the cut

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This post is about getting a haircut after seven years of being on the road. Not much else to say, really.

One day of rest. One day to hang out with my brother Ruben. I took a long, hot shower. Put on some clean clothes. Had some food. Took some more pictures. Sat around. Talked. Observed myself. I was home now. Home, home. Home.

And so the day came and the day went. And eventually I slept.

the meaning

I went to bed with my beard and my hair for the last time. Ever since that day in Northwest China more than seven years earlier I had not cut them, not even once, not even a bit. To me, my hair symbolized the journey. The tips were from China and Kazakhstan. Georgia and Turkey were somewhere in the middle. The roots were Germany and France. The journey of The Longest Way was in my beard and my hair. And the journey was done.

So they had to go.

the video

There are a few things about the original The Longest Way video that I think I would like to have done differently. I like the video. But it has a rather long intro that’s just white text on a black background. Like Star Wars where the text doesn’t move. The ending is a bit long as well. And I took my self portraits without thinking about the lighting very much. The stabilization I applied to them was a bit sloppy. Etc. etc.

But the one thing that gets me every time is the hairdresser sequence at the 3:22 mark. It was a very emotional moment for me at the time. And yet in the video it’s just a few seconds, then it’s over: I have gone from the full beard and hair look back to my clean cut self.

Why didn’t I give this transformative moment a bit more space in the video?

I don’t know.

the plan

This time I wanted to do it differently. The hairdresser sequence didn’t have to be part of the new time-lapse video I was planning to make, not necessarily.

Instead, I wanted to get the whole process on film. And because this was very likely going to be a once-in-a-lifetime experience, I decided to go all out.

pictures

getting a haircut after seven years:

I sit in my home in Germany, having just washed my long hair and beard for the very last time.

the location where we filmed the haircut

the crew

last self portrait before the cut