Someday I'll post something in earnest about music. I liked long hair and beard till I started losing some hair, and had to let go, was ratty looking in my case. I like the look when the hair is near the same length as a day or so of stubble, but too many days growth gets inbetweeny looking, sometimes. If nothing else, David Hockney's ink drawings of it are enough to justify the look. I have to shave for occasions of affection.

Not all women do shave, at all, and this was actually a topic in my college days. I've never cared much about it one way or another, and was surprised how strongly some people feel about it. It's true that most of the hippie women I knew weren't very hairy anyway, maybe it would start to seem unkempt at some point.

I insist that everything does, somehow, at some abstract level, have to do with folk and blues. I'm not sure why or how, but on faith, I believe: it must. Why does my stubble begin to look scruffy to me, and why do I sometimes like the somewhat tidier sound of a capoed guitar, if only on the first fret? Is there a connection there? Why does it drive some people crazy if I don't clip my strings off at the tuning keys? The quality of scruffiness is not strained.