hair culture

previously published by me elsewhere:

The second day of the year celebrating procreation passed by on Sunday, and I've been thinking a lot about roots.

My sister recently moved back to Tallahassee. She has spent many years on the trek towards the right place for her family to set down roots and, after a fashion, start living. Though I wouldn't say their relationship is by any means strong, our parents also happen to live there in town.

Three days ago my brother packed up and moved to New England with his caravan of children. He also happens to be moving back to a town he lived in a number of years ago, up in Connecticut.

One of the legends of Gainesville is the theory that if you are born here you will likely never leave, and if you live here once and leave, you are destined to return. It's some sort of boomerang effect.

I, for one, have lived here on two separate occasions.

As it turns out my hair stylist sister-in-law has just bought a hair salon in town, so she will be relocating. My hippie father-in-law with the golf habit shouldn't be far behind.

I can feel the roots quickly setting under my feet as I type, and I'm not sure how I feel about that, except uncertain.

I'm not one of those Hollywood-bound filmmakers. I've felt like an outsider most of my life, and there's something about making that familiar stereotypical trek to Tinseltown and losing your ideals that has always offended me at the core. I want to remain honest, and make films from that standpoint.

So, the question is, and shall always be: can that be done from a small town in Florida?

I have a friend, I once called my best friend, who I grew up watching many films with, because his family used to rent a stack of eight new releases from X-tra Supermarket every week and tape them. Our pursuits were very similar for many years, but as time went on he went to a film school in California and I left school in pursuit of learning it on my own.

I've always had a tendency of getting antsy in my place at any given time. When I was a kid I would rearrange my bedroom on a regular basis. As I got older, I would get anxious to quit my day jobs very quickly, even if I didn't. And more recently I have been on this search to find somewhere better to live, even if my perceptions of many places only come from movies.

Within the past year or so, I found some like-minded individuals in town, who are also in pursuit of making films for a living. Sometimes I feel like that little girl in the bee costume in Blind Melon's "No Rain" video. I have found my fellow outcasts! Is that ever enough, or will I become dissatisfied with that situation just as quickly?

When is it settling, and when is it merely living?