Burning Ink & Body Mods

[trilobyte]

Taking a cue from a post from DrYes in some other thread...

Burning Man was also somewhat responsible for my first tattoo. I wonder how common that is? I'd bet we're far from alone.

Has Burning Man either influenced or inspired you to get a tattoo (or some other body modification)? I know I'm interested in hearing about it - would you care to share your stories?

[remi]

I have a regular burn effigy tattoo on the back of my right calf. It was my second tattoo. I had it done by someone that came down with me (it was his first festival.) I thought it would mean more to me by having it done by a friend who was with me, compared to having a big extravagant one done by a pro. I don't regret it at all. You can see imperfections if you look at it close up.. but I love it, and wouldn't change it for the world.

[DrYes]

Coincidentally my most recent blog post was partly about how Burning Man led me to get my first tattoo. The whole thing is here - http://www.burn.life/blog/burn-gloriously - but copying and pasting the relevant part, without pics below.

Sorry if it's a little dreamy-eyed for this board, but it's how Burning Man makes me feel!

I'll tell you a story. It's a true one.**

Once, there was a young boy named Robert. He loved dinosaurs and would stomp around the yard all day pretending to be a T-rex. *stomp roar roar stomp stomp* People knew him and were afraid, because, after all, he was a T-rex!

Then one day, his father said to him, "Son, you're 17 years old now. It's time to stop being a dinosaur and go make something of yourself."

"Ok," thought Robert to himself, "I'll go to college, get a job, make some money, and then go back to being a dinosaur."

You know what happened though? Somewhere along the way, Robert started fitting in. Whether it was college, or career or family, suddenly he was just another guy, invisible. He certainly wasn't a dinosaur, stomping around and terrifying the passers-by.

And worse, he eventually realized that he forgot how to be a dinosaur. That part of him was lost, or at least pushed so far down inside that the best he could do was mewl a bit, not let loose the kind of terrifying roar it takes to call yourself a proper Tyrannosaurus Rex.

What's the moral of the story? Don't lose your inner dinosaur, right? Or put another way, "Risk being seen in all your glory." [Note: This refers to a video in the blog post.]

Myself, I'm more of a dragon guy than a dinosaur guy, and after a particularly hard and stressful period at work a number of years ago, culminating in having to sell (for pennies on the dollar) the company I was running and had co-founded, I felt like I had lost my dragon. I wasn't me any more. All I had done for the previous few years was work.

Up until starting that company, I had taken a fair amount of pride in being, publicly and privately, whoever the hell I wanted to be. But I raised a bunch of money and the pressures of work and investors really wore me down. Had things been going well, it likely would have been a different story but a couple years of feeling impending doom will get to you, especially when it's your job to remain cheerfully optimistic to inspire the troops.

I was not really familiar with Burning Man at that point, but nonetheless, at the invitation of a friend, three weeks later I was at BM for the first time. It was...god, I don't even know how to describe it. It was every motherfucking thing I needed in my life right about then. I'm getting a little teary just remembering the feeling of freedom and sheer joy that first time out there.

By the time I came back to reality, my inner dragon was back, and I got my first tattoo to commemorate it (of a simple little dragon).

Burning Man helped me get my dragon back, and helped me remember to stop giving so many fucks about what people think of me, because on the playa the possibility space of how you can express yourself without harsh judgment by those around you is so much greater than in most of the rest of the world.

That remains one of my favorite things about Burning Man too. I'm an outgoing introvert generally but at Burning Man I turn into a raging extrovert, and it's fantastic. It's made me a more social person in general, even if I'm not the same extrovert in the default world as I am on the playa. There, I let my metaphorical dragon take wing and risk being seen in all my scaly glory!

I hope you do too, because it's the best way to Burn.

[Jovankat]

None of the pictures in that blog post are actually of your tattoo. Not cool dude.

The T-Rex with grabbers one is most excellent though.

I haven't gotten any new ink since I started burning but a flaming man or city layout (or both! ) is definitely on my (extensive) to do list.

This resonated with me though;

Burning Man helped me get my dragon back, and helped me remember to stop giving so many fucks about what people think of me, because on the playa the possibility space of how you can express yourself without harsh judgment by those around you is so much greater than in most of the rest of the world.

After my first burn I finally just said NO to a friend who had been wanting me to grow my hair out, dye it a natural colour and take all my piercings out for her wedding. I'm really glad I did that. I've done quite a bit of work generally on being the most me version of me I can be since then and not caring that for some people that's not a good thing. This place has actually been the biggest help with that I think

[trilobyte]

Woohoo for getting your Dragon back!

And wow, Remi, very cool to have such a great connection with the artist too.

Here's my story. For me, Burning Man has a connection to five of my tattoos (#8 through #12). None of them are the straight up man symbol or the more detailed effigy (and there are some really great effigy pieces out there). I have a personal rule that before I get something tattooed on me permanently, it has to be a good idea for at least 6 months... and so a little more than 6 months after coming back from my first burn, I got four symbols that still resonated deeply. In that first trip to the playa, the art theme was Vault Of Heaven. Our running joke was that we'd never get in, so we called our camp Vault Of Hell. A campmate had designed this really cool burning woman icon, and I came up with a playa devil design that we'd use as our camp's symbols (because...ART, and because we wanted friends to be able to find us). We were also going to have dogtags made that had one symbol on each side to give as gifts. The next day, another campmate sent over this really spectacular image of a playa angel, after seeing the playa devil he was inspired and whipped it up in no time. The campmate who'd designed the burning woman icon immediately said the devil and angel should represent the camp, and so we went with those for the signage and tags, but I still loved that symbol. So the devil was #8, the angel #9, and the woman #10. In that first year, though, I sort of had dual citizenship with another camp... a space pirate art collective/theme camp. I wound up working my butt off helping to crew their art car, time that was not only the highlight of my burn but one of the highlights of my life. Space Island's symbol is a sort of burn-tastic skull and bones symbol, though the camp and collective as we knew it are long gone the symbol (#11) brings back floods of great art and great times that I was so glad to be a part of. For no particular reason, I went a number of years without getting any more ink. Lots of ideas, but things that didn't remain good ideas for at least six months... or just pulled in different directions. Then finally my girlfriend and I both wanted to get work done last fall. We didn't get the same thing, or even matching tattoos (hers is a really cool vine that runs the length of and wraps around one arm), I wound up getting another camp symbol, this one for Eridu Society, the camp we formed together a bunch of years ago. Part of the wait had to do with its greater significance, and wanting something more prominent and something that would fit it. I went with a more recent 'compass point' variation of the camp symbol, and the 'pointilism' style that the artist we worked with is so wonderful with, because I think it will eventually become part of something larger and I think that would integrate better into that nebulous future piece.

Here's a b/w shot of that first dogtag...


Tattoos #8-#11


Tattoo #12

[graidawg]

nice ink Trilo.

I have one tattoo directly because of BM the Dread pirate barbi logo for our camp drawn by puppy. I have been meaning to get another for 2 years now based on the welcome to nightvale image replacing the pylons with 2 different stylized man images and the mountain being one of the temples from previous years but being an awful artist and not having any skill at photoshop (or indeed the program on my tablet) i just havent got round to it

[DrYes]

Very cool, Trilo. I've often thought of getting some version of the Man inked on me. I like the way you've blended it with something of significance to your Burns.

[DrYes]

None of the pictures in that blog post are actually of your tattoo. Not cool dude.

Heh, fair enough!

[Simon of the Playa]

Wow! Trilo! Frikken Awesome.

Having never seen you nekkid i had no idea.

Very nicely done.

[Jackass]

Those towards the top of the rib cage hurt like a bitch.

[Raoul]

Good stuff here, and very nice work Trilo.

I'm running out of real estate before I start infringing on existing ink I really like, so I am trying to plan a burn-inspired piece carefully so that it includes all the "right" elements. I will most likely wait until after this year's burn to really put pencil to paper on a design.

I got really sick at last year's burn so was considering a tattoo of The Fabulous Bathrooms sign but figured that wasn't the experience I prefer to commemorate.

[trilobyte]

Thanks for the kind words! The ones on the rib cage didn't so much hurt... they were a bitch because in spots it really tickled. My left side has 5 ancient irish symbols on them, so at least when I got those done I knew what I was in for. I am planning on doing our camp's stylized version of the man symbol (cuneiform man), I just haven't figured out exactly where I want it to go just yet.

Grai, when you get a chance, check out the Adobe tablet apps. I think they're all either free or very close to it, and a couple of them might work out really well for you. Off the top of my head I'm not sure if the one is called PhotoShop Mix and lets you take different images and put them together and resize on different layers, that might be helpful. The other one, one I've used a bunch over the years, used to be called Adobe Ideas but is now called Adobe Draw. It gives you an image layer that lets you load in a picture (and you can resize/reposition it from there), and then you can stack on layers that you can draw on. You can toggle each layer on or off pretty easily, I use it a lot for blocking out and outlining different art projects. You can use it to get really detailed if you want, or you can send what you make to yourself or somebody else in photoshop or illustrator format I think.

Kickass dragon image, DrYes!

The Fabulous Bathrooms sign would be great, Raoul, but I know what you mean.. not really the playa memory you want to emblazon for eternity hehe

[geospyder]

While I am currently an After Burner my avatar says it all.

[Drawingablank]

Although I have about 17 tattoos, I haven't gotten any new ink since I started burning.

For me it's about branding these days. I read about someone getting branded on Eplaya before I even attended and thought how that would be really cool.

I was on the lookout for someone branding during my first burn with no success.

At my second burn we had a neighbor doing branding and I got 2 - one for each burn I attended.

Third burn I actively sought out a brand with no success. After returning to default I had a blacksmith make me a branding iron.

Fourth burn, I did lots of brands for people and got 2 more myself. I also bring it to regionals.

Looking forward to my 5th burn and brand this year.

I have been contemplating breaking out my tattoo stuff and adding some ink as well, but have been a bit laid back about it (and I'm out of practice).

I am working on an arm wrap of brands atm. This is the first two (note they are much cleaner scars than they appear here - that distortion is from mosquito bites).

brandwrap.jpg

[Akela]

On Sunday morning last year, I wound up bartending the party at the Man's ashes, where everyone was cooking bacon and pancakes and coffee on the charred timbers. I believe it was the same morning that whoever was supposed to play after Desert Dwellers at Apex failed to show up for their set and they just kept playing, so it was an excellent day already. We swung by the ashes a little past sunrise on our way home, and discovered that some of our close friends had wheeled out their mobile bar, while a campmate with a huge giraffe head costume had a boombox playing upbeat, funky party beats. I joined the bartending crew for about an hour and it was by far the most fun shift that I've ever worked anywhere, making mixed drinks with frozen fruit that had thawed to the perfect consistency, while people danced and ate delicious, freshly roasted goat meat (no joke--someone brought a whole goddamn goat and roasted it over the Man's remains). I met all sorts of characters that morning, but none stood out to me as much as this guy:

smiley.jpg

When he pulled me aside at first, he was definitely not smiling. In fact, he seemed like he had had a really tough night. He was hoarse, almost mute, and had a sort of desperate look to him. I could tell he needed a strong drink, and I made him one. It was difficult to communicate with him because he voice was so low and the music was bumping and I was still heavily altered from the night before (Desert Dwellers, man....every time). I left my drink-making post to talk with him for a minute, because he really intrigued me. How was he doing? What had he been through? What was his story?

And then he told me: the previous night, he claimed, he had been branded by bikers.

brand.jpg

I never got too much of a chance to learn more about what happened; he faded into the crowd a few moments after he showed me his brand and we hugged fiercely. I never learned his name. But by the end of our brief conversation, he couldn't stop grinning. Something about telling someone else, showing someone else the permanent choice he'd made, really gave him happiness. Despite how haggard he seemed to me at first, I think that smiling photo conveys how he felt about the experience. Pride, joy, and an openness to let weird shit on the playa take its course. I hope he wanders well.

Fresh fruit cocktails and giraffe-head Man-ash party is definitely happening again this year, by the way. That was one of the most fun experiences of my whole Burn.

[lucky420]

My brand...

[Drawingablank]

Although that brand looks identical to my branding iron, I don't recall branding him.

He was probably referring to the guy that rides around on a trike with flame effects that does brands. I saw him at the man burn last year.

[Raoul]

After considering countless designs, I decided to stick with the outline of the city, and in green - a perfectly clean MOOP map.

1 - 1.jpg

[lucky420]

Very sweet Raoul. Very

[trilobyte]

Excellent piece, Raoul! Great design, and a great aspiration to boot.

[kittyrodriguez]

When he pulled me aside at first, he was definitely not smiling. In fact, he seemed like he had had a really tough night. He was hoarse, almost mute, and had a sort of desperate look to him. I could tell he needed a strong drink, and I made him one. It was difficult to communicate with him because he voice was so low and the music was bumping and I was still heavily altered from the night before (Desert Dwellers, man....every time). I left my drink-making post to talk with him for a minute, because he really intrigued me. How was he doing? What had he been through? What was his story?

And then he told me: the previous night, he claimed, he had been branded by bikers.


I never got too much of a chance to learn more about what happened; he faded into the crowd a few moments after he showed me his brand and we hugged fiercely. I never learned his name. But by the end of our brief conversation, he couldn't stop grinning. Something about telling someone else, showing someone else the permanent choice he'd made, really gave him happiness. Despite how haggard he seemed to me at first, I think that smiling photo conveys how he felt about the experience. Pride, joy, and an openness to let weird shit on the playa take its course. I hope he wanders well..

Ha! I know that guy! He's a friend of ours. We met at a local music festival, then met up at our regional burn, then out of the blue, during the big white out the day of the man burn, we run into him! Just walking down the street at BRC! So we spent the whole day hunkered down at Speakcheesy waiting for the white out to pass. We headed out to the man burn, but halfway through waiting for the thing to fall, we lost him. Spent about an hour walking around shouting "buddy!" Never saw him again at that burning man.

We still keep up, though. I sent him this picture. I think it brought him joy. Its nice to know the story of what happened to him after we lost him.

He doesn't have a playa name, and I don't want to give his default name without permission, but we always just call him Buddy. He's a great guy. Different, but great.

[theCryptofishist]

(I still think I have the ultimate body modification.)

[AntiM]

(I still think I have the ultimate body modification.)

Boxing Helena?

[theCryptofishist]

Yes, that has crossed my mind, once or twice.