Studio8 - Uniting the Arts

What do you think about tattoos?

Do you have any? Would you get one?

I would never have one put on me.

I already have too many identifying marks.

Do you think that they are stylish, stupid, vain, cool, sexy, disgusting, low-class, chic?

I saw some amazing tattoos in prison. A veritable gallery in flesh.

The Mexicans did the best ones. I worked in the print shop so they were always hitting on me to smuggle ink to them. The classic prison tattoo is done with only one color made from cigarette ashes.

Now they have become fashionable.

Women get them.

They are interesting to look at on a woman's body.....once.

Then I want an unblemished body.

Having a tattoo is like getting married.

It should be for life, but there are

lasers and divorces.

Nothing is permanent.

it is all about street cred now
got to have the right ink
the right clothes
the right look
or get stomped

I used to think about getting my social security number as a bar code
on my forehead

shades of revelation
and none shall buy nor sell save they wear the mark
worked for a seventh day adventist
he was always telling me that.
but I never read the book

I think about the little old ladies in Miami Beach with those tattoos on their forearms and it creeps me out. I don't think I will get one.

My father had one from world war one on his arm
an anchor from his days in the merchant marine
he kept good muscle tone till the day he died
it still looked good when he died

"friends come and go
but enemies accumulate"

we will be best enemies till the end

stop look and listen
I am not sure first thought is best thought
but it is my way.

do you ever question your intentions clay
do you want to trash this place?

Never had any interest in one.
Always been a spectator sport for me, though
I wonder if there is any such thing as an unblemished body?

stilltrucking wrote: "friends come and go
but enemies accumulate"

we will be best enemies till the end

stop look and listen
I am not sure first thought is best thought
but it is my way.

do you ever question your intentions clay
do you want to trash this place?

you are going to have to come off of this passive-aggressive bullshit too, jack.

you keep making these veiled comments about me wanting to destroy this place, meaning Studio Eight, and about me 'having things to work out.'

Why don't you spell it out, padnah, and tell me what you mean?

Why would I want to destroy this place, I helped to build it?

If you mean the fact that at times doreen and I let our feelings spill into public, I acknowledge that we do. But it's just story.

Say what you mean, or shut up and get over it.

We used to just talk to each other. Maybe that was at least a hundred years ago. Seems like it. I could be wrong in this particular circumstance.

the only tattoo I ever wanted was over my heart or on my left arm. just the word "if" but I could never decide on the perfect font

so, I'm inkless.

They are a fashion thing now. Ancients used them as part of their rituals. The Māori use tattoos as a continuous story. As a man (not sure about women) ages, each new line, each wrinkle on his face is "documented" "highlighted" and embellished on his face... the tattoos of the men are used to show off their age, and therefore wisdom. I love that. I think that's such a beautiful thing, especially when juxtaposed with our western use of the tattoo and many westerners' views that aging is a disease to be combated.

In the west (by "the west" I mean the modern world) tattoos were associated with rebellion for a time... but now they are very much an accessory. Fuck! My mum has a tattoo. I find it tasteless and ugly. It's on her arm and just makes her look like a fucking navvy!

Some girls tattoos though... if thought has gone into it... tattoos are like everything else... not so much the thing as the thing it's attached to.

there's a girl in my work. she was showing off her latest tattoos a few days ago. She has grandfather and grandmother written on the sides of her hand (the pinky side)... in arabic. I asked is she spoke the language. she said no. How do you know it says what you think it says? she took the tattoo artist's word. I said for all you know it could say "mohamed is a raving tit!" at which she took umbrage and left in a mood. she's also wanting to get her inner lip (face lip) tattooed.

the person wearing the tattoo is what makes it special. like the origins of tattoos... it's the story behind it that appeals to me. why did you get that tattoo... my tattoo would be because "if" is the most optimistic word I can think of short of "yes" but if is even better because it offers the possibilities and the dreams, "if..." whereas "yes" tends to come at the end of the possibilities and dreams. it's the answer to the "if".

Billy Connolly has a little ring of flowers tattooed around his feet just below the ankle. I like that.

I also love this tattoo: http://bokomaru.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/tat2.jpg

haha.. when I was searching I found this pussy tattoo: http://carlnet.no-ip.org/pussy_cat_tattoo.jpg

this is pretty fucking cool, man! http://tmh.ru/tmh.fima.net/fun/devil.jpg

hahaha... http://i104.photobucket.com/albums/m187 ... tattoo.jpg

Clay listen to yourself
Do you hear it?
Do you really know what Stupid Bob was saying to you about being too late?

I always wondered about that.

You are doing the best you can with it brother
Sometimes I think Doreen would like to trash this place too.



I wish you both would get over it.

Too late is (increasingly) a state of mind.

But hell I never respected my own mind,
and I never heard of poetry,
so I'm a fine one to talk.

I had too much respect for mine
I have told myself for thirty five years
that it is too late.
I made it a self fool filling prophecy.

I don't know what SB meant
I asked Clay once and he seemed to think it had something to do with his health.
But I thought it had to do with Doreen.

stilltrucking wrote: Sometimes I think Doreen would like to trash this place too.

I wish you both would get over it.

Umm. OK. Strange post, if you ask me, but you didn't ask me. Yeah, right, Jack. That's my fondest wish. To trash this place.

Actually, come to think of it, if I did that? I would relieve myself of hours of time I spend on the internet and maybe find something more productive to do like meet real people.

Not sure what you'd like me to get over but hey, if this is what everybody wants, I can save some hosting money, too.

Want to just call it quits?

Nah, you had to be kidding, right? It was some kind of joke that's way over my head.

......

Day after day, it never ceases to amaze me, this internet thing.

Every day, without fail, there is somebody typing something into cyber space that I read and go.... "huh?"

My head needs more than text. I really don't get the jokes any more.

I'm going to go watch the sunrise.

toodle-oo

It was a weird thing to say
But then I am weird

Enjoy your sunrise

i got this done last year while in NYC...it resonates with me...It's the prajnaparamita mantra...

When did we all become so cynical? Geez. Okay... so j, this is totally none of my business to get all up in you post... but we haven't bickered in a long time and I'm starting to miss it. Maybe you so readily attack D and LRod because if they were indeed to trash this place (which is an alien notion) you would have no real way to take out your angst. Your undeserving rants against the cyberspace world would have to find a new home. And you're a guy who's set in his ways. I love most of you. I really do. But the parts of you hate, I hate vehemently.

ALL THAT BEING SAID... Lrod did ask a question. I think tattoos are beautiful pieces of expression. There are those out there who get them because it's en vogue, or they're bored or whatever, but every tattoo I have on my body tells a story about a specific moment in my life, and they still hold value for me. And when I get all old and wrinkly, I will raise my folds of skin and show them off to my grandchildren. "This is from when grandma discovered she didn't have to die miserable." "This is when grandma discovered that pride in her heritage was more important than being one of the cool kids." "This is when grandma became a mother." "This is when grandma discovered her inner strength was more powerful than any attack, verbal or otherwise, and her will to survive and excel was endless."

My tattoos are my story told in pictures. They were well thought out. I didn't go into a shop and pick something off the wall. I sat down with an artist friend and watched him draw every line and curve of my dragon in clouds. I spent hours finding the perfect picture of the human heart and tried endlessly to perfectly place my daughter's name on it. Picking colors, thinking of the perfect placement. It all meant something to me. It was all an experience that will last forever. I don't believe in lasers or divorce, and I hope never to experience either.

--k

p.s I remember on an episode of Grey's anatomy a black doctor had to work with this neo-nazi guy. There was surgery on his stomach where he had a big swastika tattooed. As a result it was completed reconstructed, and barely resembled much more than a collection of oddly shaped angles. I thought that was so powerful. His life was saved by a black woman. Karma was teaching him a lesson. I believe in lessons. And tattoos.

yes izzy I know
who you hate

I don't hate anyone. That last line about you was supposed to be "I love most of you. I really do. But the parts of you I hate, I hate vehemently. I hate your stubbornness. Your ability to judge everything and everyone without regret. But then, I am stubborn, and even judgmental at times. .So I apologize for throwing stones. Especially since it wasn't my conversation to begin with.

--k