Dreams I’ll Send You | Essay 7
A birthday month practice
For the month of February 2025, I’ve decided to publish a micro essay once a day. I described the why and what here.
It’s Friday night as I write this and I’ve been tossing around my brain for something light to think about after three weeks of political chaos. It’s time to put the burden of work, and thought, and conversation, and action down for a bit.
Earlier this evening, I went to a show by Russell Peters, the Indian-Canadian comedian who mines global cultures for laughs. It was a last minute decision. Friends were already going, and I wanted to laugh, so I went up to the Beacon on the Upper West Side, walked past the crowd of mostly South Asians, and picked up a ticket for a nosebleed seat in the balcony. (That’s one of the magical things about New York City. Sometimes you need months of planning to see something. Sometimes you can roll up spontaneously and find a seat at something you hadn’t thought about five minutes earlier. There’s always something to do.)
I remember the first time I saw videos of Peters, back when YouTube had first launched, skewering every ethnicity he’s ever met, not the least of his own. I laughed until my sides hurt.
In his latest tour, he starts out by working the crowd. People of color, South Asian, East Asian, Hispanic, Middle Eastern, in the front rows become fodder for his act. He walks up to the line of culturally inappropriate — never truly touching electoral politics but never shying away from what is happening currently — and then brings everyone in on the joke. It just seems like he likes people, and speaks with a biting edge of affection for all our foibles.
That sensibility, of appreciating people’s humanity, seems so elusive in other forms of media at the moment. It was refreshing.
The name of this tour is “Relax* … *It isn’t that serious.” He supposedly chose the title before the 2024 US election, and its absurdity now made the show even funnier. “Laughing to keep from crying,” indeed.
Essay 8 is here.
