Monday, August 06, 2007

BY THEIR HAIR YOU SHALL KNOW THEM

On 12/5/03 at 11:24 PM situationist-AT-lists.nothingness.org (Situationist) found the brilliant nerve to write:

>I shaved off my body hair. To my astonishment I didn't even recognize the
>person looking back at me afterward.

>If there is a better social future -- it is for us to
>share us. Tell me what the fuck is wrong with your lives that makes you
>write here. Fuck Sake -- lets do this.
----------------

Well, then, you must truly resemble one of those shockingly nude Sphynx cats now, Kubhlai. I commend you on your daring. I too, have gone through several cheap shots to the selfimage via the blade since you, I and them hustled along the streets of Paris and Amsterdam. Shaved my head, kept it shaved all through this past winter, and last spring allowed it to grow again into this spiky throwback to say London '77. Shaved the beard once or twice but despite cultural pressures to modernize, I simply don't have the jawline to pull it off, as the bone continues to deteriorate just as that young student dentist predicted it would some 20 years ago. Grew the red fuzz back in, but of course my facial hair is so spotty that to keep it short is impossible. I keep it groomed as close as I can. While some folks can opt into any number of styles, others "appear to be" more limited in their choices. Such is the fate of the ugly. It's always been a struggle for me just to be presentable. Self-admiration, not a chance...

But speaking of hair, how about the musical? Last week's performance at Towson State University just north of Baltimore was phenomenal. The bouncy number of talented individual performers, Towson students all, flinging limbs and laughter akimbo, naked and clothed, who sang delicious solos was amazing, and the fact that each song was full, vibrant, and successfully rendered made this finest musical I can recall ever seeing, not that I've seen that many. The twist of fate which improved our seating arrangements from the mediocre to the two most strategic seats in the house proved most satisfying. I had purchased tickets online ten days or so before the show. Sue, who keeps a close handle on the finances, noted that the charges had already been posted on the online account. However, while the school computer contained the records of the purchase, and there was no explanation to the contrary, our tickets were not waiting on us. Available seats would have put us far in the back off-center.

This snafu not only improved our own viewing pleasure but added a hint of long awaited public revenge. Although this was the first time we had seen Susanne in several years, she and I have had a somewhat comfrontational relationship, a cat and mouse game that is not so much confrontational as a persistent competition for attention between two stumbling competitors. She would deny this, of course. During intermission, as we were chatting up the show standing in the aisle at her nosebleed section which is where we might have also found ourselves were it not for the clerical mistake and some fast thinking, my comments about proximity which she had already voiced in her typical J.A.P. chagrin, teased her into opining that I was not one to shy away from attention. I sheepishly agreed, and lowered my grin a few inches closer to her face, and then growled in my feline jovial best, "Yeah, and I know that you were JEALLLLOUS the whole time." Her eyes grew larger than I'd ever seen them, as if she'd suddenly been caught in a hea

The artists on stage were beautiful, perfectly formed, distorted, fat, thin, black, white, red all over, contentedly hairy, shy, bold, ugly, pugnacious and dramatic. Feminine shapes mounted clay forms and were hanging like fruited claims in the omniverous orchard, perky and prime suspects of the tribal fold ministering to the sweep of time then reckoning along the political and sexual axis of the 1960s. Masculine appendages longer than man's knowledge of himself, alpha explained, then shriveled to a cluster amid voices and vigor renewable and renewed. The story was story, told and retold, the rise and fall of empires sold amongst two or three gathered. Having never seen the HAIR production in full costumed splendor before, neither on stage nor on the screen, I was impressed by the general honesty of the script which acknowledged without shuttling the shifting of the era's messages, flowing from the individual to group identity and back again straight up through what would soon enough collapse into petty jealousies every group recognizes as its own.

Took a job down at the local photo lab until the fumes finally chased me away this autumn. I toiled there nine months, catering to the some of the most self-important people I've ever met, in one of the most upscale neighborhoods in the city, took the summer off, returned on October 1, but left again by the end of the month. I now devote my time to racheting up the radio station I launched on July 2, and retooling the website.

As usual,

Gabriel Thy
Program Director
Radio Scenewash Network
www.scenewash.org

Now listening to: "Machkuesse" by *Goethes Erben* on the "Kondition macht" LP

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