More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
She explained in her essay that she doesn’t usually sleep well but that, upon taking a two-hour nap in a friend’s attic while a party was happening downstairs, she experienced the best sleep of her life. Over the past year or so since I read this, I’ve continued to think about what it means to rest feeling enfolded in social activity, even if one does not find themselves at the center of it.
Social napping
Given its power as a healing venture, then, what I’m calling for in this book is more hanging out: more parties, more shared meals, more in-person gatherings, more late-night conversations, more being together in public, more cooperation, more standing shoulder to shoulder, more social revelry. This might sound like a call for a return to hanging out, but I’m conscious of the futility of viewing it in this way—of returning to anything or anywhere. This is not a make hanging out great again manifesto, but rather a call to remember what it was that we used to do and why we used to do it as a
...more
The point of that training is to prepare us for a more socially enhanced, as opposed to socially divided, future.
When we set aside time and space for hanging out, we assert our right to be non-productive, in the economic sense, and likewise our right to produce differently, by focusing on the work that is required for the strengthening of social ties. Sacred to the radical character of hanging out is the fact that anyone can do it, so long as they have access to time and space.
This was before social media; this was before the most minor of intimacies came burdened with expectations of forced permanence.
A night with strangers taught me that it can still be good, even if it has to end. Sometimes especially if it has to end.
