internet diary
leaning back in
I miss being vulnerable on the internet (a little bit). I would like to go back(not really) to posting poems and journal entries about my crushes, it’s like my version of subtweeting. Everything I make is nothing without my journal entries. It feels so dry to post a drawing or a tattoo or anything I’ve made without a little bit of a backstory. A backstory could be almost anything, a meme, a song, a selfie, a picture of a sunset(anything gay), food I cooked, blurry photo from a show, the hand of someone I’m hooking up with to tease the internet peoples, a painting i saw, my friends by a body of water, a sign i saw on the street, an animal i pet that week. Everything I’ve ever made is influenced by everything I’ve come in contact with so putting something out there without even a little bit of gushing feels so strange. My kind of gushing is writing like 7 words about longing that I probably heard in a song that actually sounds very generic and vague, but I used to do it enough so people would know I feel a lot of things. Then pairing it with a cartoon drawing so people don’t take it too seriously.
Some could argue that posting too much of your personal shit could get in the way of people not taking you seriously about your work. Other tattooists have told me to try to stick to posting a specific style so there is something consistent that people wanna book me for. I could keep tattooing the other styles but market only one thing. But I don’t want to… There’s something really tempting about the mysterious artist that has no photos of themselves and posts only the beautiful work they make. Something validating about being technically so skilled that people are able to admire it without knowing a damn thing about you, so powerful it speaks for itself. I was not made to just be an image on the internet that you might want to give money to tattoo you or make you a painting. I’m a w(hole) ass person and I don’t feel like curating a likeable image for the internet is my strength and I don’t have a strong desire to get better at it. My desire is to continue to get better at tattooing in all the ways. Better at communicating with my clients (who are also whole ass people I am always collaborating with), creating a tattoo that will last (a good tattoo is not just a technically good tattoo we will get into what a “good” tattoo is in another newsletter), and distributing my time in a way that is sustainable.
I thought that I needed some sort of validation from other tattooists for a long time, the same way I craved validation for my other art practices from cultural institutions. But so many technically skilled tattooists and museums can FUUUUCK off honestly. The way so much cultural appropriation is normalized in tattoo culture is baffling. Museums exhibit work about revolutionary movements while being funded by the same evil weapons manufacturers oppressing various peoples globally. The way so much work is stripped of its context and exhibited for the consumption of ??? There’s no way to separate an artist from the work they make or separate the work from the place it is shown in. This is something I’ve been aware of for a long time but have been ignoring to continue tattooing in the current space I’m in. I haven’t been completely ignorant of the issues but I have been overextending myself to hold someone accountable who continues to refuse help. I have to make really big changes to allign my tattoo practice with my values because one does not come before the other and it’s been a real mind fuck to have those two things conflict so much at this point in time. I’m not looking forward to potentially being back in a place of financial instability but finding comfort in the reality that nothing is actually ever stable because capitalism duh.
I haven’t been very present on the internet because I been busy as hell trying my best to be present in person. I’ve honestly been a bit over my head with everything I’ve been doing and I think it’s time to reel it back in. I been working on far too many projects in a way that is actually not helping each thing I been working on. I do believe that every practice feeds your other practices but I’m at the point where it is actually debilitating. I’m not going to transition into immediately focusing on something else, I’m actually taking an intentional pause to figure out what I need to focus on. And maybe actually try listening to what my physical body feels, something that’s always been exceptionally hard being trans in a body that is not alligned with who I am. Stating and putting it on the ether so I can follow through and my people reading this can hold me accountable when I’m slacking.
I began to write this yesterday, so now my thoughts are different. It’s father’s day and eid ul adha. I really don’t mean to publish on holidays. Today feels heavy for different reasons than years before, not really focused on my interpersonal relationship with my baba. My heart and mind are on fathers that have lost their children and children that have lost their fathers to violent acts of oppression across the globe. Simultaneously thinking about Walid Daqqa, a Palestinian writer that managed to smuggle his sperm out of prison in 2020 and have a daughter, Milad. He spent 38 years in captivity but the zionist occupation forces could not strip him of his love of life and resistance. A love for life so profound.
