A sad thing about being late 30s is I haven’t been to a *party in a while.

I don’t know what I mean by “*party” but to give you a vibe: Fred Again.. rooftop set. Apparently Fred, a very famous DJ, just invited all his longtime friends to a London rooftop party. Such a beautiful setting and great music!

Here are some characteristics of a *party:

1. some people you know and some people you don’t
2. you by-and-large respect the people there and they respect you
3. some sense of losing yourself (this is often, but does not have to be, dancing)
4. some sense that you’re the coolest people in the world

It seemed easy as hell to host a *party in college; we were young ambitious successful young people in college, of course we were the coolest people in the world. And you could have a good mix of people you do and don’t know, you’d always be losing yourself (maybe dancing, maybe sneaking into some building on campus or playing some prank or even just walking around at night).

Some examples, besides college parties, that either made it or just missed:

• Our wedding. Failed #1 but we didn’t care.
• We threw exactly 3 parties in our house in grad school. They all met this bar.
• I saw Dan Deacon play last weekend. It failed #1 and maybe #4
• One time Broken Social Scene was playing at our school, and some of them knew a friend of a friend and so that person threw a party and we hung out with them
• Academic conference parties, surprisingly. As you’re trying to grow in a professional field that’s networking , you have 1, 2, and 4 almost by default. 3 is the only one lacking.
• Similarly, tech company holiday parties, surprisingly. Fails 3.
• Burning man is close. For me, because I went with like 4 friends, it failed 1 and I’m not sure about 2.
• I went to Vibegala, basically a bay area house party, once. Failed 1 (I knew ~nobody) and 2 (~nobody knew me)

I don’t know if this is a wholesome impulse from my soul or just ego tripping. Certainly when there’s celebrity or money involved, that helps, and that makes it feel fake. But there’s a part of me that feels like I Matter when I’m in a scene like that, and there’s a part of me that needs the magic of such a *party. Maybe it’s even wholesome ego tripping.