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| (Original unedited image via www.thevintagenews.com) |
Over the last week or so, I’ve been looking up images of bears in every nook and cranny of the internet. I won’t lie, it’s been a bit frantic. But you see I have a goal: a new tattoo. And I have a deadline: my 30thschool reunion.
So why the bear obsession, I hear you say? To answer this, I need to backtrack a bit. Ever since left school I’ve actively avoided all my school reunions. For the 10threunion, I still didn’t have a degree or diploma. I think I was pregnant and looking rather “swell”. I’d really done nothing noteworthy and literally had no accomplishments to my name, other than I could speak a rough, sweary form of German that I learned from a dodgy ex-boyfriend.
Then my 20threunion rolled around and, well, things were pretty much the same. I still hadn’t accomplished very much and while I wasn’t pregnant, I still kind of looked that way. I did at one stage consider robbing a bank just to make some kind of name for myself but thought better of it. I hadn’t taken up any brag-worthy sports like surfing or marathon running. I still hadn’t nailed a new skill, like playing the banjo or cello. I still hadn’t gone through a magical transformation and did not look like a swimwear model or a body-builder. I hadn’t even been on drugs so I couldn’t even do motivational speaking on how tough it was to recover.
Truth is, I was ashamed at my failure to win at life. To make matters worse, all my siblings and seemingly everyone else on the planet was busy with noble career choices like nursing and teaching and inventing cures for people with two left feet.
But now my 30thschool reunion is looming and while the status quo more or less remains the same regarding my lack of looks, fame, success, and fortune, I do have a hankering to meet up with old friends and share some memories.
This is not to say I haven’t been practicing imaginary conversations about why no-one has written a book about my life. I’ve considered bald-faced lies like “Oh, I’m a spy and can’t tell anyone about it. This chubby-mumsy look I’ve got going on is just a disguise.” I’ve even considered more outlandish lies like “I work in a secret laboratory and can’t talk about my work. You wouldn’t understand it anyway.” The most believable lie I can come up with is that my job is to shave male Olympic swimmers. (Might also be a secret fantasy. Hard to know.)
Anyhow, back to bears and tattoos. I thought that, seeing as though I’m not going to be able to pull off the image of being a beautiful, svelte, well-preserved, successful, famous, rich, highly-educated, math-nailing woman of the world, I’d better go for something else: A devil-may-care (= overthinker), don’t give-a-fuck (= actually, I give too many fucks), anti-establishment (= don’t sign homework books), minimalist (= poor), freelancer (= mostly unemployed), heavily-tattooed (= a few naff tattoos) persona. But see the problem is that I don’t have enough tattoos to be convincing enough.
So, I Googled “bear tattoos”. Big no-no. All the bear tattoos I found were these fierce, growly, teeth-bared tattoos. So, I Googled “bear drawing”. Mmm. Getting there, but lots of illustrations that looked like they belonged in a kid’s picture book rather than on my skin. Nope, not hardcore enough to match my New 30thReunion Persona. Getting desperate, I searched “bear sketch” on Instagram and I found that, between the images of sweet teddy bears, vicious bears, baby bears, polar bears, and koala bears, there were sketches of men, mostly hairy and often posing suggestively. Who knew that “bear” was also slang for a hot, hairy man?
Anyway, I finally found an image I liked and set about emailing a few tattoo artists I follow on Instagram. Can we just take a moment to lament the what-the-fuckery is up with some tattoo artists? On my quest to find the perfect tattooist to execute “bear”, I was reminded of a story my niece told me. (Um, and just to clarify, she’s in her 20’s. She’s not, like, ten.)
She’d wanted a tattoo for a while. I think it was of a wildflower. She found an image she liked and made a booking with a tattoo artist that was recommended to her. Dunno WTF his name was but we’ll call him “Gary”. As she’s a self-confessed, not-good-at-maps kind of person, she arrived a little late to find a very disgruntled, surly Gary. To make matters worse, his tattoo parlour wasn’t so much a parlour as a home, and he didn’t have a tattoo bed, but rather a drab, brown couch that lacked both cushions and cleanliness.
She showed him the tattoo image. Gary then proceeded to lecture her about “how can you expect me (*harp sound* an artiste!) to copy someone else’s tattoo?” and “don’t you have any pride?” and “why would you want to have someone else’s tattoo on your body?” Understandably taken aback at his rude tirade, she gently tried to explain that it was hard to tell a tattoo artist to tattoo something without showing them what it is you want to have tattooed. He wasn’t hearing any of it. And she left - tattooless - but with the comfort that she hadn’t parted with any cash and that she didn’t bear the indelible marks of a madman.
Anyhow, what brought this story to mind was that – armed with my bear-sketch - I approached a tattooist who had done a tattoo for me a few years ago. At the time, she was a junior tattoo artist and had no qualms about taking my money, copying someone else’s art, and using my skin as her training canvass. Fast forward a few years to when she’s honed her craft, developed her “style” and now won’t “copy someone else’s art”. Oh, the shifting sands of morality! She’s happy to “change the sketch”, but here’s the thing: I won’t get to see the sketch until I’ve paid the deposit. Erm. But what if I don’t like your sketch and I’ve paid you the money? And also, isn’t this a bit like reinventing the wheel as I already have a sketch that I know that I like?
Isn’t insisting that someone accept and pay for your art a bit like saying to your client “I know you want that yellow blouse, but here, have this black one that by-the-way also doesn’t fit you." Or, it could be like me telling my clients, “Ummm, ja, I know you want me to write about your work in your website, but I’d rather just write a fun story.”
To be perfectly honest, I have a problem with “artistic sensibilities” on the whole. If you want to puke paint on Lady Gaga and call it art, bully for you. Just don’t expect me to call it art. And if you want to poop paint-filled eggs out of your lady bits onto white paper and call it art, go right ahead. Just don’t ask me to buy it, love it, or call it art. And if you want to insert wool into your hoo-hoo and knit with it as it comes out, well fuck that shit. I mean really. That’s just taking the piss.
But back to copying. If you go with Mark Twain’s theory that “originality does not exist”,you might accept that everyone (yes, including “arteeestes”) has drawn on others people's images, works, looks, ideas, and processes to feed their creativity. And hell-lo, this is especially relevant to tattoo artists! For the love of all things that are holy, tattoo parlours have endless tattoo books and poster references in their waiting rooms from where you can select your tattoo. So duh! Don’t give me this preciousness about “copying” and your “art”. Maybe I can explain it by way of a fashion analogy: We can’t always be designers. Sometimes we have to be the seamstress who simply executes the design.
On that note, one of the words that’s bandied around a lot by tattoo artists is “trust”. I have a problem with this. There, I said it. See, telling your client that they need to “trust” you with something that you will have for the rest of your life (but that they will never see again), is like saying “Hey! Let’s have a baby together. But I only want to make it. You the one who has to live with it forever.” Also, jaaaaa, and um, sorry to hurt your feelings but what if I don’t like your doodle and now I’m stuck with it. Like forever.
Lastly, WTF’s with the heavy-metal? I get that you have to maintain your “cool” tattooee image but honestly, I can take the pain of the needle better than the pressure of having to pretend that I like men-screaming-in-pain kind of music. (I have a secret suspicion that when all the clients leave, the tattooists switch to Tchaikovsky or Carly Rae Jepsen.)
You know what the irony behind all this me-trying-to-look-cool for my reunion shit is? It’s that I can’t even claim that there’s some “deep meaning” behind the bear tattoo. It isn’t my “spirit animal” or "totem." It doesn’t remind me of a teddy bear I loved as a kid. And it certainly doesn’t reflect the constellations in any way. I only chose it because like a bear, I’m also big with soft edges, I love to sleep, I like eating fish and berries, and I also look really awkward when I run.
...
(As a side note, if we chose, say, a “Circus” theme for the reunion I could go as both the tattooed lady and the bearded lady at the same time. What can I say, perimenopause has a way of stimulating chin whiskers.)
