SELECTED WRITING
(Scroooooooooll down for poems...)
HAIR NEVER STOPS GROWING
WHY I’M GIVING THE KIDS NFTS FOR CHRISTMAS
BEARDS, BUNNIES AND BOOZE
(Scroooooooooll down for poems...)
HAIR NEVER STOPS GROWING
WHY I’M GIVING THE KIDS NFTS FOR CHRISTMAS
BEARDS, BUNNIES AND BOOZE
HAIR NEVER STOPS GROWING
Following a stage performance with his Piranha Hair Studio at Barber Society Live 2019, Barber B is returning to Amsterdam to premiere his first international performance of the auto-biographical piece Barber B: A Play of Sorts. The acclaimed barber has won countless competitions and toured countries creating hair art. But since his last show in Amsterdam, his journey has been far from clean cut. In 2021, Barber B discovered he had a brain tumor. Despite this overwhelming challenge, he decided to produce and star in a play with stories from his life.
The Initial Seed
In 2019, Brian Swarray aka Barber B partnered with the Barber Society to create something unique. Three-decade veteran Barber B felt tutorials were well-meaning but didn't offer much excitement for audiences. Especially since his sights were set on inspiring young people and children to get into the profession. For such a client-focused craft, the tutorials were surprisingly barber-centric. An idea dawned on him. Why not put on a show for an audience of trainees and skilled barbers? At the same time, he'd demonstrate his method of training new barbers developed in his Piranha Barber Academy.
So, that's what he did. Partially sponsored by the Barber Society, Barber B brought his personally-trained team, Piranha Hair Studio, from Leeds. Having self-funded the trip for his own technicians, he found a troupe of young Brazilian street dancers whilst in Amsterdam, who would double as hair models. The 'Each One Teach One' show was a phenomenal success, pairing culture, music and dance with barber training. Full of inspiration and motivation Barber B was set to offer his skills and entertainment to a global audience. But, as we all know, the world stopped spinning in 2020. The pandemic rocked the hair industry worldwide. After the significant financial investment, Barber B was under pressure. However, unbeknownst to him, the pandemic was only the beginning of his troubles. His journey was about to become infinitely more complicated.
No Stranger to a Challenge
Legend has it that Robert the Bruce, whilst fighting for Scottish independence, retired to a cave after many defeats. Lamenting his failures, he considered abandoning his mission. His attention was drawn by a spider, which attempted to weave a web as Robert watched. Countless times, the spider fell from its intended home and the web had to be started again. Robert was engrossed, identifying his own struggles in the spider's persisting failures. Eventually, the spider made its web and Robert, taking heart from what he'd seen, decided to fight the English one more time. He won, in the face of great odds. In hearing the stories from Barber B... One can't help but think of this story.
Barber B's life is as colourful as his hair designs. He's been a cleaner, a butcher, a mechanic, a builder and a club promoter along with becoming a master barber. He raised seven children whilst working countless hours in the hair studio, bore witness to his mother suffering from domestic violence and saw his father pass away in his arms. Through this, life's challenges took him to some dark places, but barbering always called him back to the straight and narrow. Although tested countless times, every challenge Barber B faced was met with determination. More still, with a sense that life's obstacles were in fact opportunities. If navigated with the right mindset they could cultivate growth. Without knowing it, Barber B was following the path of the Stoic philosophers. That philosophy was about to be put to an impossible test.
In the Face of Adversity
In 2021, Barber B had been sober for three years. Being overweight after a lifestyle of overwork and neglecting his health had pushed him to radical change. He'd taken to an intense exercise regime and diet. He completed an ultramarathon in March 2021, running the length of 2 marathons in 48 hours. In June, he ran up the Yorkshire three peaks. But, on the 4th of July, his world was about to change. A slight limp on his left side prompted a trip to the hospital. Following a six-hour consultation, the conclusion was bleak. They'd found a tumour. A grade 4 glioblastoma, known in the medical community as 'The Terminator'. This particular tumour has a 2% survival rate. Due to how the tumour was growing in the brain, there was no way to remove all of the cancerous tissue. It was the same diagnosis Brian's mother had died of at 52. He was 48.
Following brain surgery and a course of simultaneous radiotherapy and chemotherapy, Barber B began rehabilitation. Building his strength on a zimmer frame he eventually started training again. Spurred by an indomitable will, he entered the Leeds 10K on the one-year anniversary of his diagnosis. Not only did he raise money for the Yorkshire Brain Tumour Charity, he also ran a personal best. This wasn't the only challenge he'd taken on. Barber B returned to the hair show with renewed vigour. This time, together with showcasing his unique talents in cutting hair and training barbers, he was going to tell some of the stories from his life.
New Skills
Although producing and starring in the performance has given Barber B energy - the process has not been easy. It has meant confronting past ghosts and the new spectre of the diagnosis. He's balanced 'going public' with weighing up the effects that being so open about his diagnosis might have on his family. Alongside this, he's had to learn to become a performer. In the initial script testing, we found the effects of the tumour on Barber B's short-term memory made memorising lines extremely challenging. Moreover, stories told with such charisma only days before became wooden as Barber B struggled to get the words right. We changed tack. Rather than develop a complete script, a drafted guide allowed Barber B to tell his life stories naturally. Who better to tell your story than you, right? This device helped remedy some of the issues with memory. But not all of them. He still got stuck sometimes. This led to a technique of prompting which had to be woven into the performance itself.
Beyond this, Barber B had to get used to being on stage with the material. The confidence he'd delivered his hair seminars with dissolved as he tried to remember sections to audiences. On he went. At local open mic nights, he confronted the task time and time again, even plucking up the courage to give a 1 on 1 performance in a sauna!
Still Growing
In a few short months, Barber B's come on immeasurably. "I'm dying to be an actor." He jokes now. And it's with this alacrity that he faces this opportunity to build a legacy, whilst still learning new skills. Not only is he performing this show, but an application is underway to make the show bigger. All singing and all dancing, with barbers being trained as the performance takes place. It's a hugely ambitious project. But with the tenacity he's faced every other challenge in his life, he's going to pull it off. In style.
Ancient Greek mythology speaks of the Moirai - three fates who preside over the tapestry of life. Woven from a thread, a person's life is predestined from birth to death. Their lives measured out. But how they live is up to them. By taking every opportunity given to us, we honour our mortal gift of life. Barber B is undeniably a strand of hair in the fates' hands. Constantly growing.
WHY I’M GIVING THE KIDS NFTS FOR CHRISTMAS
It's Christmas Day and I'm self-isolating because I've contracted coronavirus. I've had to skip the day with my family. Instead, I've been staring at a screen, moving little images and pieces of text around Cavna. Why? Well, I haven't been able to do the usual last-minute panic buy for the kids as I've been busy washing my hands like Lady Macbeth. Since we're in a climate crisis, I stopped giving coal some years ago. I feel it sets a bad example. And I think Jeff Bezos, or whoever owns Amazon now, has earned quite enough this year (if you're reading this, thank you for sending the massager so quickly and discreetly... you angel!). So in this modern age, I've been making NFTs (non-fungible tokens). The real gems in this articles are in the pictures (PHEW!). Just read the pictures... You'll be fine!
Although I've no kids of my own, between my brother and my sister, I have seven nieces and nephews and a great-niece and nephew to boot. Yep, at 32. I'm a great uncle, twice over. And it's grand. All the fun and very little stress. Except when they go missing in my care. Which is terrifying. Or when I take them ice-skating... Imagine trying to wrangle five excited people under 3ft, who insist on going in every direction, whilst on ice. Yes, they are constantly falling (despite their penguin stabilisers). Now, envisage hundreds of others circling them with knives tied to their feet as Christmas music plays in the background. Sickening, isn't it? Such tiny fingers. It's not always so fun being the fun uncle.
Read on here...
BEARDS, BUNNIES AND BOOZE
We’ve been anticipating you since we first donned our puffers, packed our sheets with goose-down and shivered our way to work. We get flickers of you in March: daffodils, lambs, lengthened light catching us coming home from nights out. But it's not really till April that we can safely utter your name... Spring!
The first relation to tomfoolery and April came up in Chaucer's, The Canterbury Tales. In the "Priest's Nun's Tale" a proud cockerel named Chauntecleer is fooled by a fox into crowing. The fox takes him by the neck and carries him off. However, the vulpine villain is later outfoxed by the cock, who convinces him to open his jaws a moment to call off his pursuers. The cock takes this opportunity to take refuge in a nearby tree. Skip to today and our Etonian Mess in government makes it difficult to believe someone isn’t playing a practical joke that's run on a bit too long. We're still waiting for Boris Johnson to pop up on telly grinning and let us know it's over, "April Fools!"
Often I’m asked, “What’s your favourite cocktail?” It’s like being asked your favourite book, film, meme or quidditch player – really depends on your mood. Since Spring brings, come sunset, the pastel pinks and blues of cherry blossoms and borage, I might be inclined to a Clover Club.
This Easter bunny pink drink was born in 1896 in a Philadelphia men’s club of the same name, which held meets in the Bellevue-Stratford hotel. It’s a refreshing mix of gin, raspberries, lemon, and egg white. For those of you who think it's rather effeminate to be seen holding a beverage the colour of a Power Puff Girl, fret not. Advertising in the '40s, geared towards selling gender-specific clothing, put fears of masculinity into blokes who became effeminate by giving a shit what everyone else thought. Before this time and certainly pre-20th Century, pink was as manly as a lumberjack’s short and curlies. And we've seen just how the hipsters have revived that trend, with face pubis galore adorning Shoreditch men. Here's to an April with egg on your face.
WINE & JUG
FLOWERS
UNSAID
V&A Museum commission. Published in New River Press Anthology: When They Start to Love You as a Machine You Should Run, 2019
Jude Law’s fave.
Shortlisted for the Grindstone Literary Poetry Prize. Published in Grindstone Literary Anthology 2018.
Soul,
Remember.
Remember the time before mirages and visions and believing you can see things more than you can see.
Remember the time before self-hatred and self-deception. Before you had anything to hide. Before the self you saw was something you couldn't be.
Remember the other world where we were never separate. When we followed one another as the wine follows the jug as they're transported.
We were once wine and jug. We journeyed together each as one. Remember our adventures as one.
And if we were unloaded we both cast one shadow, an image brought alive by the sun.
A shadow which graced our feet until we were again stowed away- until we followed an unknown path once again.
We were drunk together for hours. Happily alone amongst the other urns. Under the cool of a canvas sky.
Until one night we arrived, as we all do, at our place of parting. Taken to a rooftop where the tiles were cold and blue and the stone kept the heat of day long into night.
You were decanted and drunk by soldiers. To be emptied into pots, or women, or dust. To be trodden into rugs or polished out with cloths. I was left empty 'til broken, by a drunken fool who stumbled into the table at sunrise.
It will not be for a thousand lifetimes and we'll see many more in between.
But one day, I will be wine and you will be jug. Opposite and same. You'll carry me inside your cool shell. We'll be together again.
I will be wine and you will be jug and we'll be drunk together again.
Until then, I'll wait on this rooftop, buried 2000 years underground.
FLOWERS
Darling,
After thinking about it too much
And talking about it too long,
I finally went to the supermarket
And bought you flowers
They weren't the cheapest
Because the cheap ones looked shitty
Which is why I didn't want to buy flowers
From the supermarket
I picked the roses because I think,
Though cliche, they're the best flowers
To give a lover
I picked the ones which look like sunflowers
Because I remembered you like sunflowers
On my way home I saw a girl in tears
She looked like she'd just discovered heartbreak
And I couldn't help but give her the flowers,
For hope
Knowing if I told you this
You'd believe me
And you'd be happy I was thinking of you
Even as I was thinking of someone else
UNSAID
I once was your guardian
I, happy Atlas, you my world
I held you proudly with gentle hands
Receiving wise gifts from a girl
You once were my defender
A fierce knight dressed in yourself
Knowing only how to care
And in these fair lands we dwelt
Many years passed in peacetime
Many years passed in war
But through it we stood together
Whether we were rich or poor
The sands of time outlived the hourglass
The sands of time buried us both
Till our bodies' present became past
And our lives returned to Earth
Still then there was no rupture
No crack marred our waxen shell
Through heaven and earth we journeyed
Served our obligatory slice in hell
I once had an idea
About freedom from all things
I tried to escape myself first
Drinking myself into dreams
And when I found I was trapped in me
I considered freedom from you
The self I was you knew too well
Without you I could be new
And this thought grew and grew
An atom of doubt became true
The morning came when I told you
I made you avocado and eggs on bread
I watched you leave with your suitcase
Holding so many words unsaid
I once had your love inside me
Now I'm full of booze and smoke
Anything I can to blind me
To stop me seeing what I broke