Do you ever find yourself hearing the John Lennon song, “Isolation,” in your head?  Well, I do.

It starts off like this:
“People say we got it made don’t they know we’re so afraid
we’re afraid to be alone, everbody got to have a home
Isolation”

I wouldn’t say I’m afraid, but rather appreciative of the engineered isolation needed to think and observe and read and write with clarity.  With Sirius in the car, I listen to jazz, old and new, and this week got turned onto Terri Lynn Carrington’s fascinating and lovely, “Money Jungle,” which is her tribute to the classic Ellington recording with the same name.  It’s a bit like Robert Glasper’s work in that it is old school and yet very new in its lyricism and overt politics.

No local radio, no national radio, just beautiful music.

And having stopped the local paper nearly two years ago, the news comes via The NYT, BBC, Bay State Banner, and The Guardian.

Playoffs?  Yes, I’ll pick up the local paper.  Fine.

But more broadly, the isolation leads to a place where sights and sounds are intensified: The European starlings nesting beneath the gutters, the long and arching tree branches almost architectural in purpose, the precise language of a good book, the good effort to add something.