PANDEMIC DIARY

HAIR TODAY; GONE TOMORROW?
DECEMBER 26, 2020

There is a recent phenomena occurring having to do with hair. Women are getting their hair cut less frequently. Men are growing their hair, intentionally. Covid is preventing women from getting their hair cut as they wish; whereas, men are allowing their hair to grow and choosing not to cut their hair. Has Covid inspired the “caveman” in us guys. After all, we are stuck in our abodes. Granted, our ‘caves’ have heating and plumbing. We have home delivery and ‘curbside pickup’. We have Netflix and Hulu and Prime. And, we can take walks around the neighborhood without the threat of a Woolly Mammoth (which possessed quite a hair growth) chasing us over bone-strewn plains.

So, what explains this development? A CEO of a billion-dollar publicly traded firm recently noted that he’s conscious of trying to recapture a little bit of his youth. There seems evidence that older men face more health issues and worse outcomes from this home-bound isolation. Maybe hair growth reminds them of a time less grim.

Some men are reporting that they are relating to their children differently. Virtual visits keep the headshot in prime focus. Their kid’s hair is front and center. Growing hair makes it more likely to relate to your kids who themselves likely had already let their hair grow longer. It adds to a more mature male’s “cool” factor. Other men report that letting their hair grow is like stepping on the gas pedal. It gives a sense of movement to life, as if you are moving on or keeping up. To what, I am not sure. At least, where the last four years have felt static, one can perceive that they are forward moving.

For some of us, this is a literal return to former days. At fourteen, I attended Judo classes in Greenwich Village in New York. Traveling on my own to Broadway and 8th Street, I would walk to Washington Square Park and watch the men and women play chess on concrete table with inset chess boards; or attend local chess tournaments at the Village Chess Club;

I would walk in and out of the streets becoming part of the ‘hippie generation’; at 15, I would go to ‘Cafe Wha?’ in the late afternoon for poetry reading;

Cafe Reggio for an expresso; at 17, I would slip into Marie’s Crisis in the evening, a gay bar with a piano where the room filled early with actors and singers and the evenings passed singing show tunes into the wee hours. If the picture makes this look like fun, I can assure you it was even more fun than it looks.

Witnessing a young Bob Dylan at The Bitter End;

Nina Simone at The Fillmore East and Richie Havens at The Cafe Au Go Go;

more poetry readings at The Gaslight Cafe and Cafe Why Not?; smoking weed on the corner of MacDougal Street and Minetta Lane;

and, then when I was of drinking age, I would commune with the intelligentsia at The White Horse Tavern where Dylan Thomas held court in the early 50’s.

Twice a year, I would roam a village perimeter, spending hours at the Bi-annual Greenwich Village Art Show; and greeting shop owners I knew from the frequency of my visits.

Then, there were the protests and the advocacies - against the Vietnam War and for the use of Marijuana.

My life seemed to revolve around opposition and proposition. I met Allan Ginsburg during one protest event and, out of admiration that bordered on idolatry, at the age of fourteen, followed he and his friends to the Gas Light Cafe, the first cafe to hold poetry readings and a major hangout of the Beat Generation leadership;

The Village became a second home to me. I was an integral part of something so big and vital and important. It seemed as if at every turn there was the sound of a drumbeat or the strumming of a guitar.

Music was indispensable to our activities. The anger, frustration, hardness and violence we experienced could all be expressed in music. Indoors at cafes you could expect a guitar playing picking at his guitar sitting on a stool; outside at a cafe, don’t be surprised if there was a jazz saxophonist playing on the corner for pennies.

Hair was who we were. Hair is what identified us. Hair forced a Broadway musical to be written. The Hell’s Angels grew their hair long and tied in pony tails. Women danced nearly nude in the fountains of Washington Square Park, their heads tilted back in transcendental-like swooning while their hair swung in long arcs. Hair was natural. It appeared everywhere on the body. Men showed off their hair. Women, in defiance, let their underarm hairs grow and let their legs grow hair. Hair was defiance. Hair was strength. Hair was power.

Each strand of my hair is a memory.

I am building a new relationship with my hair.