my room listening to recordings of Bach, then Horowitz and Ashkenazy, pretending to play along. It was pure escape, pure fantasy. I could hide inside the music, and it made everything bearable. The Chaconne specifically was like an ancient key that slid into my heart.