Bill Murray's Hair

Many things people think are alike, are in fact different.

Looking is not seeing.

Hearing is not listening.

Talking to, is not Speaking with.

Youth is not beauty.

And then we have Bill Murray’s hair.

When I was a kid, I never quite understood Bill Murray’s hair. I would look at it and wonder what he was thinking? Was it some sort of character affectation? Something the director demanded? Was it his stylist?

Now that I’m older, I understand Bill Murray’s hair. I relate to it. People don’t really talk about Bill Murray’s hair when they talk about Bill Murray. They don’t mention it when talking fondly of Caddyshack, or Groundhog Day. I always thought that hair thinning was just a process of have and have not. It either was or wasn’t… hair. How did it come to that? The Charlie Brown tufting. Surely it must tumble out in the night, or be shed like the fibres of a rug getting threadbare. I didn’t understand that it just became… shit hair. Instead of peeling away like some comedy rug, it frazzled and frayed like candyfloss. It became hair that was drunk and wild, untameable and avoidant. It became hair that scarecrowed about on your skull in a stiff breeze.

I wonder how many of men’s fashions were designed to hide this fate? From the shaven chomage of the samurai, to the ubiquitous partings and pompadours of the fifties - hair that was gathered and rallied to be hair once more. A legacy of hats and headpieces that vied to conceal these signs of decay, methods to control some slow death.

When first I noticed my own hair thinning, it haunted me, like the body horror of some Cronenberg film. Teeth crumbling, fingernails peeling off. It didn’t seem right. I used to look at photos of my grandfather as a child and wondered if he was bald or whether he just shaved his head.

He was a Shinto monk. It was impossible to tell.

But the glimmer of my ever-increasing forehead seemed a harbinger of things yet to come. Was it that time already? Surely I’d only just arrived?

My dad never went bald and as far as I could tell, neither did his father. Despite this, whenever Terry Nutkins came on TV, my dad would always praise him for not shaving his head. “Good for him!” my dad would say. Terry Nutkins was unashamedly bald. almost seeming to take pride in styling his hair as if to accentuate his baldness. He grew out the sides until his skull protruded like a sandbank at low tide. “He doesn’t give a shit,” my dad would say. “Good for him!”

Sometimes, if your hair is thinning, people will tell you to shave it off. It’s odd in a way. As if the solution is a sort of scorched-earth policy.

“I’ve got a hole in my jacket.” - STRIP NAKED AND BURN ALL YOUR BELONGINGS!

Conversely, bald men will often tell you NOT to shave your head. They tell you how much they regretted it, as if doing so had made them cross some invisible border that they couldn’t return from. Before; they were thinning. Now; they were bald. You could shave it off but what if by the time it grows back, its fallen out? Maybe that’s what happens. It just thinks that you like it that way and gives up the ghost. But then again, what if underneath all that hair is some perfect Yul Brynner-shaped skull? What if all that hair is actually concealing who you really are? What if all those flowing locks and soft, silken skin are just distracting us? What if the real glitter, is under all that glitter?

When we are younger, we might get to be pretty. But when we are old, we might get to be beautiful.

Many things seem alike but are in fact different. You could be handsome and well dressed but you might not be beautiful. People might call you beautiful, but that doesn’t mean you are. You look beautiful. But looking is not seeing. True Beauty doesn’t age - instead it shines out through the cracks in your skin. True beauty can survive even death.

I don’t know if Terry Nutkins was beautiful, perhaps those that knew him could tell me. But I think if you look at his head long enough (if you really look until you don’t see a head at all) you might instead see something else. Imagine some soft desert dune, tufted by sandgrass and picture the gestures, and actions that surround that natural wonder. If you look long enough at yourself in the mirror, I mean really look, until you don’t see yourself at all, perhaps you can learn to accept the lines that form, and the hair that thins. Perhaps you might just actually see yourself, if only for a moment, like some tiny fragment of something bright and still burning. Like a distant star or the embers of a fire, lit to wash away the shadows.

If you’re really lucky, you might just find some people who can see that in you too.

Because I never understood Bill Murray’s hair, but maybe, just maybe… If I live long enough.

I will.