I'll begin this little reflection with an embarrassing confession: I'm a total baby when it comes to pain. My wife has reminded me of this more than once. The slightest boo boo sends me into panic mode. The pop of an ankle when walking down the stairs, a slight bump of the elbow on the arm of the chair, you know... any one of the multitudes of things that befall us all every single day, and I let out a groan or a grunt of seemingly infinite discomfort. And that's not to mention the bigger stuff. When I was in the hospital with my kidney stones, for instance, I apologized profusely to the nursing staff for being such a nuisance with my groans of pain. When I go to get a shot, there's the nervous sweating, the wincing, the turning of the head, the deep breathing, etc. But that brings me to my point. The nurse, inevitably, asks a very reasonable question: "Dude, your arms are covered in tattoos, and you can't handle a tiny little needle?"
It's true. Both my arms, my hands, and my right calf, are all decorated, and what surface area isn't yet decorated, will be soon. A few weeks ago, I went in for ten hours (in total) of tattooing, over a two-day period. And I thought about this question a lot. How is it that I, a self-professed baby when it comes to bodily pain, can tolerate such prolonged periods of rather intense, slow, and methodical pain? One response, one that is often given by people who get tattoos, is the utilitarian response: "A few hours of pain for a lifetime of the tattoo." That makes sense, I guess. Employing a utilitarian calculus would place on one side of the scale a rather intense pain, but for a very short and concentrated duration, (followed by an irritation of relatively mild intensity for a week or so), as opposed to, on the other side, a significant pleasure spread out over the rest of one's life. And certainly, at some points in the process, the most severely painful ones, this calculus is indeed running through my head.
But, for me at least, it's more than just a tolerance of the pain. For much of the process, I actually enjoy the pain. And I've heard from other tattoo enthusiasts that they do too. And this is the really interesting question to me. If it were a simple matter of utilitarian calculus, well... that's fairly easy peasy. But utilitarian calculus cannot explain how it is that I can actually enjoy something that I know to be painful.
For a time, it seemed to me that the ascetic response might be a possibility. Many of the ascetic traditions emphasize the process of purifying the soul or spirit by way of the mortification of the body. In the Phaedo, Socrates suggests that by denying the body the indulgences of sex, food, and drink, we actually practice in the art of separating the soul from the body, so that when death (the final separation of the soul from the body) finally arrives, we'll have spent our lives preparing for it. A more colloquial way of expressing the ascetic route might be the principle of "mind over matter," the idea that if you simply focus your attention elsewhere than on the body, your mind can actually overpower the material and neurological impact of the steel needle, penetrating the surface of the flesh at a rate of several thousand times per minute. This is why some folks listen to music, for instance (though I never have). And again, in some of the most excruciating moments, I no doubt employ the method of trying to will the subjugation of the body.
But this response, for me, is still unsatisfactory. For the vast majority of the process, the pleasure is actually in the pain itself. And to me, this requires an almost opposite response to that of the ascetic. Specifically, the thing I think is most fascinating about the experience of being tattooed is precisely the inability to overpower the body with the mind - the incapacity to focus the mind on anything else other than the needle in the flesh. Contrary to the ascetic view that tattooing enables a separation of the mind or the spirit from the body, tattooing is an eminently material practice, through and through - steel and ink, penetrating flesh, leaving a material work of art upon the body for the remainder of the bearer's life. The very soul of tattooing is in the body itself. The beautiful thing about the pain is the way that it enables, or even necessitates, what Zen practitioners refer to as the practice of mindfulness. In a scene in David Fincher's Fight Club, Tyler pours the flaked lye onto the saliva-soaked kiss on the back of the narrator's hand, holding him captive at the mercy of an increasingly severe chemical burn, and the narrator attempts to retreat into his cave, the safe space in his mind. Tyler slaps him back to the present, insisting that he not lose this moment, that he stay immersed in it, that he acknowledge this pain as his pain.
The Zen practice of mindfulness focuses on being truly and fully present, in this moment. The demands of modern life, not to mention the ubiquitous temptations of technology, constantly lure our attention from the here and now, in such a way that we half-drift through the vast majority of our lives. I'm doing the dishes, but really I'm fantasizing about an alternate lifeline in which I'm a rock star, or I'm thinking about what classes I want to teach next semester, or a paper that I'm going to write for a conference next fall. Or I'm interpreting the act of doing the dishes--"Wow, there are a lot of dishes." "I'm really tired of being the only one who does the dishes." Etc. I'm watching a show with my family, but really I'm wondering if my Dean has read the email I sent her, or if my students have turned in their exams in Moodle, or if I really understand this point in Foucault that I'm going to talk about in class tomorrow. I'm listening to a lecture, but really I'm checking Twitter, and I'm not even really doing that, because I'm passively thinking at the same time about a chapter that's due in two months. So much of our lives are only half-lived, if that. The practice of mindfulness is dedicated to disciplining the mind, clearing the noise, so as to attain a lucidity and a clarity, the ability (more difficult than it sounds) to focus one's attention completely on one's present experience.
So, to return to this question of the tattoo, the ascetic response seems to me inadequate or, at the very least, incomplete. The pleasure in undergoing the tattoo needle lies not in the separation of the mind from the body, (which, for me at least, is impossible for most of the process), but rather, in the way that it activates the power of the mind in the entirely opposite direction--not away from the body, but in a full and inescapable immersion in the bodily moment. Don't misunderstand me... this incapacity of the mind (to focus anywhere else) is still an acknowledgment of a certain mental power. Indeed, it's a power that all too often eludes us: the power of the mind to be fully and completely one with the body, the power to fully incorporate the material temporality that the body is undergoing, the power to truly experience what one is experiencing, to live what is so typically only half-lived. "I ink, therefore I am."
It's true. Both my arms, my hands, and my right calf, are all decorated, and what surface area isn't yet decorated, will be soon. A few weeks ago, I went in for ten hours (in total) of tattooing, over a two-day period. And I thought about this question a lot. How is it that I, a self-professed baby when it comes to bodily pain, can tolerate such prolonged periods of rather intense, slow, and methodical pain? One response, one that is often given by people who get tattoos, is the utilitarian response: "A few hours of pain for a lifetime of the tattoo." That makes sense, I guess. Employing a utilitarian calculus would place on one side of the scale a rather intense pain, but for a very short and concentrated duration, (followed by an irritation of relatively mild intensity for a week or so), as opposed to, on the other side, a significant pleasure spread out over the rest of one's life. And certainly, at some points in the process, the most severely painful ones, this calculus is indeed running through my head.
But, for me at least, it's more than just a tolerance of the pain. For much of the process, I actually enjoy the pain. And I've heard from other tattoo enthusiasts that they do too. And this is the really interesting question to me. If it were a simple matter of utilitarian calculus, well... that's fairly easy peasy. But utilitarian calculus cannot explain how it is that I can actually enjoy something that I know to be painful.
For a time, it seemed to me that the ascetic response might be a possibility. Many of the ascetic traditions emphasize the process of purifying the soul or spirit by way of the mortification of the body. In the Phaedo, Socrates suggests that by denying the body the indulgences of sex, food, and drink, we actually practice in the art of separating the soul from the body, so that when death (the final separation of the soul from the body) finally arrives, we'll have spent our lives preparing for it. A more colloquial way of expressing the ascetic route might be the principle of "mind over matter," the idea that if you simply focus your attention elsewhere than on the body, your mind can actually overpower the material and neurological impact of the steel needle, penetrating the surface of the flesh at a rate of several thousand times per minute. This is why some folks listen to music, for instance (though I never have). And again, in some of the most excruciating moments, I no doubt employ the method of trying to will the subjugation of the body.
But this response, for me, is still unsatisfactory. For the vast majority of the process, the pleasure is actually in the pain itself. And to me, this requires an almost opposite response to that of the ascetic. Specifically, the thing I think is most fascinating about the experience of being tattooed is precisely the inability to overpower the body with the mind - the incapacity to focus the mind on anything else other than the needle in the flesh. Contrary to the ascetic view that tattooing enables a separation of the mind or the spirit from the body, tattooing is an eminently material practice, through and through - steel and ink, penetrating flesh, leaving a material work of art upon the body for the remainder of the bearer's life. The very soul of tattooing is in the body itself. The beautiful thing about the pain is the way that it enables, or even necessitates, what Zen practitioners refer to as the practice of mindfulness. In a scene in David Fincher's Fight Club, Tyler pours the flaked lye onto the saliva-soaked kiss on the back of the narrator's hand, holding him captive at the mercy of an increasingly severe chemical burn, and the narrator attempts to retreat into his cave, the safe space in his mind. Tyler slaps him back to the present, insisting that he not lose this moment, that he stay immersed in it, that he acknowledge this pain as his pain.
The Zen practice of mindfulness focuses on being truly and fully present, in this moment. The demands of modern life, not to mention the ubiquitous temptations of technology, constantly lure our attention from the here and now, in such a way that we half-drift through the vast majority of our lives. I'm doing the dishes, but really I'm fantasizing about an alternate lifeline in which I'm a rock star, or I'm thinking about what classes I want to teach next semester, or a paper that I'm going to write for a conference next fall. Or I'm interpreting the act of doing the dishes--"Wow, there are a lot of dishes." "I'm really tired of being the only one who does the dishes." Etc. I'm watching a show with my family, but really I'm wondering if my Dean has read the email I sent her, or if my students have turned in their exams in Moodle, or if I really understand this point in Foucault that I'm going to talk about in class tomorrow. I'm listening to a lecture, but really I'm checking Twitter, and I'm not even really doing that, because I'm passively thinking at the same time about a chapter that's due in two months. So much of our lives are only half-lived, if that. The practice of mindfulness is dedicated to disciplining the mind, clearing the noise, so as to attain a lucidity and a clarity, the ability (more difficult than it sounds) to focus one's attention completely on one's present experience.
So, to return to this question of the tattoo, the ascetic response seems to me inadequate or, at the very least, incomplete. The pleasure in undergoing the tattoo needle lies not in the separation of the mind from the body, (which, for me at least, is impossible for most of the process), but rather, in the way that it activates the power of the mind in the entirely opposite direction--not away from the body, but in a full and inescapable immersion in the bodily moment. Don't misunderstand me... this incapacity of the mind (to focus anywhere else) is still an acknowledgment of a certain mental power. Indeed, it's a power that all too often eludes us: the power of the mind to be fully and completely one with the body, the power to fully incorporate the material temporality that the body is undergoing, the power to truly experience what one is experiencing, to live what is so typically only half-lived. "I ink, therefore I am."
RSS Feed