The Frenaissance

A radical act of reconnection

Is play still a part of our adult friendships?

As a kid, I was often engaging my friends in creative, often silly, acts of connection. Maybe as an experiment. Maybe out of curiosity. Always a novel way to conjure up fun. Whenever I served up one of my wacky ideas, my friends almost always said yes.

But as an adult, I’d say connecting is often a droll, mundane occasion. We are squeezing in time in our day between meetings to vent to a friend about a shitty co-worker. Or we’re getting coffee to “catch up” on life events. Maybe if we are amping it up for a good time, it basically means we are having the same kind of chat but with drinks to spice it up. Maybe the novelty is going for a hike somewhere scenic or meeting at a cafe we’ve never been or extending the visit for an entire weekend.

But is any of it play??

Not really. And I’ve wondered lately if that is a mistake.

The closest I’ve gotten to play is going to a Paint & Sip. (Basically, painting with alcohol and other strangers.) Is the adult version of play basically an activity with alcohol?

It’s fine, but I suspect that part of me is dying from all the seriousness of adulting. Having a very young kiddo right now makes me feel even more like my days run together with the blurring of unending responsibilities.

In my last Substack, I talked about reconnecting with a friend group. With one of the friends, I decided to propose something a little ridiculous.

He was an old friend, but he was also a new friend. He was different and I was different. What would it be like to take an old friend and try to build a friendship as if he were a completely new friend?

When we talked, I suggested maybe we try to talk 1:1 more often to get to know each other better. But I hinted that there was this other idea too. However, I was a little too sheepish to suggest it outright.

The QQ10 Method

After some prodding (on his part) and some upfront disclaimers (on my part), I suggested an idea called, “the QQ10 method” from the book, We Should Get Together: The Secret to Cultivating Better Friendships by Kat Vellos. The method is meant to cultivate new friendships that feel meaningful quickly. Why not repurpose it to revive an old friendship instead?

Here’s a description:

The two Q’s stand for Quality + Quantity, and the 10 stands for ten days. My hypothesis was that if two people who have decent chemistry commit to ten consecutive days of quality time, then they’ll be able to form the kind of closeness that typically takes months to build…

How it works

For ten days straight, you and the other person see each other and communicate daily, as much as comfortably possible. It can be face to face or by phone or video call. The goal is sustained immersion. You can do big things like seeing a show or taking a class together, or you can do tiny things like grocery shopping, cooking, sharing a meal, or sitting in a park to people-watch and talk about life… Vary your activities. Do at least three different kinds of things together… aim for variety. Make sure you choose activities that at least one of you is pumped for (though obviously it’s better if you’re both excited about it).

He thought the idea sounded like a lot of fun. He was in. I was about to have 2 weeks off (but staycation) so it was the only time I’d ever had an opening to entertain such a large endeavor.

We had to get creative about it since we were going to attempt to do it all remotely. So we made a joint list! Here’s what we ended up doing over the course of about 3 weeks:

1. Make a joint bucket list
This was comprised of 3 sub-lists: him sharing his bucket list, me sharing mine, and then us making a joint bucket list for us to do together in the future.

2. Read each other’s favorite book.

I read Yumi and the Nightmare Painter by Brandon Sanderson. He read His Dark Materials series by Philip Pullman. We both loved each other’s books. I’m now reading the Stormlight Archive series from Sanderson.

3. “Bring me” hiking or usual activity.

We had to do this whole thing virtually so this meant bringing the other person into an activity we enjoy that we do somewhat regularly. I took him for a walk around my neighborhood. He took me to a coffee shop he frequently enjoyed.

4. Make a joint playlist

We made a playlist that had a song that represented each year we weren’t in contact. In doing so, it gave us each an idea how our musical tastes evolved or what historical events we went through since we went our separate ways.

We called it “The Frenaissance Fair” with a strange-looking cookie pony with wild purple flowing hair.

Some songs that made it onto our list included…

Some of my picks:

• I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing (From “Armageddon” soundtrack) by Aerosmith- high school sentiments

• More than Words by Extreme- when Law and Ryan sang this as a duet at their summer bridge talent show, Ryan dedicated his performance to me

• You are the Best Thing by Ray LaMontagne- reminds me of spontaneous dancing in the living room with my youngest daughter whenever this song came on

Some of his picks:

• Four Seasons of Loneliness by Boyz II Men- “the last song we worked on as a singing group in middle school”

• Organ Donor by DJ Shadow- “when I was in my breakdancing phase. I ended up breaking my ankle.”

• The Way you Look Tonight by Tony Bennet- “mother and son dance at my brother’s wedding… I want to dance to the same song when I get married”
  

…and we both had the acoustic version of Everlong by the Foo Fighters on our lists!

5. Watch K-pop music videos together while playing Game Pigeon.

We got on Facetime video so he could watch K-pop music videos from my tv. He said out of the groups he liked NewJeans the best. (I agreed. The vibe speaks to us 90’s kids.)

Game pigeon is a bunch of iphone mini-games you can play through text message like Battleship, 8-ball, and word hunt. We played tanks, archery, and darts. I got the idea from our middle kid who constantly challenges us parents to beat her. Most of the time we can’t.

6. Eat our favorite cereal and watch a “nostalgia cartoon”.

We ended up choosing Ducktales. I ate Lucky Charms. I think I might have actually done this super early in the morning (5 am) because of the time difference.

7. Make a shared growth goal together.

8. Coffee Date.

9. Write a letter of appreciation to each other.

We timed this to occur at the end of the Frenaissance. We sent our letters to each other via snail mail on the same day.

10. A round of 36 questions.

It turns out we got to finish some of these in-person! Getting to hang out in real life was the perfect bookend to what I’d call a successful generative experience. We ended up called this friendship incubator,“the Frenaissance.” (My idea… I’ve been watching FRIENDS reruns lately. 10 brownie points if you can guess which episode that’s from.)

Here’s us doing some coffee and co-working.

Taking him to one of my favorite new dinner places in Seattle.

We shared a malatang-flavored seafood boil!

Another round of 36 questions over ramen and sake.

A coffee date accompanied by my almost 2-year old. Actually, we did some coffee-(s)hopping and went to a few different places. I got into matcha after we did this together.

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Concluding Thoughts

For our 10 items, we braindumped about 20 items and then narrowed them down to the ones we both wanted to do the most. We definitely flexed these activities to fit our preferences, time limits, and changing circumstances. While I wouldn’t say I’d offer to do this with just anyone, I’d say that it is worth doing with someone whom you suspect you’d have a good time with.

I asked my Frenaissance partner to share some of his concluding thoughts. Here’s what he said:

”Mostly I’m challenged to figure out how to be less busy. I feel like I want more frenaissance times but I’m so overwhelmed with daily life.

“I think it was just such a gem and so innocent and satisfying to be a kid with you. And also, I don’t want to go back to how they were before we all started connecting. So I’m resisting the gravity to go back. Because it’s easy to settle back into old routines.

”It’s funny because I think some of the most hilarious and enjoyable parts were quick mentions: how you were a little hesitant to suggest the idea and then your “disclaimer”.

”I remember lying down on my bed feeling like a teenager the first night of frenaissance. And then in-person was such a joy. I enjoyed seeing your world. The parts I never saw! Like wow, this is who she is now!

For me, this social experiment also felt like reconnecting to “Little Jas”. Getting to let her take center stage and have her orchestrate my days resulted in a more whimsical, colorful world. Her creativity is expansive, not yet connected to worth or any pressure to produce anything. To let my inner child roam free with someone who made her feel safe to be seen, not shamed or ridiculed, felt like remedy. I didn’t expect it to be a healing experience, but it was restoration on a deep level.

Similar to what was said above, I also don’t want to lose this momentum for play and connection. I enjoyed that we can seamlessly switch between serious, in-depth emotional support discussions to light, playful shenanigans full of giggles; a quality I often have with those I choose to keep close. Then, and now. Can life generally reflect this dynamic as well?

Perhaps it won’t always be this grandiose, but remembering to incorporate fun even on a small-scale is a worthy pursuit. The path toward wholeness is often described as messy, hard, and taxing. But who says it can’t be filled with laughter and silliness too?

I believe it can.