Stay safe, everyone! Here are a few suggestions to help pass the time and engage your mind:
1. What music would you listen to in total isolation? Hua Hsu journeys through the archive of the legendary BBC radio show “Desert Island Discs.”
2. “The phone calls have reminded me, with new clarity, about the things that are expressed in tone, beyond words.” Sarah Larson writes in praise of phone calls.
3. Italians have been playing music from their balconies during quarantine. Watch this New Yorker video of “Flash Mob Sonoro.”
4. “Fame has long been a jarring experience for Apple, who has dealt since childhood with obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression, and anxiety.” Emily Nussbaum profiled the elusive and brilliant Fiona Apple.
5. “This was going to happen and you knew it.” Ed Park keeps a coronavirus diary that culminates in a racist street encounter.
6. Alex Ross watched streaming concerts and wrote about the strangeness of music without a live audience: “The final silence was a vacuum crying to be filled.”
7. A deep cut from the archive: the greatest Profile of the “Greatest Rock-and-Roll-Mogul in the World.”
8. “I’ve been turning to records I loved in high school. Records that fit like worn-in jeans. Familiar friends. Records I can sing along to. Sufjan Stevens. Wilco. Nick Drake. S. Carey. Bon Iver. Feist. Iron and Wine. Arcade Fire. You know the type.” Maggie Rogers and other musicians talked to Amanda Petrusich about how they are coping.
9. “Had she vanished, like smoke? Or, on that early-autumn afternoon, had I seen not a real person but a vision of some kind?” Have you read the latest Haruki Murakami short story?
10. “Eat small meals, three to fourteen times a day.Dump food onto the floor for variety.” Quarantine tips from your cat.