the unbearable lightness of seshing

and

May 19, 2023

From: Randa

i have always relished the opportunity to get a little musical for an audience. whether sitting on countertops as a toddler belting arabic ballads, inexplicably going up in front of my sixth grade class to rap the andy milonakis theme song, or producing a series of terrible calculus rap videos in high school, my self-consciousness evaporates when the opportunity to be silly and lyrical presents itself. i don’t particularly like public speaking, but having a song to sing is an entirely different, more forgiving beast. i think it’s because if it’s bad, it’s still kind of funny (see: the popularity of american idol and other singing-based competition shows).

fast forward to my late 20s life in Brooklyn, and i find myself far from a captive audience for my artistry. i’m at surf bar in williamsburg burying my toes in the sand, eating coconut shrimp, drinking gorilla milk, and listening to my friends argue about who is better at bicycling. i pull out my phone and search karaoke and a place called “chino grande” comes up. in my friend lisa’s honor (she’s tall and chinese) we all agree to go.

idk if you have been, but chino grande is a nice little restaurant and bar with a sorta eclectic multicultural menu and a generally pleasant vibe. it’s cozy enough to make eye contact with anyone no matter where you’re sitting. we arrive at 10:50pm and learn that karaoke starts in 10 minutes. we just need to scan a QR code and submit our songs.

what ensues in the hours that follow is a sort of karaoke paradise. some people are incredible singers, others really know how to work the room, and then there was us: singing songs like Poland by Lil Yachty and Pepas by Farruko. it was the perfect balance of good and bad, serious and funny, light and dark. even the KJ (who i later researched and found out had produced princess nokia’s album???) remarked that it was the best night of karaoke they’d had. we also notably sang My Way by Frank Sinatra and lived to tell the tale…

in the absence of a school or camp environment, karaoke is one of the only settings where u can rly make a fool of yourself in public without causing alarm. but you can also really freak it and be amazing at singing. anything goes. i suppose i’m trying to figure out how to make my life feel more like that night at karaoke. u could say i am feeling the unbearable lightness of singing.

Tuesday, 4:29pm

From: Harry

Ah yes, the High Concept Destination Sesh. This is a classic thing that people who are in the throes of depression (like me sometimes but less recently) do not manifest. Two weeks ago I found myself in a game of chase the chicken, and had a blast. Similar thing.

You reference Unbearable Lightness jokingly but I do think what you are talking about is the sort of value of a sesh having weightiness.

It's funny, as you recount the night it does have this sort of ethereal and inevitable feeling. But in reality, a great deal of planning, and dare I say risk went into making The Night.

What if the uber home is expensive? What if the train home is boring? What if there is a different version of your night where you go to a more libidinally charged bar and end up making out with your future husband? What if you drink two too many drinks and end up just hung over enough to where you don’t get the start to your day that you want to and end up in a light funk all day saturday AND lose out on the potential to make out with your future husband the next day? Not only are some of these possible, some of them are PROBABLE!

And yet, I guess you're banking on the fact that the odds are in your favor, or that inaction guarantees a boring albeit safe evening, or mayyyybe you're just going Delpy Mode.

In any case, when you have a night like that, you remember very briefly, that it's all worth it.

My therapist likes to be like “you will find relief through acceptance” and i'm typically like “I want to suplex you through my my Logitech 1080i usb webcam (wirecutter rec yktv), just teach me how to breathe right.” But in this case, I see the vision.

You mention school being a setting for this kind of singing and that got me thinking about just how much easier it is to find Nights Like This in college.

It's SO easy to find a sort of magic effortless night that in college there's a whole nostalgia around Anti Hangs. The nights where you chose not to go to the party. The Friday blocks between 3-6 pm when you vaguely toiled on homework and chatted about almost purposely stupid stuff (I have a memory of a night like this where my friends had a 3 hours argument about if Illinois counts as the midwest)

I was in a frat in college and there was a brief controversy at our house because some of the more well-liked and social kids would refuse to come downstairs to the party on time, choosing instead to hang in these small rooms on the third floor.

There's this weird whiplash I found when I left college. I could no longer have my cake and eat it too. I couldn’t be both totally in my comfort zone, and have a rich, exciting, and generative social life. It's so totally unfair and miz that you have to take on a level of discomfort and risk just to have a Profound Sesh…but i guess that's the way it is…and maybe actually that's….good?

Thursday, 7:58AM

From: Randa

ok this might seem off topic but i think what we are yet again talking about is having a strong sense of childlike wonder.

not to go all pop philosopher on u, but i think having a good night out - especially in a place like new york city - is nearly always possible with a sense of curiosity and optimism.

when i’m in a good mood my vibe is like wow the world is so abundant there are so many people to talk to and things to look at and smells to sniff… all five senses are firing. i’m making offhand remarks to strangers, wandering into alleys because i smell or hear something i like, and otherwise willing serendipity into existence.

when i’m in a bad mood my vibe is like ugh it’s dirty and loud and i’m bored and there’s nothing to do. it’s not about what the world has on offer, it’s about my attitude. my CW (childlike wonder) is on E.

i think what can make an Anti Hang, as you call it, turn surprisingly satisfying, is someone coming in with a full tank of CW. they kinda distribute it to the others and bring everybody up.

yesterday i was feeling pretty bad and then i realized i could go surfing which is my preferred coping mechanism. i met up with my friend faiq and we got on the train and made our way to the rockaways. when we got there the waves were comically tiny–you could get a five second ride at most–and it was super windy. almost nobody was in the water. we briefly considered skipping the surf and getting super burrito, but decided we might as well go in.

and then u know what? against all odds we had fun. bc we had high CW. we were like ok these waves are tiny but let’s be curious about how we can still make it work. we tried each other’s boards out and drifted too far out and almost twisted our ankles dismounting in the shallows. and in the lulls we discussed a podcast about the professional managerial class (PMC).

it’s true that some hangs are more memorably better than others but i think we have it in our power to make most of them pretty good. sometimes u have to deploy a CW multiplier/HCDS like karaoke or chase the chicken, but other times u can just generate it from within.

Thursday, 11:21 am

From: Harry

Should we be hanging out With Babies?!

JK — I do agree its extremely crucial to tap into childlike wonder.

This is all reminding me of one of my all-time favorite meme accounts / digital artists/poets…I’m not even sure what to call her –

sotce

Her art is so awesome…

There is something that feels very steeped in CW. I am not A Girl (famously) so I feel a bit weird saying this, but my sense is that her art highlights the sort of super profound insights about being alive that girls have.