“And what is the student doing in the office?” asked Zarathustra.

The student answered: “I make songs and sing them; and when I make songs, I laugh, I cry, and hum: thus I exercise my spirit. With singing, crying, lauging, and humming, I exercise the spirit that is my spirit. But what do you bring us as a gift?”

When Zarathustra had heard these words he bid the student farewell and said: “What could I have to give you? But let me go quickly lest I take something from you!” And thus they separated, the young one and the man, laughing as two boys laugh.

But when Zarathustra was alone he spoke thus to his heart: “Could it be possible? This young man in the office has not yet heard anything of this, that his spirit is dead!”

Ripped and adapted shamelessly from Kaufmann’s translation of Zarathustra.

I am in mourning. I am in mourning for my passion, my interest, the liveliness and caprice and energy of my curiosity. It is irretrievably gone; it has parted; it has left. All my curiosity is idle curiosity, curiosity for lack of anything worthwhile to occupy my thoughts.

I am in the middle of a series of large and serious changes in my environment, habits, circumstances, opportunities and routines. I’m changing cities, jobs, friends, occupations, direction in life. I’m weathering a tremendous quake, my world is being shaken to its roots—and no one else has felt a tremor. This man, whatever the old cliché might say, is an island. An old volcano, falling dormant.

NP: Interpol, Stella Was a Diver and She Was Always Down