Body art seems more and more popular at present and to be sure some of the tattoo artists out there are amazingly creative and talented. My own body remains unadorned in this way and is very likely to remain so. Whereas I am full of admiration for people who know what they want their own skin to look like twenty, thirty or even fifty years down the line I have never felt able to make the same confident commitment. For sure there are those who have perhaps not given the matter sufficient thought before going under the needle. I vividly remember seeing a bikini clad woman some years ago who had herself adorned with the image of some popular singer rather to the left of and below her navel. Clearly she had never had the experience of drawing on and then inflating a balloon and clearly she had not foreseen the consequences for this image of getting pregnant. Accordingly, the singer’s head was grossly distorted by her swelling belly in a manner that put me in mind of the Mekon, an evil mastermind from the Eagle comic whose head was shaped like a light bulb.
It seems a much-overlooked truth that the person who inhabits our skin is subject to change as we pass through life. I look back at my late teenage and early twenties self with a mixture of mild embarrassment and occasional shame. The person I was then (as is disclosed in some old sketchbooks I have retained) had a penchant for doom-laden images of flaming skulls and snake entwined edged weapons. However much I disapprove of this long vanished version of me I can at least congratulate him for not having had these interests translated into tattoos, for not having inflicted on my fifty-year old self the indelible evidence of a temporary state of mind.
I suppose those of us more timid in these matters might consider it unwise to make any permanent alteration to our bodies in the name of anything as transient as fashion. I once conceived an affection for a denim Levi jacket, wore it whenever circumstance would allow (and on other occasions besides). However, I am heartily glad that I did not have it welded permanently to my body. The same is true of my hair. During the nineteen eighties I thought it would be a great thing to sport a fine flowing mullet. How wrong I was. What if it had been possible to have this style permanently set in place? Fortunately, I no longer have the material resources to sport any kind of hairstyle but to be saddled with this in perpetuity would have been a very grave affliction.
In conclusion I should say that I rather envy those who have tattoos the strength of their convictions. To look into the future and to be able to state with certainty that they will always wish to present that appearance to the world seems to me to represent a boldness of spirit that I can never hope to aspire to. Tattooed people, I salute you.