My Whole Expanse I Cannot See…

Tattoo by John, with typo correction (my fault) by Colt, Las Vegas Tattoo, Ybor City

So, this tattoo is from an Aimee Mann song, Looking for Nothing, off her gorgeous record, @#%&*! (Fucking) Smilers. Looking for Nothing is my favorite song on the record, it’s a really beautiful piece of writing. To me, it perfectly describes what it’s like to be surrounded by people, and feeling completely lost, not walking through life so much as drifting. Every-day is the same, nothing to look forward to, nothing that even hurts. Life without pleasure or pain, happiness or sorrow, passion or even anger. All you have is nothingness. You’re not dying instantly in firry car crash on your way to romantic night with your love, you’re dying by inches, over years, because you have absolutely nothing to live for, nothing to drift toward. When you have nothing, and nothing to reach for, you die from that LACK of motion.

For the last year-ish, I could relate.

Tattoo by Fish, Doc Dog’s Las Vegas Tattoo, Ybor City

So, this tattoo, number sixty-one, is off of Nirvana’s third and final studio record, In Utero, from the song, Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle. The song is a tribute to Frances Farmer, a late 1930s, 1940s film and stage actress who ultimately fell from grace due to alcoholism, depression and mental illness, several times involuntarily committed to mental institutions.

To me, the song kind of reflects the idea that one can’t simply be sad and fucked up. If you’re sad and fucked up, you’re damaged, broken. If you’re damaged, broken, you have to be locked away until you’re fixed. After Farmer’s first arrest, she was physically dragged from the court-house shouting, “haven’t you ever had a broken heart?” She felt persecuted for suffering a common life experience.

At some point, sadness stops being kind of a romantic source of creativity, and becomes a pure burden, heavy stones on your chest, even a punishable offense. لعبة عجلة النقود I think Kurt Cobain saw these things in Frances Farmer’s life, and in his own.

When I got this tattoo, last January or February, everything in my life started going completely sideways. كيفية لعبة روليت I was losing my health, my personal assistants, Monica, everything, and it all just hurt. Being sad had never hurt so much, being sad had never been so empty, and completely useless. I had no energy to fight, I didn’t feel like anything in my head was worth writing. 1xbet موقع I felt so absolutely, seemingly endlessly dark inside.

Hence tattoo number sixty-one.

So, on October fourteenth 2011 I got tattoo number sixty. Sixty tattoos. I meant to stop at this one, but just like I meant to stop at my FIRST tattoo, life gave me reasons to get more.

Tattoo by Fish, Doc Dog’s Las Vegas Tattoo, Ybor City

Previous tattoo continued…

At least it’s pretty.

Tattoo by Fish, Doc Dog’s Las Vegas Tattoo, Ybor City

So, this tattoo is from one of my absolute favorite Alanis Morissette songs, Purgatorying, off her mini-record, Feast on Scraps. I wouldn’t consider it a full studio-record, it was a CD that came bundled with a concert DVD. Purgatorying is probably the best song of the collection, Alanis originally started singing it in three parts during concerts. Anyway…

Purgatorying is about being invested, invested in something so much so that you’re completely numbed by it. You’re numb to all other aspects of your life, numb to everything outside of your life, numb to the fact that this thing or idea or life that you’ve given yourself to is actually damning you to nothingness.

The song is a very nice piece of writing. The part I have etched into my skin really captures how I’ve often felt, particularly when I got it, last Summer, this complete and total desire to be close to this one person, but nothing you think or feel or do or say will make them close. You’re just stuck.

So, I’ve done a pretty sorry job of explaining some of my more recent tattoos, which really goes against everything I’ve meant to do here.

I’ll re-visit the ones that need it.

Tattoo by Fish, Doc Dog's Las Vegas Tattoo, Ybor City

Tattoo by John, Doc Dog's Las Vegas Tattoo, Ybor City

I really don’t give a shit about explaining these, it doesn’t matter. I just want to post them with the rest before I go away.

Tattoo by Fish, Doc Dog's Las Vegas Tattoo, Ybor City

So, this is my fifty-sixth tattoo, I’m honestly running out of space. I mean, I could put little images all over me, but as far as full lines of text go, we’re getting toward the home stretch, I think.

This tattoo is from a Nirvana song, an early demo version of one of their most famous songs, Heart-Shaped Box. The demo’s off their With the Lights Out collection. I really like this version a lot, you can tell Kurt has the idea in his head, a song about an intense, crushing relationship with a woman, he has the sound figured out too, but he’s still sorting out the words and the imagery. I really like feeling like I’m sitting in on that creative process. He uses lots of funeral imagery, I’ve been buried in your heart-shaped box for weeks…Then the last line, the line etched into my upper-arm, I’ve been locked in heart-shaped coffins for too many weeks…

Now’s supposed to come the why of it, some sweeping narrative that would explain me. Honestly, I’m just tired. I experience those words every Goddamn fuckin’ day.

So, last night I got tattoo #54. I have at least posted a picture for every tattoo, except one… and now, two. Tattoo #54 is another that’s completely, totally mine. It’ll never get posted here, and the few people who will see it, they never get to know what it means, nobody does. Certain words don’t get seen, certain stories don’t get told. It’s from a really pretty, yet really raw, Nirvana song that no casual fan would know.

The only down side to this is that my friend, Dani, did the tattoo and nobody gets to see her work. She bought her own machine, gear, lugged it all to my place. She’s been asking for awhile to save one tattoo for her, so I did. I usually have everything done at Doc Dog’s Las Vegas Tattoo, but I think they’ll dig the idea of letting a budding artist have some practice. Dani’s really talented, has artistic mind, so I wasn’t scared she’d butcher me. I knew she’d do the words justice, and she did, it’s great, so I feel bad keeping it hidden, but she understands the whys.

Tattoo by Fish, Las Vegas Tattoo, Ybor City

So, this tattoo is from Aimee Mann’s highly acclaimed song, Wise Up, off the soundtrack for the film, Magnolia. I already wrote about Magnolia and Wise Up a few weeks ago, so I’m not going to do it in any great detail again here. Oh, don’t confuse the poppy as being part of this tattoo, it isn’t. Anyways, Wise Up is just a really beautiful song, the gist of which is life will continue to feel bad until you do something to make it feel good.

Right now, I just want to be next to someone, to hold her close, tell her how I love her so completely, ceaselessly. I’d sleep. It’s easy to sleep when I don’t feel like part of me is somewhere else. It’s easy to sleep knowing that when I wake up, I’ll see her exquisitely beautiful face. Her eyes would be all drowsy, but silently say that she loves me. She’d ask me if I slept any, she’d tell me about her crazy dreams. I haven’t been there in so long, but that’s how it was. I could wake up next to her every morning until I quit breathing, the permanent quit, every morning I’d feel blessed. She’s the only person who lights this empty place in my heart, it’s like a million little twinkly white Christmas lights strung all over a huge ferris-wheel. That’s how she makes me feel inside, bright and happy, like there’s adventure all around.

I want life to feel good, like I absolutely know it can, entirely. I mean, as dark as I get, it’s not because I believe life is just one concatenation of misery until you’re dead. I don’t think that at all. Life is something gorgeous, there’s been so much beauty and adventure in mine, so I know for a fact that life can be all puppies and flowers. There’s just this hole in me, this giant abandoned fairground that’s shrouded in sadness, loneliness. I’ve done some stupid, awful things trying to fill that place with light again, which only served to make that place darker, and lonelier. I need to wise up, that’s the point. Stop doing things that make me more empty, stop digging myself nice, deep holes. Don’t die this way.

I miss my light, more than I can explain.

Tattoo by John, Las Vegas Tattoo, Ybor City

So, this is from a Nirvana song, Blandest (Demo), which is off their With the Lights Out collection. I wonder how many songs from With the Lights Out would have been polished and put on studio records and become part of the broad lexicon of pop-culture rather than be these really obscure treasures that pretty much only Nirvana fans ever find. What if what if what if.

Anyway, you all puzzle out what if means and why it’s etched into my chest forever, my forever, at least. Leave comments, try to guess, whatever.