Well, here we are folks!  It’s four weeks into 2012, and Sue and I have some HUGE stuff on the burners, but we’re going to wait until it’s official to tell you.

In case you were curious about the backpiece process (I know this might be a little redundant from the previous post), here’s a preliminary sketch that I did for Sean’s back in July.  I took a photo of his bareback (ass and all) and then drew on a printout of the photo.  There was some unsavory hijinks that revolved around that photo of Sean, but it’s not for public consumption.  Ask me about it at the shop, and I’ll tell you the story.  

Based on that first sketch, I did some refined, bigger sketches of the snake and eagle, got rid of some skulls, and added some maple leaves. Sean, by the way, is an eff-ing animal. He gets tattooed like a freakin’ honey badger.  What’s his favorite dinosaur?  The Tatt-a-saurus Rex.  His favorite animal?  The Tats-manian Devil.  His favorite architectural work?  The Tats Mahal.  His favorite superhero?  The Ink-credible Hulk.  His favorite Star Wars planet?  Tattooine.  Yup- that Sean loves him some tattoos.

And here’s a sweet little nerd tat-job that I did on a client- a book tattoo!  Viva le Geek!

And I’ve started writing drafts of some future blog entries on: tattooing celebrities and my two cents on yet more reality tv tattoo shows.  Stay tuned, friends.

I think this will be our last post of 2011, so thanks for reading and commenting (or just reading and lurking)!  Now that our techno-woes have subsided a bit, I’ll try to get back on posting bi-weekly in the new year.  Please be safe and take the time to enjoy your loved ones this holiday season.  They’re all that really matter- even more than tattoos.

And here’s a funny dialogue between me and a client recently.

Me:  You old timers and your romanticization of the 70′s…

Murph:  Well, we smoked a lot of pot in the 70′s.  A lot.

Me:  Oh yeah?  How much?  A ton?  Or… a Framp-ton?

 A client of mine , E., recently got back from Libya- that’s right, LIBYA- where she was volunteering as a nurse in the city of Bengazi, the rebel-controlled stronghold.  Libya?!  You might know Libya from such shows as Khaddafi Duck; Oil, Oil, Toil, and Trouble; and CSI: Misrata Files.

Libya?!  Amazing, right?  My client, E., is pretty amazing- taking a month off from the security and comfort of her life in Maine to help some people who are fighting- literally- for their lives.  There’s nothing like caring for someone’s rocket/grenade/tank inflicted wound to put into perspective the picayune pettiness of our quotidian quibbles.  I felt a little dumb for complaining that my home wireless network wasn’t working with my iPhone when I heard about what she had been doing over the summer.  Woe is we, indeed.

The unexpectedly funny thing?  The rebel soldiers were enthralled by her tattoos because they had never seen a modern, color tattoo.  E. said that some of the wounded rebels- rebels recently shot by a rocket/grenade/tank- were getting up from their gurneys and taking pictures of themselves with her tattoos.  A lot.

Did I expect E. would love her tattoo?  I sure hoped so.  Did I ever think that Libyan rebels would be admiring my work and taking pictures of themselves with it?  No way.

It’s the little thing that you never think of that may have some impact on someone somewhere in an unforeseen way.

Maybe we can all live our lives with this thought in mind.

I tattoo many clients from the greater Boston area, and one of these clients, Matt, is an apprentice at a tattoo shop in Boston.  Matt’s a swell guy- upstanding, kind, and all-around solid mensch- the kind of guy you’d want to introduce to your sister if he doesn’t mind my saying so.

At the Boston Convention this year, Matt was working with Gomineko Books at their booth.  Crystal, the owner of Gomineko Books, lives and works in Japan, importing and publishing Japanese reference books for tattooers and tattoo collectors.  With her fluency in Japanese and Japanese culture, she has access to parts of Japan that few gaijin ever see.

For this year’s Boston Convention, Crystal also brought Horimasa, who tattooed at the convention and gave seminars on tebori (traditional Japanese hand-tattooing).  Horimasa was also signing copies of his book if you purchased a copy at the show, so of course, I got in line to get a personally signed copy for myself.

Here’s the story:

As I clutch my copy of the book and start walking away, Matt calls over to Horimasa.  “Master Horimasa, that’s Phuc- he’s the one who’s been tattooing my arm.”  Horimasa stops what he’s doing and motions for me to come over to him and Matt. 

I poop my pants.

Horimasa takes Matt’s forearm (I tattooed a baku on it) and looks at it stoically.  “You tattoo?” he says, holding Matt’s forearm and slowly turning it over  from side to side to inspect it.

“Yes,” I say, as poop continues filling my pants.

There is a long pause. “Strong face,” he says.  Another long pause.  “Very good,” he says.

Holy crap.  Horimasa just looked at a tattoo that I did and said, “Very good.”  (Incidentally, his English is not very good.)  I am over the moon, barely muster a thank you, bow politely to him, and run away.  I see Sue at the photocopier and relay the whole thing to her as I poop my pants some more.

A few hours later, Matt comes over to my booth says, “Horimasa wants to look at your portfolio.”

I poop my pants.

I lean over to Sue and tell her to pull a few pages out of my portfolio- older tattoos that just aren’t representative of my work.  She yanks them out just as Horimasa comes over.  I stop what I’m doing and greet Horimasa.  He looks at my work for about fifteen minutes, smiles a bit, doesn’t say much, and says goodbye.  I bow politely again and poop my pants because a Japanese master has just perused my portfolio.

I go back to working, and in the early evening, Matt comes over again.  “Horimasa wants to watch you tattoo.”  ARE YOU KIDDING ME?  I poop my pants as Horimasa comes over to watch me tattoo an octopus.

“Ah- tako,” he says, which is just Japanese for octopus.

“Yes, tako,” I say, sounding like an idiot.  He watches me work for about ten minutes while I tattoo and poop my pants at the same time.

That night over dinner, Sue and I recount the surreality of having Horimasa inspecting my work and watching me tattoo.  I am feeling incredibly humbled and honored.

On Monday- the final day of the convention- Sue and I are strolling into the convetion hall, coffee in hands and bleary eyed.  Crystal, from Gomineko Books, comes up to me.

“Horimasa would like you to tattoo him.”

“What?”

“We’re all getting souvenir tattoos at the convention, and I asked Horimasa if there was anyone that he wanted to get tattooed by, and he said you.”

“Can you talk him out of it?”  I really said this.

“No- it’ll be fine.”

“Okay- well, what does he want?”

“It’s easy- a skull, but without the bottom jaw”

“Oh.  Okay- that sounds easy enough.  Where does he want it?”

“On his neck, behind his ear.”

“Oh no.”  I poop my pants and throw up a little in my mouth.

I think I may have done a little Wayne’s World type I’m-not-worthy begging, but it is a no-go.  The man wants what he wants.

We figure out that I can tattoo him at 6pm when I finish my last appointment.  Of course the day crawls by, and when 6pm comes, the stencil machine breaks, so I can’t make a stencil of the little skull that I’ve drawn.  Plan B: draw a hand stencil and get to it.

Horimasa couldn’t have been nicer- he’s eating a lollipop when he comes over, smiling, and he says, “Nervous.” 

I laugh, point at myself, and say, “More nervous.”

And there you go- 20 minutes later, Horimasa has a brand new behind the ear skull, and I have pants full of poop again.  Most important, I have had the amazing honor to tattoo Shodai Horimasa.  Thank you!

Some tattoo collectors get tattoos because they think the imagery is beautiful, while others are looking to wear an ideology or a symbol.  For lack of better terms, I will label the former group as aesthetic clients (tattoos for their looks) and the latter as semantic clients (tattoos for their meaning).  I like labeling people (and jars of preserves).

A client who gets a phrase like carpe diem is getting a semantic tattoo.  Obviously, they can choose to beautify the phrase with fancy script or garnish it with a skull or flowers, but the primary drive for the tattoo is to send a message (maybe to themselves, maybe to the world) that they are, indeed, seizing the sh!t out of the day.

Aesthetic collectors are compelled by the beauty of a design first and foremost.  The tattoo can certainly have deeper meanings, but the collector can choose to explain what the tattoo means or not.  To the public, the aesthetic tattoo is the image first.  Maybe it’s a bird, maybe it’s a plane, maybe it’s Superman.  I’d like to point out that the common passerby doesn’t usually demand to know the meaning behind symbols that are familiar to them.  It seems that if the tattoo is of an image that tickles a Jungian chord in their soul, they don’t need to dig deeper into the meaning.  For example, no one has ever asked me what the skull on my leg means, as if the meaning of the skull were a) so apparent that it precluded asking, or b) so creepy that they didn’t want to know.

“Hey, what’s that skull on your leg mean?”

“It means that I am a cannibal.”

“Really?”

“No.  But people do taste like chicken.  Just kidding.  Not really.”

“You’re weird.”

“You’re delicious.”

Also, as tattooers we can sometimes divide ourselves into the same camps.  My friend Jen Moore at Sanctuary Tattoo practices tattooing as a healing art form, so her clients’ projects are consistently semantic.  I used to tease her and say “Hey, Jen!  See this dragon on my arm?  Do you know what it stands for?  NOTHING!  IT’S JUST A DRAGON!  Hahahahahahaha….”

I’ve made some gross oversimplifications in this blog entry, but through the process oversimplification, I’ve sometimes facilitated clients in focusing their tattoos.  Sure, you’re getting a portrait of your mom, but do you need to have the word mother above it?  If so, is it because you don’t know that it’s your own mother?  Or do you want everyone else to know that it’s your mother?  Is the tattoo aesthetic, semantic, or both?  Or is it overly semantic when it would be just fine as a purely aesthetic project? 

Most times, tattoos are an amalgam of both aesthetic and semantic.  And perhaps by not labeling the tattoo at all, it will actually be free to grow and change with you?  That’s what I tend to think, but as a lifelong aesthete, I’ve always had anti-semantic opinions. 

Time to get asthmatic on some aesthetics!  Here are some in progress pieces and a few small finished tattoos (just in case you think I don’t actually finish any tattoos).