I’ve decided to refrain from cutting my hair, to see how long I can stand it getting. It’s been about fifteen years since I last let it grow. Now it hangs in front of my eyes, in fact reaching just to my nose, and I am amused at my desire to listen to loud boring music, call my parents phonies and slam my bedroom door.
There is no door on our bedroom these days, which thwarts my ambition.
But I’d forgotten how much I like the feel of my hair grown a bit longer, and the quarter of it that has turned gray adds some depth to the color, so I will see if I can stand the coming incredibly awkward period as it grows long enough to tie back. Besides, maybe the sheer unstylishness of it will keep the hordes of admiring women away. The being old, fat, married, ugly, and unkempt thing hasn’t been working the way I thought it would. Adding “looks like a Deadhead” to the mix might just do the trick.
The only problem: I have a David Crosby song going through my head.
This may come as a surprise to some of the younger readers here, in these days when one fifth of the men at an average Klan rally have ponytails under their pointy hoods, but it used to be that long hair on men was often considered an act of rebellion against the stultifying traditions of the old people. Except, of course, on Indian reservations, where it was often considered an act of rebellion in solidarity with the traditions of the old people. “Longhair” was one of those socially despised groups into and out of which one could opt at will, but despite the availability of round trip tickets a decision like the one I’m making now was then replete with angst and self-examination.
And of course, David Crosby summed it all up in his song “Almost Cut My Hair,” on Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young’s Deja Vu album. Again, for the young folks, CSNY was a short-lived supergroup made up of members of the still widely known bands the Byrds, the Hollies, Buffalo Springfield, and the Peppermint Trolley Company. Creative tension roiled the band. The four split up before Crosby could record the two songs he’d written as sequels to “Almost Cut My Hair,” which were, of course, “Need To Brush My Teeth” and “Really Ought To Get On That Pile Of Laundry.” Neither sequel possessed the apocalyptic verve of the first, in which Crosby neatly encapsulated the fears and anxious hopes of his generation, or at least those of his generation who weren’t Native Americans. Or, um, women.
Back in the early 1970s I listened to the album Deja Vu so many times that I can recall the lyrics perfectly. This despite the use of a certain memory-reducing substance in vogue at the time. In fact, I can write out the lyrics to Crosby’s song without looking them up:
One morning I woke up
With dream comfort memory despair
You who are on the road, must have
Almost cut my hairIt happened just the other day
And I feel like I’ve been here before
And twenty years ago I come into this life
I could have said it was in my way.But I didn’t and I wonder why
And you, of the tender years,
Big birds flying across the sky,
Turning into butterflies above our nation.
That’s weird. I just had the strangest craving for some brownies. Do any of the rest of you suddenly want brownies?
Anyway, I too, at one point, bought into that antiestablishment longhair frisson, back when I first wanted to grow my hair long, back when my parents used to correct people who complimented them on their four lovely daughters. No more, and not just because neither of my sisters have beards quite like mine. Now it’s got nothing at all to do with flags, freak-related, the flying thereof.
It’s all about how it feels. That, and I like it when Amanda calls me a hippie. I like the way she uses all those exclamation marks.
Posted by: Chris Clarke
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