#the devil's policies to reverse unemployment disproportionately target certain idle hands it seems

[nohoperadio]

[this is responding to @wellmetmat's reblog of my aesthetic self-modifications post, I'm only quoting them in part so you should click and check out the whole thing if you wanna keep up. Replying like this to keep the thread from getting crazy long!]

Tattoos: I like the idea a lot. I like face/body-painting even more: not make-up, mostly, and not usually henna (blobby, a stain rather than a paint, almost a normal skin colour but a bit off, not glorious at all); but war-paint and costumes and body glitter under blacklights - gorgeous - and the tradition of children's face-painting at fairs, and getting, too rarely, to draw on people with coloured zinc cream by way of sun protection, and smearing my face and limbs with ochreous clay or ashes from a campfire, something I have a strangely recurrent urge to do and feel modern urban life is rather impoverished for lack of. I liked Darth Maul's appearance. I think most people look better in eyeliner, and would look even better again with their faces transformed into unearthly blue-black masks of woad and ashes, at least on special occasions.

This is cool there's lots of examples I wouldn't have thought to think about here! I'm gonna try to extract some takeaways about what the things you mentioned might bring to the table in contrast to tattoos and makeup, although I have little to no hands-on experience with most of it so tell me if this doesn't ring true:

I get the impression that the tactile element is important in several of these, as much as the visual element? Especially with "smearing my face and limbs with ochreous clay or ashes from a campfire" which feels like a very sensuously-motivated description, but possibly this is in play with the body-paint and war-paint too? I like this idea because it implies that the goal is a transformation where you can feel yourself changed, it's a more first-person kind of change than either makeup or tattoos where all the emphasis is on the visual effect, and therefore (perhaps?) implicitly on what other people perceive. You actively want to feel these things on your skin and feel how your body's different.

Is there an element of democracy that's important here? Tattoos/makeup are both things where there are high ceilings one can exploit both in terms of how much money you're willing to invest and how much skill you have available (with tattoos the skill part is outsourced to someone else, but still). Whereas with a lot of things on your list the materials are simple and relatively inexpensive, and the desired effect isn't particularly intricate or subtle and most people can achieve it for themselves untrained (I think!). This doesn't necessarily apply to face/body paint but I feel like it does to a lot of the other things.

There's also a quasi-ritual social aspect to some of these which I guess is somewhat connected to the previous point, I like that you've introduced the experience of being the "artist" of other people's modifications into the conversation, it's a nice contrast to my very I-centric post.

Despite that, I don't have any [tattoos]. Partly because of pain and needles (significant deterrents! I'm not brave), partly because as of last year I have a skin condition which can be pretty wretched and the thought of voluntarily seeking more skin misery for any reason at all is offputting (and I have a lot of little scars and discoloured patches from it now, and they look distressingly messy, and the addition of tattoos would probably increase the general look of shabbiness and disorder); and in the main because I'm very indecisive and slow to commit to anything.

Very reasonable to not want to put your skin through another ordeal when it's already been through a lot! I do think tattoos that incorporate scars and such as a basis for the design are one of the coolest uses for the technology, although I guess you mostly only hear about people who were lucky enough to get the kind of scar that sets up something good. (I mean "lucky" is obviously a wrong and borderline callous word but you know what I mean!)

I don't think I mentioned "reluctant to commit" in my bit about tattoos but yeah definitely a thought I always have when I think about tattoos is "how could I possibly know whether, ten years from now, I'll still be the kind of person who thinks this is a good idea?" I guess the positive spin to put on this is that I put a lot of value on leaving room to change one's mind and change one's feelings about everything, which I do genuinely think is a virtue. The negative/depressive spin on it is that at any given point in my life I've always felt like I have a lot of personal growth still to do before I'll be somebody I'm actually happy being, kind of as if my current identity is a provisional one that I hope will at some point be replaced with something better and more solid, and so making what's basically a small lifelong commitment while I'm still inhabiting the "provisional" self feels reckless. (Damn sorry wasn't expecting this paragraph to take that turn! I should clarify I'm doing pretty alright for the most part, my full-on depression days are long behind me now.)

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All of your tattoo ideas sound awesome to me! The dandelion is particularly compelling, I like the idea of a tattoo that's expansive enough across the body that you can't necessarily easily see all of it at once, and it's a good example of a design that really uses the medium well, you couldn't get anything like the same impact with an ink drawing on paper.

I hadn't heard of a winter count, it's a very beautiful idea, I feel like I would stress too much about my years not containing enough significant events to come up with a summarizing icon though!

I don't think I need to tell you how much I approve of the pigeon.

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Hey thanks for sharing this was fun! Fwiw chatter will always be welcome, I'd like to increase the amount of chattiness in my tumblr use in general, but more to the point I've always enjoyed your ( )-shaped thoughts whenever you've shared them so always feel free please!

#touched to learn that our hands have similar personalities also #the devil's policies to reverse unemployment disproportionately target certain idle hands it seems #wellmetmat #correspondence