PERHAPS we should not be sitting here tending the vats and washing the buildings and carrying the money to the vault once a week, like everybody else. Perhaps we should be doing something else entirely, with our lives. God knows what. We do what we do without thinking. One tends the vats and washes the buildings and carries the money to the vault and never stops for a moment to consider that the whole process may be despicable. Someone standing somewhere despising us. In the hot springs of Dax, agouty thinker thinking, father forgive them. It was worse before. That is something that can safely be said. It was worse before we found Snow White wandering in the forest. Before we found Snow White wandering in the forest we lived lives stuffed with equanimity. There was equanimity for all. We washed the buildings, tended the vats, wended our way to the county cathouse once a week (heigh-ho). Like everybody else. We were simple bourgeois. We knew what to do. When we found Snow White wandering in the forest, hungry and distraught, we said: "Would you like something to eat?" Now we do not know what to do. Snow White has added a dimension of confusion and misery to our lives. Whereas once we were simple bourgeois who knew what to do, now we are complex bourgeois who are at a loss. We do not like this complexity. We circle it wearily, prodding it from time to time with a shopkeepers forefinger: What is it? Is it, perhaps, bad for business? Equanimity has leaked away. There was a moment, however, when equanimity was not the chief consideration. That moment in which we looked at Snow White and understood for the first time that we were fond of her. That was a moment.
Reaction to the hair (flashback): Paul sat in his baff, under the falling water. More hot water fell into the baff. "I would retract the green sea, and the brown fish in it, and I would especially retract that long black hair hanging from that window, that I saw today on my way here, from the Unemployment Office. It has made me terribly nervous, that hair. It was beautiful, I admit it. Long black hair of such texture, fineness, is not easily come by. Hair black as ebony! Yet it has made me terribly nervous. Teeth. . . piano lessons. . ."
Reaction to the hair: "Well, that is certainly a lot of hair hanging there," Bill reflected. "And it seems to be hanging from our windows too. I mean, those windows where the hair is hanging are in our house, surely? Now who amongst us has that much hair, black as ebony? I am only pretending to ask myself this question. The distasteful answer is already known to me, as is the significance of this act, this hanging, as well as the sexual meaning of hair itself, on which Wurst has written. I dont mean that he has written on the hair, but rather about it, from prehistory to the present time. There can be only one answer. It is Snow White. It is Snow White who has taken this step, the meaning of which is clear to all of us. All seven of us know what this means. It means that she is nothing else but a goddamn degenerate! is one way of looking at it, at this complex and difficult question. It means that the not-with is experienced as more pressing, more real, than the being-with. It means she seeks a new lover. Quelle tragédie! But the essential loneliness of the person must also be considered. Each of us is like a tiny single hair, hurled into the world among billions and billions of other hairs, of various colors and lengths. And if God does not exist, then we are in even graver shape than we had supposed. In that case, each of us is like a tiny little mote of pointlessness, whirling in the midst of a dreadful free even greater pointlessness, unless there is intelligent life on other planets, that is to say, life even more intelligent than us, life that has thought up some point for this great enterprise, life. That is possible. That is something we do not know, thank God. But in the meantime, here is the hair, with its multiple meanings. What am I to do about it?"
Reaction to the hair: Fred the rock-and-roll bandleader addressed his men. "Men, something happened to me today on Monument Street. I saw a wall of hair black as ebony falling from a high window. A girl, a look. . . Men, everything is changed. I am changed. I am no longer the Fred of former times. And I say that things must be different with you, too, because you are my men, and I am your leader. Now it is quite clear to me that you men wish to play the buffalo music of your forefathers rather than the rock-and-roll we have patented, amplified, advertised and been paid for. Now I want to say right now, that thats all right with me, the buffalo music I mean. From this day forward, until the end of time, it will be nothing but buffalo music, in all the dromes of the world. I dont care a rap, thats how all right it is with me, this freedom that I freely grant you, that our gray hides have been hankering for. Now that, with a look, this mysterious dark beauty has changed my life, which needed to be changed, we are, in a strange way, opened to ourselves, and to buffalo music, until the red slag of the nooisphere descends to cover everything with the salty finality of love. So go forth now with your amplifiers and all, and revise your lives upward, as I have revised mine. Put the question mercilessly: Where have the buffalo gone?" Freds men exchanged silent looks. "Its always like this," the looks said, "in the spring. Its always this way, when the green comes again. Our leader suffers a spiritual regeneration, from a bad man into a good man. Its always some girl, who looks at him, at which he falls into her power absolutely. We are tired of having for a leader one who is nothing else than a damned fool. Lets go down to the union hall, now, and write out the specifications for a grievance against him, under Section Four, the grievance section, of our union constitution. And we can think of other things, too, to add to the list of charges. That will be amusing, writing out the charges."
Reaction to the hair: Two older men standing there observed Snow Whites hair black as ebony tumbling from the window. "Seems like some hair comin outa that winda there," one said. "Yes it looks like hair to me," his companion replied. "Seems like there oughta be somethin to be done about it." "Yes, seems like it oughta be punished with a kiss or something." "Well were too old for all that. You need a Paul or Paul-figure for that sort of activity. Probably Paul is even now standing in the wings, girding his pants for his entrance. So I guess Ill go along to the hiring hall, where I hear there might be some work." "Ill go along with you," the other man said, "because even though I aint a A.B., I am a B.A., and maybe in the dimness the one thing will be taken for the other, and we can ship out together." "I hate to go away and leave all that hair hanging there unmolested as it were," the first man said, "but we have a duty to our families, and to the countrys merchant fleet, some vessels of which are now languishing at their berths doubtless, down at Pier 27 and Pier 32, for the lack o the likes of us. So farewell, hair! Fare thee well, and if forever, still forever, fare thee well!"
