When we get goosebumps at a concert, when our eyes tear up at the words we hear spoken onstage, or when we hold our breaths out of excitement during some other type of performance, what we’re experiencing are one-of-a-kind moments that can’t be reproduced in all their aspects—or, for that matter, repeated in exactly the same way.

“Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns, driven time and again off course…” Homer’s epic poem that recounts the wide-ranging journeys of Odysseus begins with an invocation of the muse (here in the English translation by Robert Fagle). She is asked to tell us of these heroic deeds. We will listen, promises the voice in the prologue, and the Odyssey begins…

We live in an age of information. Never before has so much information been produced, and never before has obtaining quick access to it been so easy. Information is everywhere—and it’s often said that we’re dealing with a flood of it. At the same time, untold quantities of information are lost on a daily basis, with much content being ephemeral and/or generated only for the sake of a brief moment. Thereafter, it disappears into the infinite depths of the Internet.

Ever since antiquity, at various times and to varying degrees, suicidality has been present as a topic—as one can find documented in countless songs, opera arias, and even some instrumental music.