To even the casual reader of this blog it should be clear that my current obsession is all about personal transformation.
How do we change our lives and make them more interesting without losing the integrity of all we’ve built before?
Living in another city it’s easy to feel as though you’ve transformed your life. Even the mundane activities feel real and exciting. A trip to the supermarket can be filled with adventure and newness. Riding a bike around a city filled with different languages and imagining that you half speak some of them and are half happy that you can’t understand anything leads naturally to a sense of being out of context. And from that feeling it’s a really easy leap to believe that you are in fact changing, growing, becoming someone new and better.
And then you come home.
I remember the first time I lived away from Australia I was 22. By a fabulous twist of fate I ended up working on a film at the Bavaria Film Studios in Munich. I had an apartment to myself, 500 Deutschmarks each week (a fortune back then), and a push bike and I spent one of the happiest and loneliest summers of my life on the banks of the river Isar.
I learnt a new language, finally made some new friends (who are still dear to me today) and, I think, changed my life completely. In many ways it was the loneliness that changed me the most. These were the days before the internet, before mobile phones, before Facebook… All I had were letters and cassette tapes that friends and family would make and send through the mail. If I was lucky I’d get one of these a week. Phone calls were a rare treat.
For the first time in my life I spent a great deal of time on my own and I learnt to love it. I discovered the joys of visiting a gallery on a rainy Saturday afternoon, of riding my bike through the small forests along the banks of the Isar and into town and of discovering how much I appreciated the time I could spend with like-minded friends – both old and new.
When I got back after almost a year away I pictured myself with a bright shining light following me everywhere that everyone would see and remark upon – “Wow is that Liz Doran, I hardly recognised her she looks so different” – but of course that didn’t happen. There was scant interest in my life on the other side of the planet and no one seemed to notice that I was in any way other than the same Perth girl who’d left town a few months previous.
I’ve had many adventures and life changing experiences since then and so I don’t really expect anyone to share my sense of personal change anymore but I did somehow feel the need to mark my change this time.
For some reason I needed to have something physical to show that I felt as though something serious had shifted in me. Like everything in the past year, I just went with this feeling – I didn’t question it and I tried really hard to just stay with it and follow it wherever it wanted me to go – which was pretty confronting because this time I wanted to get a tattoo.
For whatever reason I’ve always wanted one. There’s something about the permanence and the way that you transform your skin with something as simple as a little bit of ink that has always fascinated me. I’m one of those people who will stop people at parties and make them talk about their tattoos. For years I have collected names and I’ve even gone so far as calling up some of those names and enquiring about getting some ink for myself.
But I’ve never taken it further than that. I’ve never actually stepped foot inside a tattoo parlour and they’ve remained a dark and mysterious place.
Until two weeks ago.
I found the artist I wanted and talked to the shop. She normally has an 8 month waiting list (encouraging) but if you come in at 11am on a Sunday morning there’s a chance you can get an appointment and get it done that day. As I explained what I wanted to the very friendly woman on the other end of the pohone she assured me that a Sunday walk-in was all I needed.
So there we were, my lovely friend Amanda and I on a Sunday morning, queuing up with a surprising number of other prospective tatt customers outside a shop on Crown St. Once the doors were open we all put our names on a list and waited to speak to our artist. As soon as I spoke to Megan I knew I was in safe hands. She was calm and assured with a kind of secretary look (if you ignored the fact that she was literally covered in tattoos – which of course I couldn’t).
My appointment was for three that afternoon and I was required to come back alone – no friends allowed in the studio (but Amanda did come and pick me up afterwards bless her).
I actually feel reluctant to reveal the details of what happened up in Megan’s studio, there’s something about the mystery of getting tattooed that should remain intact for those who have actually committed to this strange activity. What I will say is that yes, it really did hurt and no, at no stage did I have any regrets.
I’m posting a picture – this was taken the day after I had it done so my ink is much darker than it is now, it’s settled in exactly as Megan said it would to a series of shades of grey and her work is detailed and (I think) quite beautiful. I’ve also been told it looks much bigger than it actually is in this photo – for the record it’s 10 centimeters long.
But what does it mean? Why this image? Why this spot on my body? Why not somewhere more private?
Well I’m now one of those people who you meet at a party and if you have a fascination for why people go through the pain it takes to have an indelible image inked onto their skin – then I will tell you all about it.
For now, it simply does exactly what I wanted, it marks a time of change.
And celebrates the actuality of transformation.
(I hope!)
Liz Doran - out of context 