A Rejection of Permanence
“Why did you do that to yourself?”
is the typical response I expect when showing people the few scrappy, innocuous and cheaply administered tattoos on my body. I tell them, “because I thought it was cool and funny at the time, and didn’t think too much about it.” When I give that answer it almost feels like I’m telling a half-truth, like those answers you blurt out when you haven’t thought about a question before, yet don’t want to admit that. However, when I think about it, that is truly where my justification begins and ends. I always wanted tattoos, and bad, free tattoos were as good as any other to my inebriated brain.
“I don’t understand how you could be happy with [having] something awful on your body, just to be tattooed,” says Chesterfield-based tattoo artist @emspytattoo. “The commitment side of being tattooed is something a lot of people don’t really think about.” In my own (admittedly limited) experience, they’re correct. The childhood nickname scratched across my butt cheek and the tiny doodles on my foot given by an ex-girlfriend will be there for decades to come.
However, the permanence of being tattooed is surely not misunderstood by those going under the needle. Rather, it is a commitment that is accepted in the best cases, and ignored in the worst. This recklessness perhaps comes with the territory of being tattooed; from a friend’s regretted tattoo of Morrissey, or a relative’s tribal tattoo that was very trendy at the same time bootcut jeans were, there is simply and inherently no way of predicting how the art on your body will age, in meaning and aesthetic.
It is, however, an art that remains in something of a social acceptance limbo. “ I do think it's become more of the norm, you see increasing amounts of tattooed people in modern day society and I think style and technique has advanced a lot over the years,” says Sheffield-based tattoo artist Hannah (@handling.tattoo), and they’re absolutely correct. Tattoos are as common to see in public now as eyeglasses, and even facial tattooing, something described to many of us in our childhoods as an act equal to self-flagellation, seems to be more popular in Western culture than it has ever appeared before. Tattoos, on this hand, seem to have become respected and appreciated as a part of a someone’s identity for a great many people. On the other hand, however, it is an art that still faces strong and oftentimes spiteful resistance.
Hannah recounted one such example of this vitriol to me. “ There was [one] woman on the train in particular, she seemed to be struggling with a load of bags and just as I was about to offer her a hand she looked me up and down and told me I was 'disgusting for ruining my skin in such a way'.” Perpetuity and commitment, albeit the most obvious, are clearly not the only risks associated with this art. @emspytattoo told me of how their upbringing was one full of heavily-tattooed family and friends, “so I’ve sort of been desensitised to other heavily tattooed people. I’m always surprised when I’m tattooing, I still get customers who are scared to tell their parents they’re getting tattooed.” It’s an oftentimes lifelong commitment, written in ink and scar tissue, one that can be held as taboo in circles unfamiliar and uncomfortable with the art. “I forget that for a lot of people their family/communities are super anti-tattoo and have loads of outdated opinions on them.” It is an art that becomes a part of you in the most literal way, but it is obvious that for some, it is art that simply becomes you, their ignorance of the art becoming intolerance of the individual.
And yet, why do we do it? In the face of those who do not understand nor care for your expression? In spite of the knowledge we will carry this art on our skin all our lives? I believe, in my experience, it is an act of expression that does not simply happen to last forever, rather, the forever-ness of it all is what gives the expression meaning. When my drunk friends put me under a cheap tattoo gun purchased online, it was a juvenile manifestation of a friendship I was comfortable taking with me to the grave. Affection became something tangible as those simple lines were doodled on my foot, and in that moment, I wanted to carry that warmth forever. There is meaning in the impulsive selection of a flash tattoo late at night after a few-too-many drinks, as much as there is in the dream tattoo you’ve mulled over and designed and redesigned for years.
We live in an age where your photographs live in an invisible cloud, and an age where most letters exist only in pixels. Sentimental souvenirs and mementos, like most things, were always going to keep pace with the rapid evolution of technology, a fact that we were never ignorant to. How many times have you heard people chew your ear off about ‘ how much better a real, physical book is than that kindle’ , or how badly we’re going to wish we ‘had more proper photographs of us while we’re young ’? There can often be a smugness attached to statements such as these, as if the idea that carrying a thousand photos in your pocket is objectively inferior to carrying an envelope of a dozen. The memories and emotions dear to you are no less real for the lack of a keepsake, and yet, art remains a profoundly powerful tool for making the abstract tangible. Those moments, feelings and passions can and very well may last forever. We all know this of course, and yet immortalisation can be truly important and necessary for many. God forbid you lose that envelope of photographs, and God forbid you lose those passwords.
Tattoos then, the longtime masthead of impulsiveness and recklessness, have persevered and blossomed through the years, and have become the basis for countless communities, technological advancements and shifting ideas in regard to ownership and transformation of the body and identity. I asked @emspytattoo if they believed some clients cared more about being tattooed than they did the tattoo itself. They gave me examples of “friends having matching tattoos or just 18 year olds having little hearts, they don’t really think or worry if they’re gonna like it in 10 years.” I remember, upon reading these examples, that I wanted to ask them if this risk of regret was universal, and if taste in tattoos was an acquired one. They promptly added, “but to be fair, I don’t think about that when I get tattooed either.”
It can be comforting, as you look at the words and art tattooed on your body, to know that they will be with you for as long as you allow them to be. In an age where things are compressed, invisible and intangible, tattoos will contort with your skin, and be split by your stretch marks and scars. Over the years, that art will fade from prominence but never from permanence. As will we all.
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