Now what could this mean? One thinks of Edmund Leach’s “Magical Hair” and Gananath Obeyskere’s Medusa’s Hair: An Essay on Personal Symbols and Religious Experience. Of course, it could just be a hot summer….
Hi John. I suppose my motivations probably are complicated and conflicted, conscious and unconscious, personal and cultural, first for growing the hair/beard and then for cutting it off again. But in brief, yes, it is a very hot summer. Was the hair magical or dangerous? I guess it depends on how you look at it.
These are MARVELOUS, but I can only say so, and make comments about the awful ones, because the first one is really attractive. You look GREAT like that, keep that in mind. It just works–and I usually don’t like beards, also the hair looked good.
The second is very Dejan’s ‘Eloise’, I can imagine you being a great lady composer like Louise Talma, which is to say one of Nadia Boulanger’s students who was a skilled practitionser of Lesb’anism, lived on Park Avenue, but this only made you want to go to the Bronx.
The bad Mohawk is unspeakable, you didn’t even dye it electric blue.
The shaved head doesn’t work for you, but might grow out well. I got my hair cut almost that short last week, but not quite that short. It doesn’t look as bad as yours, but even so will look better in about 2 weeks. Even one of my Hispanic buddies, who’s much younger, looks better after the ‘shave’ grows out. Yours looks like you could do an add for Corn on the Cob or Peanut Butter ‘n’ Jelly Sandwiches.
Merci Dieu for the first photo, and you really should consider how becoming the look is for you.
It looks like an attempt at ”My Subjective Destitution” which was even cognitively mapped on the blackboard, and which though there was the threat of a total nervous breakdown ended with a successful sacrifice, redemption, and resurrection.
I think Butchness’s intuition is right and the second photo is the real you, while the first represents your aspirations, perhaps towards the Graham Harman level of academic respectability? In between these two a Barbra Streisand-type character (from the NUTS phase of her career) is struggling to be heard, but her social circle is too respectable so she’s never allowed more than cutting off her hair in the middle of the cocktail party, or sneaking out to a midnight projection of A ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW.
I should add that I looked at the first pic at maybe 400%, and YOU like that look better, it shows in the smile, which is serene, but sophisticated, unlike in the three candid Lesb’an photos. where you keep wanting to do some more riffs on ‘we guys ain’t posh’. Of course, it takes real rigour to stay in character when you choose the more urbane persona, but even Garbo’s ill-fitting and boxy clothing as an aging Lesb’an was not that alluring. If one wants to be a chic Lesb’an, one has to be the fluff…
I believe I’d prefer to sell strawberry-rhubarb pie, deep dish, top crust only. Mmm-mmm good! I refuse to sell Campbell’s Soup.
I was always aware of the long hair and beard, continually reminded of their presence, the weight of them, the movement in air, the feel of them in my fingers. I suspect I was also more noticeable out in the world — I seemed to elicit more smiles and second looks. I felt like a bit of a presence — and I enjoyed it. Refined and dignified? Maybe, though it veers a bit toward the hoboesque. An old radical, possibly dangerous, resisting the short-haired brutalism of our times. With shortish hair I went grey at the temples without even realizing it — one morning while shaving I just happened to notice that it had already happened. It’s as if I were invisible to myself, strictly functional. But John McC is right: it’s too damned hot for all that hair.
I kept the mohawk for about half an hour, though I didn’t take it out beyond my own neighborhood.
Looking at her old photo I thought she looked a bit like Steve Martin, but now I see she’s more the Paul Newman type, although more rugged, and kind of kinky as well. I think she can still attract enough suckers, especially if she strikes that French pose in front of the window.
A Southern writer from old money, only slightly dissolute but with plenty of charm. The room looks foreign: Caribbean, or maybe South American. Is this the legendary L.A. hotel?
I have to check out which lingerie to put on first, because if I make a mistake and appear too bottom she will never forgive me. Although now I have enough weaponry what with all the collages I could make on the basis of that photo, so she better be careful what she SQUATS to Analyte and the Cobra.
I’m in a bit of a quandary about all this. I used to have a vague notion that how I kept my hair meant something, but mostly it meant that my dad cut it and then I cut it, so it wasn’t going to be anything fancy. Grew it long in college, although long meant bushy, mostly because I could. Eventually, tastes being tastes, I gave up on it meaning anything at all or looking good to all possible audiences and decided I just want it to be as little fuss as possible. This means I treat it like a hat which I take off in the summer and put back on in the winter. The problem with this approach however is that what is no fuss for me produces loads of fuss from people who think it’s terribly significant to change hairstyle, so for weeks after I whack it off for the summer I’m having the breathless ohmygosh you cut your hair conversation with a few dozen people, and then when those people see me later in the winter it’s the same ohmygosh you blahblahblah again. Add in about a hundred students a semester all of whom think they need to personally inform me that I’ve changed my hairstyle and Hell is other people.
I’m now thinking that on balance it will be the least fuss overall to buzz it all off with the clippers on short (the summer cut) and keep it that way because I can do that cut in about five minutes, even though I’ll have to keep doing it every couple weeks in the winter where before I got to just let it grow.
Ktismatics 
Now what could this mean? One thinks of Edmund Leach’s “Magical Hair” and Gananath Obeyskere’s Medusa’s Hair: An Essay on Personal Symbols and Religious Experience. Of course, it could just be a hot summer….
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Hi John. I suppose my motivations probably are complicated and conflicted, conscious and unconscious, personal and cultural, first for growing the hair/beard and then for cutting it off again. But in brief, yes, it is a very hot summer. Was the hair magical or dangerous? I guess it depends on how you look at it.
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Hey, that’s quite a close crop!
I like the beard, it makes you look older, but very refined.
The third picture is what I look like when it’s windy. Which is most of the time in the UK.
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These are MARVELOUS, but I can only say so, and make comments about the awful ones, because the first one is really attractive. You look GREAT like that, keep that in mind. It just works–and I usually don’t like beards, also the hair looked good.
The second is very Dejan’s ‘Eloise’, I can imagine you being a great lady composer like Louise Talma, which is to say one of Nadia Boulanger’s students who was a skilled practitionser of Lesb’anism, lived on Park Avenue, but this only made you want to go to the Bronx.
The bad Mohawk is unspeakable, you didn’t even dye it electric blue.
The shaved head doesn’t work for you, but might grow out well. I got my hair cut almost that short last week, but not quite that short. It doesn’t look as bad as yours, but even so will look better in about 2 weeks. Even one of my Hispanic buddies, who’s much younger, looks better after the ‘shave’ grows out. Yours looks like you could do an add for Corn on the Cob or Peanut Butter ‘n’ Jelly Sandwiches.
Merci Dieu for the first photo, and you really should consider how becoming the look is for you.
LikeLike
No, the ad should be for Watermelon…
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It looks like an attempt at ”My Subjective Destitution” which was even cognitively mapped on the blackboard, and which though there was the threat of a total nervous breakdown ended with a successful sacrifice, redemption, and resurrection.
I think Butchness’s intuition is right and the second photo is the real you, while the first represents your aspirations, perhaps towards the Graham Harman level of academic respectability? In between these two a Barbra Streisand-type character (from the NUTS phase of her career) is struggling to be heard, but her social circle is too respectable so she’s never allowed more than cutting off her hair in the middle of the cocktail party, or sneaking out to a midnight projection of A ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW.
LikeLike
I should add that I looked at the first pic at maybe 400%, and YOU like that look better, it shows in the smile, which is serene, but sophisticated, unlike in the three candid Lesb’an photos. where you keep wanting to do some more riffs on ‘we guys ain’t posh’. Of course, it takes real rigour to stay in character when you choose the more urbane persona, but even Garbo’s ill-fitting and boxy clothing as an aging Lesb’an was not that alluring. If one wants to be a chic Lesb’an, one has to be the fluff…
LikeLike
I believe I’d prefer to sell strawberry-rhubarb pie, deep dish, top crust only. Mmm-mmm good! I refuse to sell Campbell’s Soup.
I was always aware of the long hair and beard, continually reminded of their presence, the weight of them, the movement in air, the feel of them in my fingers. I suspect I was also more noticeable out in the world — I seemed to elicit more smiles and second looks. I felt like a bit of a presence — and I enjoyed it. Refined and dignified? Maybe, though it veers a bit toward the hoboesque. An old radical, possibly dangerous, resisting the short-haired brutalism of our times. With shortish hair I went grey at the temples without even realizing it — one morning while shaving I just happened to notice that it had already happened. It’s as if I were invisible to myself, strictly functional. But John McC is right: it’s too damned hot for all that hair.
I kept the mohawk for about half an hour, though I didn’t take it out beyond my own neighborhood.
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Interesting.
I’ve been growing my hair out since last fall, so it’s starting to get long. It’s longer than it has ever been.
I can see you wearing well a closely cropped goatee.
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Since fall? Yours must be a lot longer than mine was, Erdman. What’s been your motivation for letting it grow?
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Looking at her old photo I thought she looked a bit like Steve Martin, but now I see she’s more the Paul Newman type, although more rugged, and kind of kinky as well. I think she can still attract enough suckers, especially if she strikes that French pose in front of the window.
LikeLike
A Southern writer from old money, only slightly dissolute but with plenty of charm. The room looks foreign: Caribbean, or maybe South American. Is this the legendary L.A. hotel?
How about a photo of you, pc?
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I have to check out which lingerie to put on first, because if I make a mistake and appear too bottom she will never forgive me. Although now I have enough weaponry what with all the collages I could make on the basis of that photo, so she better be careful what she SQUATS to Analyte and the Cobra.
LikeLike
It’s all good.
I’m in a bit of a quandary about all this. I used to have a vague notion that how I kept my hair meant something, but mostly it meant that my dad cut it and then I cut it, so it wasn’t going to be anything fancy. Grew it long in college, although long meant bushy, mostly because I could. Eventually, tastes being tastes, I gave up on it meaning anything at all or looking good to all possible audiences and decided I just want it to be as little fuss as possible. This means I treat it like a hat which I take off in the summer and put back on in the winter. The problem with this approach however is that what is no fuss for me produces loads of fuss from people who think it’s terribly significant to change hairstyle, so for weeks after I whack it off for the summer I’m having the breathless ohmygosh you cut your hair conversation with a few dozen people, and then when those people see me later in the winter it’s the same ohmygosh you blahblahblah again. Add in about a hundred students a semester all of whom think they need to personally inform me that I’ve changed my hairstyle and Hell is other people.
I’m now thinking that on balance it will be the least fuss overall to buzz it all off with the clippers on short (the summer cut) and keep it that way because I can do that cut in about five minutes, even though I’ll have to keep doing it every couple weeks in the winter where before I got to just let it grow.
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Just experimentation, I guess. I’ve never grown my hair out, so I thought I would give it a try.
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