The Hair

1994. ACM programming contest finals. The mohawk was already tall, shaved clean on the sides — and if you squint through the VHS grain, that’s purple. The colours were there from the start. The hairdresser in SLO just turned up the volume.

This is where the colours started. A hairdresser in San Luis Obispo who was, according to Rob, “very artistic.” He’d bring her art books for inspiration. She’d send him home looking like a different species. Purple one side, orange the other, shaved clean between. He was scared and excited in equal measure.

Brightest thing in Amsterdam that winter.

The first time he turned his head into a billboard. A cyclist, shaved and dyed onto the back of his skull for Bike Happening. The hairdresser in SLO must have had steady hands.

Pink at the front. Orange in the middle. Blue at the back. He photographed the result himself, at Tanglewood on a Friday night, because who else was going to document it properly.

Yellow mohawk, California summit, the whole state laid out behind him. He didn’t need the elevation to stand out.

Not hair. That’s a multicolored fur ball he wore on his head for a hike. A friend behind him is trying not to laugh.

Leading the pack on the same trail, pink mohawk barely visible now. The fur ball was retired.

MusicBrainz summit, London. Only the hair matched the ball pit.

Hamburg. Three colors at once now — orange, pink, green — in neat sections with clean borders. Still a hairdresser’s work, but already pushing toward a map of something.

The Google Chrome logo. On his head. He used to dye his hair to match conference logos so he could get in free. This is not a joke.

MusixMatch got the only advertising space Rob respected. Royal blue field, MXM carved to skin, the second M in orange. The hairdresser in SLO was a distant memory by now.

Satan’s Halo. Two spiked tufts styled into devil horns, pink-to-orange gradient at the tips, bleached blonde base. The child’s painting behind him is significantly less alarming.

Same horns, two months later, sun-bleached on the playa. The desert took the pink but kept the attitude.

Seen from above: concentric rings of pink, orange, yellow, purple. A topographic map of someone who couldn’t sit still. Portland, freshly done.

The checkerboard. Pink, orange, purple, yellow squares on a grid, covering the entire skull. Made for Burning Man, because even at Burning Man you could spot him across a tent city.

The back. Because half the rainbow wasn’t enough.

Red and gold stripes, outdoors, looking like a flag nobody salutes but everybody notices.

The other side. Six colors. Red, yellow, green, blue, purple — arranged in organic swirls, not a grid this time. He was already past geometry.

A robot. Shaved and drawn onto the back of his head. It’s grinning. Of course it’s grinning.

Between designs. Just a pink mohawk and all of the sky.

His wedding day. Hearts in red, pink, purple — nested on the back of his head. Of course.

At the wedding reception. Rob is mid-story, hand to chin, fluorescent orange still holding up under the kitchen lights. The terrariums behind him didn’t stand a chance.

Barcelona now. Red, yellow, pink — a tricolor mohawk, freshly done. He was doing these himself by this point. The hairdresser in SLO, the girlfriends who took turns — all of that was California. This was his own hand, his own bathroom, his own rules.

Stained glass. Triangular segments in pink, coral, yellow, magenta, separated by shaved lines radiating from the crown. Photographed in the bathroom mirror at home, for Nowhere festival. The geometry was back, but wilder.

Chaos Communication Camp. The opposite approach: colored crescents scattered like confetti across a shaved head. Less architecture, more whimsy.

The Nowhere pinwheel from below. The colors hit harder from this angle.

The confetti from the front. Orange nub at the forehead, pink and purple flanking the temples. That grin is the grin of a man who just did this to himself with a hand mirror and a bag of dye.

Web We Want Festival. Pink, blue, red, yellow — and letters shaved through the color field down to bare scalp. The back of his head was a protest sign, a love letter, and a business card all at once.

The other angle. You can almost read the letters now.

Fire & Ice. A mohawk: deep teal and purple down the back, flaring to orange and red at the crest. Nine years after the first purple-and-orange experiment in SLO, and the colors still hadn’t run out.

The fire from the front. Yellow base, red tips, standing straight up. Bathroom mirror, Barcelona. Still going.

Polka dots. Hot pink base, purple-blue spots, freehand onto the back of his own head. At some point he stopped thinking of it as hair and started thinking of it as fabric.

A rainbow spiral, radiating from the crown outward. Green, yellow, orange, red, teal — all curving in the same direction, like a weather system. The topographic map from 2011 had gone full colour wheel.

Fire at the front, ice at the back. Two climates on one skull. He was doing these in the Barcelona kitchen by now — you can see the counter underneath.

Pink and yellow concentric spirals, swirling from the crown outward. The mirror behind him shows the back — the pattern holds all the way around. Tongue out, because of course.

Split down the centre line. Orange on one side, teal on the other. The same two colours from the very first appointment in SLO, ten years later, applied by himself in a Barcelona bathroom. He knew what he liked.

The mirror trick. Phone in one hand, every colour in the other. Red and yellow at the front, green and blue and purple around the back — the full spectrum, distributed like he was testing how many he could fit before running out of head.

A teal X. That’s it. One letter, one colour, on the back of his skull, photographed in the elevator on the way out. Minimalism, Rob-style.

Calçotada rules: you kneel, someone pours wine through a funnel, you drink. The hair was already done — pink and yellow — so this was just Rob being Rob in a Catalan street, stripy socks and all. Friends filming, obviously.

Japan. Pink and orange mohawk, autumn maples, Shinto vermillion. He didn’t coordinate with the shrine — the shrine coordinated with him.

Pandemic. Titisee, Black Forest. Just blonde. No pink, no teal, no polka dots, no letters shaved to skin. The most restrained his hair had been in fifteen years, and the golden hour did the work instead.

Jaipur, getting dressed for a wedding. Purple kurta, gold sharara, black juttis — and a pink mohawk on top. The outfit was borrowed. The hair was not.

Same wedding, different day. Yellow kurta, orange stripes, yellow sunglasses, pink mohawk. Everyone else dressed to match the garden. He dressed to match himself.