Yet Untitled 130 - Ways of looking at Hammers and Scissors

Using Leonard Cohen to decipher a haircut

Dearest Yet Untitler,

I got a haircut after six months. My hair had grown long and heavy. I was looking forward to the joy of letting some of that hair go, shape things up and reveal the me-I-wanted-to-see that had got somewhat obscured in my mass of tress. But this time, my friend and stylist went medieval on my hair after seeing its state (all stretched out and dry) and gave me a haircut that I wasn’t prepared for.

When I looked at myself in the aftermath, shit went down! I looked nothing like how I had wanted myself to look. An alarm went off in the deep recesses of brain. Over the next day, I was thrown into a surprising sadness that I hadn’t expected. To her credit, my stylist friend had done what she felt was best for my hair and scalp, and I trusted and continue to trust her expertise. But I did feel shitty and was suddenly curious about how and why a dang haircut could pull me down and under in the way that it did.

Hair in question…or…Edifice in front of Edifice, Taj Mahal Hotel, Mumbai, c. 2025

It isn’t psychological rocket science to ascertain the basis of my emotional response, and of course, to my stylist friend’s defence, it wasn’t the haircut alone that triggered me. Having just returned from a fantastic vacation to the demands of the new year, I felt like I had suddenly lost my best and most reliable friend - me - in the face of all that lay ahead. While this may sound dramatic, all these associated feelings were real and had a sharp edge. It didn’t help that my wife and I were arguing at the time.

Everything compounded and in the midst of it all, I felt more than a little anchorless. In the face of such feelings, I recalled this memory:

She broke her throne, she cut her hair

Barakhamba Road, New Delhi, c 2008

Many years ago, a friend of mine with wonderful hair (photo above) noticed just cut but shaved it all off, deliberately. I was very surprised and we were close enough for me to ask directly - why in the world?

She told me about her strong feelings around how hair was associated with a traditional sense of beauty and how she was tired of being only seen through the lens of beauty: a thing that she found reductive…

…hence.

I don’t think I was mature enough then to appreciate the maturity of her impulse, but her decision to challenge the association of self with external appearance comes back to me with full-blown import now.

Who do we have when we are alone?

What creatures we are, I marvel. How easy it is for us to feel alone and abandoned. How difficult it is for us to not find solace in our own selves. How much our solace is dependent on things that can change easily and without warning!

All this said, meta as I may be in vocalising it, I’m also subject to the such vulnerability. It takes me back to what I wrote about in the last instalment - about the punch. How easily my sense of sure footing was destabilised by an unexpected right hook to the face (a big thanks to all who called or wrote in with concern, I was really and genuinely moved!).

I think of the thousands displaced by wildfires in the city of angels. If losing a desired appearance via a haircut can do this to me, what would losing everything - clothes, journals, mementos, keepsakes, photographs, hard drives, cars - have done to LA’s stricken citizens?

Haircuts, clothes, journals, mementos, keepsakes, photographs, hard drives, cars. All building blocks in the Edifice of the Self.

Us and the Edifice of the Self

Didn’t ol’ Leonard Cohen sing about someone losing their hair in ‘Hallelujah’?

“Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you to a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah.”

Breaking thrones and cutting hair; that’s what we’re talking about, aren’t we? Throne of what kingdom? Hair from beneath what crown? By now it’s quite clear to me that I’m a regent very attached to ruling over my perceived territory. Take it away from me, you’ll draw from my lips a painful ‘Hallelujah’.

But ‘Hallelujah’ by definition is a sacred utterance of joy. Even if uttered with pain, to my mind it still alludes to a sense of rejoicing. Perhaps Cohen’s song, then, is about transformation, the transformative effect of love…of passion? If you speak of breaking and cutting, both words imply something not immediately reversible. Cohen’s transformation is not a taking apart, but a shattering. If so, shattering of what?

There’s an irony operating in Cohen’s song, from the fact that love and passion - commonly seen as desirable principles - are doing the breaking and the cutting. I find it interesting that punches and haircuts-that-take-a-wrong-turn - things that I would regard as undesirable - ironically also break and cut towards the same outcome I think ol’ Leonard is singing about. If you ask me, I think he’s singing about shattering any attachment to how we like to see ourselves, allowing us to become something more, whether in the face of love, hate or the happenstance of fate.

Scissors and Kitkin, c. 2019

Dearest Yet Untitler, I feel lucky to kick of the year with what feels like an important insight. My haircut is growing on me, quite literally. My stylist is still my friend, remains very dear to me and we continue to learn from one another, haircuts being a very small part of our relationship. My nose and my upper lip have healed since the box on the beach, as has my shaken spirt that carries forward no darkness from the experience.

At 44 (soon to be 45) the prospect of having my throne broken and my hair cut feels exciting and hopeful. But I gotta tell you, I may not have been able to write the last sentence with conviction had it not been for this instalment and the last.

Thank you always for listening and helping me make sense of the world and to see its hammers and scissors as tools that build rather than destroy.

Lots of love

V

P.S: Please drop me a line. I always love to hear from you.