I am drawn to the dash because I hear what I read and hear what I write.
All punctuation is, fundamentally, acoustic, not just at the moment of placement, but as a capitulation of the swell or ebb that preceded. But the dash is the most purely oral, most purely paratactic, of all standard contemporary punctuation -- the least syntactic, the least logic-plated: the least like a colon. (But lordy: I do like my colons!)
There used to be a rival to the dash for pure acoustic indication: that peculiarly poetic comma that grew from the King James translation's focus on church scripture readings. The comma of playwrights and politicians and preachers.
