There is an old saying to the effect that knowledge never is wasted. Some people learn skills for practical purposes. I was fascinated by books and lettering as long as I can remember. From the age of two or three, I loved to look at the page of a book or periodical while some one else read it aloud. From the age of five, I had an ambition to become a writer and in fact, wrote a little 'book' of my own. My own reasons for learning any skill, however, seldom has been truly practical and certainly never was prompted by the desire to make money. (I am no longer proud of this character trait and now consider it a flaw rather than a virtue!)
I loved lettering almost as much as the words themselves and calligraphy fascinated me from my earliest days. I began to practice different alphabets, however, mainly because I was left-handed and found that conventional teaching of lettering at school did not really help me. I could not place the paper the way I was told, nor could I hold the pen at the same angle as other students. Stupidly, the teachers I had when very young did not make any allowances for the left-handed student... I therefore found books of my own and taught myself to write in a fine hand. Actually, I ultimately devised my own calligraphic alphabet and was quite chuffed when three friends and family members asked for a copy in order to learn and use it themselves! Even to this day, the handwriting of two of those individuals is closer to my original lettering than my own now as I developed a simpler style ultimately.
My mother suggested that I use the skill to create wedding invitations and menus but I found that difficult because I am a perfectionist and I would develop so much anxiety when faced with the creation of the 'final copy' that I almost invariably would make a silly error. I used my knowledge of calligraphy therefore to write letters and greeting cards to friends and family. I never, never dreamed that I would design a calligraphic tattoo.
My daughter is an amazing girl. I never desired to create a little duplicate of myself but although she is very different from me, I do see some of my own headstrong, stubborn and individualist nature in her. There are some skills that she learned for my sake originally. Taekwondo is one of them, although she has surpassed me, having attained the rank of 2nd Degree Dan or black belt. Although I doubted for a time that she would embrace a love of reading with the fervour that I had, she has become a serious reader and is a wonderful writer. She has a sharp wit and is very vocal, although far more ready to make sexual innuendos than I ever was. She is from a different background and a different generation from mine, of course, but apart from that, she is very much 'her own person'.
From the age of 13, she was determined to have tattoos. I forbade it and kept her from doing it until she reached the tattoo 'age of consent' which is 18. As a mother, I have been bedevilled by the complexity of my ethical duties, feeling that I constantly am sailing between the shipwrecking threats of Scylla and Charybdis. On the one hand, I feel obligated to exercise the 'voice of caution' when she has desires that could be life-changing. On the other hand, I do admire courage and individuality and I am not about to become a hypocrite who attempts to crush my daughter's spirit and unique character.
Where tattoos or skin art is concerned, I admit a certain social prejudice that is a product of my own upbringing. 'Nice girls' in Western civilisation did NOT have tattoos until quite recently. My mother went further in declaring that nice girls did not have pierced ears. At the age of 16 at University far from home, I immediately went off to a local practitioner to have my ears pierced. The fact that he did a terribly job is neither here nor there. Later, a boyfriend of mine gave my ears a second piercing using no more than a needle and a potato and the result was far more professional. I regret the initial bad piercing simply because it never became any better and I have had to deal with it for years but now, almost every girl has pierced ears and I doubt they even make those old torture implements known as 'clip earrings' that gave the wearers terrible headaches. I tried a pair of my mother's clip earrings once and had a frightful headache within minutes...
Having been sent to Nepal as a child to experience a culture that revelled in jewellery, where earrings were as important to a girl as bangles, the love of ornamentation has been very much a part of my adolescent and adult life. I could no more live without bangles or earrings than I could live without clothes. Despite my mother's opinion that I 'looked like a gypsy', I continued to bedeck myself with gold and jewels and still do. One of my favourite arias is Marguerite's aria in Faust wherein she discovers a casket containing a treasure trove of jewellery and is transported with utter delight as she bedecks herself with them, declaring that she feels like a princess:
Marguerite's 'Jewel' Aria from Faust
The incomparable Victoria de los Angeles sings the aria here. Both the music and the voice of the singer display all of the exuberance of youth and the innocence of Marguerite without any foreshadowing of her ultimate doom.
'Ah! Je ris de me vois si belle en ce miroir.... Est-ce toi, Marquerite?... Non, c'est la fille d'un roi qu'on salut au passage!'
'Oh I laugh to see myself so beautiful in this mirror.... Is it you, Marguerite? ... Is it still you? No, it is the daughter of a king that one salutes in the passage!'
The sad part of all this is that it is on the advice of the crafty Devil, Mephistopheles, that Faust places the casket of jewellery where Marguerite will find it, in his plan to seduce her. The innocent girl reacts as expected:
'Ah, s'il etait ici! S'il me voyait ainsi! Comme une demoiselle il me trouverait belle.'
'Ah, if he were here! If he were to see me thus! As an aristocratic lady, he would find me beautiful...'
The poor simple girl has no self-confidence and it is only with the valuable and glittering jewels that she feels she could attract his notice, little realising that it is her utter vulnerability and naivete that draws her to him.
This is all beside the point, however, which is that the song joyfully expresses a young girl's rapture as she tries on each new item of jewellery and captures my own emotions as a young girl whenever I wore a pretty ring or set of bangles, even if the bangles were glass and not gold.
Oh, the meandering that is possible when one writes a post on a weblog... How far have I wandered here from calligraphy and the connection may not become clear until now: Yesterday, I designed a calligraphic tattoo for my daughter, after attempting frutlessly once again to persuade her to wait before she committed another indelible design to her own body.
Freya is terrified of needles for some reason, probably because as a five-year old child, she was taken to the local doctor by her uncle for a routine visit on a day when I was working. I had no idea that she would be given 5 jabs or injections and evidently it was a very traumatic experience. It was the first time she had gone to a doctor without me and in every other case when she had been given an innoculation, I held her on my lap and diverted her. (I had a traumatic experience of my own when, at the age of 10, I had to have 8 different innoculations in the space of 10 days before I went to Nepal and one of them hit a nerve... so I do understand, although I lost my fear of needles long ago.)
It is characteristic of Freya that she would challenge her own phobia by determining that she would have a tattoo on the inside of her wrist, the place that she felt was most vulnerable and where she feared a needle most. The tattoo? 'Conquer Your Fears'.
The best argument I could summon was the fact that it would be in a location that might clash with formal attire at some point. Not much of an argument really. The inside of the wrist is a very discreet location and one could wear a diamond bracelet on that wrist to a gala event and no one would see the tattoo unless she wanted to expose it.
Furthermore, she made a rather impressive statement when she declared: 'I don't know why people undervalue tattoos. They can be fully as valuable and beautiful as jewellery.'
Quite so. Even if I say so myself, having designed it, her new tattoo is very elegant.
I actually designed her first tattoo as well. It is a bind-rune of her name Freya and it is on her foot. Visible but discreet as well as one need only wear stockings to conceal it. She obtained her first tattoo to celebrate her 'coming of age' last August and I accompanied her and obtained a tattoo of my own. I wrote about that in another post. It was an extraordinary experience of bonding with my own child. I never would have imagined when I was her age that I would agree to a tattoo of any kind, although I always understood the potential shamanic significance of the act.
Mine is not a bind-rune, although that would be fitting as I worked with runes most of my adult life. Mine is the sigil of the Emperor Napoleon, a childhood idol of mine. Freya wants me to have another tattoo now and if I committed myself to that, I would have my own bind-rune incised upon my skin this time. In fact, it is rather curious that I chose Napoleon's sigil first rather than my own bind-rune design, especially as Freya took a bind-rune for her first 'ink'.
I am as much of an individualist as my daughter but I became rather schizophrenic in my attitudes when I assumed the mantle of motherhood. I try to be so responsible and far more conservative than I would be if my own destiny alone were considered. The fact that Freya was able to persuade me to obtain a tattoo last year to celebrate HER eighteenth birthday shows how strong the 'conservative maternal' side of my persona is in truth.
In any case, it gives me a curious pride to know that my daughter chose to have two of MY designs engraved on her skin and I am rather touched that she did, although she almost ruined it by saying, 'Well, I'd rather have calligraphy done by you than some crap writing done by somebody else!'
