Episode Transcript
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(00:01):
Hello, friends. Thank you for your patience. But the
time is now. The Philip Lu episode is
happening. Here we go. I wanted to say a few words on
a personal level about Philip. 20 years ago, I'm
a young tattooer. I don't really understand this large
format stuff. To me, tattoos are still things you pick
off a wall you know the size of a fist the size of a football if
(00:24):
you're lucky and I come across this article where Philip is
doing these body suits massive compositions that go from a
dragon from a guy's shoulder it wraps around his body all
the way to his ankle and I just was
like oh my god who
(00:45):
can take this art form, how beautiful, how creative,
how exotic. So it changed my
career. I wasn't able to switch my whole game that next day, but
for the next, you know, I've been going 33 years now. I've
been striving towards that goal, ways to compose pieces that
really decorate the human form in a large format type of a way. And
(01:06):
he was a massive inspiration for me in that way and is
a huge, hero of mine, as I know he is to a lot of
you as well. So I just want to throw that in there and
let you know this show, this particular episode means a whole lot
to me. So I hope you guys enjoy it. Now, with that being said, one more
thing I want to talk about the Tattoo Heritage Project. It
(01:27):
was founded by Good Time Charlie. They're focused on protecting and
preserving and archiving American tattoo history. If
this is important to you, check out tattooheritageproject.org. They
do all kinds of cool stuff over there. They've got a traveling tattoo museum.
They just debuted Felix's Dare to Dream.
(01:48):
Amazing film. Check it out. They are a non-profit, so
if you get over there and you like what you see, maybe even make a donation. It
helps get more of this stuff out there for the world. to see and
it also helps protect tattoo history which i find really important
and in this era of so much change and if you do too
yeah make a donation so with all that being said
(02:10):
here we go fill a blue Hello,
everybody, welcome back to Chats and Tats. Wow, I've
got a really special moment about to occur, kind of a historical, I
don't even know what to call this right now, but I've had a few heroes
in this industry, but one stands out more than any of them for
sure. And I'm gonna sit with him today, and
(02:32):
I'm just so honored and stoked about this. So please
tune in, listen up, because I'm gonna have a fun conversation with
the man, the myth, the legend, Philip Liu. Thank
you. Thank you. We'll cut that part back into the front. It's
(03:06):
Standing up and doing charcoals at arm's length was the way for me
to break away from being rigid and cramped, right,
to try and teach a more flowy kind
of construction. Forget about the details and get the shapes down. Stand
back, look. Stand back and look. And it really, it was helped me enormously in
my body drawing, like drawing tattoos on. Because I
(03:27):
did, I don't know, I was coming up a couple of hundred of my dooming sets every
now and then. It really helped me. It was something to
come out of art school, because my parents had done art school. I
didn't have art school, but I had them. Well, in
a way, you had art school through them. Yeah. Yeah. But that was the concept of
that. When you start, you draw with your fingers, like if you're writing or something. Yeah,
I like that. And it moves up, the more relaxed you get, and you're not working with
(03:51):
Then it goes to your shoulder, and maybe it ends up in your heart one day, or
your soul, you know? Or your back. It's like back
pain. Yes. Well, maybe we should talk about that.
43rd. 43rd year. Dicked around with it a bit before
that, but I was just a bit too young. You know, 14, 15 people
(04:13):
started trusting me and started going. Had my
How much do you work? What's your workload like right now at
Well, finally, just before lockdown in 2020, I'd finally pushed
it to breaking point. I was doing. It's like
too often big work and I
(04:35):
had arthritis and tinnitus and had to take
a half year off. So now I wheel my way back from two hours of
tattooing a day to maybe four tops. Not too
comfortable to go above that. How many days a week? I'd be happy to
do four. That'd be comfortable, give me enough time to...
(04:56):
I work on my own, just me and B. We each
take care of ourselves. T.T. helps me. I'm
pretty much, you know, I'm not in a big shop with a lot of people,
and I don't have a lot of... I've heard. I like saying I'm my own secretary,
which is true, and I want to fire myself about three times a week, because I don't do
a very good job of it. I keep talking to myself, sit myself down,
(05:21):
Or do you have someone to help you? No, my mother, Loretta, does emails
coming in. Concentrates a lot more on art
projects and shows and books and
stuff like that. She's made the film, which is showing here. That was all her.
Teaching is the logistics and the brains. She's the accountant and
the one that makes sure everything works, knows where everything is. And
(05:44):
I'm the guy who's been sitting in the middle doing it. Right, I
Yeah, I couldn't have done it without my family behind
me, absolutely. I'm the same, my wife and these guys. I
need help to manage all these things. I say, do you want to talk to the man
in charge or the woman who knows what's going on? I say that
a lot, too. Well, that's impressive. At 33 years, I have existential
(06:11):
crisis sometimes. I'm like, am I going to
be able to, you know, I talked to a guy like you and I sat with Henning yesterday.
He's got more time than me under his belt. 46 years,
he says. Working five days a week. Yeah,
I'm like, OK, this can be done. I can tattoo for many more years.
(06:32):
But you can also say, what kind of work do you want to do? You know, I
stand most of the time when I work. 90% of it,
I'm on my feet. Got a table that just comes up.
Yeah, but I like being bold. That's moving work.
In two to four hours I can do a lot because I've thrown
the detail out the window. Just not interested. I've been doing
(06:53):
it long enough to know that you can break your back desperately trying
to make something perfect and then the skin goes... and
all your works for naught. You
cannot beat skin and aging so it doesn't matter how careful you
are or how small your needle is or how delicate you go or
how special your colors seem to be. You can reinvent this
(07:14):
shit from now to like you know forever and then the skin's gonna just
let you down. So really that really has
become so apparent to me. So I try and work for it, you know. Cliche
is a tight old truth, right? Bolder hold and all the rest of it. It's really
true. And I remember all the things I was told along the
way. Bob Roberts said to me, when I first met him when I
(07:36):
was like 17, his advice was, your tattoo
should look good when the lines are done. It should look done when the
black and grey is in. And colour's extra because it ain't sticking around, you
know? Yeah, that's his concept. Or Paul
Rogers, he'd said to me, you know, testing me, because I was young in the old life,
like to play with me. And he's like, what's the colour that heals the fastest? And
(07:59):
I didn't get it right, because the answer is
I worked my way around the whole thing, and he's like, no. I
say it differently. I always say to the young tattooer, what's your brightest color
in your palette? And they look at their whites, and I go, skin.
Yes. And the good use of skin. Beat
(08:20):
is somebody you spoke to, I heard yesterday, and he's very good at that negative
space. So, you know, when you look at a sleeve, how
much of it is solid black, how much is gray, how much is color,
and how much is emptiness that lets it breathe,
makes it readable, and speeds up the whole process because there's a whole chunk you
Right, right. And it looks great. And I've always heard, like, thirds. Third
(08:43):
skin, third black, third, if you're
But if you look at traditional Japanese work, there is so much
more black in it than a lot of Westerners use when
they do Japanese. They tend to put more gray in. They
do all the soft tones and stuff. But Japanese got a good amount of black in
it, which really makes it. Yeah, not wash, but looking black.
(09:06):
Yeah, yeah. Very true. Very true. Your
body's okay, though? I mean, I know you tattoo at this rate, but your
Great. I've had all the problems over the years, from carpal tunnels
to tennis elbow to, you know, broken bird wing
shoulder. You can't win. So
if it's not one
(09:29):
thing, it's another. But like I said, I stand a lot. And that's
helped me, because I don't move my frame. I
don't twist my spine to get into a hard
spot. Move them, not you. No, I just swivel my
hips. I kind of lock the top part. And I
just sidestep and move around people like this. And so the
(09:52):
And it really, really helped. Remember to drop your shoulders, that's
a real big one. You can actually see
through body, it manifests how we feel and
we all, you know, because it's too stressful, you're
hurting somebody, you're worried, you're fucking up, am I gonna get it, is the line gonna be
okay? You get all these things that never go away. And then we cramp up
(10:13):
and fuck ourselves up, really. If you can remember to drop your shoulders, it
really goes a long way to not fucking up your... Thinking about it right now.
This episode is brought to you by Bishop. I
have been using their machines and cartridges and grips
and many other products they make for well over a decade and I
(10:33):
have to say it's just some of the most high quality stuff I've ever laid my hands on.
It makes my workday so much easier to have that stuff work seamlessly
so I can do the best tattoo possible. There is so much
out there nowadays, and it's a sea of things to
try to sort through to figure out what's good and what isn't. And I really
don't know all the best stuff, but I do know this stuff. It's fantastic. So,
(10:55):
if you're interested for some new equipment or trying a new type of equipment or a new
machine, please head over to BishopTattooSupply.com. And
a special thank you to Franco Viscovi. great friend of mine, and
all the boys and girls over at Bishop for all the love and support they've given me
and Guru over the years. Thank you so much. And now,
back to the show. You know, back to that point, though, of your
(11:17):
ability to tattoo all these years, Henning's ability to tattoo all
these years, it's the style of work, you know, this big color realism
thing that's so amazing to look at and
to see. And I tell these guys, they come work at
my shop, and I say, you know, how are you going to do that? Are
you going to be able to do that in 30 years? Concentration levels.
(11:41):
I think the answer is simple. No, you are not going to be able to do that. I
Maybe someone can do that for 40 years. We're in a huge transitional
period. I never thought that
the art, because when I started out, when Felix started out,
and then when I joined, there were a lot of competent tattooers around,
and a lot of shitty artists, to be truthful. There weren't that many. You
(12:04):
used to go through a tattoo mag looking for that wonderful piece. Now
you go through a mag and you're almost doing the opposite, look for something to laugh at,
because it's all so brilliant. On the art side, they
are literally oil paintings on skin. It's blowing
my mind. How the fuck did they even pull that off, right? I don't know.
But it has no longevity, really. That's my next
(12:25):
question. I wanted your feelings around that. No, it can't, because you're
working on blotting paper. You're working on something that will pass
out in time and spread. And the other thing is not
all colors fade at the same speed. True. So
if you're making a mixture that's based on like a rule of
thumb of painting, where painters mix a
(12:47):
bit of this and a bit of that, just a dab of this to get the right tone, that's
a very unstable color. Because if you've got five different
tones in there and two of them drop out before the others, you're left
with the three that were, you know. So these things will change
to the eye. They will change their intensity, their color tones. I
agree, I agree. So it's a tricky thing to do that. That's why I'd
(13:09):
rather not have more than 12 colors, you know, at the most, maybe
nine. The less, the better, right? Keep
Tattooing seems to me at this phase as this process of
elimination almost. It's like we're spending our whole careers figuring
Well, that's the loss of the apprenticeship. The apprenticeship was
(13:30):
more about what not to do in many ways. Don't try that. We've tried that.
That don't work. It might look like it works, but trust us, we've tried it.
It don't work, so avoid that, right? Because you
Years to really see it come back. And look at that thing from 10 years ago. Go,
No, Yoshi said to me, I met him when I was a kid, too. And he said,
(13:54):
six years it takes. If you see a guy do a tattoo, you
need to wait six years before he can tell whether
he knows his stuff or not. Six is probably the minimum.
Minimum, yeah. For the lines to either fall out or spread too much, for
the shading to separate, or for the colors to be no good. Yeah,
(14:15):
it is slightly problematic on that level. The other
thing I was thinking about, it's a
complex issue, it's the internet. The
internet, right? Who's guiding the industry?
Laymen. The world is on Instagram, for
example, and it's fueled by likes and
(14:37):
attention. A lot of people participating in
promoting or not liking stuff know nothing about tattooing,
don't even recognize an oriental style. really
understand what a wave looks like if you're doing it, or a cloud, Japanese. So
these observers will gravitate
towards what they know and hit the like, and everybody understands realism. So
(15:01):
they're promoting it more because they can relate. And it looks great on a
phone. Yeah, but they can actually relate to it. Sometimes they look at a Japanese design
and they're like, what's that? Is that a wave or a cloud? You know, you get these questions. And
suddenly you realize, holy shit, just because I've been into it my whole life,
my whole career, and I totally recognize a nice Japanese waifu
against a not nice, the guy doesn't even know it's a waifu. Yeah?
(15:23):
That's an interesting thought. You need to be trained in this to really
get off on it. Yeah, so the public is steering where
tattooing is going. Now the flip side is that if you start tattooing today
and you want to be popular, you follow the trend. So it's so
hard for these newcomers who are tattooing that need to do hyper-realism. You
cannot do a really good face unless you know how to draw a face. That's
(15:47):
why judging, we look at these things that are gorgeous and then suddenly
you realize one eye's up there and one's down there. There's these very basic
mistakes happening in very high-end design
and art. It's
harder for them today, starting out, and trying
to step up to the bar, because the bar is way up there, you know what I mean? If
(16:09):
they just start simple tattoos first, work their way through the butterflies, get
little things, build it up, you know? Understand skin and do the five-year
apprenticeship to get to the next level. But that's not
a golden rule. I have seen some guys that step out of art school or are
like so proficient in
painting, sketching, drawing, sculpting,
(16:31):
digital, and then they just pick up a tattoo machine and flow right into
it. It's just another tool to do something that they're learning anyway. These
guys get... Good results real quick. I
mean, two-year tattooers. Couple of years and you're looking at it going, wow, man,
that took me fucking 20, you know? So I admire that. I
like that. But then going back to the
(16:53):
internet, it's done that to everything on the planet. When you're
making music, you don't even have to know how to play an instrument or
Homogenization, I think is what the word is, where it makes everything
similar because it's all, everyone's seeing the thing that was yesterday, doing
something similar to that, so the unique voices are getting
Well, because it's harder to break away
(17:16):
from the group and follow your own. I like people who stand
out. What's that old saying that if
you make a mistake long enough, they call it a style? I
like that. Well, if we all recognize each other by our little quirks,
I'm like, I know who did that. I know who did that. I know
who did that. Because if we do realism and we do it to
(17:39):
Yeah. Yeah, realism, it's art, but in
some regard, is it? I mean, you're looking at a thing and recreating
a thing. It's still art, but there's something different from
that than drawing an idea. The idea
for art for me was always bringing something novel into the world. Do
you see the girl's suit that was just
(18:01):
No. Half her body was negative, half was positive.
And the artist had used a little piece of, like, crazy Italian marble
and just reproduced this all over her body. Wow. And I
was looking at it, and you looked at the back, and I was like, does she have horse
heads on the top of her back? And no, it was like dogs. And
then we got up close, and it was pure abstract. And
(18:22):
I was taken aback that I didn't have, until
now, The fucking balls to do that to somebody's body,
because it's so individual, so distinct, such a
statement, artistically speaking. It was beautiful, but
it was just weird little shapes and scraggly lines,
(18:45):
That that kind of reminds me of something that I think this is happening in this paradigm
shift in tattooing where we're this new thing of just debt,
you know It was always imagery a skull a
snake everybody had to have a thing and now we're
in this world of like Decorating bodies all black all
black a solid black or a big line Shading
(19:06):
off to this, you know, and at first when it started happening as an
illustrator I of course was kind of like oh that's not fucking art, you know
Well, you're just going to put a negative space from here to here with
a little flower head at the bottom. Get out of here. And now I see
the stage. It's beautiful. It's fucking beautiful. I
The artistic courage it takes for maybe
(19:27):
it's because of the way I got into this. And I
was always catering to the wishes and desires of the individual. Oh,
yeah. Whose
idea was it to get those two parallel lines in the flower? Usually
I think the artist is doing this, not the customer request.
Well, it's becoming popular now. Now people are requesting it.
(19:50):
Yes, I'm seeing that. I just love this that people are finally getting
around this idea that a tattoo doesn't have to have meaning.
Meaning in tattoo is great, but you can also just decorate your
You know? I'm totally with you there. I thought I had meaning to my
early tattoos. I mean, the true meaning of my first tattoo was, you know,
I was a little kid and I wanted to piss people off and it was great. I found
(20:13):
something that worked, you know? And then I had a few excuses and
then I realized I just like it. It's an interesting question. People
come to you and they bring you this drawing and they're like, ah, what happened? And
you can ask them, did you wake up one day, see this drawing and just go,
man, I just have to have it? Or did you wake up
one morning and say, I really want to get tattooed, now I've got to find an image
(20:33):
to represent something and spend the last three months desperately trying to
bring me something. That's usually what they'll say. That's usually the
case. Because the desire comes out of fucking left field and has no face.
It has no image. It's just this on't. That's
a weird part of tattooing. Why do people do it? All these years in it to
try and pin down what motivates people to want to be tattooed. It's
(20:55):
beyond fashion. It's beyond trend. So what
That's one of the questions I wanted to ask. It's a tricky, tricky one. It
is a tricky question. What are we doing? I mean, when I think about
it, what did I do? What am I doing to them? What are we
doing? And for me, sometimes I arrive at some level
of insecurity or something. I'm like, I must have a hole in me I'm trying
(21:18):
to fill. I mean, this is a totally unnecessary way to spend my
Well, OK, there's a difference between little tattoos, which
are spur of the moment, or sometimes linked to a
group moment, or doing a bodysuit, which is
transformative, takes a long time, hurts horrendously
and costs a fortune. It's a huge endeavor. I've
(21:42):
come to one idea. We hear the mark change. They
change. We make it permanent. That's our
job. Some kind of paradigm shift in
their psyche, their life. They reach a point where
now I feel like I need to make it real. Whatever
it is, it's so personal. We couldn't even know. Maybe they don't even know.
(22:05):
But they have the feeling that it's time. They want to make something to mark the
Yes, yes. And I think it's that. And also, I think
it's human nature to want to be heard and to
express yourself. I want the world to see me.
I want them to understand I'm unique. I'm not just
(22:25):
You must have these guys hit 50. well-placed
jobs, will get a bodysuit. They don't show anybody but their
wife and their doctor and me. Yeah, I've got a couple. So
it's deeper than... I know what you're talking about, but it's so... It's
not even for others. Yeah, they've waited their whole life to actually finally
take this leap. And yeah, it's
(22:47):
a trick. It's a tricky question, and it's impossible to
answer. It's almost... Some parts might be very generic,
but otherwise I think it really is tailored to each person. Yeah,
the need to decorate, or the need to express, or
Or drive a certain car, or wear a certain shirt. I mean, it's all
(23:08):
a way for me to, or a person to say, look at me. I'm a
One little track
that I was talking yesterday is, when I was younger,
we knew every face in Europe. Maybe five or
eight of these guys. Facial tattoos. Oh,
(23:30):
I see. They were very rare. They always existed. So
on Instagram, somebody showed me extreme facial tattoos. You
can scroll to infinity. It's like
the fucking thing is out of the box and there's no
putting it back. The quantity is just unbelievable
(23:51):
of actually under 30s. They're going,
some of them, I gotta say, I actually think are beautiful. I'm naughty,
I'm picky, but I have to, I'm into cyberpunk,
future sci-fi films, and some of these dudes are right there, you know?
With the black eyes and everything, right? I
can't, I feel like a dinosaur when I'm like, oh, have you thought about your future, you
(24:13):
know? You know, I've become like this old guy, like, don't do
that, oh, you might regret it. What am I talking about? Maybe they'll never regret
That used to be the most extreme thing you can do, and it still is, but
I met a nice woman in Paris, a body mod
(24:36):
girl that took her nose off. Well, that's what you meant by that. Yeah.
She took her nose off. Yeah, she's all black and got the black eyes, and
she's removed the nose. Cut her head clean off. So
there's just two holes there? Reached down straight into the sinuses. And
we're at the after-party together, having a bit of a dance, and she's
the first girl to do it in Europe. But I found about eight people
(24:57):
online that have done this. Oh, wow. The
Black Alien Project, people who remove their ears, remove
their noses, tattoo themselves all black, do
loads of subdural implants, and modify,
split the middle lip, you know. That's the
forefront if you really want to scare the shit out of people. Having sleeves doesn't do
(25:18):
it anymore, just don't cut it. Then they went to tattooing their faces, now that's been
passed by this wad mod world which is really
front line and I was watching her slopes through the party and you
know she got the desired effect that I had when I was 14 and
I'd whip my tattoos out and people go holy shit now she's in
a room full of tattooed heavily pierced fucking and she's
(25:40):
freaking them out, right? So that's
always moving forward, that part, because that's the
other side of tattooing, the big fuck you. That's part of it.
That's why I started doing it. Oh, yeah. But
if your dad's tattooed and your mom's tattooed and your uncle's got good
sleeves, what are you going to do? For a while there, they were coming home with those ignorant
(26:00):
style tattoos. What do you mean by that? You know, there's this
trend of really poorly executed, shaky
lines, really crappy drawn, silly
ideas that people are putting on themselves, and it's called ignorant style. And
it seemed to be almost a rebellion to having beautiful sleeves. I
don't want beautiful sleeves anymore. I want this. It's shocking. Or a full black
(26:22):
arm falls in the same category. I like tattooing, but
I'm sick of all imagery, so I'm just going to get pure ink. Then
That's fucking mind-blowing. It's like the eyes That that
one was wild enough, but that's another level But
then it's like then you ask yourself because there will be something else
(26:45):
more. It won't stop with the hell
Yeah, how you can get pointy is now you can
get horns put into your head, you know Mm-hmm I'm
waiting for a girl to show up with a third breast. I mean, these are
all things you've seen in Reaper. I remember that
Schwarzenegger film years and years ago, where you saw
(27:07):
one girl in the background with three titties. And it's this
fantasy of a future that's now. It
is now. Everything is now. It's happening now. It is. Fucking
wild, man. Lyle Tuttle said a funny line. He
said, the Tertullian is as ancient as time. and
as modern as tomorrow. It's always been in this zone where
(27:30):
Yeah, we've always... And different aspects of it. Yeah, the oldest mummy
Yeah, five and a half thousand, a guy in the Austrian Alps. Yeah.
He had interesting tattoos. He had a lot of little, like, tiny tattoos
on acupuncture points and nerve ending
points and stuff. So they were speculating it could be medical because
(27:52):
if you know you need to be rubbed, you just go, the
black dot goes on the black dot, you know, and anybody can help you. You don't
need a professional. So it was like a tattoo with
Yeah, yeah, I didn't know that part. I thought it was a bunch of tribal symbols
No, they actually turned out to be acupuncture, and I think that way
(28:12):
if you do massage or put heat, you could help. Fascinating.
Yeah, this whole tattoo journey, it's so
beautiful. It's filled up your life. It's filled up mine. We're
so lucky to be here. Thinking about what it
all means on the deepest possible level is something that I
think about mostly, you know, besides the art and
(28:33):
making a great tattoo. For me, I feel like it's been a spiritual
journey. I've learned more about myself as happening to
be a tattooer and do this service for others. Do
you have feelings around? Do you have a spiritual belief? Do
you have a philosophy you live by? Or do
you believe in God? Do you wonder if we're in a... I think
(28:56):
I think. Yeah, I'm willing to conspirative all that shit.
I watch way too much of it. I could put it like this. I grew up in
a house with a lot of faith and no doctrines, which is
a weird middle of the road thing where do good and, you
know... Eastern faith. I've
never believed in
(29:18):
God, per se. I don't worry myself about an afterlife. I'm
very skeptical of all stuff that I can't actually get
my hands on. So they're wonderful ideas, and
I love listening to them all. But I don't really buy
into much. I guess I think when I'm dead, I'm dead, and that's it. You know, I'm fine
with that. You are. We're all stardust, and it's... We're
(29:39):
the only fucking monkey or only animal on this planet that even
worries about future, present, and past. Yeah. We preoccupy
ourselves with... I heard a funny thing
about a joke, but it was like the Buddha said, don't
worry about the past. You can't change it. Don't
worry about the future. You can't affect it. And don't
(30:00):
worry about the present. I didn't get you one. But
you know, the thing about here and now, Because I'm
interactive with it, and I can touch, see, feel, and play
with it, and try and get along with it. I'm
not going to be doing a whole bunch of stuff in my life on
the off chance that when I die, I go to a better place or a worse place. That,
(30:24):
to me, is just too much of a human idea, like
a sales pitch. You know? Yeah. To what end?
Yeah. I do watch a lot of things on religion, and I love
debates, and I love politics. I love the Flat
Earth group. I can't get enough of all these
crazy ideas that float around, right? That people truly buy
(30:45):
into. Conspiracy theories are a blast. Oh my god, they're
great. Flat Earth is one of the best. But they're just ideas. I
don't know why people go to war over this and want to kill somebody else that
doesn't believe in their god or something like that.
Back to the whole idea of, like, I agree. I mean, I think I spend most
(31:05):
of my time trying to be in the now. This is the only reality that
actually exists. It's happening right now. And what I loved about art
as a kid was that that would put me in
the now. I didn't know I was doing it at the time, but I was. Meditation, yeah.
You start drawing, and then you're just here. And that's
the beauty of tattooing. And when it goes well, hours go by. Hours.
(31:28):
Didn't think about that, didn't go backwards, didn't worry, no concerns.
You're in a meditative state. If people only knew that when we're deep in
a tattoo thing, we're like miles away. We're on holiday, actually. Our
mind is like on a beach somewhere. It's like, I
liken tattooing to like driving a car. You're
(31:50):
there, but you're free as well. Your mind wanders, you know? And
sometimes you come back and check on yourself to see how you're doing and then you fuck off,
No, it's a form of meditation. I think it saved my life. Without tattooing and
art or whatever, I think I was the type that thought too much, worried too
much, and I would have spun out of control. So
when I'm really having a hard time in life, I crave the tattoo shop.
(32:14):
I crave to just focus on some art and let it all behind, let
it go. It's a gift in that way.
It has been a rock for me, and it's given me the option to live an amazing life.
I mean, I'm just ignorantly happier.
(32:34):
I don't seem to suffer too much. Ignorance
is bliss, they say. I wanted that tattoo. You know, the one of the guy's head with
the empty symbol on it? I was tempted to get it, and it said bliss,
and the head, the brain is empty, because it's true. What's
the point of worrying about shit you can't fucking change or control? There's
(32:55):
There is not. Well, tattooing, you
know, it's just changed so much,
okay? In the last... What hasn't? What
Changed so much. Why? No, what hasn't since we've been
alive? Well... You know, I remember the world without internet.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, do you know what I mean? Going out and playing all
(33:17):
day and if I can, you know, ride your bike and build a tree house and go fight with
the guy next door or something. Yes. It was very different today. You
see the kids going around and I'm hooked, so I can't bitch. If
I can take the phone to the toilet, I actually look at the phone before I kiss Tito in
the morning, you know what I mean? I'm so tuned into this thing. It's
(33:40):
It's an endless access to the world. Yeah, but do you ever, I
mean, sometimes I do it too, but sometimes I do it and I feel
like, how do I feel when I'm done? And I feel shitty. I
I refuse to feel guilty for the way I want to waste my life. It's
my life to waste. You know, why should I feel guilty if
I had a good time on the couch all day watching Indian mechanics fix a
(34:03):
bus? That wouldn't make me feel shitty. That's educational. But
sometimes I get... It's not educational. RuPaul's
Drag Race, Love Island, what's the matter? You know what I mean? You're just
studying people. I've loved watching people my whole life. You've got
to be a people person to be in a tattoo. True. An
antisocial guy could have a hard time. There's some of those. Yeah, I know, but they
(34:24):
really suffer for it because you've got to be in the people. Yeah, yeah.
And so watching anything is... I like
what you said there. I feel a little less guilty now. Why should you know?
Who's judging us? Me. I'm judging me. They
say you waste your life. So if you sit under a fucking tree in a lotus position
like Siddhartha doing phakal and letting vines grow all over you, is that a good life?
(34:45):
And he did nothing. He sat under a tree meditating
I love that. Might as well just be on Instagram checking
There is satisfaction in creation in the sense
of it's not so much the making as I've done and you feel good about having put
(35:07):
something out, done something. It's, you know, you just,
I feel good. If I build a shelf at home,
if I finally get to sort out my screws in the garage, if I
do things, there's a certain feeling of accomplishment, rake
the yard, make a painting, finish a project. I
do get off on that, that I've always felt like, yeah, I did something that's
(35:30):
And I guess that's the guilt, because when I get down and I accidentally am
Buddha should have, Buddha could have, all of those things. You know, the
idea that I wanted to lie on my deathbed and not regret anything, I've come to realize is
ridiculous. Of course you're going to regret something. Oh, God, I could have
done that. Yeah, that's true. Well-being is...
(35:52):
I don't know, following your desires as long as you don't fuck
up everything else. If you want to lie on the couch and
go down the rabbit hole of Instagram for an afternoon and you feel relaxed and
you've rested your body and you've filled your head with all kinds of weird shit you can think about
I agree, and you're making a great point. What do you think, though, as
(36:13):
this evolves so rapidly, there's social
media, but now there's quantum computing, and now AI generated
everything. I mean, fuck, they're going to be able to hit a button soon and make a movie. Probably
a good movie. I think they already do. Yeah. You know what I mean? You
don't even know it. Right. So that's just,
(36:34):
It's exponential, this growth. It's going fast.
Where are we going here? Did you see the Boston Dynamics robot now
that they have attached to a bike and it can bunny hop onto the table? I did see that, yeah. Oh,
I love that shit. Oh, that's cool. That is so out there. What we've been
able to build as a race of beings and what we can
(36:55):
That's going to get crazier. Wow, yeah. Yeah. I wonder if they'll
Maybe. I don't believe in the matrix kind of thing.
You know, I tattooed some dudes into robotics. He works
in Zurich. And we had a great talk. I
think it's so human. First, we project ourselves all over
everything. Gods are human, gods are human,
(37:18):
the whole thing. Animals are fucking everything we put human on. Now
we're going to put all this human shit on a machine. What
would a robot want to... What
motivation? He doesn't have jealousy, reproductive drive.
He doesn't worry about wealth. He's just a fucking bunch of circuits. Why
(37:42):
Well, but what you're... So the argument, though, is this... We're talking about self-aware
machines again, right? Yeah, if that can happen or maybe it
2027, some guy was talking about being like the singularity. Ooh, I'm
glad I'll be around. I hope it is. Yeah. Why would he go
be a khan? Why wouldn't he just be a Buddha? We're
infinitely smarter than anything alive with access to every bit of
(38:04):
information that's ever happened. Why don't you just look at us and go, you
guys are fucking up, chill out, stop. We can sort this out,
Something that smart, I think you're right, it's more likely it would be
like that. Something that intelligent,
omnipotent, would be kind, I would think. Why not?
Because war is useless, it serves no purpose. It's
(38:27):
always based upon acquisition of wealth and land
to perpetuate my, DNA.
We're just DNA carriers, right? DNA wants to carry on, so
this is our thing. I love that concept of us being a virus with
shoes from the Matrix. I thought it was brilliant. Just human
I think it was, you know, Timothy Leary, right? Timothy Leary's thing
(38:51):
was that the only intelligent thing in our body is the DNA, and
we are just the puppet of it. And the reason we can't
stop inventing things, we can't, humans can't seem to stop building
shit, is because the whole goal for the DNA is to get off Earth
and keep on moving out into wherever else. So we're just here
Yeah. Well, the get-off-the-planet thing, that was his extra little
(39:15):
thingy, but he's right in the sense of I believe it. We are programmed to
reproduce so DNA can carry on. It makes a
lot of sense. There's the progress of life. I mean, there's no deeper than that. And everything else is
the trimmings and the reasons we come up with to, you
I had a DMT trip once where that
(39:35):
was kind of the message I was told. Have
you ever done that stuff? You have? Very
unique drug, or drug, whatever people say. It's not a drug. It's
something else. I don't know what they call it. It's the closest I
ever came to a religious experience. What was it
like for you? Because I love the stories because it seems like
(40:01):
It's the ultimate here and now for me in the sense of being in
the center of the universe. There
are no words in some ways. It's
an onslaught of ideas that takes months,
even years, to really understand. Probably not
really. Revelations. So
(40:24):
you were communicating with something, something
was talking? I listened to too much of fucking, what was his name,
the dude in Hawaii. Oh, Terrence McKenna. Oh,
Terrence McKenna. And I listened to him loads, and so I had expectations that
I didn't fulfill. I wanted to meet little fucking, you know, squeaky elves,
but they never showed up. That's all right. Yeah. I
(40:47):
The elves almost never show up on the DNT. The
elves show up with the fucking mushrooms. I don't know why these two realms are
It's got to be dosage. But no, I saw it really as
a mirror to where you're at, how you're
doing, how you feel. I dealt with tattooing on
it. That question did arise of, what
(41:09):
am I doing? Am I doing it right? Should I
be doing it? I came to the conclusion, as long as
I'm trying to keep myself in a good state, happy,
and I try my best, you can't do any more than that. That's
all I can do. You practice
(41:30):
dragons, you get to a point, to a really great dragon. Where
the fuck you go from there? Right? Do you maintain that
level of great dragon forever? Are you going to dip down sometimes? Can you
keep going back up? You know, there's, you reach these, not
limitations, but plateaus of, of, of
being where... And so if things move
(41:51):
like this through life, I think, understanding yourself, understanding the world, I
feel about my body, my mind, my relations, my
I had a bit of a different experience and that's why I think they were in a simulation because
they kind of I felt like I was in a cathedral made
(42:12):
Oh, I got that. It starts out on the eyebrows very close, the
mandalas, the movements, every time you breathe. And then
suddenly, you're in a big space. Yeah, exactly. Stuck
up on the wall, looking down, and unbelievable, breathtaking,
indescribable, felt very emotional
and personal. Did
(42:37):
it feel familiar? That was the weirdest part for me.
You sound like a raving lunatic after, because you just keep talking to people
about it. Oh, shut the fuck up. And they're looking at you like, what the fuck is he talking about?
I started a fucking mini cult. There
was a day at my tattoo shop, we were at our 15th fucking
DMT sessions, and I'm suddenly the leader of this thing. And
(42:59):
people are texting me in the middle of the night having crazy. Hey, Aaron, I need to talk
to you right now. I think I know something. I think I know. And
I eventually, my wife's like, what are you doing? I'm like, I don't know. Just,
yeah, I was just so excited. And now, I mean, it's fun talking with you
No, it takes time to truly come
(43:21):
to terms with what happened to you. It's like a freeway full
of thoughts and ideas and emotions. And in
the experience, if you try and stop one and analyze it, it's like
backlog. So you just let it flow through you. And
then over time, you take a pop-up. Oh, I get it. Oh, wow,
(43:43):
One thing that was really clear to me, though, that on all of
my trips, if I felt scared, everything
got less organized and it
would increase in intensity. And then if I would relax and
feel more of a loving, everything would get back into order.
It applies to life in general, doesn't it? Exactly. You know what I mean? If
(44:05):
there was a lesson there, that's the lesson, right? It's flipping out about shit
you can't control. Looking at people in cars going... and
behind the wheel, and you're thinking like, just chill out. Somebody once
told me, never get upset. There's very few places in life
where you are alone. It's your time. It's
the toilet and behind the wheel. Behind the wheel, chill.
(44:26):
You're in a traffic jam, put some music on, wait. I do that.
I'm good at that. Oh, yeah. I chill. You see the other one
is frothing at the mouth, fucking losing their minds, trying to get in front of
Yeah, no, I would never do that, never. Plus, I've got my
Oh, look, it's going to be an hour and a half to get home. Perfect. It's your
(44:47):
time. Yeah. That's fucking beautiful. That's cool you
tried that. You saw the scene. Yeah, I like that. There's
Oh, right, right, right. He's the one that found the mold on the bread. Yeah, yeah,
yeah. He did a massive dose once
(45:08):
a year until the end of his life. He was doing massive, like equivalent
of like 20 or 30 hits a day. Yeah, and he did it every year until
the end of his life. And he's a scientist. And he wrote a book called
LSD, My Problem Child. And he was really disappointed in
the way that young people used it. He
thought it wasn't a toy. It wasn't a party drug
(45:30):
to do every week. And you do it once a year, and you really, it was like a
mirror to look at yourself and check. see
It should be treated with respect and it should be... Oh,
so one day I decided to disrespect the DMT. So
then you'll learn, right? Oh my, I've never had a bad trip my whole
(45:52):
life. None of my trips have on all the different hallucinogenics. And this particular night,
I had a few whiskeys, I had music playing, I got
cocky, and I'm like, I'm gonna fucking do this. And boy, oh boy,
that fucking, that thing showed up and it was very, it
turned everything into plastic. It turned me into plastic. I
thought my fucking brain snapped and I was gonna be stuck there forever. I
(46:12):
started panicking, I ran upstairs, I woke my wife up to see if
she was plastic. But the lesson at the end was
what you're talking about, which is it was saying, what do you, do not come
I mean,
I quit tobacco after 44 years and that's been a couple of
years. It was a hard one to walk away from. I'll bet. And
(46:36):
it's weird. I mean, the addiction voice won't go
away. It's always going to be there. I finish my coffee, my voice went, Siggy? I
have a meal, I'm like, Siggy? Yeah, you stop at that, too. Siggy?
It goes all the time. You ever tried
the zens, the little zens that people are doing nowadays? I tried
that vape for a couple of weeks. No, you don't want to do the vapes. What am I doing? This thing is,
(46:58):
I either smoke or I don't smoke. I
had a bit of
wine at dinner and thought I'd go out and have a quick puff with everybody else. I
kind of broke down. I went out there. It was horrendous. I
coughed my lungs out. I burned my throat. I felt like I'd licked an ashtray.
I almost puked on the sidewalk. It really was no good. And
(47:20):
the next morning after breakfast, my little voice went, see? And
I think it'll do it for the rest of my life. I'll never be able to get away from
that impulse, you know? of something that
I truly enjoyed smoking. I quit because I was afraid of killing myself. Not
because I didn't enjoy it. They say nicotine is good for
Have you read any of that studies? Nicotine, they
(47:41):
think, might contain a molecule that's going to cure. It's really good
for brain health. Alzheimer's, dementia,
specifically. One of the reasons I do the Xans is
because of these studies and how they've done these brain scans. They
give people the nicotine. New synapses start to develop and
new pathways in the brain start to open back up. You'll
(48:04):
notice a lot of creators, writers, painters, tattooers.
It's not just the act of smoking, but it stimulates you. There's
a stimulant in there. It's the only drug that stimulates you
and relaxes you simultaneously. No other drug they've ever
discovered can do that. Very unique. And I
have no idea about that. Yeah, so I don't know. Maybe you should get back
(48:26):
on the job. Oh, that's
Yeah, that's a whole other. And,
you know, are we all a little autistic or a little addictive in the sense
to be a good tattooer? What does it take to sit on your butt and make tiny
little circles for hours on end while your friends are playing outside in the sun? You
know, what turned us into this kind of, you know,
(48:50):
profession? There's a room full of people doing it out there.
It does take a certain mindset to be able to, first,
to break skin and draw blood. It's not for everybody. Two,
feel confident enough to actually do this to another human being. Like,
yeah, of course I can. Watch me, you know? And
(49:11):
then to stick with it. I've seen a lot of people start and bail
and go, I can't do this. This is too
I guess for each person would have to answer that question. I'm
thinking about myself right now and being honest enough to admit a
lot of it I think is my ego. I think it's my identity. And
(49:32):
I think I want to be loved and appreciated and
respected. And so tattooing gets me that more than anything
If you compare us to musicians, we're all lead singers and lead
guitarists. Not a lot of drummers or bass players. We're
all up front, right? We're out there. We
(49:53):
All of these things are true. But I feel that's starting to
slip away. It feels like that's not as important as
it was, for sure not as important as it was the first 20 years. But I'm
hoping to let go of it completely because I guess if it ends one day,
I don't want to have some kind of fucking crisis when I can't have that. If that's
the only place you're getting your love and your attention and it goes away, you're in
(50:14):
a tough spot. So I'm trying to detach. And
then it becomes more, for me at least, back to
the meditation thing. It's a very relaxing, fulfilling place
I never had a different job. I've had a
couple, but not many. Yeah, and you know, I didn't choose tattooing. You
(50:36):
did. It kind of fell on me. Actually, when my dad started,
I thought it was the dumbest thing in the world. Why the fuck would you do that? I was a little kid, like, fuck,
I want a tattoo. It was this shit, you know? I
didn't get it. And so it kind of crept up on me,
and I accepted it in my life. You actively sought
it out. Just about everybody in that room, except for a couple of
(50:56):
second generation guys, fell into it. Hiroshi
Son, Amy Cornwell. I
know I met a few, you know, that are second gen, but it's
a very different thing. You decided, I've tried a few things and I want
to do this. You know, I can't see myself
(51:17):
I can't now anymore. But at the time, it was just, how
That's the flip side, too. It's like, I do tattoo,
and it's not a popular thing. You just said it, and I agree with it. I
tattoo to survive. It's the way I make money
to live. That's my motivation. And so I don't have to do those other
(51:39):
jobs out there. I don't want to do those things. If you were a multimillionaire, would
you still tattoo? You just asked
me this one. It's an interesting question. Maybe after
33 years, you'd want to keep your finger, but you'd do an occasional tattoo
that really interested you. But I'm sure you did lots of other things you'd like
to do. Yeah, so you take the money survival away from
(52:01):
us. I guess maybe you want to make a
20-foot metal dragon in Jübergarten, you know what I
mean? Maybe you want to build a race car. Maybe it's the only thing that
we dream of doing that we can't because we can't afford it. Maybe
I would still make things. I actually have some things I want to make.
(52:21):
Yeah, there you go. You know what I mean. And if money, you know, but it would be artistic, but
I want to carve wood, and I want to make these puppeteering fucking things where the
art moves inside of it like a picture. You know, I have dreams. I
But yeah, you're right. No, but actually, it's a survival thing for us. Like you said, a
way you can do the thing you like and make money. Yeah. And
I think there's nothing wrong with that. It's an honorable fucking profession. I
(52:46):
don't feel like it should be that
you can't say it, that you're like, oh no, I'm only in tattooing for the heart and
blah, blah, blah. Yeah, I am, but that's secondary. The fact that I truly love
and I'm obsessive about what I do makes me fortunate. Can
you imagine being stuck in a job you don't like? I
(53:08):
I'd do it. You know, I got kids. I would do what I needed to
do to protect and serve for my family, but thank God I don't
The discussion I was having yesterday, I was 14 when I chose not to have kids. I
thought about it, and I was like, yeah, no. I'm the oldest of four. I've
done my bit of parenting. And I just was like,
I'm not afraid of being alone when I die, because I figure you're alone
(53:29):
anyway. If you're surrounded by your family as
you croak, or you're surrounded by a few nurses, or maybe a robot, he's
still a huge dude to die in. Yeah. Everyone dies alone. Yeah.
Very true. Fuck, man. Well, my
dad took me when I was about nine to Benares, just me
and him. Varanasi on the
(53:52):
Ganges in India. He was a jeweler at the time, before tattooing. And
he'd gone out to buy silver, just me and him. It was this big trip, me and my
dad. You know, we were living in England, I think, at the time. And
he was a really tall guy, and he'd walk really fast. And I
called onto his coat not to get lost in these marketplaces, and I was hungry.
And he didn't tell me we were going, and I started smelling barbecue. And
(54:15):
I was salivating. And then we came upon the river where they burn all the dead bodies.
It smelled really good. It's so weird. That's what you were smelling? Yeah.
It smelled like fucking a fry of bacon or something with
sandalwood at the back. Oh, my god. and spend the rest
of the afternoon watching human bodies burn. It's
so weird. They sit up at one point when
(54:37):
all the tendons retract and start erecting. They
actually go into a fetal position and the guys have to come out and smash the spines
with a stick to make them lie flat again and cave the skulls in.
And this was 78. It
was dogs fighting over femurs and hip basins like
human bones. Now they've cleaned up, I've heard, and they don't do it
(54:58):
so often. But that was a real life changer
for me. I walked out of that afternoon Like, oh
my god, I'm a meat puppet. I'm a meat bag. Like,
wow, this is not permanent. And that's what got me motivated to
try and start tattooing, do something, and start
as soon as possible to find a way
(55:19):
to look after myself and generate. It really
Well, the Buddhists say you should think, well, they'll
say meditate on, but you should think about your death
Yeah, I agree. It's inevitable. It's coming. And not
that it ruins you here and now, but that you're aware that you're not going to be around forever.
(55:42):
Oh, it makes life better. My wife hates it when I say it. I'm always saying it. I'm
like, hey, everybody, raise your glass. We're all going to die. She's
like, you? And I'm like, but it's true. I'm trying
to lift everybody up right now. I'm trying to make a good vibe. I think
that's something that makes life rad. We're all going to die, and we're not
But it kind of counteracts these problems that raise their heads and look really
(56:04):
important. And suddenly you realize, like in the face of death, very few things are
important. Whenever a family member has
passed away or a close friend, I'm always thinking about
my own death, looking at him, you know? It brings that home
again. It's like, oh man, I'm two-thirds of
the way through this fucking thing, you know? It gets closer
(56:27):
Yeah, you think about it more and more the older you get. I think about it more than I used to,
that's for sure. But yeah, and it
just forces you back to what we were talking about earlier. This is all we got. This is
the moment. I like your attitude. It seems like you've really got that
one figured out. You don't seem to worry too much about tomorrow or
I do sit my ass down and work, and so
(56:51):
that's taking care of my future. I
don't play the cricket too long. I am a field mouse that does, you
know, prepare for winter, so to speak. What do
you mean, prepare for winter? Well, before my folks got into
tattooing, we were fucking broke. I mean, I can remember living
out of a van, and my parents, my dad didn't want to work for
(57:12):
nobody. He'd rather eat brown rice. And
I had like two t-shirts and a pair of pants and a wellies and it
was bare bones lifestyle. They chose to do the trip.
And I got no complaints. But I remember money
worries when I was little, and I remember what that was like. And tattooing came
along, and suddenly we had enough money not to have to worry. And that
(57:36):
stuck with me. I don't want to go and fucking squander all my bread and don't know
how I'm going to pay the rent. I just don't dig it, and I don't want to put myself in
that position. So I will take some steps to make sure
that my work continues and I concentrate. But
I don't worry, per se. I don't. That's
why I keep busy. I think when I'm all alone and I
(57:58):
try and meditate, that's when everything goes all wrong, because then these worries start
to pop up. Yeah, but what if this happens? There's no
point. It's like, nah. Yeah. Get involved, do
something. Keep yourself moving, yeah. Go on Instagram for
Really, whatever it may be. I'm just busting your
(58:18):
balls, because that's true. That's true. Stay
busy. Yeah, I don't do very well. I'll fight. I'll
work my ass off to have a vacation. I'll get
to the spot for the vacation. I'll get to the bitchin' hotel room
with the perfect view. I sit down. I pour a glass of
wine. And then I'm like, I've made it. I'm here. And
(58:40):
suddenly, none of it mattered. What do we do now? I
can't make a tattoo today. I didn't bring my iPad. What
do we do? I don't know. Just drink and
walk around. It's just an interesting thing. Some of us fighting
so hard to get to the place where you don't have to do anymore.
(59:02):
Yeah. It's a tricky one. I got to spend a
little bit of time with Paul Rogers when I was young. I went out for a couple of
weeks in 86, and then in 87, I stayed with him
in his trailer. Cool. Built a bunch of machines with him,
and he was great. He was in his early 80s, and
he slept, like, six or seven hours a night. He
(59:22):
built machines all day long. He talked about titties,
tattoos, and tattoo history. You know what I mean? Time in the
circus. I really enjoyed my
time with him, and he was such a happy guy. His wife
had died a few years before. He was on his own after a long life together,
50 years plus. And he was upbeat and happy. And
(59:44):
I always wanted to be like him. I was like, when I'm old, I want to be like that guy, you
know? He was generous and open. Yeah,
it was just, there wasn't an anger in him. I
didn't feel any, never heard him bitch about anything. I never heard
him complain. Because it's a hard industry and
I start to understand why some old tattooers get grumpy. We're
(01:00:07):
asked to do a lot. Hardy said something I liked once about being
an artist and a tattooer, that we're forced to create on
demand, in public, with a time limit. It's
a performance art. You're never alone. And it's a very difficult thing.
We have to be very disciplined. We can't sit around going, oh, I don't want
to work now. We don't get to do it on our time.
(01:00:29):
We do it. We've got an appointment. We've got to work. Gary's watching everything
you do. And he's going to start picturing after a minute. It's difficult.
Not inducive to free creation. It doesn't give you
that chance to sit back and you're painting now. Yeah.
I'll take a break because I can. Yeah. No. It's stressful. That
(01:00:51):
stresses. And even if the guy's not screaming in your face about how much you're hurting
him, you know you're hurting him. You've got enough tattoos to know what you're doing to him. So
you've got to block that as well. Not take that on
board. There's a lot. I think
the dangers of tattooing are maybe bypassed a
little bit in all this promotion of tattooing. It's
(01:01:13):
swimming in people's bodily fluids. It's fucking disgusting. It's
super dangerous. You're dealing with it. blood, right?
It fucking aerosols. Aerosols. That's something I was taught.
Up to 20 centimeters. So you're breathing a cloud of
this shit in. Yeah. That's interesting. And then there's the
psychic strain it takes off you where it really taxes us.
(01:01:35):
And so we become right bastards to argue with because we're very
good at compartmentalizing. We're super good
at ignoring the evidence, right? You
ignore the fact you hurt the guy and you're actually enjoying your work and trying to
invent something and be a bit creative, all the while you're torturing another
fucking human being. It's these two things
(01:01:59):
Yeah, and it takes its toll. Yeah, well,
you know this, but that energy exchange. I mean, there's such a difference between
sitting with a client who seems to be staying in a very good place
and somehow finding that center fluid, and
then the guy that fights. And then when you walk away
from that session, Something's missing from me.
(01:02:21):
I'm fucking done, man. It's
like they're just sucking the energy. There's some kind of energy exchange going
on. And then the people that love us and are around us
pay the price as well. Oh, yeah. I come home, my wife's like, why
are you in such a bad mood? I'm like, I'm not in a bad mood. I'm done. I can't even.
Even physically, because we touch, and
(01:02:45):
then she'll want to come and sit by me on the couch after a big day of tattooing, and I'll be
like, she's like, what the fuck? And I'm like, I just need
not be physically near anyone tonight. She's
Very interesting. People don't talk about this. how
it's really not as glamorous as
(01:03:08):
they make it look on all the TV shows and it's harder
work than some people might think if you want to be successful
and you want to be true to your because
I believe in respect for the person
you're working on. You know, you've got to give them your all, you've got to give them your
(01:03:30):
best. Yeah. It really is. My biggest fear is somebody
comes back and says, you ruined my life. I hate it. That's one
I don't think that it's probably, I don't know if it's happened or not, but they probably,
A bunch of years ago, I had a foreign legionary. I
(01:03:53):
mean, he was fucking ginormous, solid
bone from the neck up, and flipped
out on me for no good reason. My brother-in-law had been working on him, and it didn't go well, so
I took over, and I did a bit, tried to save the day. He went
south. He got difficult. I got lippy,
because he was solid bone. I won the argument, and he just grabbed
(01:04:15):
me by the throat, lifted me off the ground like this, outstretched arm,
one arm, my feet that high off the ground. He
had a thumb this big, it was like under my ear. I didn't
know what to do, so I went, pretended I was dead. And
he kind of dropped me then and left the show. But it
was fucking terrifying, you know what I mean? The strength in this guy,
(01:04:38):
holy shit. I like that your instincts told
you to do the right thing. Like a little puppy. I couldn't win.
You weren't going to win the fight. I shouldn't even have left off to
him because I was able to talk circles around him because he
was slow. I would expect
that. Big mistake. I've
(01:05:04):
Yeah, me neither. I mean, I probably if I thought, well, I had some psychos are
the guys that taught me how to tattoo. Those are my stuff. Yeah, that's
it. That's it. I'm so jealous of you and Henning and
I've had so many interviews with so many tattooers and I'm just a
rare, I thought everybody was having a psychopath apprenticeship and
I know they happen, but so many people didn't. And,
(01:05:25):
uh, I don't know why the gods of tattooing decided to
torture me for three years. You've got that whole part. Oh my God.
Well, you know, it kept me away from these places for many
years because I left that going, basically, fuck
any of those old tattooers. They're all fucking pricks. I don't want
to know them. I don't want to learn from them. Fuck them all. And then, of course, over
(01:05:45):
the years, I realized there's all these other folks out there that are wonderful. But
I hold up. I secluded myself from the industry, basically.
I'll create my own world. I don't need these guys anymore.
I remember I talked to Paul Rogers about his apprenticeship and
how it was hard, and he was trying to explain to me how different
(01:06:05):
the world was back then, and how a lot of
the people that did come to tattooing couldn't fit anywhere else, and
they were kind of nutjobs anyway. They were rough around
the edges, and part of the hazing apprenticeship was to break
them down to build them back up, like in the army. He said,
put them right down to the bottom, get them cleaning toilets and work their way up so
(01:06:25):
they learn respect. and they learn all sorts of things, which
is not necessary anymore in many ways, because back
then, a very sensitive art student would never have made it. He
couldn't survive that environment. And
now, since they don't have to go through that, a lot of very talented,
but very sensitive souls have come into the profession. Look
(01:06:48):
at ladies in tattooing. When we started, it was fucking...
All men. You know, 5% women, right? Now
it's at least 50-50, even if there is more girls than boys. I
love it. Which has brought a new aesthetic, a
new approach, a new fucking front, a whole
(01:07:11):
It changed my work environment. Half my shop is women now. Love
it. It's such a happier place to go. It's just different. And
that's awesome. But to be clear, the thing I'm
talking about wasn't clean the toilet and bring me down. No, clean you
like shit. No, they were just fucking flat gangsters. You're
going to take that gun. You're going to come with me. I've got to buy some shit. If
(01:07:33):
you end up pulling knives on me and fucking you do that again, I'll
fucking cut your throat and just nasty things. And
I just thought that's what the old timers all were, because I didn't meet
I was lucky I didn't have to go
through any of that. I mean, having
your father as your teacher is difficult, too, because you've got nowhere to hide.
(01:07:56):
If there's somebody who knows you inside out, it's your old man, right? You
know, we had our run-ins as well. Learning is
painful. And certain aspects of
it are not going to go your way. One of my first
big ones, I was 15, gone on 16, and I went to work at
the Amsterdam Convention, I think with the 84 edition. And
(01:08:18):
I had a lot of smoke blowing up my ass about being Little Boy Wonder, and
I was the youngest guy on the block, and so I kind of strutted in there. First
day I had to work up next to Ed Hardy, Bob Roberts, Iain
Redding, this list of A.A. I
went back and cried in the hotel that night, told my mom I couldn't go back
the next day, because I realized how shit I was. Going in
(01:08:40):
the next day was harder than anything I'd done up until that
point, because I really knew my place all of a sudden. I'd
been taken down a whole bunch of pages. You got humbled. I
had to go in there and really put my ass on the line and try to get back in
We all need a little humbling, that's true. Hell, I got humbled
yesterday with the tattoo that I did trying a new stencil product, and I thought I
(01:09:03):
almost fucking lost control of the project. That hasn't happened to me in
Because I still use a... No, no. This is a standstill.
Have you heard of this? No. It's pretty cool and interesting. They're
printing the design on this biodegradable... It looks like...
Oh, the one you tattooed through? Through, yes. So doesn't the ink get underneath it
(01:09:23):
and blur it all out? No, no. The
thing that got me off guard is I do larger work and
you know when I was a young tattooer I would let the needle be way out and work
off the point very accurately. Float line. Floating. And now
I don't. I get the depth I want, I usually put it right onto
the skin. I've always worked like that. Well you can move faster and it
(01:09:44):
steadies you up a lot. Absolutely, absolutely. Well this stuff it
dissolves with water. Well, ink is kind of mostly water. So if
you put your tube down and a bunch of ink pools out, well, you're going to lose everything
right there. Oh, no shit. So you've got to work off your point, and
you've got to have just the right amount of ink flowing off that tip. And
so I didn't think about this. So he's a friend of mine. Phil's a friend of
(01:10:05):
mine. He asked me to do this. I say, I'll do it at the show. It'll be fun. We'll give it a shot.
And so I forget, I haven't floated with my
needle in 20 years. So I go to put this thing in
there, and I'm I'm fucking, I don't shake, I'm
shaking, the design's complicated, and I was, oh
man, and anyway, I got, I scratched it in
(01:10:26):
basically, I bloodlined most of it, got that shit off
there, and then I was like, okay, time to save a tattoo now, and
I went and tattooed, I just haven't had a moment like
It's when it goes all wrong, right, it's all pear-shaped, and suddenly you
realize just what a fucked up, job it is so hard. That's interesting
because I have seen that but I haven't tried it. I tried that stencil
(01:10:49):
stuff the other day but I'm doing it back and
I'm like hard because I use a dettol,
what do you call it? Dettol. For when you transfer
a hexol. Yeah, that's what I use too. So I figure I'll
try the stencil shit they got. It doesn't come off. Of course I placed the
back wrong. So now I'm trying to get the
(01:11:09):
crap off. I'm hurting the fuck out of it because it wouldn't come off. But obviously I
didn't buy the stencil remover when the guy suggested I should try it. I
don't need that. I'm fine. Yeah, I'm an idiot. And I found it
really annoying that I couldn't get rid of my stencil. I couldn't see what I was doing.
It stuck too much. Yeah, too much. Just that little change
fucked me over, right? I'm used to a stencil that stays a
(01:11:30):
bit but goes away so I can see the quality of what happened. You can see the line you dropped
and the purple shit finally goes away. I wanted to buy a second stencil machine
here. They don't even have the ones with the rollers on the floor anymore.
They don't? It's all digital. I don't want one of those. No. I
But just to back to that stuff, though, I'll tell you what's so super cool about it. Because once
(01:11:50):
it's on there, first of all, it's see-through. It's easy
to place. Yeah. And then once you place it, and you don't like where it's
at, you can peel it off and put it. You can do that as many times as you want. You
can just keep, you know, I think guys like you think about doing a mandala
and a thrower. Yeah, it's for a certain style of work. Oh, if you had,
you know, because if you don't, you know, how many... Cover-ups as well. Oh, yeah, cover-ups. It'd be wonderful for
(01:12:13):
It's a good product, but I... I was anti-iPad for
years. I was like, iPad, never. You know, I've had this whole, now
I fucking use it all the time. The last three years I've been in it. I'm sorry
I don't have bits of paper around the house anymore because I did enjoy that. aspect of
drawing on tracing paper and stuff. But
I see the merits of it. I've suddenly realized that,
(01:12:34):
wow, I could work right up to the end on a guy's project and
suddenly go, you know what, that head needs to be a ton smaller and
I can do it. Maybe I want to flip that. The
creative aspect of working on design is all the way to
the end. When you do it on paper, it's linear. You get your sketch,
you do your lines, you do your shading, you color it, then you want to
(01:12:56):
change it. Now you've got a problem, you've got to cut bits of paper, glue them on top, you've
got to fuck with it. You tend to not backtrack as
much. And here I'm constantly going back and forth right to the end. So I
think the design profits. Oh, it's amazing. The
Agreed. Agreed. More efficient. More efficient, yeah. I mean, I'm
just all about efficiency. I've never had a romance for any
(01:13:19):
kind of equipment. I don't collect tattoo machines. I'm just kind of a... Efficiency
is a lazy man's solution. I like that. I
It's going to be efficient. You don't waste time. You don't have to fuck about. You
get it just right. I just want anything that can make this happen quicker
and faster. No, I'm not using the iPad in the sense of building
(01:13:40):
a collage, tracing it, and putting it on people. I still treat it like paper. Yeah,
you're still drawing on it. Right. Because I didn't see a mistake, something that
really struck me. I think it was here last year of
a girl doing a thigh piece, and there was a poker on his head. Super
well done. And she'd had to put a wolf hat on top. So
she'd found this wolf head. And then we're looking at the piece and the
(01:14:03):
face is going this way and the wolf head's going that way. And it
was this perspective error. And I don't think she clocked it. Because
she couldn't find a perfect angle of wolf head, so she found something that
looked good enough, close enough, but it was off. It was a little off, yeah. Yeah,
and I could tell. Because I could see
I mean, it's just like a hammer. A hammer could be used to build a
(01:14:25):
house, or a hammer could be used to break a table or crash a
window, right? It's a tool. It's a tool. And people are going
to abuse it. I mean, it's going to be shitty and others are going to, you
So where is Tattooing going with the ultra detail, with the ultra height?
super saturated color sleeves that are just oil
(01:14:46):
paintings on skin. This is, we're moving through a phase here. Because
in 33 years, you've seen the chrome come and go, you've
seen the warped tattoo machine, warped everything come and go, you've seen the
Celtic come and go, you've seen the black work rise
in popularity and die out, right? These are all phases that tattooing goes
through, with the staples of tattooing continuing all
(01:15:08):
along. You know, the regular tattoo stuff never
goes away, but there's all this, what is popular, the birth of
dot work, hit the scene, you know,
and now it's got its place, right? So what's the next one?
I was going to ask you that, but you brought it up. Perfect. Well,
I said it earlier, I think the idea
(01:15:31):
of just decorating a body, whether it be
a humongous black shape that goes along the rib and then comes down
towards the belly button and a line next to that. I think
decorating is going to become bigger and bigger and bigger, and
That each body becomes a standalone piece. Rather
(01:15:51):
than become what I wear, which is the graffiti wall of
memories, the one concept suit. I like
that. Yes, I think that for sure. Did you
see the artist over there that paints on women to
display? Sengu. Wonderful. That's all digital. I
(01:16:13):
heard. He can't tell, he's clever as hell. Oh, I
couldn't believe it. But he's got that water suit there. I've
been wanting to do that on somebody for years. I'd like to do multiples. The
rock suit, the wind suit, the water suit. Let go
of all these dragons and demons and skulls and samurais and
(01:16:34):
I like that evolution. I love it. It's beautiful. I
Myself have started to do some of that work in my way But I
think that's coming and I'm sure there's gonna be a bunch of stuff
that neither of us are gonna Predict it these things show up.
I'm curious to see what it is because new shit's always showing
up the Hyper color dense filled I
(01:16:57):
I don't want to diss it. It's just that like you said
earlier. We don't give this stuff 10-15 years and
You know from painting, you're using
a red and you want to have a nice, gentle, kind of
smoky, broken red. You look at the color wheel and you
choose the opposite, which is green. You put five drops of
(01:17:18):
green in the red and suddenly it goes down in tone. It looks
really good. Same with the other way, you can
put a few drops of red in the green, but that one's not going to stay, right?
Because the three drops of red and the green, once they've gone,
you're left with just green again. These are the fucking massive
(01:17:39):
Yes, and that's why will that be the big popular thing
in 10 years? I don't know. I kind of think maybe not.
Maybe it's a new form of tattooing. I will do this for you, but
you'll need to come back in 10 years and redo the colors, like you need to
repaint the side of your house. Which is fine. If you want to wear that kind of work,
(01:17:59):
If you want to look like that for the rest of your life, that's how it's going to get done, yeah. Yeah,
we'll see on that one. But decorative tattooing, for sure. I think
that's going to be a big one. Yeah, that's going to be cool to watch. You
know, and then, of course, I don't know how much we want to go into AI,
but it's just how that's going to change the
(01:18:20):
In one way, it's helpful for somebody that can't or in
the flip side, it'll make everybody that can't look alike. Right?
Well, yeah, because the AI is just searching a bunch of people who created
a bunch of art, putting that all together. So that would be the same. Homogenization.
Homogenization, yeah. Yes. But if it's a
(01:18:40):
better level, because... There was some god-awful tattooing
when I saw it. And that's interesting that there are still very poor
tattooers surviving today. They're out there. They
manage to, which is a testament to the power of
wanting to be tattooed. You have the people who tattoo because
they think it's aesthetically beautiful, and then the ones who do
(01:19:02):
it just for the social statement. Those
guys really don't care about the quality. They'll get the cheapie or
for a guy down the corner. Because it's all about having
the ink. It's not about whether it's good or bad. They just couldn't care less,
really. So there really are these two grooves. I
mean, they mingle. They cross over and they mingle. But
(01:19:22):
there are some people that search out really beautiful, it's
very important, the aesthetics, like jewelry or clothing. And
they put a lot of time and research into getting something really beautiful. You
see them here on the stage. Then you get the other ones who go, oh, it's like
me. It's like fucking anything goes, right? It's like, I don't know what you do, me
Yeah, those two groups will always continue to
(01:19:44):
exist. They'll be around forever. But the
AI thing, the homogenization that's going to
occur with that is a troubling thought for me. But like
you, I just think I'm not going to worry myself with this. It's
sort of entertaining. I feel like I'm in a sci-fi movie. You know, it's
great, it's really... Very entertaining, if you don't get personal about it
(01:20:06):
or emotional, it's like, we're gonna have a fucking crazy next
Can't wait to see what's coming next, you know, I really can't. I can't either.
And talking about like AI, do you know that most movies we watch today, the sunsets
are all manufactured, the cityscapes are all manufactured. It's
easier to do it on the computer and go location finding to get what
you need for the right sun and the light. So it's already
(01:20:29):
been tailored for us, right? It's
going to get crazy, man. It's already a little crazy, but it's about
to get fucking nuts. I want to see machines move.
It went handwork, rotary,
coil, and now it's gone back to rotary, trying
to imitate a coil. I want it to go the other way.
(01:20:51):
I dream of maglev technology, magnets
that carry trains at high speed with no moving
parts, nothing touching. And I see this as
a concept of a machine in the future where you'd have like
a little plastic square that you hold with a tip and
a needle bar that you'd attach to a weight that you put on top of it and it would
(01:21:13):
like float there. And it would have a drive mechanism
done with different magnets. And why not? I want it
to go that way, you know, rather than going backwards. I
actually tried, what was it, a bishop two years ago now, and I
was so pissed off it worked. I wanted it not to
work because I had this idea that that was what was making
(01:21:34):
tattooing change with these tools. And
I was blaming the tools. Suddenly I realized it's
not the tools, it's the people using it, so I can't blame the tool because it actually works.
That's what I use, Bishop. Everybody's using, you know, they can't
all be wrong. That's what I'm saying, that's why I actually pick one up. I
stay with the coils because I know them and I'm comfortable and I hate change, you
(01:21:56):
know. Fair enough. I can still handle it, it doesn't hurt my
wrist. I actually hurt my hand with the rotary, with the
Bishop, and I realized the difference. The coil machine
has this shock every time the needle bar hits the
coils. So the coil machines, you just hold them
and run them over the skin. With the Bishop, I
(01:22:17):
had to push. And it hurt my tendons again.
I hadn't had pain like that in years and years. Because it's this
No, you're absolutely right, because if you think of it in slow motion, a coil machine
is kind of like the tip of a whip. So
the energy moves down the whip, and then at the end of the whip, it punctures. A
(01:22:40):
rotary is like a tractor. It's kind of
adjustment problems to go from the coils to the... In the beginning, a little bit,
but I got, you know, maybe a month or two. That's it? That was it. Yeah,
I mean, the biggest thing with those is their direct drive, and so the depth of your needle
kind of matters a fucking lot. Like, if you have a little give with a coil
(01:23:03):
machine, and you, it'll give back a little. These
don't give back. You'll fucking blow a line out, like, on a shin bone or
I was running at around eight. Well, I've
been looking over people's shoulders four, six... Yeah, eight's
pretty high. Eight's high, right? But I've seen a few guys doing eight. If you're moving fast
(01:23:23):
enough... Yeah, I'm looking over them and I'm like, oh, eight, you know? Yeah, that's
high. I haven't seen above eight, but... You don't need above
eight, I don't think. No, he gave me that silver tip, the metal tip
that you can put on it, which gives it extra weight, which I like a lot. Yeah,
I use the plastic stuff. It's so light. Teflon, or what
is it, the other one? I don't know, some kind of plastic. Yeah, super
(01:23:44):
light. What kind of needles do you like for that machine,
if I could ask? I mean, brand-wise, I
use the Bishop needles. They make their own cartridges. Yeah, I
use all their stuff. Good stuff, you know. I'm walking around and I'm
thinking, how much difference is really in these tools? Because they all look very
You know, I've been on that. They've been sponsored, so it's been
(01:24:08):
15 years, and I haven't even fucked around with it. I'm not a good guy for that. If
it ain't broke, don't fix it. Kind of where I'm at now. But I think
you're right. I mean, I have tried a couple. They do seem
like they all work pretty damn good, and there's maybe one that's better
out there. I don't know. How big will you go for a Magnum grouping?
You know, I had that phase there for a while. I was moving up into
(01:24:29):
the 45s and things like this, and I still might sometimes,
but typically nowadays, 27 is about as
big as I like. I just can't seem to control them
We go 9 mag, 13 mag, 19, which I might drop out, 25, 35. And
if you make your designs according to
(01:24:53):
the needle, then it's great. Because a 35 for a large area of
shading is really comfortable. It heals up really well. It cuts
the work time down a lot. But I had a 45 and all that. I quit. I
tried and I realized. You see the 100 plus magnums, the guys that
It looks fun. It does look fun. Yeah, I've
(01:25:13):
never played with that. Yeah, the 45s, it's like, you
know, the idea behind it was I have to do a wash, black, huge
area. This is the thing to do it. But I could never get
the smoothness I wanted at that size. And then
25, 27, it's great. Yeah, that's a perfect, what I mean is.
(01:25:35):
When I was in the States, I asked Hardy when I worked for him. He said, forget
it. It was seven mag at the time. You
could go up to a big E, the 11. I was like, ooh. And
I was like, why not more? And he says, it doesn't work. We tried it. I asked Bob Roberts.
I asked Lyle Tuttle. I talked to Henry Goldfield. And
I said, all these guys, why not? They said, it's just, it
(01:25:57):
doesn't push the color in enough. He can't get
dark blacks. No good. So
I put it aside. But then I was looking at 38 needle Japanese
by hand, or I was looking at Samoan fucking combs that are as wide
as three fingers, you know. So I went back to the drawing board
in the early 2000s. I
(01:26:19):
worked with a local guy who was also a bike
mechanic and made tubes. It took us two and a half years
of him, R&D, you know, research development. He
would build a tube for me and then I'd try it. It
wasn't right and we kept fucking with it until we got something I really liked. And
then I met Richard Pinch. He does good luck iron,
(01:26:40):
this guy from Scotland. I do his body and
he makes these tubes out of one piece now. And
I asked him, he puts my name on it just for the It
literally got picked up by the whole industry, and within a year, people were
trying to sell it to me in catalogs as a new thing, and
I got picked off. I was like, fuck's sake, you know? I'm
(01:27:01):
not getting recognition for something that affected my industry on
a worldwide level. And I was
a little miffed, so I had to put my name on it, just so people wouldn't forget.
Because I'm really proud of that fact. It changed my work for the better. The
I didn't know that. So you were one of the first guys to have somebody make a tube that
would hold as big as, 45 was as big as you were
(01:27:24):
going? Yeah. OK. I didn't know how to use it on people.
Drengenberg. Drengenberg. Yeah, he was making my tubes
Because then it was 2000, Tattoo the Earth, I think,
one of those shows where I went to the States and I did a,
we worked Chicago, we worked, Oakland,
we'd travel across America and I was working with these needles and
(01:27:47):
I allowed everybody to photograph them, to choose and
machine builders, Drinkenberg and other ones to measure and
so they could make their own because I wanted people to. You
wanted to share the love. I tried to get Paul Booth to use it. He wouldn't. It was driving me nuts because
it would be perfect for what he does. I thought he did. I tried to get Guy Etches
to use it and maybe he uses it now, I don't know, but they preferred a
(01:28:07):
smaller grouping. But
it changed my tattooing all night and day. Suddenly
I was able to do big things. And the more I
use it, the more you become adept at going in corners. What do you think
about rounded magnums? Oh gosh, I love this one.
I like them. Why? I just feel
(01:28:29):
like, well, it depends on what I'm doing. If I'm just going to be packing something, I know
I'm packing black or something, no, I don't need a rounded magnet. But
when I'm working around and I want to blend out in shade, I just find
I can, it's just easier. It just makes the job easier for me. You
know, Hernan Correta, me and him argue about this all the time. He just
says, I need to learn to tattoo better. You don't need that, Aaron.
(01:28:49):
You're losing space on each end. I agree with him in that sense because
the rounded magnet comes from the Japanese tool. OK. Yeah,
when they would wind them on the stick, they would make it round. They round the
ends of the magnets like that. Well, that's crazy round, yeah. Yeah, but it's
a little less. It's not as radical as this, but it is. It's
curved. And the reason is they got one
(01:29:12):
brush here that they have the ink on. Then they stretch. Then
you come into work. So you've already got this whole thing. You've
got that going. they can go from here
to here and forward a line and back
a line and forward a line and back so they
don't have to let go. I see what you're saying. So that's why they needed it rounded so
(01:29:35):
that they don't have to let go for a different reason which we
don't need with the machine because You don't need, I get
that, okay. But a lot of people like them. I'm not saying they're no
good. So you don't use them? No, no. I actually very
jealously enjoy the edge of my Magnum. I've
gotten quite good at chiseling my way into little spots, yeah. It's
(01:29:57):
Oh well, it's quicker. You can get on that corner and you can fucking,
a 45 mag, you could fill a little thing if you get on the corner of
it. Yeah, no, that's true, but I do use a lot of,
you know, the rounded, at least the brand I use, it's just, I
mean, it's like, I mean, it's just the subtlest, or
It's not like, you know. No, I'm not saying it's a bad thing. It's just I
(01:30:19):
never found a need for it because if I want to be soft with my shading, I take a bit
That's interesting. Back to
the bigger mags though, can you pack black with
One time, black as this. Can I draw on
this just for a second? Here's something that is
(01:30:43):
a weird mistake I've seen people do. Imagine that's
a 9 Magnum tip. And you set up
your depth. You say, oh, OK, I'm going to make it like that, stick
out. And now you're supposed to
do a 25 or a 35, and somebody will stick
it out like that. But if
(01:31:03):
you bring them together and you put the big magnum next to it, and the
ratio of width to depth, if you repeat it
by eye, you've gone way too
deep. If you want to do the same depth as the nine, it
looks too shallow on the Big Magnum. It
looks like it's not deep enough because you wouldn't do that with a nine. Right. Relation to
(01:31:25):
the width. Relation to the width. It's such an optical pitfall.
So people will hang the Big Mags out too far, which then make it
bounce off the skin because it's too deep, which will fuck up
the ink flow and make the whole thing maybe even chew up the skin a bit.
Yeah, I don't I know what you're saying is that you know, I look
(01:31:45):
at depth and I'm the depth of depth and I don't I thought you were about
to tell me with my foot with your 45s you you have
to put them out further I was like no really I
will do more than that if I'm on a buttock I will put it
that way if you would need a millimeter and a half to work
with your lines I will put it out six or you know, I
will go a certain depth and Because I know that
(01:32:08):
there's a little bit of skin that goes away with it, because it's such a large surface.
Yeah, so it's the optical illusion of where you're going. Right. Interesting. Very
cool. No, but I can get solid black in one go, and that is
one of the things that I still get pleasure from. Just
pack in that black. You're the big man. When you get ink under
the skin, one go, perfect. It gives me pleasure. It's so stupid.
(01:32:35):
Because it doesn't always work. I get off on it, yeah. Yeah, when you have
that moment, you're like, I don't know why, but every time I wipe,
I don't have to go back. That's fucking done. I
get off on it. Yeah, we all get off on that because we've all had
too many hours where it wasn't working. You're
like, thank God it's working today. Today's a good day. Very
(01:32:55):
cool. Very cool. Well, my friend, thank you
so much for sharing your experience, your
love for tattooing, and of course, everything you've done to inspire me
personally. Thank you very much. It's been a pleasure. Thank you. It's been an
absolute pleasure. I don't know. I'll be
hanging around. I'll come by and say hello before the weekend is over. All
(01:33:16):
right. You know, I would love to come visit you sometime. You're
more than welcome. OK. I'm going to hold you to that. Fly
It's the closest airport. I've been there. I've been to Lausanne. I've
moved. I'm up a mountain now. Yeah, out of town there. I went
from Lausanne, which was 130,000 people. Then I went to St.
Croix, which was 4,500 people. Now I've moved to Bullitt. which
(01:33:39):
is 750 people. My god, you'll be in a cave soon. But
it's easily enough. You can rent a car or something, be free. OK.
Switzerland's not big. All right. Well, I'll email Loretta.
OK. We'll figure that out later. But yeah.
Is this the WhatsApp? Yeah. OK.
(01:34:02):
Very cool. I got your number. Oh, boy. Well,