Hair today

I count myself a fortunate person because I have hair. I have a lot of hair. Many men my age, and younger, do not and it is not always for hereditary reasons. My father lost much of his hair and two of my sons continue to look distinguished despite losing much of theirs. A third son keeps all his hair.
Hair is a wonderful thing, though I am unsure of what useful service it performs. Obviously, it is a throwback to the day when we descended from hairy apes when I guess its purpose was warmth. These days it is aesthetic, but it is also a distinguishing factor, particularly among men. We are still largely a tribal society and if we examine men's hair styles closely, we can see that style distinguishes which tribe they belong to. Here are some examples:
Televangelists
Without a doubt and universally this tribe of parasites have the worse and most distinctive hairstyles of all. Think Benny Hinn, Jimmy Swaggart, Kenneth Copeland and Brian Tamaki. They invariably have an abundance of hair with not one follicle given the freedom of movement; their hair is always swept to the side or the back and is invariably dyed. Do they go to the same hairdresser? You can walk down the street and see that hair coming toward you and say, yes, that’s a televangelist…God help me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2af4gcS-b9Y
Rugby League Players
This tribe tries to out do each other in strange hairstyles. Many sport throwbacks to the 50s when short back and sides were de rigeur and hardly avoided. Others have strange cuts such as man-buns (Kieran Foran) or umbrellas (Kevin Proctor). Others such as Tohu Harris grow their hair long so they look like a Dothraki from Game of Thrones. What all rugby league players seem to have in common though is a complete inability to have a normal haircut like rugby players (Ma’a Nonu apart). They are however less boring.
Rock Stars
Who knows? They are all over the place these days. They don’t even call themselves rock stars any more; they call themselves “artists”. Right—Kanye West? There was a time when the rock star tribe was easily identified by the length of hair and moreover the differing length of hair showed which sub-tribe they belonged to: the longest denoting heavy metal. But these days? Who knows? Then again, who cares?
Donald Trump
Nothing more need be said.

I am growing my hair long. Not because I want to look like a rock star/artist. Not because I want to have the scope to turn it into a piece of art like the league players. And not because I want your money like a televangelist. No, I am doing it because I like it long, because it suits (hides) the shape of my face, and…most of all…because I can. I count myself a fortunate person.

What I want to be when I grow up

Let’s at the outset say that I am what I always intended to be as a grown-up. Whether I have indeed grown up is the only question left unanswered. I spent 30 years in advertising. And that is what I wanted to do. It was a productive time for me. It taught me many life-skills that—had time remained my friend—would have got me a job in just about every profession I could name. I compiled a list of a few. I could have become:

A teacher

In advertising, I learnt to be adept at seemingly retaining my fervour for the job whilst secretly seething with frustration. It wasn’t that the job was not personally rewarding. It was. And for a teacher able to shape young minds it must be doubly so. But in teaching as in advertising there is always an expectation for you to sell something you don’t entirely believe in—like The Treaty.

An airline pilot

Back in the 70s and 80s we in advertising flew high. We mastered the art of doing so with very little substance below us and only the rarefied air of being on top of the world to sustain us. Of course, there was always the possibility we would come crashing to the ground—as we did in the mid-80s—but we never lived for tomorrow. We lived for the day and couldn’t remember it tomorrow.

A Hamilton librarian

In Auckland advertising we were good. But those working in Wellington were better. We learnt early to handle the frustration of being second-best or being even further down the totem pole if we accept that most of the great advertising of the time emanated from the United Kingdom. So, I could handle the Hamilton humiliation of being at best second best. At least a Hamilton librarian has the facility to think of books less as a vocation than as an escape.

Leader of NZ First

Of all the jobs I am qualified for, this comes pretty close to the top. The reason is that advertising taught me one essential skill—one precept, one I share with the current leader of NZ First: “it is not what you want to say, it is what they want to hear.” I am good at that.

A televangelist

Possibly the easiest for me to master, given my advertising background. Essentially it is sales. No more, no less. Once you manage to lose that frustrating little albatross some call a conscience and replace it with the knack to selling with fervour, passion and naked belief something in which you have no belief—you are made. Advertising is second only to car sales as providing the necessary skills for televangelism.

Local body communications manager

Top of the tree for me. Requires only the essential skill (learnt in advertising and PR) of seemingly saying something when you are not. There is a skill in that. An even greater skill, requiring greater imagination, is finding a way to say nothing at all. After all, you are an expert in communications—not conveying it, just creatively avoiding it. That’s what council pays you for. Only problem is I would probably have to change my name to Dick, because that is what everybody else would call me.

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