| At A Glance | |
| Author | jasonthe29th |
| Contact | jasonthe29th@bme.anon |
| IAM | jasonthe29th |
| When | Six months ago |
| Artist | Jonathan Pitcher |
| Studio | Alter Ego Tattoo |
| Location | Augusta, Georgia |
When I was junior high, a teacher noticed that I wasn't like the other students. I wasn't shy or deformed or anything, I just never read fictional books. I read the required stuff, but other than that it was mainly biographies or just general non-fiction. I understood that the real world was much more interesting than stories in books, and that more lessons could be learned from history than from fantasies. So one day a teacher gave me a copy of book that would turn out to be a great influence on my life.
Breakfast of Champions, by Kurt Vonnegut, jr.
The book is a fictional journey of two men who meet each other at troubled points in their lives. One man is a big man in a small town and the other is a small man traveling across old America. A lot of real world problems and injustices are addressed in the book. While the moral and truths that are told in the story, which include racism in corporate America, class ware fare, and pollution, the book remains light and very humorous. Throughout the book you can find several sketches done by the author himself. Simple illustrations that look like a child drew them on a post it note with a magic marker. These drawing include guns, a beaver, a catchers mitt and some other random things that I'm sure he only drew when he ran out of things to write. One of the pictures is of an old style bomb that was, in the story, to be dropped on Dresden. Before, the bomb was dropped, a message was written in it, the message is also the alternate title to the book.
GOOD BYE BLUE MONDAY
I wanted to incorporate that line into my design because that line stood out and meant something to me. To me it says that life goes on, shit happens, but it will be okay. Look towards the future and forget about yesterday. To me it's a message of optimism. I had decided that I wanted a tattoo that would be very recognizable to people familiar with the book. I narrowed it down to a few significant items and drew several sketches based on the pictures in the book. Nothing was really working and I wasn't too excited about the project by the time I had drawn 10th sketch. I guess I'm afraid that if I don't get it right the very first time, it just wasn't meant to be. You shouldn't have to over think the things that you put on your body. If you have to convince yourself that you like something, you will be trying to convince yourself for the rest of your life. A tattoo should be a part of your body, not just something on it.
As usual, after I had cleared my mind of it, I sat down and just drew the thing. It was right. I didn't have to convince myself. It was just right. I presented the drawing to my tattoo artist, Jonathan Pitcher, owner of Alter Ego tattoo in Augusta, Georgia. He and I are good friends so we usually trade services and keep things friendly. I went in on a night when he wasn't too busy and we got started. I'll be honest when I tell you that it must have taken 10 or 11 tries to position the stencil right where I wanted it. Not that I am hard to please it was just that the new tattoo was to be positioned in between two other tattoos and I really wanted them to line up straight. I wanted the tattoo, on the under side of my arm, sort of like Bill Cosby in Leonard 6. It was a tough place to get to and I ended up lying face down to get the work done. Jonathan likes to keep you in as natural of a position as possible, so the tattoo will look best while you are relaxed.
Off we went. Jonathan started with the thick black outlines, which have become a signature in my drawing style, but make for extra painful black work. The pain was not much different from my other arm tattoos, and it really wasn't anything I couldn't handle while I watched a DVD. After the outline was finished, we took a break, and I took a few minutes to admire my new piece in the mirror. I'm not a big bleeder, so it was relatively clean and looking really good.
This is the part where I think I might have made a mistake. It was a relatively cool night and we stood outside for quite some time talking to people and smoking and what not. By the time we went back inside the tattoo had started to swell up a little and it was rather sore. We sat down to color in the outline and it hurt worse than anything I've had done before. I could feel every needle poking in and out of my tender flesh for what seemed like an eternity. I am a very strong willed person, so mentally I could take the pain, but my body just couldn't. After finishing most of the color, I started to feel very ill. My stomach hurt and I was shaking and cold from not having a shirt on for so long. I had to call it quits. Until then I had never stopped before.
I had planned on going back the next day to finish up, but I was ill for almost two days. It was not a pleasant experience. My arm was killing me. It was hard to sleep face down with my arms at my side. The under side of your arm is a lot more sensitive than you might think. After a few days the soreness had wore off and the healing had started. It healed quite fast for as much as it hurt. It is not a spot that you bump a lot and doesn't rub against things. The colors stayed bright and the blacks are sharp. I only have one more color to add and it will be finished.
For some reason I feel more comfortable keeping an unfinished tattoo on my body. In the past when I had everything complete, I felt a need the bordered anxiety to get another tattoo. It almost feels like a fear that I will never get another tattoo. With one unfinished, I guess I feel a security that I will be in that chair again. I will finish the tattoo soon, as it has been a while now since I have been tattooed. In that time I have probably read Breakfast of Champions three or four times. It will always be with me as my tattoo will always be with me. I will continue to learn from it as I continue to learn from myself and be myself.
We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.