Tattoos are paradox: They're only cool, when the are new - 20 year old tattoos look like shit, they are not any more what they intended to be: to be where nothing has been just a while ago. It's not cool to have a tattoo, it's cool to have a tattoo done on blank skin.
At the same time they are made to last forever and not intended to be removed.
It's the paradox that makes them interesting and it's the paradox that motivate people to get some and why they want some that are not of a timeless design but, for example, something trendy like cartoon characters: Just an attempt to ignore that time can't be stopped to pass. Just the human fear to get old and die. To get something that's the coexistence of the moment, the newness and eternity. An immature refusal of the fact of aging in a world that always values the young higher than the old.
But as we know, not newness and eternity belong together but creation, fading and eternity.
Learn to get old and you'll learn to grow. Otherwise on some future day when you realize that you've finally gotten old, you'll die with an empty soul under your bleached scribbles.
At the same time they are made to last forever and not intended to be removed.
It's the paradox that makes them interesting and it's the paradox that motivate people to get some and why they want some that are not of a timeless design but, for example, something trendy like cartoon characters: Just an attempt to ignore that time can't be stopped to pass. Just the human fear to get old and die. To get something that's the coexistence of the moment, the newness and eternity. An immature refusal of the fact of aging in a world that always values the young higher than the old.
But as we know, not newness and eternity belong together but creation, fading and eternity.
Learn to get old and you'll learn to grow. Otherwise on some future day when you realize that you've finally gotten old, you'll die with an empty soul under your bleached scribbles.