Archival photo of an Inuit woman. The facial tattoos signify the stages of a woman's life, resilience, and strength. The designs have been handed down through the centuries and are constantly reinvented.
…The joy of writing
The power of preserving
Revenge of a mortal hand.
-Wislawa Szymborska, The Joy of Writing
There's a guy at the gym, 50 maybe, who has tattooed feet crawling up his right shin. It looks as though a child clambered all over him when he was lying down and left his or her footprints. Maybe that child is all grown up now, or maybe he's dead, and the tattoo is what's left of him, or her, or them, or they. It's just feet without pronouns, so I'm guessing. I could ask the man, a stranger, to tell me the story that inspired the image. And the recitation would be oral history, not visual storytelling, powerful nonetheless.
I hardly meet a person these days who doesn't have tattoos. I gaze on many of them at the pool where I swim, or in the locker room. The hot tub wasn't working the other day, so I went into the sauna where I was surrounded by tattoos, a panoply of inscribed flesh exposed for everyone to "read," so to speak. Not that anyone was asking questions about them, nor would I in that situation. Queries about tattoos require a safe space; tattoos are personal, even confessional at times. Ask anyone with tattoos what they signify and, in my experience, stories pour out. It's a visual storytelling genre that is significant to a person, but meaningless to a voyeur unless an interpretation is requested. Sometimes the tattoos are so dense they read as a blotch of ink and I disregard them. But mostly I'm fascinated by the stories that inspire tattoos, mostly on people much younger than I am, to be sure. And I also wonder if tattoos are replacing literature by shortcutting storytelling, or are an ancient form of storytelling revived and reinvented in our often cold-hearted digital age because they are more visceral and tactile.
Personally, I don't have a tattoo. I associate inscription onto human flesh with the Holocaust. I know it's been 80 years, but there it is, I am possessed of intergenerational loathing of ink embedded in skin. That said, a young friend of mine, descended from Holocaust survivors, said the other day when I asked if he had a tattoo—he doesn't—that if his grandparents had been in camps, he might consider tattooing their numbers onto his arm, as a remembrance of murdered relatives. Remembrance and warning, I might add, given the current administration in DC.
I do not judge or begrudge anyone who sports one tattoo, or a plethora of tattoos, or an entire sleeve of tattoos, so long as the images are not incendiary. After many conversations in recent years with people who enjoy tattoos, I know that most hold deep emotion, connection, and memories, and that is all to be applauded. But if they are not transcribed in some way, they will disappear when the person disappears unless they are preserved in photography, or illustration, or handed down through tradition as in tribal cultures. Otherwise they are ephemeral, and disposable, as writing is not, as this blog post is not, though I am aware it could easily disappear into cyberspace in an instant.
Dedicated to all the visual artists and writers making art in challenging times.