nothing in the world is good or bad til we decide it. all actions arise from ignorancer and they simply exist, it takes one of us to come along and declare it ‘good” or “bad” and those judgments rely on how the action affects what we think we want to happen.

Are tattoo tv shows good or bad? Its the wrong question, really. the fact is that tattoo tv shows ARE. They exist and debating whether they are good, bad, or indifferent is like arguing about whether the sun rising is good or bad, either way its going to happen.

Tattoos are a fact of being a human for some reason. every culture does it or did at some point in their history. Apparently once we learned to make fire the next thing we did was start tattooing motherfuckers, its that old. In the western world we have been laboring under outdated victorian notions of what is permissible with our bodies and in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s this notions finally were washed away and tattooing came back into its own as an important part of human society.

It was inescapable that something as important to us as tattooing wouldn’t be featured on something also important to us, television. It was going to happen, there was no changing the fact.

Are tattoo tv shows good or bad is the wrong question. the right question, in my humble opinion, is are each of us doing the right things with tattooing? Thats all that matters, the world is going to continue to do what it does, your like or dislike of it means absolutely nothing.

I just try to do the next right thing and not get too hung up on what other folks are doing thats out of my control.

Im typing this by the light of a Christmas tree, I dunno about you but I think thats pretty cool. In fact i think the whole holiday is pretty cool. A lot of folks seem to get upset every year that christmas isnt what they believe it should be like, but it still happens and i still feel like the basic gist gets across despite anything that anyone tries to pile on top of it.

Like most holidays it happens on the cusp of great change. the change of seasons, change of weather, change of year. We like to mark these occasions, to say “remember this moment because from this point forward it will be different. In the really old days that might mean some folks wouldnt survive the next 3 months of really serious winter, or that after weeks and weeks of being stuck in-doors (or in-cave in the really old days) that there might be signs of a new baby on the way. In a lot of traditions it was believed that the old year had to die so the new could be reborn.

Its nice to think about the fact that under everything, the religion, the commercialism, the expectations there still beats a warm heart of generosity.

Merry Christmas/Hannuka/whatever.

Right speech can be a bitch.

Not only do you have to not lie 9which is pretty easy) but you also want to avoid talking about other people in a way that places them above or below you. in practice this means basically not talking about anyone  when they are not there. Even if you are being nice (because by praising them you are placing them above the listener). its fucking annoying.

Being a shit-talker is a huge part of being a tattooer. In fact if a tattoers main job wasnt farming beards and drawing skulls it would certainly be gossiping like a room full of Kathy Griffins. It seemed so fundamental to being a tattooer that when i stopped doing it (as much. . . ) I found that a lot of my tattoo buddies and i didnt have very much to talk about anymore. When we no longer had the latest on who was on drugs, who quit working for who and who was tracing other artists work it was like a desert of words developed in our relationship. Wierd.

A fair number of customers bring drama and gossip with them as well, the tricky part is extricating yourself from these discussions without coming off holier-than-thou and jerky. Just as Right speech concerns not badmouthing others with your words, it also means not causing others harm when speaking to them directly. If you tell person A that you dont want to talk about  person B because its ‘wrong’ you come off as morally superior and cause person A to suffer. So instead its like verbal Judo, gently sliding the conversation around to neutral, non gossipy ground. Believe me, Ive had plenty of customers steer me away from being a shit-talker myself, its just so easy of a trap to fall into.

At the same time there is certainly no reason not to call a spade a spade, as long as you can do it without being a superior asshole about it. I truly feel like there is a compassionate way to tell anyone anything if I could only take the time and care to look for it before i open my gob and garbage falls out.

The whole reason I talk about this now is that i started a post about how Cara and i went to a local shop the other day and how surprised by how trashy and stuck in time it was. A few sentances in i realised that what i was really doing was trying to cover my own insecurity. By describing this other shop in bad terms i would be implying that I my own shop was superior (after all i wouldnt be denigrating a shop if I thought they were better than our shop would I?) So i had to stop.

I think it’s time we talked this over
I think you’ve taken this too far
I never wanted to be different
Didn’t ask to be nobody’s star
Try and take control of it
Cause what you see is what you get
Try and take control of it
And not me

You say there’s talk of revolution – so what’s new?
You say there’s fighting in the air
You think that I’ve got the solutions
But do you really think that’s fair?
Try and take control of it
Cause what you see is what you get
Try and take control of it
And not me

[Chorus:]
Don’t wanna be nobody’s hero
Don’t wanna be nobody’s star
Don’t wanna be nobody’s hero
Get up get out be what you are

You think it’s time you took me over
To do what you can’t do yourself
But don’t let heroes get your kicks for you
It’s up to you and no-one else
Try and take control of it
Cos what you see is what you get
Try and take control of it
And you’ll see

[Chorus]
You think you’re nobody
And I get all the fun
But no-one is a nobody
Everyone is someone

[Chorus]

Be what you are

-Stiff  Little Fingers

Over and over again we hear about someone famous, someone who is ’supposed” to be a role model failing to live up to what “they should be”. We get angry if Kat von D doesnt act like our idealized tattooer, if some kid on Intervention doesnt display the ‘correct” level of willpower, if Brad Warner isnt all nice and fuzzy the way a zen master “should” be, if a Terrell Owens doesn’t act like a “good sport”, if 50 cent isnt still doing drive bys, if Gene Simmons isnt still boning 12 groupies a night,  over and over we are disappointed when someone we know only vicariously dares to act “wrong”. We get angrier about these folks behavior than we do about the exact same action of our close friends and family.

We have expectations of what someone “in their position” ought to be doing. We want them to be better. better than our friends, better than our family, better than US! We want our heroes to be someone we can worship, someone above reproach. We want perfection. We also want a non-stop inspection these people, a full body scan of their every thought and action and the second they deviate from any idea we have of their ideal behaviour we are ready to destroy them. It’s why you couldnt pay me to be famous, not for all the money in the world.

Not only is it an insane demand to place on another, very human, person, but it is sheer laziness on our own parts. We want there to be someone to do all the “right” stuff so that we can like them, and by extension, bask in the glow of their righteousness. We want to have someone to hold up like a shield in front of ourselves, someone to tell us what to do and to always be right. We make up rules in our head and then get upset when the rest of the world doesnt abide by them.

Its time that we stood on our own two feet. Its time to accept our own responsibility for our own lives and more importantly its time to stop placing other people above or below us. A person is just a person no more (or less) than that. Some behave in ways that inspire us, but they are not doing this “for us”. In the end it is up to each of us as individuals to decide to behave the way we know is true and honest. Frankly it’s not their job to live up to our expectations.

The old zen master Hakuin lived near a family with a teenage daughter. The daughter had a boyfriend her own age in the village and one day discovered that she had become pregnant by her young lover. Such a thing was scandalous to her family and would have ruined the boy’s family reputation as well (not to mention the fact her parents would forbid the boy to ever see her again) In her fear she told her mother and father that old Hakuin had been the one to get her pregnant.

The parents went to confront the zen master, yelling and angry they berated the old monk. “You filthy old pervert, you got our daughter pregnant!”

Hakuin did not respond with his own anger or try to cause the girl further grief, instead he only said “Is that so?”.

In time the baby was born and the parents again visited the monks hut, “Here, this is your fault, you raise this brat!” they scolded as they handed him the infant.He took the child as tenderly as a grandmother and said only “is that so?” to the angry parents of the young girl.

Haukin raised the child for a full year, the village had all heard the tale and looked with disgust on the old man. Occasionally someone would shake their finger at him or spit after he passed, the old mans response was only ever  “is that so?”. His reputation was ruined and he barely survived on the few who still donated to him, he begged enough milk to keep the baby healthy though.

Finally the girls conscience could bear her lies no more and she confessed to her parents. They were terribly sorry at their treatment of the old man and went right away to the old zen master. After being told of the girls confession and the dozens of bows and apologies they asked for the child back to give to its mother and her boyfriend to raise. Even after a year as the babes parent, Hakuin handed the child over without hesitation saying only “Is that so?”

“Having a clear faith, based on the creed of the church, is often labeled today as a fundamentalism. … Whereas relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and ’swept along by every wind of teaching,’ looks like the only attitude acceptable to today’s standards.”

-Pope Benedict XVI

Of course the pope is correct, if your goal is to have a pat answer for every nuanced thing that the world throws your way. In the world of religious fundamentalists there is no place for shades of grey, no room for the individual intricacies of the world to be accommodated. It’s like using a sledgehammer to do brain surgery.

The big problem with fundamentalism, of any sort, is that it relies on the assumption that one solution can be mandated for the messy, changeable world. One reason we have more people per capita in prison in the US than any other nation in the world is that for the last 20 years we have been passing laws that take the judge’s discretion out of sentencing. No two cases are the same, but they are sentenced identically regardless of the actual circumstances surrounding them. The result is that a person whose crime is stealing a bike is condemned to 20 years if it is his third offense but a rapist may only serve 5 for his first.

We are terribly afraid of change, of randomness, of a world moving beyond our control and by saying “the book (any book) tells us to do it this way!” it  gives us the illusion of a magical answer to all problems. The reality is that there inst a single solution to the real world and its chaotic way of occurring.

My real problem with fundamentalism, however, is that it is based on faith. it cannot exist without the ironclad faith that whatever book, law, or authority is being referred to is correct and infallible. Sadly the truth is that faith, however kindly applied, is based on a lie. Heres why:

Joseph Campbell once said “unless your myth works with the current scientific knowledge of your day, it isnt working for you.” What we are faced with today in the Judeo Christian tradition is a 3000+ year old set of rules and explanations about the world that we simply can not believe in with our own two eyes. You may be the most devout person int he entire world but you can not honestly believe that woman was literally created from a rib or that a snake tricked us into sin. So what happens? Your mind can’t be fooled, it simply can’t. Your true intuition KNOWS that  the world works in a certain way because it has seen it and tried it and has seen scientific evidence repeated time and time again that shows it works a certain way, and yet here comes these books that tell us “no the world doesn’t work in that way which you have seen with your own two eyes, it works in this other, magical way, that  these men wrote about 3000 years ago!” And if that werent enough of a mind fuck they go on to say “AND if you DARE to believe all this science nonsense, you are not only wrong, you are a sinner and you are bad in the eyes of God!”

This, unfortunately leads to  what is known as cognitive dissonance. In your heart of hearts you know the scientific, provable truth, but you want to be a good person in the eyes of your religion. How do you put away the real world and start to believe in this hocus pocus biblical world? One word: Faith. Faith is nothing more than your purposefully ignoring everything your senses (including common sense) tells you and pretending to believe the fantastical stories religion weaves.

The real problem is that it doesn’t work. You don’t really believe these things because your experience has disproven them over and over again. It’s like the child who spys on his parents putting out Christmas gifts, no matter how much he loves the idea, no matter how convincing his parents tales, he is forever unable to believe in Santa Clause bringing gifts from that day on. So the person trying to be a good Christian (or Muslim or Jew) is faced with  the idea that they are bad christians (or muslims of jews) if they dont really believe what they are supposed to.  Here  is where fundamentalism comes in. Because when we are lying, when we must say we believe in that we really do not believe in with our hearts and minds, we overcompensate. We yell louder, we are willing to die (or kill) we are willing to commit any horror in order not to face the idea that this idea we feel we MUST believe in is something that we, deep down, don’t really believe a word of!

Need an example? it is a commonly held notion that those who have a violent anger towards homosexuals are themselves closeted homosexuals. That their rage and violence against gays is a reaction to their own deeply hidden (and feared) gayness . Well, in 1996 the Department of Psychology at the University of Georgia did this study.

The authors investigated the role of homosexual arousal in exclusively heterosexual men who admitted negative affect toward homosexual individuals. Participants consisted of a group of homophobic men (n = 35) and a group of nonhomophobic men (n = 29); they were assigned to groups on the basis of their scores on the Index of Homophobia (W. W. Hudson & W. A. Ricketts, 1980). The men were exposed to sexually explicit erotic stimuli consisting of heterosexual, male homosexual, and lesbian videotapes, and changes in penile circumference were monitored. They also completed an Aggression Questionnaire (A. H. Buss & M. Perry, 1992). Both groups exhibited increases in penile circumference to the heterosexual and female homosexual videos. Only the homophobic men showed an increase in penile erection to male homosexual stimuli. The groups did not differ in aggression. Homophobia is apparently associated with homosexual arousal that the homophobic individual is either unaware of or denies.

The louder you yell and the more violent your reaction the less real belief in whatever your faith is you have. these guys claimed to be viscerally repulsed and hostile toward homosexuals and yet their penises seemed to say quite the opposite. So no matter how loudly you scream, no matter how much you are willing to fight and die ‘for’ your faith, the fact remains that as a fundamentalist you are telling the world that in your heart of hearts you really don’t believe a word of what your ‘holy books’ are saying. This is no gloat either, both the homophobes and the fundamentalists are in a special kind of hell I wouldn’t wish on anyone, the hell of being at war with your own mind. They suffer because they can not bring the two worlds, the real and the ideal into harmony, they hate themselves even more for what they hate in everyone else.

So what is the solution? With apologies to the pope, it’s to learn to deal with the world as it comes, as reality currently reveals itself and not to react as if we live in a world of ’shoulds and it-would-be-better-ifs” To admit that the holy books are best taken as metaphors, as guide posts to a life of peace and solidarity with the world not as a magical spell to hold the world and change at bay. It does seem to be coming despite the loudest yells and violence of fundamentalism, the world slowly seems to becoming more and more  tolerant of its wondrous variety. Sadly those deepest mired in their delusion will likely become more and more violent as the real world encroaches on their facade. On the good side, they also seem to be dwindling more and more as the rest of the world stops glorifying their willingness to use conflict to ‘defend their faith’.

The buddha told his students not to believe in him, not to have faith in his words, he said over and over “be ye a lamp unto yourselves”. His teaching was to question every deeply held belief, to look at the world and to find the truth that could not be denied. Strict rules, he discovered, were a cold corpse trying to direct we the living how to get by. He was not advocating hedonism or anarchy, he knew that the truth of the world meant that treating others as we treat ourselves was what we would find, you dont need a rule telling you “dont steal from yourself” and that if we looked carefully we would see that this is what stealing from another meant. He knew that we knew right from wrong and didnt need a “big man in the sky” to tell us that. he knew, in short, that we didnt need faith when we had the truth right in front of us.

Ive been tattooing for a long time now, and if i have learned anything it’s that I havent learned very much. Tattooing has always been pretty cyclical for me, there are times i really feel like I am growing and expanding and then there are times that i feel like Im just treading water, trying to keep my head above the waves. Sometimes im fully aware of the state im currently in but recently I feel like ive been in a bit of a rut and hadn’t realised it. Whatever the reason i feel like i havent been pushing myself as much as i would like to, ive been doing what the clients ask for but i havent been pushing for even more and i feel like it’s about time that i got to doing that.

In part ive been wasting a lot of time playing video games. This has long been a problem of mine and acquiring an x box for my birthday has just exacerbated it with Oblivion and Fallout taking up way too much of my brainspace. I suppose everyone has something they do to waste time now and then, but for me this has been a little too much and now that a couple months have gone by I dont think its going to taper off any more until i sell the goddamn thing. I would hate to do it, it’s really fun, but like having a giant plate of cookies on the counter all the time the temptation to fuck off for 4 or 5 hours in la-la land is too great for me to pass up.

Second ive settled into a comfortable patter of business where Im booked for a few weeks so Im comfortable. Comfortable is bad sometimes, I need a kick in the ass. Fortuneatly i know where to get it, looking at other tattooers work online and posting my own work for critique. I havent done either for some time and just the other day Cara was looking at some of Valerie Vargas work and it blew me away at how she took very simple themes and tricked them the fuck out. I need to start doing this more. Any tattoo that comes in i need to give the full on treatment to the best of my abilities, I know that I have it in me, i just need to kick the old grey dog in the ass enough times to get him motivated to try harder.

Stay tuned, I hope to be putting some next level stuff up in the future.

In other news i have finally begun the lasering of my left arm in earnest. A friend i have tattooed for years recently started to do laser removal and i had all the black from my shoulder to elbow zapped this past sunday. I hope to be going in monthly and if all goes according to plan (when does it ever?) I would like to be getting my sleeve started sometime next year. ideally i would like someone like Dana Helmuth or Mike Rubendall to do it (well ideally it would be Shige but I dont see that happening too terribly soon). I have lived with tattoos I only half like for a really long time, Im ready to love my sleeves from this point on.

We recently attended the Meeting of the Marked, Pittsburghs tattoo convention and i did a few pieces there like this one

I have also finished some japanese work i am waiting to get pictures of and am damn close to finishing a sleeve Im very proud of.I finished a set of traditional flash in black only and am within days of finishing my japanese sketchbook. I feel like im finally back on the good foot, now its time to get stomping.

Ive been riding quite a bit too and after another month or so I feel like Ill be able to write a review of the Giant Bowery/mashup. In related news a friend is convinced he saw some kid riding my stolen Trek around the hood. Im not sure what to do with this news, Im over it but if I see that in person it will be real hard not to double foot dropkick that fucker.

I probably wont, mostly because ive gotten back onto the meditation tip lately, Cara and our buddy kevin just went to a small sitting group this morning at the Mattress Factory art gallery. And i do mean early, that shit was at 7 am! Thats early for a tattoo artist goddammnit! But it felt great and so has just sitting regularly again. So hopefully im getting back on track and pulling my head out of my ass (yet again, what is this like the 12th time? 44th?).

A few weeks ago Cara and i were talking and the subject of this blog came up. I really enjoy writing it and I feel like it has helped me to clarify my thoughts at times but there is something that annoys me. Its that I sound like a know-it-all, and not just on this blog but in person too there is some way i present myself that gives people the idea that im smug or think that i know everything. The reality, of course, is the exact opposite. I have learned a few things in my life and a very few of those things im pretty damn sure of, but the vast majority of things in my life are subject to change as i learn new things. And im always learning new things.

Im not sure why I come off that way, but almost everyone in my life who is honest with me has expressed some annoyance at this trait. It bugs me too. So how do i present my thoughts and ideas without sounding like I have all the answers? Im not sure, but its something im working on constantly.

One thing i do know is that this is definitely a family trait, my family is full of folks who are sure of what they know and are not shy about letting you know how sure they are. Perhaps its all a byproduct of being raised the way we were, my folks never ran our lives for us, they supported what we did 100% but they never ordered us to live a certain way or with certain beliefs. When i was younger I took this to mean that they didnt care the way i saw other folks parents trying to plan out every detail of their childrens lives, but as i grew older i saw the wisdom of what they were doing, the Lambert children (all six of em) would be fiercely independent, self-determined, and self-assured and i supposed its the latter that is the source of the annoying “I know that already” trait we all share.

In a lot of the old Buddhist stories I read it seems that the old guy was trying to insure that his listeners were not satisfied with pat answers and rote recital of his words. Over and over he admonished his monks to test his theories and to judge for themselves if they reflected the real world or not. It seems that he wanted us to be sure of our lives based on direct awakened experience and not on what others said reality was like. My problem is that when i have looked into a subject and come to a conclusion I tend to take that conclusion as the gospel, inviolate, unquestionable. The buddha i think wanted us to come to our own conclusions but he also warned about being stuck on your own ideas, in a way its like the scientific method. Nothing in science is ever a “fact”, they are simply the most reasonable solution until a better one comes along, this is what makes science so progressive, once a new theory is provable and demonstrable it becomes the new fact. nothing is ever above questioning.

So my challenge is to examine the world around me and come to my own honest conclusions the way my parents instilled in me but to do so without the cocky sureness that my one-sided view is the Truth with a capital T.

I hope my future posts will sound a little less know-it-all ish.

Its 1 am and I really ought to be in bed.

Clearly im not so lets recap the day. i did zero tattoos today and it actually feels pretty good. The first one was something i didnt feel very good about doing and the second the customer didnt really get moved enough by the art to tattoo.

Ive been really trying to be more selective, to take on the kind of work that i will be extra excited about. its funny because there is always this feeling of doing something wrong when i think about this. there is a bit of the old school blue collar tattooist guy in me that says “just do it, its just fucking drawings, stop being such a pansy and do whatever walks in the door.” and that voice has been the way ive done it for my whole tattooing career. Someone comes in and unless its blatantly impossible i say “ok”. If its one of those pieces I know I can do but just doesnt excite me, or if its one of those things that i think will come out “ok but not amazing” I immediately begin worrying and dreading it. Sometimes i end up being wrong and having a really good time with pieces like that, but generally experience has taught me that its just not going to be all that fun to do.

Thats where the dilemma comes in. I realise that I have a pretty good job (ok a fucking amazing job im lucky enough to have stumbled into) but The feeling i get when im working on a really fun piece is even more awesome, so i wonder if I cant dispense with the worst of the “bad” stuff and just focus more on what i really enjoy doing and think I can do my best work on? Its not entirely selfish either, I know that on the kind of bold graphic work i enjoy that I can do my best work. I try to tell myself that turning down stuff i can do at an average level in favor of stuff i can rock out on benefits the customer as well as me, but i just cant shake the feeling that i would be being self-indulgent or “bad” to tell someone i cant do their tattoo just because i dont think it would be very fun.

Ive read some interviews with guys like Uncle Allen, Mike giant, and Steve byrne all of whom basically pick and choose their clients and it does sound attractive to me, but perhaps my low self esteem cant wrap my head around telling someone “nope”. I mean, they are going to want to know why and i just dont lie to people anymore. What kind of reputation would I have if i straight up told people “I dont want to do this tattoo because i dont think its very interesting.”? Does that make me a prick? it feels like it would.

I do know that Ive been on a bit of a plateau lately and would like to push myself a little further, maybe thats the benefit of doing anything that comes in, its more likely to be a challenge if I dont always pick stuff to tattoo thats in my comfort zone.

Bleh.