y'ever walk into work with puffy eyes and a thick throat,
but you weren't sick or hungover?
y'ever wonder what your client, who is getting his first tattoo,
must be thinking as he looks out at you in your car in the parking lot
animatedly talking to thin air with wild hand gestures?
yeah.
me too.
and then i barreled in like a wrecking ball,
wrecked and wreaking mayhem and havoc with my marky markers,
and i drew on and blasted off a big ol' tree for this kid's FIRST tattoo.
yuuup.
wanna see?
here:
one shot, one tree, one moon, one aquamarine crystal,
drawn up and tatted on and sent packing with time to spare.
why
because i had to put the oversaturated battle batteries to some kind of good use,
and i figured since he'd been awkwardly waiting for my phone call to end,
with no contact from me, despite being able to clearly see me....
maybe i should try to make it seem like i have some kind of professionalism.
(i may or may not,but i did go hard on this tattoo all the same)
i'd almost give credibility to the idea of a tortured artist being more creative,
except.........here's the thing.
i took advantage of the fact that he couldn't start without me,
and that's not the best foot forward.
and i tried to create a better experience despite starting off way behind schedule,
after i tried unsuccessfully to create balance or the semblance of it between
two out of many worlds i live in.
yeah.
i'd love to tell you that i'm one of the aesir
traveling between the layers of the world tree-
but that ain't me.
i've just got separate and unequal shares of spirit and memory
fractured and fragmented across a prism of whatever the opposite
of rose-colored perception is.
y'feel me?
no?
well, look man-
i've got my work life, at AMPERSAND TATTOO,
and all the albie rock you could ever handle happening therein;
i've got my home base at the Folk Life & Liberty Fortress, and too much old,
broken, busted, cold cavernlike dwelling and dwelling to do within those thin walls,
including dragging crabtree around and hoping that will ever feel easier,
and desperately trying to be excited about all the things i used to be so excited about,
and wishing that still felt good;
i've got the weird and wintry stormswept aches and pains of my past stretching
from downstate new york to western massachusetts these days,
with silence and violence and the distance that distance and age
create between family members slowly and subtly overlapping in flowery
asterisks of ven diagram spiral;
and i had the thriving and growing and glowing little lives in the middle of nowhere,
new hampshire, getting bigger and better in the secluded oasis of small town american life.
that's a lot to account for.
and every day, the one thing that actually makes any of it possible is tattooing.
the curse of being a tattooer?
once you're in it, what the F* else are you ever gonna do?
like a mafia where you basically put out a hit on yourself,
and then also do the hit on yourself, just by doing the thing you do.
so shoutouts to tattooing for creating every interaction,
and also ruining every interaction i've had for twenty years.
that's a hard-styled biodome of closed-loop recycling if ever i heard one.
the ebb and flow of all my life has one baseline that stays steady and consistent-
work.
work work work work work.
the highest highs and lowest lows weave through the one constant that keeps me alive.
i. go. to. work.
and that's it.
sometimes, i do it while i'm broken in body,
other times when i'm broken of heart,
and occasionally, when i'm broke, broken in spirit,
and disconnected from the collective soul of the secret universal plan.
i'm not very spiritual, kids.
but i tapped back into some art making outlets yesterday,
and dug deep with more silence than i usually allow,
and made it work, at work, at least,
and worked as hard as i could for as long as it took.
why?
because when all else has gone wrong,
and all is lost, and all of that sort of sad sh!t is everywhere?
working more always feel right, because that math makes sense.
being sad doesn't generate revenue,
therefore it's a luxury,
and luxuries are expensive.
emptiness isn't going to pay for itself;
never quiet, never soft.....
No comments:
Post a Comment