“If you were immortal, I could understand your choices better.”
I ran into the man who wrote that line, Brad Yoder, tonight at an open mic in Pittsburgh. I’d heard it years ago and always imagined it something that would be said to me more frequently than I could ever utter it to someone else. I hate the idea that there are certain mistakes in my life, certain ways I sold myself short on how good I was, that I will never get to fix even with the lessons learned. And that’s real life.
I love the tattoo, and it relates. It’s about change. About aftermath and destruction. About living through things. About getting to the next arc in the design.
It’s often referred to as the babe, the maid and the hag – three interlocking waves that symbolize life, death, and rebirth. What I liked about this version of the traditionally Celtic design, was that not all the lines are continuous. Some of them have endpoints, but they are all integral to the design, and interlock with at least one other thing. And that’s really more what life is like. I am not banking on reincarnation. But within this life, there are deaths and rebirths all the time.
In Pittsburgh, Heather and Holly give me… uhm… a dubious glare which probably means I’ve done something wrong though for the Life of me I can’t imagine WHAT. I’d been SO good!
I’ve laid waste to my life a couple of times, a fact I often forget when change gets me scared. When I was pursuing my journalism degree and started to think about doing something else, I was also in a very serious, but uncertain, relationship. When I had to choose, I abandoned it all for a new package: I finished my degree, but went away from journalism to do music, and I started a new relationship. Later, I would go on the road and lead a nomadic life, end another epic relationship that I feared would mean the end of that entire version of my existence, as well. A few very scary changes and uncertainties loom on the horizon again.
Brad Yoder hosting : Surprisingly enough – the source of Heather’s quote was the host for the open mic at Club Cafe on Monday nnight in Pittbsurhg, PA.
I always forget that I survived before and life didn’t end. That there are, I hope, pray, need to believe, any number of lives that could make me very happy. That’s part of the reason I wanted that symbol. Wanted to carry it with me all the time.
We met up with Crystal and Encore in Pittsburgh for sushi. We don’t see them enough and even when we DO they’re all blurry n shit. Later that night we all went back to Holly and Kimmy’s to watch Hairspray. The new one. hrm. So much singy singy and the dubiousness of John Travolta dressed as a woman.
So now that I’ve been tattooed, I’m surprised at some of the things I’ve become aware of. Most of them fall under the category of Tattooing as Reclamation and Repurposing .
One: Having a piece of artwork you really love tattooed on a part of your body – a part sometimes a source of self-consciousness – is an ingenious way to boost your self esteem by sort of reclaiming the part. I can’t wait to show people the very part of myself I might have yanked my shirt down to conceal most of the time before now. And it also makes it a part of my body that I now love to look at. I see the tattoo and not an extra couple pounds.
Two: At the same time, my putting it there is a guarantee I will maintain a healthy weight, because there is no way in hell I’m going to wreck a $350 piece of artwork I had to go through this much pain (of COURSE it hurts!), effort and expense to acquire. And if, at any point, I do decide to have children after all, that will be a beautiful reason to wreck it (though I was told with enough cocoa butter it would be fine, which seems like a funny t-shirt slogan.).
Three: I am proud of myself the way I am when I face physical pain successfully. I didn’t cry, and never flinched anywhere but my facial expressions here and there, so I feel pretty bad-ass. Endurance of physical pain is something I can only hope will translate into my emotional life. People tell me they think I’m a strong person, and I’ve never believed it. I think I’m weak. I think I’m only starting to grow a spine. But I’m learning to believe in my ability to withstand pain (bone marrow donation, gout, tattoo). And that’s something. A certain self-reliance comes from that, not fearing getting hurt.
Four: It’s an excellent distraction from things I don’t want to think about even as it is a sort of mile marker for those things. Mark the difficult with pain, but the end product of beautiful art. Seems like good therapy to me. Repurposing and reformatting.
Five: It’s sexy. I wanted it at the belt line so it could be concealed if need be, but our friend Mitzi’s Ankh, Angelina Jolie’s cross and Latin, and Asia Argento’s spread-winged angel in their partially visible suggestiveness was always something I really admired and found hot. Now I got my own!
Six: We’re doing our photo shoot for the band press photos soon, and normally this would have me a little nervous. Now I can’t wait to see how everything looks!
Seven: I’m slowly making myself look the way I want. Gathering the things I always wanted to have as part of me, an aesthetic process that I’m also hoping will spill over into my daily life. I wanted an industrial, and I got that. I wanted this tattoo, and I got it.
Eight: The tattooing experience, particularly in this location on my body, was ridiculously intimate. He gets very close to his work, and used my body to prop himself as necessary – an arm resting across my hip, a forearm appropriately but definitely across my pelvis. I’ve never been touched so intimately for so long by a stranger.
Nine: And lastly, in that vein … my body is different now. It makes me think of something from Battlestar Galactica that always interested me. Bear with me: When Sharon voluntarily is executed so she can be uploaded into a different body on the Ceylon ship and rescue her baby there … she’s still her, possesses the same features … but that body has never been made love to by her husband. That body has never born a child. My body now is marked in a way it has never been. It’s been reclaimed from old lovers, old injuries. There is now a new leader among the scars. I am in new skin that no one has touched.
And now my theme song gets to be one I’ve always loved, but never applied to me until now:
No I’m no angel
No I’m no stranger to the dark
Let me rock your cradle
Let me start a fire with your spark
Oh come on baby
Come and let me show you my tattoo
Let me drive you crazy
Come on and love me baby (Allman Brothers)
Incidentally, for the curious: the least painful bits felt like a sunburn being scratched, just as the tattoo artist said. The most painful, the long lines and arcs, felt like someone splitting my skin with a hairline scalpel.
