I cut my hair short because of The Big Blue. The diver’s look — stripped, elemental — stayed with me. Hair wasn’t fashion; it was ballast. And ballast is something you throw overboard when you want to go deeper.
From there it became Ockham’s razor. Cut away what is needless. Reduce to what is essential. Every strand beyond that is noise.
Then McLuhan entered. He said he read only one side of the page so the other side could live in the imagination. My short hair works the same way. The absence becomes presence. It’s a kind of Rorschach test. People can imagine me with all kinds of hair, projecting whatever they want onto the blank space.
Montaigne wanted to show himself “entire and naked.” Epictetus reminded us that the true weight lies in opinion, not in things. Marcus Aurelius sought the plainness of a life in step with nature, unmasked and unembellished.
Short hair carries their discipline onto the body, a small but steady declaration of what remains when the excess is gone.
I want to live in clarity.