More myself than I was
Hey folks. Still no real update, I realize, but an event at any rate. On Friday I headed off to Massachusetts and got my tattoo. Apologies to Odfellows who are seeing this twice. =)
The life cycle of this was that back in June I asked here if any artists were interested in helping me design a tattoo. nambroth was interested, which thrilled me, as I love her work. I drew up an extremely rough sketch, and this is what Nam came back with:
http://pics.livejournal.com/zhai/pic/0001q8x2
I then started researching tattoo artists like crazy, and found Carson Hill through Off The Map Tattoo, in MA. I made contact with Carson and set up an appointment. This is what I have now:
http://www.gryphonflight.com/~zhai/tattoo/tattoo.jpg
If you look in that directory (http://www.gryphonflight.com/~zhai/tattoo/) there are some other photos from when it was 'fresher', but not for the squeamish.
The "chronicle" of my experience gets kind of long, so it is
The process of getting the tattoo is probably one of the most rigorous physical tests I've undergone in my life. Being so, even while it was going on, it was very much the catharsis that I felt I needed, just with all of the crap in my life over the past three years. I understand it is a sort of common thing to get a tattoo under those conditions, and I understand why. There's very little else I can compare it to -- it's like climbing a mountain, only you can't move, and once you start you can't go back.
On a physical level, I know things about my skin that I did not know before. This only really applies if you're getting a largeish tattoo, and I think in general a lot of this stuff only applies under those circumstances. But I learned a lot about how nerves work and about how pain works that I don't think I could have learned any other way. Some stuff is pretty obvious and common knowledge -- areas with a lot of flesh don't hurt as much, anything near the spine hurts a LOT. When he was working on my shoulderblades, there were points that did not feel like pain at all (and if you get a tattoo on the right or left shoulder, you might never feel any kind of sharp pain), but the lower part of my back around the spine hurt intensely at points. But then there were other areas where he would be working on one spot and it would cause sharp pain, but a millimeter to the right and by comparison it wasn't pain at all. Skin nerves are very interesting.
The phases of pain were also interesting. The process of a tattoo like this is outlining, then shading, then highlighting. Outlining in general hurts more because they're making deep solid lines; shading can be not painful at all because the needles are lighter and more spread out; highlighting is something some artists don't do, but gives the tattoo a lot of dimension when used properly, and is the most painful part of the process, because it is deep solid lines across an area that is already hypersensitive from having been colored previously. But anyway, the first twenty minutes or so were painful but also just intense in a bracing way -- you don't know what's coming and you realize fully that there is no turning back. The second half of the first hour was a slow ramp; in the second hour my adrenaline started to wear off and I started to feel the pain more, and my nerves got fatigued and skin got irritated so the pain was higher. After he started again after the second break, into the third hour, though, I had a straight period of about thirty minutes where I felt no pain at all. I felt hyper alert, had a big surge of endorphins, and felt totally *good* in a really strange way. This dropped off and the second half of the fourth hour was the absolute hardest.
I forgot to mention that they actually filmed this whole thing. Carson is a world-renowned tattoo artist and was a guest in the shop where I got mine done, and for each of their guests they try to film what they think is the most interesting tattoo during that period. It was a little bit of extra pressure that they picked mine (couldn't wuss out on camera!), but kind of cool. But during the last half hour they actually interviewed Carson while he was working, and that was a little more intense, possibly because he was slightly distracted.
In that sort of euphoric third hour I was thinking about tattoos and some of the buddhist philosophy I've been reading over the past several weeks. There is a huge application of that philosophy in the whole tattoo process. Buddhism, at least part of it, is about the concept of no escape; of living in the moment and not reaching or struggling against anything. Nirvana itself is the release of struggle and the comprehension of life in perpetual change. During the tattoo process, there is no escape. Nothing will keep you right inside your body like a low level of inconsistent pain. Nothing will keep you quite so well aware of the passage of time as that low level of pain. I was considering all of this, and actually experiencing a sort of gratitude for it and the discipline involved -- you can't move or it screws up the design -- and also of the sort of psychology behind getting a tattoo. The whole culture of tattoos is fascinating, too. Pain is a part of the culture, but it isn't the purpose of it. Generally, when someone wants a tattoo, it's because they want the design at the end. That's certainly why I got into it -- the pain is an obstacle, not the thing itself. How like life, I thought -- we spend most of it reaching toward a goal, striving, and meanwhile the reality of it all passes us by. Being trapped in that moment, you realize distinctly the reality, which is pain. The zen is accepting and even cherishing the reality of suffering itself, and not leaning perpetually toward that indistinct future moment that never arrives.
The other part of the culture is the sense of earning. Every tattoo you see, and if it's an attractive tattoo, well-rendered, has been earned with pain, generally a long period of sustained pain. There is nothing you can do to defray this. You can't drink alcohol because that makes you bleed more and distorts the ink; you can't take ibuprofen or pain killers because these too alter the flow of blood and cause problems that will distort the art. Same with local anesthetics -- they make the skin flaccid and that causes it to not take ink as well. So if a tattoo is sharp, it came through pain, and the bigger it is, the more exponential that pain ramp, though generally very large pieces are done in sections.
The result of all of this is a culture that is very distinct. A painting on regular canvas done by a tattoo artist has characteristics of the mentality tattoo artists use -- it tends to be a very intense, graphical style with high saturation colors, sharp lines, and usually pretty unusual subject matter (generally leaning toward what we would probably consider horror tropes). There is a "school" of tattoo art that way, in the commonality of these things. The actual symbols involved in tattoo are more important, generally, than they are in other art forms -- because there is this sense of permanence. The sense of earning also means that whatever you do is probably REALLY important to you -- and you don't get that in other art forms. The level of abstraction is not there.
I think the concept of it and the culture together are uniquely fascinating. Phase two of this story is how I was so delerious after all of this (and afterward I was in a daze -- a sense of satisfying extreme exhaustion on par with any I have ever felt, but also what was probably physical shock symptoms) that after driving an hour and a half back to Albany I accidentally took a wrong turn and wound up on the wrong highway for 45 minutes, and was two and a half hours late picking up Justin from the Poughkeepsie train station. =P So my advice is not to do any long distance driving immediately after getting a four hour tattoo.
I am ecstatic. That is all.
The life cycle of this was that back in June I asked here if any artists were interested in helping me design a tattoo. nambroth was interested, which thrilled me, as I love her work. I drew up an extremely rough sketch, and this is what Nam came back with:
http://pics.livejournal.com/zhai/pic/0001q8x2
I then started researching tattoo artists like crazy, and found Carson Hill through Off The Map Tattoo, in MA. I made contact with Carson and set up an appointment. This is what I have now:
http://www.gryphonflight.com/~zhai/tattoo/tattoo.jpg
If you look in that directory (http://www.gryphonflight.com/~zhai/tattoo/) there are some other photos from when it was 'fresher', but not for the squeamish.
The "chronicle" of my experience gets kind of long, so it is
The process of getting the tattoo is probably one of the most rigorous physical tests I've undergone in my life. Being so, even while it was going on, it was very much the catharsis that I felt I needed, just with all of the crap in my life over the past three years. I understand it is a sort of common thing to get a tattoo under those conditions, and I understand why. There's very little else I can compare it to -- it's like climbing a mountain, only you can't move, and once you start you can't go back.
On a physical level, I know things about my skin that I did not know before. This only really applies if you're getting a largeish tattoo, and I think in general a lot of this stuff only applies under those circumstances. But I learned a lot about how nerves work and about how pain works that I don't think I could have learned any other way. Some stuff is pretty obvious and common knowledge -- areas with a lot of flesh don't hurt as much, anything near the spine hurts a LOT. When he was working on my shoulderblades, there were points that did not feel like pain at all (and if you get a tattoo on the right or left shoulder, you might never feel any kind of sharp pain), but the lower part of my back around the spine hurt intensely at points. But then there were other areas where he would be working on one spot and it would cause sharp pain, but a millimeter to the right and by comparison it wasn't pain at all. Skin nerves are very interesting.
The phases of pain were also interesting. The process of a tattoo like this is outlining, then shading, then highlighting. Outlining in general hurts more because they're making deep solid lines; shading can be not painful at all because the needles are lighter and more spread out; highlighting is something some artists don't do, but gives the tattoo a lot of dimension when used properly, and is the most painful part of the process, because it is deep solid lines across an area that is already hypersensitive from having been colored previously. But anyway, the first twenty minutes or so were painful but also just intense in a bracing way -- you don't know what's coming and you realize fully that there is no turning back. The second half of the first hour was a slow ramp; in the second hour my adrenaline started to wear off and I started to feel the pain more, and my nerves got fatigued and skin got irritated so the pain was higher. After he started again after the second break, into the third hour, though, I had a straight period of about thirty minutes where I felt no pain at all. I felt hyper alert, had a big surge of endorphins, and felt totally *good* in a really strange way. This dropped off and the second half of the fourth hour was the absolute hardest.
I forgot to mention that they actually filmed this whole thing. Carson is a world-renowned tattoo artist and was a guest in the shop where I got mine done, and for each of their guests they try to film what they think is the most interesting tattoo during that period. It was a little bit of extra pressure that they picked mine (couldn't wuss out on camera!), but kind of cool. But during the last half hour they actually interviewed Carson while he was working, and that was a little more intense, possibly because he was slightly distracted.
In that sort of euphoric third hour I was thinking about tattoos and some of the buddhist philosophy I've been reading over the past several weeks. There is a huge application of that philosophy in the whole tattoo process. Buddhism, at least part of it, is about the concept of no escape; of living in the moment and not reaching or struggling against anything. Nirvana itself is the release of struggle and the comprehension of life in perpetual change. During the tattoo process, there is no escape. Nothing will keep you right inside your body like a low level of inconsistent pain. Nothing will keep you quite so well aware of the passage of time as that low level of pain. I was considering all of this, and actually experiencing a sort of gratitude for it and the discipline involved -- you can't move or it screws up the design -- and also of the sort of psychology behind getting a tattoo. The whole culture of tattoos is fascinating, too. Pain is a part of the culture, but it isn't the purpose of it. Generally, when someone wants a tattoo, it's because they want the design at the end. That's certainly why I got into it -- the pain is an obstacle, not the thing itself. How like life, I thought -- we spend most of it reaching toward a goal, striving, and meanwhile the reality of it all passes us by. Being trapped in that moment, you realize distinctly the reality, which is pain. The zen is accepting and even cherishing the reality of suffering itself, and not leaning perpetually toward that indistinct future moment that never arrives.
The other part of the culture is the sense of earning. Every tattoo you see, and if it's an attractive tattoo, well-rendered, has been earned with pain, generally a long period of sustained pain. There is nothing you can do to defray this. You can't drink alcohol because that makes you bleed more and distorts the ink; you can't take ibuprofen or pain killers because these too alter the flow of blood and cause problems that will distort the art. Same with local anesthetics -- they make the skin flaccid and that causes it to not take ink as well. So if a tattoo is sharp, it came through pain, and the bigger it is, the more exponential that pain ramp, though generally very large pieces are done in sections.
The result of all of this is a culture that is very distinct. A painting on regular canvas done by a tattoo artist has characteristics of the mentality tattoo artists use -- it tends to be a very intense, graphical style with high saturation colors, sharp lines, and usually pretty unusual subject matter (generally leaning toward what we would probably consider horror tropes). There is a "school" of tattoo art that way, in the commonality of these things. The actual symbols involved in tattoo are more important, generally, than they are in other art forms -- because there is this sense of permanence. The sense of earning also means that whatever you do is probably REALLY important to you -- and you don't get that in other art forms. The level of abstraction is not there.
I think the concept of it and the culture together are uniquely fascinating. Phase two of this story is how I was so delerious after all of this (and afterward I was in a daze -- a sense of satisfying extreme exhaustion on par with any I have ever felt, but also what was probably physical shock symptoms) that after driving an hour and a half back to Albany I accidentally took a wrong turn and wound up on the wrong highway for 45 minutes, and was two and a half hours late picking up Justin from the Poughkeepsie train station. =P So my advice is not to do any long distance driving immediately after getting a four hour tattoo.
I am ecstatic. That is all.