Thank You, To My Quarantine Locks

Quarantine ended, fourteen months after it began, when I took my first airplane journey, leaving LA for the first time since we locked down; and when I received my first haircut. The purpose of the trip was not to get a haircut but it was certainly a perk. But, before I left, I wanted to document my quarantine hair. I had already been thinking of scheduling a haircut when everything shut down, my last haircut having been in October 2019, which was then six months behind me, but it had been continuously pushed to the next weekend and the next; and then as everything remained in the world of the unknown, I decided to let it grow until it felt safe to once again to sit in other insides, and until we reached whatever this other side might be.

It had never been this long, I don’t know if it ever will be again, reaching past my waist and just touching the top of my jeans. It was often referred to as my pioneer woman hair though I’d like to think that it was more in tune with Victorian or Edwardian aesthetics. But maybe now we’ll refer back to our long hairs by a new name, one that calls back to these pandemic times. I do, however, wish that I had played around with some more vintage hairstyles, or at least tried to create the robe tie curls. Many, many days were spent with my hair piled on top of my head, wound round and round and round into a full bun, growing heavier as the year passed, or twisted at my neck to keep it off my face. I would pile it into a makeshift heap when sleeping to keep it from getting tangled as I turned in the night. There would be days of waves and tangles, and headaches from the weight.

So many of us marked the passing of time with our growing hair and changing reflections. It makes me wonder what we’ll hold onto from this time and what moments we will remember the most. After so long of holding a physical reminder of time, it felt, dare I say, cathartic to cut it off. It was a momentous occasion for many reasons, one being that I, we, made it out of 2020. I said thank you and goodbye to my locks, which I decided to donate, and there were some definite Jo March feelings as I looked in the mirror with a now much shorter do after seeing a very different reflection for so long, and I hoped that by donating it, someone would gain a fabulous new wig and hopefully some good feelings when they now looked at their own reflection.

This process has made me think about how we record the passing of time. Is it by inches? By seasons? By a collection of moments? By the sun setting each day? By the feeling that we’ve made it through another day, week, month? The growing of my hair was not something I had previously contemplated, other than as a thing that it naturally does, or as a desire for a bad haircut to correct itself. It was an occurrence that did not sit on my mind until it reached that point of needing to be “reshaped” or “tamed”. But this time, I felt more present in my awareness. Not just in the inches that were being added but in the way that time impacted me. The way it felt so expansive in those first quarantine weeks when schedules slowed, and then how it once again would race by. Days feeling long but weeks feeling short. After our move, I began to record the passing of time by Saturdays. And in earlier times, I marked the passage by the changing of the seasons. That has felt like a less reliable marker over the years, as the seasons here do not look like the traditional ones I once knew. At times, it can feel like time is one continuous stretch that never changes, except that we keep getting older or our hairs reveal more grey.

Now that my physical marker has been cut back, I wonder if my sense of time’s progression will change. Will I notice it differently? Will I mark it by the growth of our balcony farm or the ripening of the tomatoes? Will it be mostly the same, filled with similar explanations of “how can it already be June” when it feels like it’s been an ongoing March?

I have long been inspired by self portraits, especially those done by Jamie Beck, and the way that the artist has chosen to capture themselves. This was the challenge: how to capture the idea that is in my head? Staging it in front of our new bookshelves felt like the most natural setting, though the idea of lounging in a flower filled garden also crossed my mind, except I wasn’t as sure of where I could find one. There was the ticking clock of my flight leaving in a couple days, and the knowledge that it needed to happen before I boarded, along with the other outstanding items on my list, the haircut scheduled for the next day. After an afternoon of meetings, with hair that had been held tight in a bun for days, I pulled my green dress from my closet, and with a swipe of blush and a deep red lipstick, I began to build my set. The dress danced and flowed. Toes pointed. Hair positioned, just so. The book served as prop, and as a way to hide my phone, which was my shutter, connected to the camera.

A girlfriend, when showed early sample shots, suggested that I try to invite in my viewer, as if we were having tea together. As if you were part of the conversation. I hope that feeling comes across in some of the pictures, but mostly, I think I wanted the feeling of a moment caught in time, as if stepping into a private moment, that for a brief second, you’re able to be a part of too. For, haven’t we all, been part of this moment in time, in one way or another?