Had I got any tattoos when I first wanted them, I would’ve been the only middle schooler in Hawaiʻi with THUG LIFE scrawled across my belly. (I was a big 2-Pac fan). Thankfully, I postponed the decision to get a tattoo until I was 29, opting instead for a shark on my leg.
Once the seal was broken I got three more within a year: a picture of my hometown mountain, Olomana, in the traditional Korean color palette called obangsaek; a snake curling around a skull containing the word 초심 (pronounced “cho sim”), which means “a beginner’s mind,” or more broadly the eager, excited feeling you get when you do something for the first time; and a tiger. I eventually got a fifth tattoo, but we’ll get to that one later.
At a distance, there’s not much of a unifying theme from one piece to the next. There are obvious Korean influences, since I got most of them from Korean artists while living in Korea. But that has little to do with thematic aesthetic and more to do with circumstance and proximity and the fact that Seoul is rich with world-class artists. Besides, my first tattoo has nothing Korean about it.
I don’t think anyone needs a unifying theme for their tattoos, or any other kind of justification, but there are stories behind my ink. I mean that literally.
My shark tattoo was from a short story I had written; Olomana was from a novella; 초심 was a nod to a blog I used to write with a friend; and my tiger was from an essay. I know what you’re thinking, dear reader, and no, I did not forget to hyperlink the works my tattoos are from. Those links don’t exist, because the works were never published (though my old blog is still out there, irregularly yet dutifully updated by my former blog partner). If the pieces were successful, I’m not sure I would’ve gotten the tattoos I did.
There are plenty of “why I write” origin stories, but all of them share the same detail: getting rejected and choosing to keep writing anyway. Failed projects are stripes earned. William Faulkner famously kept record of his rejections from literary magazines, while Ray Bradbury and Stephen King decorated their walls with rejection slips. Mine adorn my skin.
Tattoos signal a commitment to artistic seriousness. Tattoos — like writing, or any other art we create or experience — are “permanent” in a solipsistic sort of way; they last for as long as we do, in physical form or memories. But eventually my skin will wither and desiccate, and me and my work will be long forgotten. Death is our collective and inexorable inheritance, and so too is failure. We tend not to think of either as beautiful, but I’m not convinced that has to be the case. The Human Effort — or at least one of them — is the ceaseless drive to cultivate meaning when there doesn’t seem to be any, to pull purpose from tragedy, to forge beauty from failure.
I got my fifth and most recent tattoo a few days before we moved back home from Korea. My wife and I got matching dragons on our calves in different colors, because we wanted to get something cool together before we left. The dragon bucks the pattern of tattoos for failed writing, but it still ends up in the same place. Beauty is its own purpose, for which no justification is needed, and maybe its pursuit — through failure and in spite of death — is the point of it all.
Check out my tattoo artists:
Reads from January
The Dangerous Decline of the Historical Profession by Daniel Bessner, New York Times
'Plane' Perfect Gerard Butler Movie, Go See by Vince Mancini, Uproxx
We Should Rethink Our Housing Priorities While Waiting For The World To Change by Neal Milner, Honolulu Civil Beat
The Diamond In The Dirt: 50 Cent’s Get Rich Or Die Tryin’ Turns 20 by Casey Taylor, POW
You Don’t Know How Bad the Pizza Box Is by Saahil Desai, The Atlantic
Does Horror Infect or Protect? by Jason Ray Carney, Los Angeles Review of Books
Books of January
Kubrick by Michael Herr
Herr, who wrote arguably the best and most influential book on the Vietnam War, became good friends with Stanley Kubrick, who made arguably the best and most influential films of the 20th century. Kubrick was first published as a pair of essays in Vanity Fair after Kubrick died. It’s Herr’s tribute to a friend and fellow artist whom he deeply admired. Come for the intimate vignettes of a singular auteur, stay for the insightful and incisive writing about art and film.
The Big Drop: Homecoming and Impermanence by Ryan Gattis
The Big Drop is one story split into two novellas. It follows ex-military translator Johnny Ban, who kills a yakuza goon and is forced to take his place tracking down a wanted woman who also happens to be Ban’s first love. It’s great LA noir, with all the accoutrements you want from the genre: violence, betrayal, mystery and intrigue. And the writing is sharp as ever. But having read all but one of Gattis’ books (he was one of my writing teachers, and continues to be a mentor of sorts), it’s clear to me this story was an important transition to get to where he is now. The Big Drop novellas are good, very good even, but if you want to see Gattis at his best, start with All Involved, Safe or The System.
Writing from January
I took on the sexy topic of zoning laws, and how they exacerbate the housing crisis.
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