A Memento of loss, love and life

“Aren’t you worried about what you and your tattoos will look like when you’re old?”

It’s the question you hear a lot if you have ink on your skin. While the answer in my head is usually “fucking cooler than you’re going to look.” I usually smile politely and mumble something about them meaning something to me. But, why mumble?

Those that ask that question miss the point. They don’t see the real beauty of the tattoo and how the pain of its creation is long replaced by the splendour of the scar it leaves behind. The art on my body is a memento to the wounds of life, my life. They mean a lot to me, a hell of a lot, and I don’t need to mumble anymore. What will I look when I am old? Like I have a story to tell.

I was 35 when I got my first tattoo. Were there experiences in my life before this that I could have marked on my skin? Almost certainly. But they were mostly mistakes, failures and mental scars brought about my shortcomings in life and not something I wanted to commemorate on my body. I had always imagined my first tattoo would be celebratory, and in some ways, it was. But the first chapter of ink on my body had a lot to say. In 2015, a combination of life’s meteorites collided, and it was precisely the right time to commit art to my flesh.

Chapter 1 – C’est ne pas un Boba Fett

I make short films.

I am a Star Wars geek. I have been my whole life.

My favourite artist is Rene Magritte. The surreal is where I feel safe when the reality of life is so hard.

I’ve struggled with my mental health, and it has led me down many dark roads. In 2015, my Dad had a complete mental breakdown following years of having to struggle with the diagnosis and effects of the degenerative disease muscular dystrophy.

These are the facts of life which are represented in my first tattoo. It was a labour of love in more ways than one. The film collective I am a part of was making a short documentary film about British hand-poke tattoo Artist Tarly Marr.

The idea for the film was simple. We would intercut an interview with Tarly with footage of him hand-poke tattooing somebody. That somebody turned out to be me.

My brief to Tarly for my first tattoo was 'simple'. I wanted a piece that combined my favourite Star Wars character, Boba Fett, in the style of my favourite painter, Rene Magritte, and which conveyed the pain of mental health and the problems of my past and Dad’s present. Simple, right?

The genius of a great tattoo artist, however, is their ability to capture in one piece of art not what their client imagines in their mind’s eye but what they will feel in their heart when they see it.

I can still see the tears in my Dad’s eyes when I showed him the final piece on my forearm and explained what it all meant. How the inclusion of the semicolon was a recognized symbol for mental health and that this tattoo would always remind us of the pain we had felt as a family. For the first time in a while, that day I saw hope in his eyes.

A few months later, while I attended the Star Wars Celebration in London, England, my Dad took his own life.

Chapter 2 – The Lone Wolf

The night before my Dad died. He had worn a shirt with wolves on. It hangs now in my wardrobe at home- unworn since. For the first time in months, my Mum had said, he had smiled and seemed happy.

The days and weeks that followed his death are something of a blur - a whirlwind of pain, emotions and heartbreak. Life and logic unravelled, and we were lost. But there was one thing I knew almost instantly and that the second pictorial story for my skin had been written.

Again, I went to Tarly Marr with a brief. I told him about the wolf shirt. I told him about Penmon lighthouse on his home of Anglesey where we used to visit. And I asked if he could once again link it to another of my favourite artists, M. C Escher. And once again he delivered in image what my heart could not say. A lone wolf in black and white unravelling as my heart and mind had. A tattoo that allowed me to grief and now which every time I look at reminds me that the most demanding walk you ever make is the one you make alone.

Chapter 3 – Bridges and Lilies

Death is always followed by new life. And that happened in many ways for me following my Dad’s death. Bridges were formed as I reconnected with people, and foundations were laid for the incredible joy that comes from meeting someone and falling in love.

My third tattoo which goes around my right wrist is a depiction of the Menai Suspension Bridge. The bridge which took my Dad home when he visited. The bridge which inspired him to be an engineer. The visual reminder on my skin that the only way to cross a chasm of pain is to build a bridge.

On St Patrick’s Day 2017, I became an uncle for the first time. My niece, Lily, shared her birthday with Star Wars actor John Boyega. My fourth tattoo drew itself. It depicts John Boyega's character Finn's Stormtrooper helmet surrounded by lilies and shamrocks. I did have ‘a new hope’.

Chapter 4 – Aroha mai, aroha atu.

The first time I nearly got a tattoo, I was 18 years of age. I had just left school in the UK, and I had travelled half the world away to live and work in New Zealand for the year. Amongst incredible experiences and breathtaking sights, I made the best of friends with another English boy doing the same as me, Chris. Over the years he became like a brother.

Without warning, without reason following a bike ride, Chris died suddenly in 2017. The shock was soul-numbing. Chris’s comedy, his dancing, his animated eyebrows, his spontaneous outbursts of song, his comedy walks, his impressions, the joy he brought to any room he entered live on in my memory but he was gone. There are so many tales that I could share about him, but it wouldn’t even begin to convey to the man he was.

In every stumble and misfire, I have personally had he had always been there. Days after my Dad died, Chris got in his car and drove from the other side of the country to just listen, to just be there. A few weeks later, the same long journey, and he was back to attend my Dad’s funeral. That’s who Chris was.

You have some friends in life who when you introduce them to other groups of friends they have to come with a warning but not Chris. Chris was the friend I wanted everyone to meet. Entertainer, peacemaker, compassionate, fair and just simply a friend I always wanted in my corner.

The world without Chris is a sadder less fun place to be, but the world that he created which began for us both in New Zealand lives in my memories and that's a place that will remain happy forever and a place that I will always want to visit. Chris was a friend, I know, who made me a better a person, and who made me a better friend. He was a friend who inspired the best in others.

My fifth tattoo was a simple choice to remember Chris by - the outline of the beautiful country where we met and his initials written in morse code beside, Chris. A simple and understated tattoo that reminds me of my friend. Or as the Maori say ‘aroha mai, aroha atu. (Love received, Love returned).

Chapter 5 – DMC – 12

“You had me at 2,1,3.”

When the love of my life confessed to being a Back to the Future fan on our first date, she had me. When she described her preferred order of the films as part 2 first, part one second, and finally part three third. I realized she was my density, I mean destiny.

There was, therefore, only one way of declaring my undying love for her in the form of tattoo – a kick-ass depiction of the DeLorean DMC -12.

Chapter 6 – The Phoenix and the Dove

The last few years of my life since my Dad’s death have been hard. Do I talk about it as much as I should? Probably not. Other personal dramas have unfolded and the world on many days for many people everywhere feels so hard to get through. I am no different. But with the love of others, the belief of others and the faith of others, even the most wounded can heal.

Last year, for the first time in a long time, I felt liberated and reborn so I once again revisited my go-to tattoo artist Tarly Marr and asked for a glorious phoenix.

Not long after I became an uncle again when Baby Noah was born. The choice for my most recent tattoo was obvious and continuing the theme of my tattoos being inspired by artists that I love and while travelling in Sri Lanka, I had Picasso’s dove of peace tattooed on my wrist by Sajee Tattoo. A pictorial scar that not only marked the joy of becoming an uncle again but represented the inner peace I was feeling in life.

Chapter 7 - Where next?

Has marking my skin in coloured inks helped me heal? Without a doubt. Am I the only person who will write about the picture story of their skin? Of course not. Simply put, there are thousands of people like me out there who look down at their skin each day and are reminded by beautiful art where they have been and what they have been through.

The day might come when I am old, wrinkled and my skin doesn’t look as good and even worse my memories might have faded, but as long as I look at my flesh I will be reminded of the life I have led.

My body isn’t just a canvas. It’s a testament to my life, to those I have loved and to those I love. There are pages to be drawn for people, I hope, not yet born. And pages ready to commemorate those I fear to lose.

So if you are one of those people, please don’t ask a person with tattoos what they think they will look like when they’re old. Instead, sit down next to them and ask to hear their story. It is, after all, sharing our stories that make us human.