Getting Started - Intro Post

Getting started is always the hardest.

One thing I’m loving about this research is the aha moments I am having in discovery, especially sharing those discoveries.

For anyone, anywhere, who has ever built anything, put themselves out there, or have a client tell you, “idk do what you want” — it is a mixture of freedom and despair. You begin to sympathize with the painter and the blank canvas, the writer and the flashing cursor, the detangled dry hair. Getting started shows us that anything is possible is as free falling into creativity is freeing and scary.

Two blank pages Source: Malhar Mali

When I initially started this project, I started with a yearning to go home - home to Atlanta- after moving to Boston. But really, it started a year before that, when I cut off all my hair. In love with seeing my full face and scalp for the first time, I immediately wanted cornrows for the same effect. But when your hair is literally * snaps * that long, the only thing you can do is wait.

Researching this project began with three things: Lori Tharpe + Ayanna’s Byrd’s Hair Story, Shani Crowe’s Braids exhibit (and her work with Solange) , and Emma Dabiri’s Don’t Touch My Hair.

Those books and art with my planning background, I started weaving Braids: The Essence of Urban Design, a session about braids as the social and urban fabric of the city. Even after the session, where I compared cornrows and braids to the built environment and way for building and sustaining a city anew, I knew this was work I wanted to keep in my life, it was work I wanted to intertwine in my life and everything that I do.

It’s woven within me.

But to get a conference proposal to a website with content, pictures, blogs, collaborations? Oh my goodness. I cannot tell you how many times this has cycled in my head, how convoluted the explanations and pitches have been. But how to get people to see it?

As I reached out to spiritualist, big artists, braiders, and therapists, I was falling on unanswered emails and a lot of doubt. Where is that enthusiasm from Hindsight, why won’t they email me back?

Here comes the aha.

Well, just how it’s hard to see that a three small strands creates a cornrow, it must be difficult for people who are not close to see what this project is. I was trying to start braiding a cornrow from hair in the middle of my head, not at the edges of it! I realize that the starter strands aren’t those people who will come across my journey eventually, but those people who are close to me, who are at the edges, the delicate, most important part of the style that makes the look - my friends who know how I think, who are dope ass braiders, thinkers, and artists who support me, this work, and who literally get it.

Getting started is always the hardest part - but when you start with what’s close to you, make a plan (post soon to come), and get your ducks (um hair) in a row - you’re good to go. After that, the most important part is to be steady, and keep going.

Now, a year later, here we are, untangling those ideas and building that dream out, one cornrow and conversation, at a time. The people who get it, get it, and those who don’t soon will.

So this first post goes out to my edges, my close friends who see the vision, who inspired and sustain this work, who anchor me and this project. This goes out to you. Thank you for reviewing my work, for your insights, pictures, and encouragement. Thank you for helping me get started.

If you want to help get us started, please, follow on IG and Twitter at @cornrowconvos and submit pictures of your cornrow styles here, and stay tuned!