meta_pixel
Tapesearch Logo
Here Be Monsters

HBM159: Final Haircuts

Here Be Monsters

Here Be Monsters Podcast

Science, Society & Culture, Social Sciences, Personal Journals, Documentary

4.61.3K Ratings

🗓️ 19 February 2025

⏱️ 32 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

During a moment of personal turmoil, Rocky Villanueva gets an email from a long-time client.  His client is in his final weeks of life, and is getting his last wishes taken care of.  One of those wishes: to look like himself when he dies.  

Rocky says that many hairdressers and barbers have similar experiences: helping their clients through the last stages of life and letting them look the way they want to look for a final time.

Rocky packs his haircutting tools and bikes across Berlin to spend an hour with his client, giving him a haircut and receiving advice on love and grief. 

Producer: Jeff EmtmanMusic: The Black Spot, Serocell, Phantom Fauna

Sponsor: The Summer Diary of a Lady Artist

The sponsor for this episode is The Summer Diary of a Lady Artist.  It’s a fictional illustrated diary of an artist navigating love and hatred.

The Summer Diary of a Lady Artist is now available at all online book stores.

See Jeff’s favorite images from the book, on the podcast website

Want to sponsor an episode? HBMpodcast.com/sponsor

Support Here Be Monsters with a small monthly contribution: patreon.com/HBMpodcast/

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

From the follicles, this is Here Be Monsters. So house goals are really interesting because when a client comes into the salon,

0:28.6

their behavior is going to be adapted to that environment.

0:32.6

But when you go and visit a client in their home, you're really getting a view of their whole life, their personal

0:39.8

life, how they live, what their aesthetic is like, what type of person are they at home, you know,

0:46.6

are they super neat, are they a little bit chaotic? Do they have a pet? Do they have kids? Do they put a lot of importance into objects?

0:56.3

So actually all of this is very helpful when you're doing someone's hair because it's

1:00.5

giving you clues or insight into their character.

1:04.5

And with hairdressing, ultimately what you're trying to do is frame the character, frame

1:10.3

the person in front of you in a collaboration

1:13.1

between how they described themselves and how you may see them.

1:21.1

How many haircuts do you think you have given?

1:25.1

I wish, I wish I knew that answer. Sometimes I think about it.

1:34.6

I sometimes have this visual of all the hair I've ever chopped off, piled up in one pile

1:41.9

in a giant, you know, a giant warehouse or room, and I would love to see physically

1:46.8

how much that is.

1:51.9

It probably will look like an animal from a different time or planet, you know, just a big, fluffy,

2:00.0

furry, multicolored, multi-textured

2:02.6

mound of hair. Where there's no features, it's just like fur and hair, basically.

2:12.6

I often get clients that want big changes and they go from long hair to shore hair.

2:22.3

And even as I'm doing one of those haircuts, there's kind of like a little sea of hair around me in the chair by the time the haircut's done.

2:30.3

It is, in a sense, a time log of your past. So so to speak, let's say, let's say you have long

2:40.7

hair and you cut, I don't know, a few centimeters or a few inches or whatever. And if you think about

...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in -40 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Here Be Monsters Podcast, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Here Be Monsters Podcast and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.

Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.