I used to wallow in Tchaikovsky's Sixth and Beethoven's Seventh. I've never understood why, when I was feeling melancholy, I always reached out for depressing music and novels. I never felt better, but I would have felt worse if I had done something else.
Nero's death is just so empty and pointless and unfair. I lost another friend and a former advisor earlier this year, both in their seventies. At least they had full lives and careers. I've run into so many jerks and a$$holes who are still going strong and not contributing much, if anything, useful to society...I feel hopeless when I think about Nero's death.
And lonely. I miss him. I never met him, never saw him, never heard his voice--and yet I feel as if he has taken a chunk of my soul with him.
The world is truly diminished by his absence.