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The central element in this piece is a rolled braid of human hair. Several years ago, as he was getting close to graduating from college, my husband, who was my fiancé at the time, decided it was time to cut his waist-length, thick, brown hair in order to look more "professional" as he endeavored to become a working guitarist. Most guitarists wouldn't have done this, but since he is a trained classical guitarist, he knew that the way he would be making money would be by playing at weddings and special events or as background music in upscale restaurants. Most brides don't want some long-haired guy performing at their wedding, and upscale restaurants would generally be turned off by the "hippyish" length. So he went to the barber and did it all at once. We had heard about a charity that takes ponytails and turns them into wigs for children undergoing chemotherapy, so we made a point to keep the braid in tact. A couple years later, I was cleaning out a drawer at our apartment and found the braid still sealed in its Ziploc bag. When I opened it, it was still clean, but the rubber bands had fused themselves to the hair at the ends as they had deteriorated. I took it to work to show my coworkers the incredible thickness and weight of it (none of them had known Kyle with long hair) and one of them suggested that I scan it before I sent it away. So I did. Of course, I never remembered to send it away, and as of September 2003, it is still sitting on my desk waiting to be mailed. It's so thick I think a skilled wigmaker could get two wigs out of it! Besides that lifestyle choice, the other funny story associated with this braid is the confusion it caused people regarding his race. Kyle is half-Japanese, with nice dark skin and hair, a puggy nose, and a little bit of an almond shape to his eyes. When his hair was long, people always asked him which Native American tribe he was from. He even got this question from Japanese people! But now that his hair is short, everyone thinks he's Hispanic. People who don't know him will sometimes approach him in Spanish. This was especially true when he was working at the local bagel store to help make ends meet because the owner is from El Salvador and for the most part, all of his employees were family. People saw Kyle, with his dark skin and hair, and assumed he was just another family member. He got really good at taking orders in Spanish! None of that really has anything to do with the chosen title for the piece. That all goes back to the symbols involved, but the background is still pretty fun. A human braid of that length (it's a good 12 inches from rubber band to rubber band) and thickness deserves explanation, I think. For the title: White symbolizes boundaries and nothingness, something yet to be fulfilled, rebirth and transfiguration. Hair is the symbol of the person from whom it was taken, but is also a symbol of strength with cut hair symbolizing sacrifice and the renunciation of the individual personality. The number six (the six circles on the left of the image) represents perfection, stability, balance, and harmony, while circles also represent perfection, freedom, harmony, fullness, and potential. Metal is transformation, specifically from the raw into the refined, and axes represent seperation. I saw this piece as a metaphor for egolessness in the Buddhist tradition, where the hair represents the individual, but its removal symbolizes that individual's loss of a sense of self. Because this is not a negative thing in Buddhist thought (egolessness, in my understanding, is a part of enlightenment, decreases suffering, and allows for a more subjective and honest view of the world), the title needed to be something positive. In our country, emancipation is usually used exclusively to refer to the freeing of the African slaves after the Civil War, and this is generally held as a positive step in the American journey of civilization. So by using that generally positive connotation, but also the "freeing from slavery" that it implies, I was further able to establish the mood I intended for the piece. (Freeing the self from the slavery of the ego.) |