Battling cabin fever with a dose of song

I've got a cupboard with cans of food Filtered water and pictures of you And I'm not coming out until this is all over And I'm looking through the glass Where the light bends at the cracks And I'm screaming at the top of my lungs Pretending the echoes belong to someone Someone I used to know And we become Silhouettes when our bodies finally go - Ben Gibbard, The Postal Service

I SUPPOSE we have taken it for granted. A ticket out for a global citizen begins with an inspired lunch conversation, a coordination of timetables, and can be sealed by a matter of clicks.

We breeze into a different part of this vast physical world by tap dancing on keyboards through the vastness of the World Wide Web, and find ourselves delighted to be in a different place, enveloped by different sights and sounds.

We buy some days of newness, a break from the humdrum of the sameness of life.

So for a global citizen, to lose the ability to leave your own country for respite takes some getting used to.

To be clear, there is absolutely a true justification for border restrictions to stem the devastating loss of life from a global pandemic. And as the air hangs thick with worry, it also weighs heavy on our newly clipped wings.

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Travel can make you smaller in a big world. Most of us may shrink down, willingly, in unfamiliar territory. The awe and wide-eyed curiosity is mixed with heightened senses about risks - from price gouging to cultural insensitivities - and you find a refreshing freedom to fade into oblivion when a scene doesn't feel right, or to blend into a community that binds to universal things despite once being miles apart: music, food, philosophies, ideology, art.

That smallness is rich in humility.

So the loss of travel for now leaves us to confront ourselves under a sharpened lens.

It's for every anxious tic developed from working from home, every speck of lint in our pyjamas-turned-office wear, and every broken conference call that begins with the lyrics of Adele's mega-hit: Hello // can you hear me.

To confront ourselves also means coming to terms with every news headline that spells out the socio-economic impact from a pandemic on a near real-time basis.

The global affliction has only made the world seem so much boxed in, and vulnerable.

But there are also the good things, and they come in the form of music and sights from different corners of this Earth, shared over social media. We watch the Chinese entertain themselves while on home quarantine via video-sharing app TikTok.

We replay over and over again the quarantined Italians singing from their balconies in unison, their soaring harmonies defying the silence on cobblestone streets.

Cellist Yo-Yo Ma bows Going Home by Antonin Dvorak, bringing to mind healthcare workers who may have been isolated from family members in these times.

We hear singing powerhouse Pink belt out the classic Make You Feel My Love as she offers free piano lessons over Instagram. Over Twitter, Paramore's Hayley Williams casually strums and sings to Things She Said by Kent.

Fans of band Death Cab for Cutie also now tune in for a daily YouTube acoustic recording by frontman Ben Gibbard, who has committed to doing this for two weeks.

"While I'm proud that we're all doing the necessary things at the moment to help flatten the curve, I know it has left us all incredibly isolated," the singer wrote on his band's YouTube page. "But because we're all going through this nightmare together we are quite literally not alone. Some of you have traveled great distances... to see us play and that has never been lost on me. In this crazy and unprecedented time, I'd like to return the favor by coming to you."

It isn't limited to music. Brandon Stanton, a street photographer who documents the ordinary lives of New Yorkers via the Instagram feed of Humans of New York, has now avoided the streets to practise social distancing, but has instead started a stream of quarantine stories from fans around the world.

Soon after, he posted a heartfelt story about a mum who hunted for years for a tattered toy that had been lost. It was a soft toy that had accompanied her daughter since her birth.

"Mr Duck" was the mother's way of coming to literal terms with an unplanned pregnancy at a young age, her daughter wrote, beaming into a photo while clutching an old soft toy, weathered, but stitched in memories.

We don't have an easy ticket for a change of scenery now.

But the redeeming grace of different forms of artistic media may make it easier for us to confront the dullness of the same four walls, and the stifling - but needed - perimeters of tightened borders.

The power of creativity in the modern age is in its warm, true reminder of a common humanity. With every song, dance, and visual beamed across the World Wide Web, we reach out to try to close this new divide in these uncertain times.