Saturday, November 07, 2015

Tattoos

What tattoos you have and if they have meaning:

I have three tattoos. The first was done in the field during lunch in junior high, back in the late seventies or very early eighties. We used a pin and a bottle of ink. If the lunch bell hadn’t rung, I would have a Black Sabbath styled cross on my right wrist. As it is, I have something that looks either like a lightning bolt or the Sowilo (sun) rune, which is the rune of guidance, goal setting, and success. When kids ask about it, I tell them that Voldemort tried to kill me but I put up my arm to block his spell, hence the lightning bolt shaped scar on my wrist, instead of on my forehead like the one Harry Potter has.

The second tattoo is of a crow. I got it in Flint, Michigan in 1995 while on a road trip with my friend, Chad. On our way to Flint, we kept encountering crows, and while in Flint, I took advantage of the fact that one of Chad’s friends owned a tattoo shop. These days, Chad has a much bigger and more intricate tattoo of a crow himself, across his chest like the boy in Santa Sangre. Chad also sung at my wedding to Jeanine almost exactly three years ago. Oh, and these days we both call ourselves “Crow”, me for work, and him because it’s an abbreviation of a family name. Chad sings and plays washboard on this album, which features a song called General Crow.

The third tattoo I got while I was married to Jen, or perhaps almost married to Jen – sometime in 2002 or 2003, I think. I got the image out of a Brian Froud book – it’s of a wood faerie playing what looks like a sitar. At the same time, she got a tattoo of a lavender faerie on the small of her back. I think, from what Willow has said, that she regrets having it now. I like my wood faerie though. It doesn’t have any real meaning – although at the time, the fact that Jen and I got our tattoos together did.

I have no plans to get more tattoos, although I know who I would get them from if I ever change my mind. Josh Visher, an old coworker of mine from my Tower Books days is now a phenomenal tattoo artist. Check out his work here.

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