ReLâCHE: Tattoo: 'Koto' Kanji coverup

Cover-up and New "Koto" Kanji
10.8.92

I dreamt that my shoulder was cracking and it was spreading, so I had a metal plate bolted on to stop it. That image stuck with me, along with the feeling that my statement about being different needed to be bolder and more layers of different needed to built into it.

The character koto means "to be different" and I told Greg to color it like a piece of peacock copper, aka chalcopyrite. That stone, by New Age definition, is supposed to make one more comfortable with one's own eccentricities. He did such a good job that people looking at the stones on my shrine at home have often pointed right at the stone and remarked "that's the one your arm is colored like, right?"

I drew dozens of weird shapes, all subtle variations of the dream image before settling on the one shown here as THE one. You can see the faint outline to show where the cover-up is. In the dream, the tiny screws went all the way down into the bone. You can't really show that in a tattoo.

This was Greg's business card at the time. He'd copy and cut them himself, and they had a few lines on the back where he'd write down the appointment info.


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