Those who see the name/date tattoos might not realise it (indeed some who have them might not even know it) but those indelibly embedded characters are literally magical. “ I will never forget, and somehow, in some way, I will be better for it ”. Most importantly of all then, the fallible everyday you makes the oath to the inerrant all-knowing you. This is the domain of the omniscient, omnipresent other the elusive Higher Self whose wisdom we all appeal to, regardless of spiritual beliefs (or lack thereof). A promise made to the place we speak to when we ask an empty room where the hell our keys are, or why we drank so much last night the region we wish and we hope into. The promise of never forgetting is one the individual has made to the world at large, but more than that it is made to a realm beyond our own. The sentiment behind the commemoration may be summed up as “ I will never forget ”, but there is more to it than that. The name/date might be rendered in an aesthetically pleasing way but simply looking good is not the reason for having a name/date tattoo. Commonplace as they may be, these inscriptions are a perfect example of everyday magical thinking.Ĭhoosing to have these characters etched permanently into your flesh is not rational. While there are of course exceptions, the majority of these name/date tattoos are in commemoration of births and/or deaths.
One of the most ubiquitous kinds of tattoo I see on a daily basis here in Liverpool – on the street, at the shops, at the school gates, in the pub – are those of names and/or dates. This time however, I thought things through rather more carefully. Seventeen years later I have again opted to have ink inserted via needle into the layer of dermal tissue underlying my epidermis. I got my first tattoo when I was nineteen years old: a 2p coin sized yellow smiley with horns, surrounded by red flames (my children now refer to it as “ Mr.
That seems like a pretty believable statistic to me. So, taking into account the fact that I failed maths GCSE twice, I think that means that between Brits and Americans, roughly one in six people who are of legal age to get one has a tattoo. A corresponding 2013 survey of US adults found that 14% had at least one tattoo. The statistic crops up again and again if you’re reading tattoo related articles online, but has been upped ever so slightly in more recent pieces to “more than 20%”, just to be on the safe side. According to an online survey conducted in 2010, 20% of British adults had at least one tattoo.
0 kommentar(er)
