Remember the first tattoo you ever saw?
At A Glance Author Shamus Contact [email protected] IAM Shamus Greenman When N/A I do.
This isn't an experience in the normal sense, it isn't about the sting of the needle as it touches your skin or the sound of the buzz of the tattoo machine or even about the color of the ink as it flows out of the needle and into you, forming a piece of living art, becoming transforming and defining who you are, who you want and desire to be...completing you.
Still, it is as much a part of the process as any of those aspects of the tattoo, at least to me, maybe even more so, because the first tattoo I ever saw belonged to my Dad.
Memories are strange things, some are kept sharper then others, some fade with or over time. Some are lost forever, some stay with you for life. Still some resurface, seemingly from a part of yourself that has been locked or lost to you until they chose to one day come back to you, sometimes with the strength and force of a punch to the gut knocking the wind out of you making your head spin from the force sending you reeling or sometimes they sneak back in the most subtle and unnoticeable ways, and as a result, regardless of how when, or even why they came back to you, they inevitably affect your life and influence how you live it, and as a result, affect, shape and form who you, as a human being and how you live and experience your life...or, at least that is how it feels to me.
In my case, a man I knew for only 9 years, and the memories of him, who he was and how he lived. What he stood for and believed in, has had, at times the most profound and the longest lasting affect on who I am today, and in turn so has his absences for the last 28 years of my life.
See, my Dad died two days after Christmas, December 27th 1977. When I was 9 years old. So much about that night, and about him have shaped and formed my life and who I am, he and has death have imprinted themselves on me and played a roll in where I am today. Honestly, how could an event like watching and knowing, in the simplest and most honest way a 9 year old could, your Father was dying not? The events of that night shaped my goals, career choices...and have even been the inspiration and meaning behind some of my tattoos...but I never realized what part my Dads tattoo played in my opinion and subsequent attraction to and embracing of tattooing, body art and mods as a whole.
In the scrapbook of pictures I keep within my mind that is and are my memories I still see him through the eyes of a child, but now I look at him with the knowledge and mind of a grown-up, an adult, if I can honestly call myself that. As a man, who in fact is now close to the age he was when he passed away.
I feel that all tattoos are sacred in there own way, large or small, simple or complex. Even the ones we may sometime look back upon as a mistake or a bad idea. All were and are born of something. All came from somewhere, something, some event, or person, some image or the result of some time in our life. They all come too us from someplace near or far, from within ourselves or from outside us.
It's only recently that I've been able to understand how the firs tattoo I ever saw, the simple tattoo on my Dads forearm, that simple red heart with a banner like sash across the center of it with his name Mike spelled out on it has come back to me as more then just the memory of him, more then just the red and blue and black faded ink that made it up. More then his teasing me that if I touched it, it would rub off onto me. It's only now that seeing it comes back to me as more then that scrap book of a memory, it is part of the flash point inside myself that acted as the map that helped me start my journey, helping to contribute to me finding myself, finding my spirit and my belief in the tattooing of my own body, the spiritual nature it has come to represent too me, the extension of my inner spirit...of completing myself, and as much and as important a part in making me the human being, the MAN I am as the DNA he contributed to my actual creation.
I understand that just him having a tattoo, any tattoo, his tattoo, I understand simply that because my Dad had one, it gave me the experience to know, and accept that one day it would be ok for me to find my own way...and transform my body as he had...though I don't think he would have seen it exactly that way...as a transformation from one person into another.
I don't think we honestly give enough thought about or give credit to the impact of these events on the actual experience that we go through when we make the choice to "modify" our bodies. Which is why to me, this is a part of the experience of every tattoo that has found its way from that inner vision, from what I guess you could call my soul or my spirit to the outside of my being.
My Dads tattoo was my first exposure too body art and modification, though again I doubt my Dad would have ever called it that, too him I'm sure it was simply a tattoo. I'll never know why he got it, or how he felt about it, but that can be said about so many things when it comes to him.
Still, it has had an impact on me, and as such has affected who I am, and my views and choices to find myself through modification. While the tattoo itself has not been the inspiration for any of my own. And, not knowing the reasons behind him having gotten the tattoo or modifying himself per se, that aspect of it the not knowing why has not affect my choices to do so to my own body. The image of it, and the knowing he had a tattoo still remains one of the few things I can remember clearly about him, that time has not dulled or stolen from me. It remains one of the few lasting memories about a man who I never got the chance to fully know.
To me, my Dad, just having been my Dad would make him worthy of being part of all my experiences, not just the tattoos...but also every experience and every part of my life. In the end, that chance too have him around and experience my life with me was stolen one night...still.
My Dad and his memory are still a part of my life, and because of that he is still alive and his tattoo is as important a part of every one of my tattoos and the experience of them as the ink, the artist and the reason and meaning behind them.
In the end, isn't that what makes an experience an experience...the life experience behind it...that takes place...and in turn becomes our experience?
I do.