1/17/2003
Hair
In the name of “cultural literacy”, I often encourage (i.e. force) my 13-year-old son to watch old movies and/or TV episodes. I feel that a good understanding of the popular entertainment available when his dad was growing up will give him more appreciation for the struggles of his parents’ generation. I feel that watching old shows with him will help him to develop a deeper and more meaningful relationship with his old man.
He thinks it’s just about the most horrible torture one could imagine. “God, Dad,” he says, making a sour-lemon face, “it’s black and white!” To his credit, he does not verbally add “you pathetically decrepit and tragically unhip old fossil” to such statements, but I know the sentiment is there.
(I’m not sure what exactly is wrong with ‘black and white’, but he’s quite certain that the lack of color indicates a guarantee of boredom, and fingernails-on-the-chalkboard irritation. Of course, we’re really even, because I think his video games are stupid, what with all the incomprehensible exploding and bouncing and spinning and clavin…)
Anyway, I had chained him to the sofa to watch an old Ed Sullivan show on PBS. I was so excited when they announced that the Fifth Dimension was going to sing “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In”. Man, that was such a great song that he had to like it. And it was even in color!
Looking like the grand-uncle of MTV, the segment had the Dimension standing on a rather shapeless platform (you know, the kind they use at Super Bowl halftime shows). They were dressed in the grooviest shiny gold metallo-fabric, with tastefully conservative afros reaching only partway to the sky. The “magic of television” had altered the Sullivan soundstage into a background of stars, planets, and for some reason, those fractal-teardrop patterns we lovingly referred to as “paislies”. Once the music started, the camera did the obligatory 60s zoom dance – moving in and moving out at a pace that was perfectly timed to maximize the distance you could travel on your own little LSD magic carpet ride. The music! The colors! It was totally far-out, man.
(Plus, it was gratifying to learn that my memory of Marilyn McCoo being a total hottie was not inaccurate. That’s good news after the Lulu disaster of 2001.)
I’m sitting there, groovin’ with the vibe, when Tanner asks, “What the heck is the Age of Aquarius? Was it a time when everybody had to wear those really ugly pants?”
By the time I could form a coherent thought to answer him with, the song had shifted and he’d already come up with another. Pointing at the bed of stars surrounding the band, he said, “If they want to let the sunshine in, shouldn’t they be singing during the daytime?”
As I was about to explain that they were speaking symbolically -- of the sunshine of peace and love that warms the world with tie-dyed camaraderie -- he said, “Dad, their dancing sucks!”
Alas, he had me on that one.
I may not think much of the musical talents of the modern batch of cloned and overdubbed pretty boys and girls who sell out today’s concerts, but I have to admit that they could dance rings around any of the groups from the 60s. Score one for the whippersnappers, I guess.
Regardless, I felt obliged to further his cultural education. So I explained that the “Aquarius” song was from the musical “Hair”, which was in itself of some significant cultural impact. He stared at me blankly. For kids who think nothing of seeing pink and green hair atop a face whose nose has an entire cyclone fence embedded in it, the idea that a little hair covering a guy’s ears could result in scathing persecution – well, it just doesn’t even register.
I was there, though. I lived it. I wore black armbands to protest the war in Vietnam. I signed petitions to relax the school haircut dress code. I bought Beatles records, and laughed when Arlo made fun of the stupidity of the Establishment. I was on the edge of becoming a full-blown hippie, when the hair issue came up.
A good hippie needed long hair. The problem was that I was on the swim team. Oh, there was no rule against long hair for a swimmer -- indeed several of my teammates had full-flowing manes that Fabio would envy…but when I tried to grow my hair longer, well, it bugged the hell out of me.
Long hair gets in the way of your goggles. It’s harder to shampoo and style. It takes longer to dry. In short, it’s a pain. I decided that I’d keep my hair short.
My long-haired buddies revoked my membership in the hippie movement and told me that I was bumming their buzz, man. Because my hair remained short, my former friends started calling me “Narc” and turning off the Pink Floyd whenever I’d walk into the room.
So I hung out with my short-haired friends instead. Instead of turning on and dropping out, we did things like get jobs and explore entrepreneurship. Instead of eating Alice B. Toklas’s brownies, we competed in the State Championships and won university scholarships.
At my 20-year high school reunion, I ran into my favorite one of the old long-haired buddies. “So, Jeff”, I asked, “how did that whole hippie thing work out for you?”
“Pretty much wasted about 10 years of my life,” he said. I noticed that his ears and neck were plainly visible. Hmmm. Welcome back to the Establishment.
Does this mean that I think the Fifth Dimension were (was??) wrong? No. I think their message still resonates today, in many ways. And I still feel somehow, oh, I don’t know, warmer when I hear their music. But that feeling of wanting to buy the whole world a Coke is difficult to describe to someone who wasn’t a part of it.
“Dude,” I finally said to my son. “I don’t know what the hell the age of Aquarius is, either. I know it’s a good thing, but beyond that, I have no definition.”
“I may not know what it means,” he said, “but I do know how to spell it. B-O-R-I-N-G!” He stood up to leave the room, shaking his head. But I couldn’t help but notice the pointy little protest spikes in his hairdo as he walked past the window, where the sunshine was streaming in.
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