The Art of a Cut
Last night was the first time I watched Barbershop, and I know I know, it took me too long to see it. Take my Black card if you must. But man, was I mesmerized. It pulled me back to Saturdays spent in the shop, not as a customer but as a witness, a quiet observer of a sacred ritual.
I’d tag along with my brothers and father, trailing behind them like a shadow, slipping into a chair in the corner, small legs swinging, watching. Always watching. The hum of clippers filled the air like an incantation, the sharp snip of shears punctuating conversations that moved as fast as the hands shaping the hair. It was art in motion, deliberate, precise, a performance of steady hands and sharp lines.
I’d look up at the posters tacked to the walls, glossy images of fades and tapers, high-tops and waves. And the designs, man, the designs. Lightning bolts crackling across fresh cuts, initials carved with mastery, hearts etched onto scalps like declarations of love. Each one a story, a signature, a statement. It was the closest thing to magic I had ever seen.
I wanted to sit in that chair. I wanted to feel the cool metal of the clippers against my skin, to know what it was like to have my edges lined with the same precision and care. But little girls didn’t do that. Not where I was from. I knew that. I wasn’t supposed to want that. So I stayed in my seat, silent, mesmerized, carrying that wonder with me long after we left.
Man, I’ve always wanted it, though. Always wanted to sit in that chair, to get a fade, to have a cool haircut.
Instead, I listened. I listened to the conversations floating through the air, the banter and the jokes, the debates and the storytelling. I listened and thought about boyhood, what it must be like to be a boy, to move through the world with that kind of ease, to inherit the right to that chair without question. I thought about the generations that had passed through that shop, the fathers and sons, uncles and brothers, the lineage of men whose hair had been shaped in that space.
They talked about the silliest things sometimes, basketball, the latest barbershop rumors, some wild story that no one quite believed but everyone laughed at anyway. And I’d just sit there, staring up, thinking: Wow. This was a world unto itself, a space of history, of culture, of connection. And even if I wasn’t meant to take that seat, I was still there, absorbing it, letting it shape me in ways I didn’t yet understand.
Black hair has always been magic to me. The coils and curls, the locs and braids, the fades and waves. I’ve always admired it, studied it, held it close like a secret, but I never fully grasped the level of talent it took to wield a pair of clippers. Not just to cut, but to shape, to transform, to carve identity into the canvas of a person’s head. A barber isn’t just a barber. A barber is an artist, a sculptor, a craftsman, a storyteller. A barber is a historian, tracing the lineage of Black hair through every stroke, every line, every fresh cut that walks out their door.
And maybe I never got to sit in that chair as a little girl. But I sat in that space, absorbed its magic, let it shape me in ways I didn’t understand then. I carried it with me. And maybe that’s its own kind of cut, its own kind of mark, its own kind of art.