Day Three hundred and forty - For now

So, what does a haircut, my father and Thomas Feiner have in common? Well, nothing, to be perfectly true, other than today, and for one second, all these things intersected in my mind. I created a ritual some months back of going for a haircut about every two weeks or so. It only costs me a fiver per visit, so it's no exorbitance. And I usually have my hair cut the same way I've used it for many years now : very short on the sides and back, and I opt to leave a mop of hair up top. Never too much of it though, because - and as I've come to learn much to my chagrin - my hair is thinning quite a bit. Not balding, not yet, but it's nowhere near as thick as it was once upon a time. Back when the pandemic started, I didn't have a haircut for over two years, and my hair grew long - but it didn't look good, it didn't look healthy, and one day I just decided to have it shorn.

The guy who's been doing my haircuts knows precisely how I want it done, and I'm usually in and out in about five minutes or so. But as it so just happened, my usual guy is away, having some time off, and I had my hair cut by a different dude. And this guy, man, he went to town. Something that usually gets done in a short amount of time took about half an hour to do. And somewhere along the way, I started to feel a bit drowsy. As the guy went about his cropping and amidst the buzz buzz buzz of the clipper, I started thinking about a voice, a voice of someone with whom I once had a form of nearness. And because that voice lulled me to a sleep, I started to drift away. And in the precious few moments when my eyes closed - no more than a minute - I slept soundly, but when I came to... and I looked myself in the mirror... for an all too brief moment it was my father who was staring at me. Now, for the past few years I've sported a full beard, and my father for the longest time always had a moustache, and a few years after he and my mom split up, he started wearing a beard - and unfortunately for me, there are bits of me that I find very similar to him. And I hate that feeling.

I've written about this, but me and my father never got along. And yet... as I age, I find myself thinking about him a great deal. Not about the guy I knew, not about the guy who was my failure of a father, but rather the guy before, the guy who I knew grew up in really harsh conditions and somehow had to make a name for himself. I could still reach out to him - I could still find him. There are conversations that could still happen before it's too late. But I don't want to - the part of me that could maybe have desired that hasn't existed in decades.

Now we have the haircut and my father, but what does Thomas Feiner have anything ti do with this? Well, it was in Monica's voice that I heard a song. And I wondered where I knew that song from. Did I know that song? Not very well, as it came to pass. And so it is that I've decided that one of my goals for 2025 is to listen to a new record every single day. And it will have to be something wholly new. Something I know I never listened to. And I want to do it without repeating bands, without live album, compilations or tributes. I know of a fair few I'll be listening to. And both Anywhen and Exit North, both projects fronted by Mr, Feiner are front and center. It'll be, in a sense, a fitting soundtrack to what's come. Exit. North.