Braiding/Magic

I had the hair strewn all over the floor but I was determined to persevere.  I’d watched about two dozen YouTube tutorials, studied the way the hair plaits, the way it looks like ropes.  In a lot of ways, I wasn’t too different from a lot of people who’ve survived the last year — I was hungry for transformation.

I just wished I’d learned this skill earlier in life, like before 35 years old.  It probably would’ve saved me a ton of cash and hours spent in Brooklyn and Harlem braid shops waiting for the next good braider.  I could have been, had I possessed this skill, situated before my own bathroom mirror, perfecting the technique of separating hair so it doesn’t tangle, looping it, finishing it down to the 30-inch end with confident finesse.  Instead, I was starting, redoing, pausing, rewinding, playing on slow motion these YouTubers who knew wtf they were doing.  My West Aftrican ancestors were probably laughing.  My German/Italian ones equally amused.  

I kept the toddler away from the Kanekalon hair (it tangles easily) and with a sink full of water-based gel, three style of combs, including a rat tail, a soft brush, moisturizer, dry oil, rubber bands and two smaller mirrors, I got to work.  My oldest sat behind me and helped me to get the checkerboard parts in the back.  Parting, if you plan to do this, is the foundation of this work.  It’s also the most tiring and frankly boring.

This video where Amandla Sternberg tells Vogue how she braided her own hair made me think this was even possible.  Something about celebrities doing a hard craft is my new feel-good.  What else can explain the comfort I find in HBO’s Selena + Chef where she tries, in every episode, to dice an onion with ombre chef knives and not slice her fingers.  About halfway through Amandla’s tutorial, I realized that she probably had a stylist on hand to complete the look.  Whatevs.  I like the way she got swinging silver and blue tomboy braids without a lot of fuss.  Maybe next time I’ll go for color!

Seemingly unrelated, I got myself the Marseille Tarot deck and Camilla Elias’ Read Like the Devil. Known for her clarity and common sense rather than esoteric fluff, she makes the art of cartomancy so plain and simple. It’s a parallel instruction that I am consuming. It’s a skill that I’m learning to perfect. Just like I’m working getting better at my work as assistant editor.  I’m an arranger . I guess we’re all doing our best to storyboard. As Camilla says, “I’m ... interested in the actual practice of reading cards via storytelling and cunning-folk arguments.” It’s practice that delivers the story.  It’s all repetition and mimicking, really, until we can walk away with something to marvel at.

Man, sometimes I can still feel myself at 9 yo sitting at recess making a zine about endangered animals.  My own braids swinging.  My mom did those and she was no professional.  It began with inspiration.  We were obsessed with Janet Jackson in Poetic Justice.  My mom sat me down one Saturday morning and by the evening, I remember thinking this is it, I’m brand new.

My mom is gone now but the impulse to make myself over for the fun of it is just as strong as ever. Listen, I took shortcuts. I gave up on knotles braids.  I rubber-banded the bottoms instead of dipping the Kanekalon hair in a kettle of boiling water or running a lighter to seal them. Ten days have gone by and I will have to rebraid some this weekend. But, you know I took a stab at something new and it worked out alright.

But also the first chance I get to have a day in the city, and the pandemic has taken many months off, I will peek my head back inside the shop near the Euclid Ave C stop and ask how long the wait is for waist-long boxed braids because honestly this craft that they do is magical.