: : self - image : :
Delusion - 20 May 2003
My first tattoo is well into the healing process, and it's as good a time as any to examine what I've done for myself.
...preparation...
My desire to, in the current parlance, modify myself in such a manner goes back a number of years. My original plan was to demarcate a new portion of my life with a hafada, or scrotal piercing. The two primary upcoming events in my life included the finalization of the divorce from my wife and my 30th birthday. A hafada represented something I wanted for myself and something I would do for myself on which the opinions of others had no bearing - a representation of sorts of becoming my own man again. For whatever reasons, both events came and went without my taking action. During this time, the idea of a stark, extremely minimalist tattoo came to mind.
Time, once again, passed without action. Then, during a casual conversation between my friend Nicole, my roommate Norm, and myself, Norm says that he and I should both get tattoos this weekend and that he'd pay for half. It's fair to note here that Norm is a quintessential bullshitter, but it did hit a nerve as the sort of design I wanted and what I would use it to represent had been solidifying for a while. This was serendipity in action, however, as I don't believe I had ever mentioned anything to him about it at all. Nicole was encouraging, as she and I had actually talked about it before, but as I knew Norm was bluffing, I knew I wasn't going to be getting a 50% discount. No matter, the course was set.
The important aspect of this conversation is that it got me to think about why, exactly, I was putting off doing something that I wanted to do as much as this. Was I waiting for another life milestone such as a birthday, an anniversary of an event in my life, a formal occasion worth checking off into my skin? I immediately started thinking differently about the situation and decided that the best approach was to let it be its own occasion--that this in itself was important enough to me that I didn't have to tie it into anything else at all.
What's more, my friend Nicole had already had a number of tattoos, so my single rational reason to put this off was eliminated: lack of trusted information. Moral support is always a great start, but honestly what I really needed was technical support. It was useful to get an idea of how this would feel, how to take care of it in the short and long term, what to expect on pricing, and most importantly to me, assistance in finding an artist out of the many choices in the area.
I had three things to settle first: money, art, artist. The money issue neatly solved itself, as $200 I was going to use to settle a personal business matter turned out differently than I expected after I withdrew it from my account and had mentally written it off. Now it wasn't needed and it already felt 'spent' to me. The art seemed simple enough, as I had a fondness for the idea of a machine readable bar-code encoding a number. I chose the UPC-E format, which is a lot like the typical UPC image you see on most products, but can be abbreviated to encode a five digit number. The number in question was 11375 or 11376, depending on what day I did this on. This would represent my age, in days, at the time of the tattooing. There's a lot more to it than that, as you'll see. The UPC-E code would circle my arm at the bicep, so would look like a series of thin parallel lines, and read sideways. To decide on the artist, Nicole and I went to a few places she's had work done at, and a few she'd never been to. This is where I ran into a significant snag.
When the idea of having an extremely minimalist tattoo first came to me several years ago, the UPC-E band was perhaps the second idea I had after deciding that a single simple line all the way around the upper arm wasn't exactly all I was after. I had never seen a UPC-based tattoo, so the idea was original in the sense that I didn't pull on outside inspiration to get it, but I also assumed that this was merely because I had never looked and I was confident (and correct) that I certainly wouldn't be the first person to do this. When talking to various artists, however, it was impressed upon me that this sort of thing would age quickly due to the fineness of the design and its reliance on extremely accurate relative widths. I was told I could expect a simple rectangular UPC-E code to look good for about eight years, but understandably I expect to last longer than that myself, so it was as discouraging to find this out as it was useful.
It was clearly time to revise the design. My first change was fundamental: location. As I was being quoted anywhere from $100 to an inexplicably princely sum of $300 for even just a single horizontal band, I decided that if I was going to spend this sort of money and put myself through this process, I had no interest in having it hidden in the usually-occluded area of my upper arm nor of having to show off even pastier white untanned flesh than is usually visible.
The changing nature of the art itself went through several phases.
The UPC-E idea required too fine a line and proportion to age well, and looked a little too primitive from afar. Primitive chic isn't exactly a bad thing, but I wanted something more stark and basic than urban tribal, and this seemed a step toward an almost Maori tribal, so I decided to play with an i-ching design while brainstorming. While very attractive, i-ching artwork was more of a design springboard than something I'd have actually considered having settled with. I-ching is a Chinese system of divination akin to reading runes or tarot cards, and as I am a strict rationalist on matters of the supernatural and religion in general and divination in particular, it would have been hypocritical at worst and merely ironic at best to have used this. It did get me thinking, however, about a way to encode the number, which would now be 11382 or 11383, in binary format: broken bars representing 0's, solid bars representing 1's. I took this and created a design of binary bands. When I approached the artist I had decided on about this, he brought me back to reality explaining that even now that the relative thicknesses of the bars and spaces were constant, it wasn't sufficiently more forgiving to aging than the original UPC-E design, and that both designs had a common flaw of requiring exacting parallelness, which while he admitted was possible, wasn't work that he'd take responsibility for. The odds of it looking like I wanted were just as slim as the design elements themselves. I'm glad this was the case, as looking at the mockup of it now, it has that ethnic tribal look I was trying to get away from.
Clearly, my work in Photoshop wasn't done yet. I had to figure out how to simplify something which was already, in theory, simple. As I only needed 14 binary digits, it occurred to me that the simplest way would be to take an approach not unlike that of paper punch readers or mylar tape readers from the bad old days of heavy metal mainframe glory. With this in mind, I made a design which read left to right from my perspective, with bars representing 1's and blank spaces representing 0's. It would read from my left to my right and be centered if my arm was palm up in a seated position, or facing forward if my arm was at my side with palm out. I was immediately enchanted with it, and extended the design to its logical conclusion by wrapping a thinner line around the rest of my arm, and making the left join a pointer to the beginning of the data stream, so to speak. Success! I printed out a sample for 11382 and 11383, one for Friday and one for Saturday in case Friday was bad.
Artwork once again in hand, on Friday I met up with Nicole at Lady Luck Tattoo, talked to Scott and found that the new design was going to be entirely practical. Now I was sure I'd be happy with it. There was a scheduling problem on our part, so I could either go it alone at 6:00 PM or come back in tomorrow. Getting something permanent like this done without a friend to witness just seemed wrong, so we agreed to come in at noon on Saturday.
11383. Saturday, 17 May 2003.
...execution...
When I came in Saturday, I wasn't nervous, though I was understandably excited. After filling out the requisite paperwork and going over the details, I was strapped into the iron maiden and given last rites. Actually, I'm pretty sure that would have made me nervous. Seriously however, the environment was relaxed and professional, and I was shaved, swabbed, seated, and ready to go. My history with needles extends to copious blood tests (particularly during an extraordinarily bad case of pneumonia when I was about 19), and frequent blood donation while in the USAF. Needles don't bother me as long as I can see what's going on, so I didn't expect this to be any different in that regard.
Despite all the literature and web space devoted to the subject, it's understandably difficult to describe the sensation of modern tattooing to someone who's never experienced it. Despite this, I'll give you my impression: a sharp, hot razor cutting through your skin but not lacerating the flesh. That probably sounds worse than in feels, in fact. It was about what I expected, which is to say it was tolerably painful. As Scott started on the inside of my arm, I was able to see up close the process of both the outlining needle and the filling needle working the ink into my skin. Part of the process involved my having my arm behind me, but as I had already seen the details up close, I was comfortable with it. The pain was more acute on the band right below my elbow, as the bone is a lot closer and the flesh a lot less thick. The process was interesting, and the initial sensation of being tolerably painful bordered on becoming enjoyably painful. I'm not exactly sure where that comes from, as I don't have a tendency for masochistic behavior or sadomasochistic fetishism, but I'd be lying to deny this sensation. As I could no longer see the work being done, it was with some surprise that I found out I was actually done when I had assumed that the rear portion was merely half-complete. I spent most of the process fairly deep inside my own head, as can probably be expected. My charge was $130, which was well on the lower end of what I was prepared for. This was considerably lower than what one shop I won't name wanted for even a single simple horizontal bar. Sent off with supplies and care instructions, I was finished. I was thrilled.
I spent lunch conspicuously wrapped in bandages that probably looked like an acute case of dog bite. When it was time to remove it, I approached it reverently and hesitantly as I disassembled the phylactery of tape and gauze weaving around my arm. I was even more thrilled. The area around the design was just slightly red, and the overall design looked almost embossed due to the mild swelling. Thrilled is hardly even the word. The condition of having binary newly encoded onto my flesh pretty much directed me to see Matrix Reloaded, if only for kitschy irony. It had to be done, you know? Of the two, the movie was the letdown, just as I suspected, but that's the subject for a ranty, irreverent review, not a monument to introspective navel-gazing such as this.
...analysis...
I've been accused of investing certain things with too much meaning. It's a flaw in my character and I acknowledge it. In some circumstances, I can really make it work for me, and this is certainly one of them.
The artistic direction and literal meaning of this design is the easiest to explain.
Artistically, I desired a design which would be starkly minimalist, which fits in with some of my favorite art, particularly music. It needed to have a sort of geek fetishism, something that would be recognized for what it is only by techies. Having it out below the elbow ensured that it would normally be visible and complementary when I wear my favorite short sleeved shirts. I was fortunate in timing, inasmuch as the binary encoding for 11383 involved an attractive array of bars and gaps of no more than three spaces. This would make the literal explanation and interpretation that much easier to understand. As a techno-fetishist design, it out-spares and out-minimalizes classic urban tribal, which I also have a fondness for.
I've said that the number 10110001110111 binary or 11383 decimal represents my age in days at the time I had this done. While that's easy and straightforward enough, be assured it's never quite that simple. Aside from commemorating the fact that the occasion is occasion enough to commemorate, there is definite agenda and subtext to all of this: given my nature, there pretty much has to be.
Even though the binary block design expresses this less obviously than the original UPC-E design, an element of this reflects a desire to encode a number, a serial or item number if you will, which is both an ironic embrace and a scathing rejection of an increasingly consumerist society more focused on product than quality of life. We're all products now, and every product has a number. I chose my own number rather than having it chosen for me. That is an admittedly oblique and passing reference as well to a group of people who were tattooed indelibly with numbers they did not get to choose, nor in may cases survive.
Most importantly is what it means for me at a personal level. The reason I've had this put on my right arm (Latin dexter), rather than the left arm (Latin sinister) and the reason that it reads to my left to right rather than a viewer's left to right is because this is a positive, urgent message to myself. It is, ultimately, a reminder that time is very short and that I have to spend it better. I have to risk more to get more.
As I write this, the flesh has just begun to peel in certain areas, which is right on schedule.
As much loaded meaning as I had for this design, something that's surprised me in my extremely brief time with it (about 80 hours now) is what it's meant to me that I didn't intend. I knew I would find it artistically satisfying once I settled on the design. What I didn't realize is that it would be an adrenaline charge just to see it and have it there. At the risk of sounding megalomaniacal and cocky, it makes me feel a certain confidence and power that I simply wasn't expecting. I'm halfway to grabbing my own self by the collar and ravenously seducing myself. That works best as a surprise, so don't warn me. Humor aside though, there is a serious underpinning to that. I never realized that this was going to be a turn-on in the way it has become. Whether anyone else even cares for the design is completely secondary, though most feedback so far can be described as 'extremely positive', and much of the rest as 'bewildered'.
As an unapologetic atheist, I'm not a spiritually-inclined person to say the least, but I feel I understand people who describe this experience as 'spiritual' a lot better than I ever have. I 'get' that. I 'get' why people enjoy doing this and having it done for them on an emotional level rather than the rather abstract intellectual understanding I had of it before. I 'get' why people express themselves this way, and why they choose designs for personal and/or artistic reasons and why they change or update their designs as they do. On one hand (sinister), I regret having put this off for so long. On the other hand (dexter), I'm glad I didn't wait another day, week, year or more to get it done, and on a certain level I'm almost glad I waited this long, as it means that much more to me now...
...and unlike a hafada, I can show this off in polite company.
I am thrilled.
Delusion
---- 10110001110111 ----
- - - - and counting - - - -
finished product
It's more even and better-looking in person, but as the skin was temporarily tightening, it adds to the difficulty of doing it justice while photographing blind with the wrong hand.
