September 24, 2025 • 46 mins
The journey of healing and transformation can be catalyzed by profound life experiences, such as accidents, which compel individuals to confront their past and redefine their identity. This theme is vividly illustrated in the story of Greyson Savo, who endured a life-altering accident that not only changed his physical state but also prompted deep introspection and a transformation of his identity, including the incredible covering of his scars by tattoo artist Patrick Sweeney ( https://www.instagram.com/patricksweeneyart ).
In this episode of "Chats and Tatts," host Aaron Della Vedova explores the multifaceted meanings of tattoos, drawing on over 30 years of experience in the tattoo industry. He reflects on the deeper significance of tattoos beyond their aesthetic value, emphasizing that, in the grand scheme of life, the relationships and memories we create hold far greater importance.
Tune in for insights on the emotional and personal connections people have with their tattoos, and how these body art forms can encapsulate significant moments in our lives.
Chat Highlights:
00:00:00 - Thoughts on Tattoos
00:05:30 - What Happened to Greyson Savo?
00:06:39 - The Defining Accident
00:10:35 - Hospital and Rehabilitation Journey
00:18:38 - Near-Death Experience and Spiritual Awakening
00:23:07 - Pre-Accident Beliefs and Spirituality
00:26:08 - Post-Accident Transformation
00:30:01 - The Significance of the Dragon Tattoo
00:36:29 - Processing Pain Through Tattooing
00:40:34 - Life's Lessons and Challenges
00:43:48 - Helping Others Through Shared Experience
Quotes:
"Trust me, when you're taking your last breath, you will not be thinking about tattoos that are on your body."
"What I always say when I get to a point where I think I have the right decision at hand is fuck it."
"I was ejected from a convertible going 110 miles an hour on the 99 freeway in the midst of the night."
"I asked my mom in the hospital, I'm hardly talking, and I asked her for a shot of tequila."
"If I don't know something and I'm not going to trust that it's going to be better for me than what my limited imagination can come up with, then I'm going to be afraid."
"It's a moral compass that most people call God."
"I'm alive. And he hugged me and he just hugged me tight. And he said, I've been waiting for this to happen. Welcome home, son."
"Life is the art of surrender."
"Life finally was like, okay, we're going to send you a very, very big wake up call, a clear picture, a very clear picture."
"We don't have to go through shit alone. We're not supposed to, right?"
Stay Connected:
Chats & Tatts:
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Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@chatsandtatts
IG: http://www.instagram.com/chatsandtatts
Chats & Tatts YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/chatsandtatts
Connect with Aaron:
Aaron IG: http://www.instagram.com/aarondellavedova
Guru Tattoo: http://www.Gurutattoo.com
Connect with Greyson:
IG:https://www.instagram.com/deadmangrey/
#tattooartist #healing #transformation
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
So before this accident, when you were that
young, angry man, is
it fair to say you had no belief in the afterlife? You were godless, to
put it simply, in those times? Or did you have a belief? Were
No, I wasn't at
(00:21):
all. And it was almost like a very dismissive and
(00:49):
Hello, friends, neighbors, lovers of tattoo. Welcome back
to Chats and Tats with me, your host, Aaron Della Vadova.
We've been pumping out a lot of tattoo artist episodes lately,
which I love. Got so many good ones still coming up from
Gods of Ink in Germany. But I've been craving a
little something off the beaten track, and I think I have that today.
(01:12):
So, before I get into the introduction of my guest today, I just want to talk a
little bit about tattoos and their meaning. You know,
I've been doing this for 30 plus years, and the reality I've
noticed is tattoos have all sorts of levels to
their meaning. I mean, ultimately I would say, and I get
in trouble for saying this, tattoos are relatively meaningless.
(01:34):
Trust me, when you're taking your last breath, you will not be
thinking about tattoos that are on your body. You will probably be thinking about the
love that you've given to others, the love you received, the
people that are in your life that you care about, and the memories you created
with them. So in a big picture way, I always
say, you know, they're just tattoos, but in
(01:55):
our little microcosm of day-to-day reality they do
have meaning and there's a reason people get them and they it ranges it goes
from you know being silly just to have a little fun
moment with a buddy you know i i've sat on a snowmobile up the
top of a mountain and uh my my son tattooed my leg
And it's not a great tattoo, but it's one of my favorites.
(02:16):
And every time I look at it on my leg, I get filled with joy
and I smile. And it's not because it's some perfect thing. It's because of
what me and him did that day. And I'll never forget it because it's
marked in my skin until I die, at least. There's
also the feeling accepted by your social
group. For some people it has a lot to do with that. They
(02:37):
don't fit in possibly to the typical culture
that's out there and they have some friends that are into
alternative music and tattoos are part of the culture. You get some
tattoos, you feel more bonded with that culture. It's fantastic. It's
all good, by the way. There's no bad reason here. Your reasons
are your reasons, you know. There's the rite of passage, you know. You're a
young man, and your father had tattoos, and all his
(03:00):
buddies had tattoos. Possibly that's one scenario. You getting a
tattoo is like a rite of passage. You feel like you're
now a man, or you're now a woman, or whatever you're
striving towards, and that's awesome. artistic expression.
For some folks it's literally just an act of art. They
love art. They hang art in their homes and
(03:21):
in this case they decorate their body with art. It's just a way to wear art.
Their love for art is so deep that they're willing to put it in their skin. It
could symbolize a significant event, a marriage, a
death of a loved one, maybe a spiritual belief or a
spiritual breakthrough, a permanent reminder possibly.
I've tattooed on the back of my hands, if I put my hands into a prayer, prayer
(03:45):
pose, if you look at them, it says, fuck it. People
think I'm being goofy, but fuck it to me is a spiritual statement.
You know, in life, for me, we can never be 100% certain
about anything. You can get pretty close. You can decide I'm
pretty sure this is the girl I should marry. Pretty sure this is the
career I should pursue. But in the end, we all have to take a risk because
(04:06):
you don't get guarantees in life. And what I always say
when I get to a point where I think I have the right decision at hand is
fuck it. I'm not gonna sit here and think about it anymore. It's
time to take action. And if it's the wrong decision, I'll know soon enough and
I'll take corrective course action. And
most of the time, not most of the time, but some of the times it's a mix of all these
(04:27):
things. A little bit of the first one, the second one I mentioned, it's just
a blend of those things. But there's one more category that
I think we're gonna get deeper into today. And that is tattoos
can be a very healing process for some people. I had
one client, he went to war, he came back, He
never told me the details of what happened, but I know, I don't know,
(04:48):
but I'm pretty certain it had a lot to do with watching people
die and maybe even killing people. And he
was very troubled with a lot of PTSD. He got an entire bodysuit from me
and told me straight up, I don't wanna look in the mirror and see
the guy that went to war. I wanna see a different human
being. He was transforming from the outside
(05:10):
inward. Now he was doing inward work as well, but together
it was a way for him to help work through his trauma. So
today's guest has some words around that. I believe he's been
through a lot and he's gotten a lot of tattoos since this
event in his life. And I thought it would be a really interesting person
to tell that story. So without further ado, I
(05:32):
would like to introduce to you Gray Savo.
Did I say that correctly? Grayson Savo. Totally
Yeah, Grayson. Yeah, I was going by Gray. Well, your emails are saying
I like Grayson better. Yeah, yeah. All right, well, you
(05:52):
are a lot of things in life, as we all are. And just before you get
started, I wanted to let the audience know, you're a musician, which
started as kind of a poet, moved into musician. You're now the
lead singer of a band called the Moonburns. By the way, you guys, if you're interested
to hear some of Grayson's music, it's kind of a, bluesy
rock sound with some deep emotional lyrics
(06:15):
mixed through super good stuff you'll find it on Spotify again
that's the moon burns one word and for a living day-to-day
job architectural draftsman so
enough said on that just some big highlights on kind of who you are I know you're much
more but having said all that I want you to
kick this off with this event that occurred to you, which
(06:39):
Okay. Yeah. All right. The
floor is yours. Sweet. OK. Thanks for having me here, man. This
is super cool. And the vibe is right. So I'm just going to jump
right into what happened to get your attention. May
3rd of 2021, I was ejected from a convertible going 110 miles
an hour on the 99 freeway in the midst of
(07:00):
the night. It was like 10 p.m. Not
sure what day. I was going too fast
and I was not hindered by anything but
emotional uncertainty. I was sober in
the accident, but I was in a hurry to
get nowhere. And there's a long time
(07:22):
where I thought it was a suicide attempt, but I have been since then in
some intrinsic work, I found that I was just making mistakes.
I was just going too fast. I ended up hitting
a black van trying to trying to pass a black van i
don't remember any of this right because i was ejected going 110 um the
seat belt actually broke through um and i flipped
(07:45):
my audi tt convertible um totaled it
uh And they kept me alive.
They found me immediately after. And I
was in a coma for two and a half weeks. And I
had been pronounced dead for two minutes, 30 seconds.
(08:06):
They already had signed basically my parts away. My dad was in there. He
had to sign that they would donate my body parts. They
had affirmed to him that I'm not just brain dead.
I won't I there's there was no way I would ever be able
to talk let alone walk again right like that was all He's
not gonna make it. He's just not gonna make it. And my
(08:27):
grandmother had told me there was a person in the emergency
room with them that said, he's
25, he might have hope, right? That's all. So
my grandmother being very, very faithful, she was kind
of the pillar of like, let's just leave this
up to God. And everybody else was trying to figure out what
(08:49):
to do. Obviously, all
my family fell in around and came up. It was in Visalia, so
off the 99 freeway. I went on the wrong freeway going up. I was
going back and forth to Washington, where my sister lives. I
was living up there, and I was going to join the military. I was going to join the
Air Force. I thought that would be a good direction, having
(09:11):
lost some jobs, hopped around different states, lived
in Utah, lived in San Diego was
getting let go from jobs and just running from myself,
essentially, right? I didn't, I didn't understand that
Now? No, at this time. Oh, um, 25 when that
(09:32):
happened, I was 25. Yeah. Um, that was, and
Okay. Yeah. Um, and Yeah,
so I was in the hospital for four to
six months in and out of, so I was in the hospital
like on life support, Visalia, then I went to Fresno, then I
went down to San Diego where I live and still live. And
(09:54):
then I was in an inpatient rehabilitation, physical rehabilitation, where
they had taught me how to walk. They had taught me how to talk. I didn't
know how to say anything. Granted, I did,
I guess when I was coming out of my coma, my
first memory back, my first memory was my
stepfather, Roger, he brought me a Lego, just
(10:16):
a little like, Bionicle Lego thing and
I My injuries include the functional amputation of
my left arm So it was ripped from my spinal cord in the accident right
tons of skin grafts a lot of scarring traumatic
brain injury but with my my right hand
I was able to start piecing this Lego together and Aaron and Memories
(10:40):
of who I thought I was started coming back into my head Like I
was like I started to remember my name and they would come
in and ask me. What's your name? When were you burnt? What happened to you?
And I'd like never get it right to what I'm bit told right they
said like I mean, I was begging my
parents to go park my car. Like, through the first, like, five
(11:01):
months that I was living in a hospital or whatever, or three months, I was like, go,
can you go get my car? Because I was concerned, because it was mine, right?
It was my little Audi TT. And I was like, that's going to get me
somewhere. And I guess one
of the first things, this is before I started
working in an anonymous program and found out that I'll actually be
(11:21):
three next week, which is exciting. But I
asked my mom in the hospital, I'm hardly talking,
and I asked her for a shot of tequila. That was my go-to. That
was one of my first sentences. And she was like, son, you're
not in a hotel. You're in a hospital. And I said, well,
then make it a mimosa. That's what I said. And
(11:43):
it's like, it was just this, it was just back and
forth with this, you know, conviction of what
my perspective of reality was so just
not accurate, right? I was in delusion and I was like,
convincing myself it was okay to be in delusion. I
didn't know what honesty was. I didn't know. And coming to
(12:06):
this, Instance of like survival right
when my mind started coming back to me. I am I felt
the fear and we'll get into the fear We'll get into that when
I go more into my piece and I felt this darkness and
this just drive to destroy but
I was immobile, right? And I was talking to Aaron a bit
(12:28):
about this too. I was talking to you about how I couldn't really
walk and I had to rely on people to bathe, to
help me get in and out of bed. There was times where I was just like
too afraid to scream out for help, right? And
that pretty much sums up like how I was getting through life
until then. I was too afraid to tell you I was hurting. I wanted to show you,
(12:49):
right? And I was showing everybody through my actions the
pain that I didn't understand, right? And just the
deviation of that, just trying to get away from it. And I
remember when my dad helped me get to, because after the accident, right,
to get back on track, I ended up in the hospital for a long time.
I lived in the inpatient for about a month and a half. I couldn't
(13:12):
stand it anymore. Also, people
are like, you can't be afraid of needles. Look at all the tattoos you have. I'm like, there's
a difference when they're taking your blood, right? If
you're ever in an inpatient facility and you
think your heart hurts, make sure. It was a broken rib, but
I complained about chest pain. They had to take my blood every
(13:36):
hour for the next 48 hours. Yeah,
they'd wake me up and be like, okay, we got to do this again. Because who knows?
I mean, I had some pretty catastrophic injuries.
And after all the testing, they don't want to miss something. So
I just remember being, again, it was doubled down
on that afraid to ask. I was so afraid to ask for help. Because
(14:00):
uncertainty is fear, right? I think like, just what
we, What we don't know without
faith is fear. If I don't
know something and I'm not going to trust that
it's going to be better for me than what my limited imagination can
come up with, then I'm going to be afraid. I
(14:22):
agree. and familiar sense
of isolation, familiar sense of, it's familiar, right?
So I think there's parts of us that we've talked about a little bit, like identifying with
that, right? And I was identified with, I
just don't know and I don't give a, I don't know what the cursing policy is
here. You can curse all you want. Yeah, so I just didn't know
(14:42):
and I didn't give a fuck. And I didn't, it was like
the opposite of what your tattoo says. It was like, Fuck
it. Like, I'm gonna die anyway. And I grew
up, Aaron, telling my friends I was not gonna live till 25. I said
that. Since I was a little kid. And this is something that I revisited
lately, doing an amends to my father. Back when
(15:03):
I was a little boy, I used to scream I hate myself. I used
to just scream this. I was confused. I didn't know
where I was. My parents were split up and I couldn't, I
didn't have any control over where I went. I didn't know how some
stuff happened to me as a young child that happens to a lot of
people in society these days. And I didn't know how to talk about it.
So I thought, so I joined martial arts.
(15:28):
And I got pretty proficient at hurting people that I thought didn't like
me. And that was my thing. For a long time, I identified as
that, all right, talk shit. And I was like a six
foot flat scrawny ginger guy. And I'm like, but I can kick
you in the face. In school
man, I was I was like bully me like fucking
(15:49):
bully me Like that was what that was my spite my pride
because I knew how to hurt people so I fell into that
like yeah Go ahead see see how see how
you're gonna hurt me more than I hurt myself right because I
mean I have a group of friends now that we
don't shoot our wounded and But our wounded usually shoot themselves.
(16:11):
And that's the truth of it, right? And I was very much... The
society's pressure of being more than I am was overwhelming to
me. So I went and I got really diligent at
my practice of martial arts. Jiu-jitsu, high school wrestling, Kenpo.
I just wanted to know that false
sense of security. That if I was threatened, I
(16:34):
could handle it and I there was a couple of parts of my life where
that really helped me out like I mean knife stuff like
I was able to like secure a weapon from a guy in an
instance and I'm not Superman but if
if you know what you're doing and you have faith that you know what
you're doing things usually turn out how they should now that
(16:55):
doesn't work well with spite right I mean that negativity
is negativity and I got all over
the place on that. But back to this, just in the hospital, not
knowing what was gonna happen, I just, I surrendered to
thinking like I'm just gonna die. Like I was on the clock, right? I was
figuring this is how I'm going out and I'd rather be
(17:17):
drunk. That was my mindset. I was like, okay, if
I'm gonna die, I mean, I'm in the hospital for what felt
like, I was telling people it was nine months. I don't know how long it was. My dad was
like, you're really embellishing there. And I'm like, But
he's like, but you've also had severe brain injury. So,
you know, let's get the facts down. So I don't know. I'll
(17:38):
follow up. I think it was closer to six months. But
I mean, that's still a long time to be in a hospital, especially when you don't
know where you are or who you are. It's a scary spot
to be. I'm on all sorts of stuff when
I'm in there, right? Going through surgeries. Yes. Oh,
that's funny. I was just going to bring this up. I was sitting with my grandma one
(17:59):
time and this poor nurse, I feel for her now. She
put the wrong gauze tape on a wound that wasn't healed yet,
on me, and she had to like slowly rip it off and
it was taking my skin with it. And I remember
that. I remember that because that's pain, right? That's
like, and to the piece, right?
(18:22):
The piece represents to me surrendering to the
pain. Because that's what it is. It's
transcending suffering. That's what the dragon represents. And
I learned that while getting the piece, right?
Before we go too far into the tattoo, there was something you brought
up earlier that I think is worth revisiting. You died for
(18:44):
two and a half minutes. And I think you mentioned earlier something about,
tell me about that and what profound effect or whatever came
Okay. This
is a touchy subject for me because it means a lot and I
don't want to sound preachy or soapboxy, but let's face
the facts, man. This is a hard thing to relate to. I
(19:07):
mean, but we're all there. We're all there. My
father is very close with me now. He's got 42 years
of sobriety. My godfather, his name is Danny,
he had 36 years and then killed himself, right? That's just
some context of when I was on the
(19:30):
other side, the isness, people ask me, what was
that like? And it's not... Comprehendable
like I can't really fully conclude what
what that feels like to you, but I can kind of use
The way that I've delineated in the past it's it's like it
(19:54):
just is Comfortable. It's like absolute
comfort of of a freedom from form
like that's kind of what I felt and it didn't feel like there was
a timeline I felt like It was a long time,
and it was no time, right? But
what I felt was my father,
(20:17):
mixed in with my godfather, mixed in with a bunch of
people that are no longer here, holding me,
not with their body and not with their voice, but
pushing me towards the overarching theme
of no son, you're not done here
yet. That's what it was. And I was like, I
(20:40):
mean, man, I am
convinced that my father's love
for me kept me alive. And the
prayer for my grandma and all her friends and my mother's love and like, but
feeling his presence. And I asked him about this during my
amends. I was like, how did you get through this? "'cause
(21:02):
I don't know how I got through this, "'but it had something to do with you, Dad."
And he said, it was simple, I prayed. I was like,
what did you, and he said, what am I learning? How can I help? And
when must I relax? And I'm like, that's it?
Like, what do you mean? What is, how does, and he's like, well,
the rest isn't up to me. And it's like, okay,
(21:25):
so what do I take from this? And he said, well,
why don't you just try your best? That's what he said to me. And it's like
from that day on, man, I've done a lot of meditation
on connecting with that, that isness, that being,
that presence of like afterlife. And
it's almost just, in
(21:49):
human words, I think the easiest way to
kind of boil this down from my understanding It's
a moral compass that most people call God. That's what
it is. And it's bigger and more vast than
human comprehension is able to take. That's why I can't really describe
it. I've experienced it on
(22:13):
earth, like looking at someone in the eye and connecting. It's
there. That's what's there, man. It's that, but magnified. I've
heard, when I've described this at a more articulately
eloquent way, I've heard people say, that's what I
felt like when I held my son for the first time. And it's like,
(22:34):
it's life. That's life, right? So I think me
choosing life or life choosing me,
really, is something I
can bring to the rooms of recovery when I'm like, hey
man, you have a choice. And I think being helpful is
the right thing to do, right? It
(22:57):
It was as deep as... So before this
accident, when you were that young, angry man, Is
it fair to say you had no belief in the afterlife? You were godless, to
put it simply, in those times? Or did you have a belief? Were
(23:18):
No, I wasn't at
all. And it was almost like a very dismissive and
don't want to talk about it. That's how my attitude was. I was like,
Oh, okay. Yeah, and the prejudice of organized religion and
the church and all this underlying resentment of
(23:39):
what I didn't understand, it was easy enough for me to disregard,
right? It was easy enough for me to be like, I don't even, but also
Aaron, I think for me, and the same with my means of
recovery, it's like, if I do accept spiritual principles,
I'm gonna have to do some work. And that was where like, I
was hesitant. If I said to my family
(24:02):
that, okay, I'm going to
do the 12 steps, then I'd
have to do it, right? So I never did. I would always identify as
this alcoholic, drug addict guy that didn't know what that meant,
and that was enough. So before the accident, i
was i was just kind of waiting to die i was just waiting and
(24:25):
i thought this was the end and then i wasn't
done right um there was one one thing
that happened that i'd like to touch on that when i was a really because this happened through
some more intrinsic meditation and stuff. I
remember another conversation with my father, and I've shared this
at meeting level, where I was young. I
(24:46):
was like five, and this is a memory that I
asked him because I was in trouble again. And I was like, I
asked him, who is God? That's
what I asked my dad. And he said, what? What
is God? And I said, what is God? And
he said, where is God? And I pointed up and
(25:09):
I looked and he's mad. That's what I said to my dad. I
said, he's up there and he's mad at me. And he said, no son, no.
And he takes my little finger and he points it at my chest and he
says, God's in there and it loves you. That's what
my dad said to me when I was like five years old. And
I wish I would have remembered that going through my adulthood because
(25:31):
That's comforting now, right? And that
thing that's in us, that life force, that
is beyond measure. Like you can't buy
that, man. Like that's something that I think that's why we
live. We live to experience that, right? I think we live
to experience evolution of consciousness through understanding what
(25:54):
God could mean to you, right? So anyway, I
No, I love it, dude. I love it. And so and
then so then obviously, was there a so
you have this accident, it takes a long time for you just to come
back to who you are, where you are. But
at some point, your memories and
(26:15):
your consciousness regains itself and you start knowing I am
Grayson. I've been in an accident. I'm going through these
surgeries. I'm going through this pain. I'm going through all this. You understand what's
happening at some point. You're angry still. You're still that
same guy that had the accident at this point. So I'm
curious. Because you're not that guy today, the guy I'm talking to right
(26:36):
now. So when does that old
person die and this new person is born? Is
it a poignant moment, or is it just a slow, gradual process?
It's both. I've been sober since June 19th of 2022. That's my
sobriety date. And you talked
about the spiritual experience. There was a time where I
(26:59):
was finding worth in my life. I was
just things were starting to go really well. I had about like four
months of sobriety and like people were becoming my friends and
encouraging me to share and talk. And I was like, wait,
I'm like people I'm except like people are liking me. This is crazy. I
thought I was supposed to be dead by now. Right. And I was in
(27:21):
the pool doing physical therapy like we talked about with Eckhart Tolle
plant. I had no headphones on. I was just in it was actually a cold plunge
and I was just in there. And I felt it
that same feeling I had in the coma shot through me like
shattered glass I was just like and I started
smiling and I was like, oh, I'm alive I was like, I'm a
(27:43):
fucking live dude and it like all of the unprocessed
trauma I went through was immediately processed and
it was like just too much. I got out of the pool and
I was like wailing. I was like just so emotional.
And I walked in and I was like, Dad, I need you.
And he was like, good. And he came around and
(28:04):
he's like, what's going on? I'm like, I'm alive. And he hugged me and he
just hugged me tight. And he said, I've been waiting for this to happen. Welcome
home, son. And I just, I melted. And I'm like,
and that gives me goosebumps now, man. I was like, Oh,
I'm here to help. And today,
my dad's my bass player in my band, dude. We had a gig last night
(28:27):
and I turned to him and I'm like, this is better than the hospital, huh? And
he just gets a little tear in his eye and he's like, keep rocking,
son. And it's just, it's amazing what happens. Wow.
That's powerful dude. Yeah. It's weird how for
some people that can show up like that, like almost like a bolt of lightning.
And in your case, what I heard right there is it kind of was, um,
(28:51):
you know why it took that long and why it happened in
that cold plunge that day. I suspect it
was, you know, a lot of buildup, your soul, whatever animates
you. I call it a soul. It doesn't really matter. It's that light of
life that animates us all. Um, which
isn't an alcoholic and is well aware that it's
(29:13):
a gift to be here and to be alive. It's the ego that takes
control of the soul and says, shut the fuck up, I know what's going on.
But somehow, it had been talking and
trying to talk to you and trying to get through to you, and it was
working on you and working on you and working on you, and that day, for whatever reason,
it was able to crack through that ego. You were probably just enough
(29:34):
relaxed or the cold water or whatever it was, that
cart totally playing on the headphones, and it created a crack, and
that voice shot through, and you heard it. Loud and clear. I
That kind of brings us to this tattoo. You've
(29:55):
been tattooed a lot, but this latest piece that you
just finished, is for those of you who are listening
to the episode, some of you are gonna watch us on YouTube and you'll be able to see photos of it, but
it's your entire front torso from deep up high on your neck
and throat, across your shoulders, complete coverage all the way
down through your front torso, down past your pant line. And
(30:16):
it's a huge dragon head. Patrick Sweeney, who
works with me here at Guru Tattoo, one of my favorite tattooers I've ever worked
with, look him up if you haven't seen his work, fucking absolute prodigy,
did the piece. And also I just want to add before you tell us
more about that, having had my front done and having
tattooed for 30 years, I can tell everybody listening, if you haven't had your
(30:37):
front torso done, it's some of the most punishing, brutal
tattooing that a person to go through. Most people, they
get their fronts done. I sit with them for four hours, five hours. And
Grayson over here is asking Pat to do 12-hour sessions on
him. He can tell you more about some of why he did that
and what the tattoo meant and what kind of healing it provided, what kind of
(31:00):
cathartic reflection he was able to attain through the process of getting
this massive, beautiful tattoo. So I kind of highlighted everything,
Yeah, man. Thank you so much. Yeah. What
a, he is such just a genuine human too. Cause
I have a lot of personality and you know, I was
(31:20):
like, dude, you're going to have to tell me to shut up. Like there's going to be times. And
he's like, hey man, I'm on your throat. You might want to keep it quiet, you
know? But no, it was, it
just kind of grew from there. I think, and I've learned this from
my sister who's also just a phenomenal artist up
in Washington that like, I'm the
(31:40):
canvas, right? So I have an idea and I'm like, and
I went to Patrick and I went to him to look at some scar tissue on
my body and I was like, hey, is this going to be salvageable in
any way? And he's like, yeah, yeah, it'll take some time. It'll take some work. He's like, I don't really want
to touch somebody else's work. Like I'd rather do a fresh piece with you.
And I, it was like an intuition, man. I just said,
(32:01):
what about like a dragon on my chest? And he looked at me and he was
like, Nah, what do you mean? I'm like,
like a big, metal, angry dragon. And
he's like, yeah, okay, yes.
How willing are you to do it? I'm like, dude, I
(32:21):
have the funds right now and I want this. And he's like, okay,
well, I'll send you some stuff. And then like
a week goes by and I come back in and he has very, Like,
he has the stencil, and he's like, if you're sure, man,
this is gonna hurt. And I'm like, bring it. And
that's how I went after this whole process. You talked about, you
(32:44):
know, I asked Patrick how long he's tattooed one person, and he
said 10 hours. And I'm like, we can top that. And he's like, bro, with
your front? Like, I don't know. And I'm like, yeah,
let's do it. And it's almost like, there's a part of me
that may be a defect, right? It might be... an
ego thing obviously right i want to prove i can do it but
(33:06):
also there it comes from a deeper part of me that's like i've been through worse
right so when when people much worse yeah and so when people are like
damn that's crazy i'm like Yeah, ask me about it.
Part of the reason it's this glaring, aggressive dragon
is because it's like, oh yeah, that's nothing. It's everything.
(33:29):
But it's also, it's like, no, talk to me about how I feel. Because
that's this dragon, this is skin. That's skin. It's
like, I can take it on the skin. You know, that's how I treated it. And I'm
telling you, Aaron, there was some areas of this,
and I mean, you know, where I had, and the
day I met you, you're like, how are you getting through that? That's what you said to
(33:51):
me. And I looked at you and I said, God and
a mouth guard. And
that's what I did, man. I brought an MMA grade mouth
guard to chew down and I just bit the
bullet and it's constantly, this will pass, this will
pass. And I believe, I had faith, right? I
(34:13):
had faith that something good would come out of this. Even if it's just people out
there that are going through some chronic pain. Guess what? It
gets better. It does. It does. I didn't think I
was gonna make it through the shit I got through. Hell, I didn't think I was gonna be
rockin' and singin' in a band. I didn't think. It's
not about what you're thinkin'. It's about how you're livin', man. And the
(34:33):
tattoo, there's a couple portions where, the
worst was in the 12 hours. When he was goin'
over a line packin' color, down on like the lower low
the lower abdomen and i was like
i was i was squealing i was like bro this
is intense and there was something pat said to
(34:53):
me really early on before we even started he's like He's
like, I was like, cause I was asking him how this is going to work. Cause I've never had, you
know, that's like, you only have one full frontal. So I was like, and
he's like, you're going to be talking to God a lot. And I was like, knowing
like my spiritual health and fitness and wellness and helping people
in the program and learning like that humbling
(35:14):
myself and trying to be of service is like my willing that that all
kind of treats my ism. Right. I was like, okay
i'm gonna do so i memorized a lot of prayers i memorized and and
my lyrics to my songs i would just go over them and over
them and over them trying to like cement them into
my brain but when it got down to how painful this
(35:36):
shit was Because, I mean, functionally
amputated left arm, dude. I've felt some shit. Nothing
compares to this, the pain that I
felt, not physical, when he was just going over
and over and over on my abdomen. The prayer was
just, please. That's it. I was just saying, please, please,
(35:58):
I surrender. Please help. Help me. Help me. It was just
constantly like, God, help me get through this. Help me get through this. And counting,
a lot of counting. I would just count to 12 and then back
to 1 and then count to 12 and back to 1. And I mean,
Well, not the best part, but the unusual part is you asked
(36:20):
for it. You didn't have to do that. You could have
done four, take a couple weeks off, come back, get four more.
And I think you said something earlier that I wanted you to kind of extrapolate
a little bit about was the pain you had been
given earlier in your life. It wasn't by,
(36:41):
I mean, it kind of was your choice, but
it wasn't like an overt, obvious choice. And
the tattoo was different in that way because it was
your choosing, which I heard when you said that, and I'll let you talk
a bit about it, but I heard sort of like, I'm
Yeah, it was definitely a power move because,
(37:04):
and I forgot about that. Yeah, I totally, so it's an
art of surrender, right? That's with pain. Pain
management is an art of surrender. Absolutely. And I was like, I've
been through- Life is the art of surrender. Well, and
a lot of the emotional convictions that I had had that had dug
me into this, whole of despair. That was
(37:28):
a lot of unprocessed emotions. And
unprocessed thoughts turn into festering emotions. And
those festering emotions will strangle you if
you don't get help. And if it's silence, if
it's God, if it's people, if it's something that you, a
routine, I highly recommend to people that are struggling with things, get
a routine and stick to that routine. Routines matter most
(37:51):
when you don't want to do them, right? So I know
for me, it was like, I've been through something
and I want to wear it on my skin. That's another part of this tattoo. It's
like, I want to, I want to have something to like, look
at these scars, right? Like that's, that's basically what it was like. And,
and yeah, it was a power move. It was, it was the art
(38:13):
of control because I was like, I know I can get through this. And I had faith
that I'm like with the shit I've been through. And I talked to you
a little bit before about how, My mental
conception of things was very foggy and bewildered and
diluted with mental hemorrhaging, emotional
(38:33):
hemorrhaging and like drugs and all sorts of stuff when I was in
the hospital still, right? Like I didn't really experience with
complete consciousness the severity of the pain I was
in. So this was, there was a, you just reminded me
of this, when I was getting tattooed and it was like at the peak of just destruction,
I was like, you're processing. I would tell myself, I'm
(38:55):
like, okay, body, you're processing, you're
processing. And I would just remember that like, this is
And that's why some guy, do you
think, okay, what I just heard there is a lot of the pain you
went through after the accident, obviously when you're going through surgery, they're
putting you under, they're administering painkillers or doing a lot of
(39:17):
things so that you really don't. that because that trauma is
still happening. Yeah, you could be unconscious under anesthesia. But
your body some part of your body is still feeling the pain of
what they're doing to your arm that day, which is if you were awake would
probably be blinding pain. Yeah. But so
this agony so this pain is is being dumped into your
(39:38):
body without it being processed to
some degree so some part of me is telling me like when you
got the tattoo you're not just processing the pain that the
tattoo oh yeah you're processing processing the stored pain of
everything you didn't get a process during your accident it's almost like that
it was like a doorway to allow all that processing all
(39:59):
that pain that you had been through coming out in the tattoo you just
gave me goosebumps because you you just nailed something that i am now coming
that makes sense right because it was a lot
of this and the responsibility to my being
my soul is is to process this
(40:20):
right it it's it's like
my body got through it and my mind wasn't awake for
it so now hey wake up We
I find that life is some kind of teacher. It's a teacher. Right.
So how does life teach? It gives
(40:41):
you challenges. And, you know, to make me to make this simple, like
I gave the example earlier, perhaps you're an impatient person.
And that impatience affects your marriage, affects
the way you raise your children, affects the way you do your job at work. I mean, it's going to show up.
Patience is a virtue. We all want to be infinitely patient
if we could. But because this person is
(41:03):
not patient, they find themselves in traffic and they're pissed and
they have a choice to make. They can find more patience, less
resistance to the small inconvenience
that's occurring to them, or they can spend the rest of the drive to work being
fucking pissed that there was traffic on
the freeway and it was an inconvenience to them. Why is this happening to
(41:25):
me? Why is this happening to me? So that little
traffic, I would say that traffic was you know, in
this simulation that I think we're in, was specifically designed
for that person that day to help them find patience. Now, the
person in that card chose not to. So, what
life usually does, it'll elevate the lesson, and maybe
(41:46):
next time it'll help, you
know, maybe you saw your finger off while working on a porch because you're rushing through
it because you have no patience, and you take the skill saw and you just take
the tip of your finger off. My father did that one, who was an extremely impatient man.
who is a very patient man today, by the way. Love you, Dad. But I
think in that moment, he was so impatient, and
(42:07):
his impatience was just, ah, ah, ah, and he chopped his
finger off. Well, there's life elevating the lesson. A
little more intense this time. You just took the tip of your finger off. And so when I look at
your story, this young man full of anger
and angst and confusion and all the things you spoke of
earlier, I think life was delivering you opportunities to
(42:27):
learn, small ones probably at first that you ignored, little
bigger one, little bigger one. And I wonder if you look back on
the accident itself and the events that transpired afterwards, as
exactly that. Life finally was like, okay, we're
going to send you a very, very big wake up call, a clear picture,
a very clear picture. And we'll see if you get it this time. And
(42:49):
even then you seem to have fought it. Your story is inspire me.
That's for sure. And I think everybody that listens to this is going to feel similarly. I
mean, we all have our problems and we might think they're big. I
can sit here and say, I've had a pretty blessed life, knock on wood. I
haven't been any through anything quite like what you've described and you know, it's
an inspiration because You know the little challenges I
(43:10):
think I'm dealing with today. They just don't really seem all that fucking big anymore
so kudos to you you're back with the living you're back
with the Awake and and
you're working with a lot of others to help them And and
you're spreading the word and you're spreading the the love that you've you've come
to realize through a very painful process But it
(43:31):
got you here. Yeah, and I guess That's
Yeah. I'd like to say one more thing just to wrap, to put
a little bow on this, man. Um, I've also been given the
gracious opportunity to, um, counsel
men who have been in accidents, um, working with the hospital and
Dr. Hinchcliffe and my phenomenal orthopedic
(43:55):
therapists, um, my OTs and
my, my PTs, they, they all, they've,
they've given me the task to be able to
talk to other men and women who have been in terrible accidents as
like almost a, just
a voice of reason. Like you can do this, right? Even if it's a little
(44:19):
encouragement. So if you're going through something physical, reach
out to me, like I will help you cause I've been in, you
know, we don't, we don't have to go through shit alone. We're
And that's a unique gift that you can now offer others that I
couldn't. My words wouldn't mean as much to those people, but they
probably mean a lot coming from somebody that's been through what you've been through. And they need to see it,
(44:41):
right? To see is to believe. If they're laying there and they're going through that stuff,
and you're looking at them going, I was right there, and look where I'm at now. Hope,
Occupational therapy, physical therapy. Love, it
just works, right? And I'm a testament to
that. It's not all
what I did, right? Sometimes it's just letting
(45:07):
Thank you for coming. You approached me and I was like, huh, what? And
you started telling me your story. I'm like, oh, hell yeah. I could see it
in your eyes. I'm like, this dude has got a story and I could
see his eyes are bright and shiny and I could see he's
awake and I just can't wait. And I didn't even ask you much. I told you,
I'm like, I don't even want to know. Just come on and just tell me the whole thing on the show. So
(45:28):
it was beautiful, more beautiful than I thought it could have been. I am honored to
know you deeper and better. I'm stoked that you're a fan of Tattoo. I'm
stoked that you're a fan of Patrick. It sounds like we'll be seeing more of you. You got some
more skin still to cover. We're not going nowhere, so I look forward
to all that. And God bless you in what you're
doing for the world and for others around you in the AA group
(45:48):
and in the physical therapy trauma group for the physical trauma people.
God bless you in that. I wish you only the best and it's
Yeah. All right, everybody. Thanks for tuning in. Always appreciate
the fans that repeat. Come back to the show. Thank you.
So before this accident, when you were that
young, angry man, is
it fair to say you had no belief in the afterlife? You were godless, to
put it simply, in those times? Or did you have a belief? Were
No, I wasn't at
(00:21):
all. And it was almost like a very dismissive and
(00:49):
Hello, friends, neighbors, lovers of tattoo. Welcome back
to Chats and Tats with me, your host, Aaron Della Vadova.
We've been pumping out a lot of tattoo artist episodes lately,
which I love. Got so many good ones still coming up from
Gods of Ink in Germany. But I've been craving a
little something off the beaten track, and I think I have that today.
(01:12):
So, before I get into the introduction of my guest today, I just want to talk a
little bit about tattoos and their meaning. You know,
I've been doing this for 30 plus years, and the reality I've
noticed is tattoos have all sorts of levels to
their meaning. I mean, ultimately I would say, and I get
in trouble for saying this, tattoos are relatively meaningless.
(01:34):
Trust me, when you're taking your last breath, you will not be
thinking about tattoos that are on your body. You will probably be thinking about the
love that you've given to others, the love you received, the
people that are in your life that you care about, and the memories you created
with them. So in a big picture way, I always
say, you know, they're just tattoos, but in
(01:55):
our little microcosm of day-to-day reality they do
have meaning and there's a reason people get them and they it ranges it goes
from you know being silly just to have a little fun
moment with a buddy you know i i've sat on a snowmobile up the
top of a mountain and uh my my son tattooed my leg
And it's not a great tattoo, but it's one of my favorites.
(02:16):
And every time I look at it on my leg, I get filled with joy
and I smile. And it's not because it's some perfect thing. It's because of
what me and him did that day. And I'll never forget it because it's
marked in my skin until I die, at least. There's
also the feeling accepted by your social
group. For some people it has a lot to do with that. They
(02:37):
don't fit in possibly to the typical culture
that's out there and they have some friends that are into
alternative music and tattoos are part of the culture. You get some
tattoos, you feel more bonded with that culture. It's fantastic. It's
all good, by the way. There's no bad reason here. Your reasons
are your reasons, you know. There's the rite of passage, you know. You're a
young man, and your father had tattoos, and all his
(03:00):
buddies had tattoos. Possibly that's one scenario. You getting a
tattoo is like a rite of passage. You feel like you're
now a man, or you're now a woman, or whatever you're
striving towards, and that's awesome. artistic expression.
For some folks it's literally just an act of art. They
love art. They hang art in their homes and
(03:21):
in this case they decorate their body with art. It's just a way to wear art.
Their love for art is so deep that they're willing to put it in their skin. It
could symbolize a significant event, a marriage, a
death of a loved one, maybe a spiritual belief or a
spiritual breakthrough, a permanent reminder possibly.
I've tattooed on the back of my hands, if I put my hands into a prayer, prayer
(03:45):
pose, if you look at them, it says, fuck it. People
think I'm being goofy, but fuck it to me is a spiritual statement.
You know, in life, for me, we can never be 100% certain
about anything. You can get pretty close. You can decide I'm
pretty sure this is the girl I should marry. Pretty sure this is the
career I should pursue. But in the end, we all have to take a risk because
(04:06):
you don't get guarantees in life. And what I always say
when I get to a point where I think I have the right decision at hand is
fuck it. I'm not gonna sit here and think about it anymore. It's
time to take action. And if it's the wrong decision, I'll know soon enough and
I'll take corrective course action. And
most of the time, not most of the time, but some of the times it's a mix of all these
(04:27):
things. A little bit of the first one, the second one I mentioned, it's just
a blend of those things. But there's one more category that
I think we're gonna get deeper into today. And that is tattoos
can be a very healing process for some people. I had
one client, he went to war, he came back, He
never told me the details of what happened, but I know, I don't know,
(04:48):
but I'm pretty certain it had a lot to do with watching people
die and maybe even killing people. And he
was very troubled with a lot of PTSD. He got an entire bodysuit from me
and told me straight up, I don't wanna look in the mirror and see
the guy that went to war. I wanna see a different human
being. He was transforming from the outside
(05:10):
inward. Now he was doing inward work as well, but together
it was a way for him to help work through his trauma. So
today's guest has some words around that. I believe he's been
through a lot and he's gotten a lot of tattoos since this
event in his life. And I thought it would be a really interesting person
to tell that story. So without further ado, I
(05:32):
would like to introduce to you Gray Savo.
Did I say that correctly? Grayson Savo. Totally
Yeah, Grayson. Yeah, I was going by Gray. Well, your emails are saying
I like Grayson better. Yeah, yeah. All right, well, you
(05:52):
are a lot of things in life, as we all are. And just before you get
started, I wanted to let the audience know, you're a musician, which
started as kind of a poet, moved into musician. You're now the
lead singer of a band called the Moonburns. By the way, you guys, if you're interested
to hear some of Grayson's music, it's kind of a, bluesy
rock sound with some deep emotional lyrics
(06:15):
mixed through super good stuff you'll find it on Spotify again
that's the moon burns one word and for a living day-to-day
job architectural draftsman so
enough said on that just some big highlights on kind of who you are I know you're much
more but having said all that I want you to
kick this off with this event that occurred to you, which
(06:39):
Okay. Yeah. All right. The
floor is yours. Sweet. OK. Thanks for having me here, man. This
is super cool. And the vibe is right. So I'm just going to jump
right into what happened to get your attention. May
3rd of 2021, I was ejected from a convertible going 110 miles
an hour on the 99 freeway in the midst of
(07:00):
the night. It was like 10 p.m. Not
sure what day. I was going too fast
and I was not hindered by anything but
emotional uncertainty. I was sober in
the accident, but I was in a hurry to
get nowhere. And there's a long time
(07:22):
where I thought it was a suicide attempt, but I have been since then in
some intrinsic work, I found that I was just making mistakes.
I was just going too fast. I ended up hitting
a black van trying to trying to pass a black van i
don't remember any of this right because i was ejected going 110 um the
seat belt actually broke through um and i flipped
(07:45):
my audi tt convertible um totaled it
uh And they kept me alive.
They found me immediately after. And I
was in a coma for two and a half weeks. And I
had been pronounced dead for two minutes, 30 seconds.
(08:06):
They already had signed basically my parts away. My dad was in there. He
had to sign that they would donate my body parts. They
had affirmed to him that I'm not just brain dead.
I won't I there's there was no way I would ever be able
to talk let alone walk again right like that was all He's
not gonna make it. He's just not gonna make it. And my
(08:27):
grandmother had told me there was a person in the emergency
room with them that said, he's
25, he might have hope, right? That's all. So
my grandmother being very, very faithful, she was kind
of the pillar of like, let's just leave this
up to God. And everybody else was trying to figure out what
(08:49):
to do. Obviously, all
my family fell in around and came up. It was in Visalia, so
off the 99 freeway. I went on the wrong freeway going up. I was
going back and forth to Washington, where my sister lives. I
was living up there, and I was going to join the military. I was going to join the
Air Force. I thought that would be a good direction, having
(09:11):
lost some jobs, hopped around different states, lived
in Utah, lived in San Diego was
getting let go from jobs and just running from myself,
essentially, right? I didn't, I didn't understand that
Now? No, at this time. Oh, um, 25 when that
(09:32):
happened, I was 25. Yeah. Um, that was, and
Okay. Yeah. Um, and Yeah,
so I was in the hospital for four to
six months in and out of, so I was in the hospital
like on life support, Visalia, then I went to Fresno, then I
went down to San Diego where I live and still live. And
(09:54):
then I was in an inpatient rehabilitation, physical rehabilitation, where
they had taught me how to walk. They had taught me how to talk. I didn't
know how to say anything. Granted, I did,
I guess when I was coming out of my coma, my
first memory back, my first memory was my
stepfather, Roger, he brought me a Lego, just
(10:16):
a little like, Bionicle Lego thing and
I My injuries include the functional amputation of
my left arm So it was ripped from my spinal cord in the accident right
tons of skin grafts a lot of scarring traumatic
brain injury but with my my right hand
I was able to start piecing this Lego together and Aaron and Memories
(10:40):
of who I thought I was started coming back into my head Like I
was like I started to remember my name and they would come
in and ask me. What's your name? When were you burnt? What happened to you?
And I'd like never get it right to what I'm bit told right they
said like I mean, I was begging my
parents to go park my car. Like, through the first, like, five
(11:01):
months that I was living in a hospital or whatever, or three months, I was like, go,
can you go get my car? Because I was concerned, because it was mine, right?
It was my little Audi TT. And I was like, that's going to get me
somewhere. And I guess one
of the first things, this is before I started
working in an anonymous program and found out that I'll actually be
(11:21):
three next week, which is exciting. But I
asked my mom in the hospital, I'm hardly talking,
and I asked her for a shot of tequila. That was my go-to. That
was one of my first sentences. And she was like, son, you're
not in a hotel. You're in a hospital. And I said, well,
then make it a mimosa. That's what I said. And
(11:43):
it's like, it was just this, it was just back and
forth with this, you know, conviction of what
my perspective of reality was so just
not accurate, right? I was in delusion and I was like,
convincing myself it was okay to be in delusion. I
didn't know what honesty was. I didn't know. And coming to
(12:06):
this, Instance of like survival right
when my mind started coming back to me. I am I felt
the fear and we'll get into the fear We'll get into that when
I go more into my piece and I felt this darkness and
this just drive to destroy but
I was immobile, right? And I was talking to Aaron a bit
(12:28):
about this too. I was talking to you about how I couldn't really
walk and I had to rely on people to bathe, to
help me get in and out of bed. There was times where I was just like
too afraid to scream out for help, right? And
that pretty much sums up like how I was getting through life
until then. I was too afraid to tell you I was hurting. I wanted to show you,
(12:49):
right? And I was showing everybody through my actions the
pain that I didn't understand, right? And just the
deviation of that, just trying to get away from it. And I
remember when my dad helped me get to, because after the accident, right,
to get back on track, I ended up in the hospital for a long time.
I lived in the inpatient for about a month and a half. I couldn't
(13:12):
stand it anymore. Also, people
are like, you can't be afraid of needles. Look at all the tattoos you have. I'm like, there's
a difference when they're taking your blood, right? If
you're ever in an inpatient facility and you
think your heart hurts, make sure. It was a broken rib, but
I complained about chest pain. They had to take my blood every
(13:36):
hour for the next 48 hours. Yeah,
they'd wake me up and be like, okay, we got to do this again. Because who knows?
I mean, I had some pretty catastrophic injuries.
And after all the testing, they don't want to miss something. So
I just remember being, again, it was doubled down
on that afraid to ask. I was so afraid to ask for help. Because
(14:00):
uncertainty is fear, right? I think like, just what
we, What we don't know without
faith is fear. If I don't
know something and I'm not going to trust that
it's going to be better for me than what my limited imagination can
come up with, then I'm going to be afraid. I
(14:22):
agree. and familiar sense
of isolation, familiar sense of, it's familiar, right?
So I think there's parts of us that we've talked about a little bit, like identifying with
that, right? And I was identified with, I
just don't know and I don't give a, I don't know what the cursing policy is
here. You can curse all you want. Yeah, so I just didn't know
(14:42):
and I didn't give a fuck. And I didn't, it was like
the opposite of what your tattoo says. It was like, Fuck
it. Like, I'm gonna die anyway. And I grew
up, Aaron, telling my friends I was not gonna live till 25. I said
that. Since I was a little kid. And this is something that I revisited
lately, doing an amends to my father. Back when
(15:03):
I was a little boy, I used to scream I hate myself. I used
to just scream this. I was confused. I didn't know
where I was. My parents were split up and I couldn't, I
didn't have any control over where I went. I didn't know how some
stuff happened to me as a young child that happens to a lot of
people in society these days. And I didn't know how to talk about it.
So I thought, so I joined martial arts.
(15:28):
And I got pretty proficient at hurting people that I thought didn't like
me. And that was my thing. For a long time, I identified as
that, all right, talk shit. And I was like a six
foot flat scrawny ginger guy. And I'm like, but I can kick
you in the face. In school
man, I was I was like bully me like fucking
(15:49):
bully me Like that was what that was my spite my pride
because I knew how to hurt people so I fell into that
like yeah Go ahead see see how see how
you're gonna hurt me more than I hurt myself right because I
mean I have a group of friends now that we
don't shoot our wounded and But our wounded usually shoot themselves.
(16:11):
And that's the truth of it, right? And I was very much... The
society's pressure of being more than I am was overwhelming to
me. So I went and I got really diligent at
my practice of martial arts. Jiu-jitsu, high school wrestling, Kenpo.
I just wanted to know that false
sense of security. That if I was threatened, I
(16:34):
could handle it and I there was a couple of parts of my life where
that really helped me out like I mean knife stuff like
I was able to like secure a weapon from a guy in an
instance and I'm not Superman but if
if you know what you're doing and you have faith that you know what
you're doing things usually turn out how they should now that
(16:55):
doesn't work well with spite right I mean that negativity
is negativity and I got all over
the place on that. But back to this, just in the hospital, not
knowing what was gonna happen, I just, I surrendered to
thinking like I'm just gonna die. Like I was on the clock, right? I was
figuring this is how I'm going out and I'd rather be
(17:17):
drunk. That was my mindset. I was like, okay, if
I'm gonna die, I mean, I'm in the hospital for what felt
like, I was telling people it was nine months. I don't know how long it was. My dad was
like, you're really embellishing there. And I'm like, But
he's like, but you've also had severe brain injury. So,
you know, let's get the facts down. So I don't know. I'll
(17:38):
follow up. I think it was closer to six months. But
I mean, that's still a long time to be in a hospital, especially when you don't
know where you are or who you are. It's a scary spot
to be. I'm on all sorts of stuff when
I'm in there, right? Going through surgeries. Yes. Oh,
that's funny. I was just going to bring this up. I was sitting with my grandma one
(17:59):
time and this poor nurse, I feel for her now. She
put the wrong gauze tape on a wound that wasn't healed yet,
on me, and she had to like slowly rip it off and
it was taking my skin with it. And I remember
that. I remember that because that's pain, right? That's
like, and to the piece, right?
(18:22):
The piece represents to me surrendering to the
pain. Because that's what it is. It's
transcending suffering. That's what the dragon represents. And
I learned that while getting the piece, right?
Before we go too far into the tattoo, there was something you brought
up earlier that I think is worth revisiting. You died for
(18:44):
two and a half minutes. And I think you mentioned earlier something about,
tell me about that and what profound effect or whatever came
Okay. This
is a touchy subject for me because it means a lot and I
don't want to sound preachy or soapboxy, but let's face
the facts, man. This is a hard thing to relate to. I
(19:07):
mean, but we're all there. We're all there. My
father is very close with me now. He's got 42 years
of sobriety. My godfather, his name is Danny,
he had 36 years and then killed himself, right? That's just
some context of when I was on the
(19:30):
other side, the isness, people ask me, what was
that like? And it's not... Comprehendable
like I can't really fully conclude what
what that feels like to you, but I can kind of use
The way that I've delineated in the past it's it's like it
(19:54):
just is Comfortable. It's like absolute
comfort of of a freedom from form
like that's kind of what I felt and it didn't feel like there was
a timeline I felt like It was a long time,
and it was no time, right? But
what I felt was my father,
(20:17):
mixed in with my godfather, mixed in with a bunch of
people that are no longer here, holding me,
not with their body and not with their voice, but
pushing me towards the overarching theme
of no son, you're not done here
yet. That's what it was. And I was like, I
(20:40):
mean, man, I am
convinced that my father's love
for me kept me alive. And the
prayer for my grandma and all her friends and my mother's love and like, but
feeling his presence. And I asked him about this during my
amends. I was like, how did you get through this? "'cause
(21:02):
I don't know how I got through this, "'but it had something to do with you, Dad."
And he said, it was simple, I prayed. I was like,
what did you, and he said, what am I learning? How can I help? And
when must I relax? And I'm like, that's it?
Like, what do you mean? What is, how does, and he's like, well,
the rest isn't up to me. And it's like, okay,
(21:25):
so what do I take from this? And he said, well,
why don't you just try your best? That's what he said to me. And it's like
from that day on, man, I've done a lot of meditation
on connecting with that, that isness, that being,
that presence of like afterlife. And
it's almost just, in
(21:49):
human words, I think the easiest way to
kind of boil this down from my understanding It's
a moral compass that most people call God. That's what
it is. And it's bigger and more vast than
human comprehension is able to take. That's why I can't really describe
it. I've experienced it on
(22:13):
earth, like looking at someone in the eye and connecting. It's
there. That's what's there, man. It's that, but magnified. I've
heard, when I've described this at a more articulately
eloquent way, I've heard people say, that's what I
felt like when I held my son for the first time. And it's like,
(22:34):
it's life. That's life, right? So I think me
choosing life or life choosing me,
really, is something I
can bring to the rooms of recovery when I'm like, hey
man, you have a choice. And I think being helpful is
the right thing to do, right? It
(22:57):
It was as deep as... So before this
accident, when you were that young, angry man, Is
it fair to say you had no belief in the afterlife? You were godless, to
put it simply, in those times? Or did you have a belief? Were
(23:18):
No, I wasn't at
all. And it was almost like a very dismissive and
don't want to talk about it. That's how my attitude was. I was like,
Oh, okay. Yeah, and the prejudice of organized religion and
the church and all this underlying resentment of
(23:39):
what I didn't understand, it was easy enough for me to disregard,
right? It was easy enough for me to be like, I don't even, but also
Aaron, I think for me, and the same with my means of
recovery, it's like, if I do accept spiritual principles,
I'm gonna have to do some work. And that was where like, I
was hesitant. If I said to my family
(24:02):
that, okay, I'm going to
do the 12 steps, then I'd
have to do it, right? So I never did. I would always identify as
this alcoholic, drug addict guy that didn't know what that meant,
and that was enough. So before the accident, i
was i was just kind of waiting to die i was just waiting and
(24:25):
i thought this was the end and then i wasn't
done right um there was one one thing
that happened that i'd like to touch on that when i was a really because this happened through
some more intrinsic meditation and stuff. I
remember another conversation with my father, and I've shared this
at meeting level, where I was young. I
(24:46):
was like five, and this is a memory that I
asked him because I was in trouble again. And I was like, I
asked him, who is God? That's
what I asked my dad. And he said, what? What
is God? And I said, what is God? And
he said, where is God? And I pointed up and
(25:09):
I looked and he's mad. That's what I said to my dad. I
said, he's up there and he's mad at me. And he said, no son, no.
And he takes my little finger and he points it at my chest and he
says, God's in there and it loves you. That's what
my dad said to me when I was like five years old. And
I wish I would have remembered that going through my adulthood because
(25:31):
That's comforting now, right? And that
thing that's in us, that life force, that
is beyond measure. Like you can't buy
that, man. Like that's something that I think that's why we
live. We live to experience that, right? I think we live
to experience evolution of consciousness through understanding what
(25:54):
God could mean to you, right? So anyway, I
No, I love it, dude. I love it. And so and
then so then obviously, was there a so
you have this accident, it takes a long time for you just to come
back to who you are, where you are. But
at some point, your memories and
(26:15):
your consciousness regains itself and you start knowing I am
Grayson. I've been in an accident. I'm going through these
surgeries. I'm going through this pain. I'm going through all this. You understand what's
happening at some point. You're angry still. You're still that
same guy that had the accident at this point. So I'm
curious. Because you're not that guy today, the guy I'm talking to right
(26:36):
now. So when does that old
person die and this new person is born? Is
it a poignant moment, or is it just a slow, gradual process?
It's both. I've been sober since June 19th of 2022. That's my
sobriety date. And you talked
about the spiritual experience. There was a time where I
(26:59):
was finding worth in my life. I was
just things were starting to go really well. I had about like four
months of sobriety and like people were becoming my friends and
encouraging me to share and talk. And I was like, wait,
I'm like people I'm except like people are liking me. This is crazy. I
thought I was supposed to be dead by now. Right. And I was in
(27:21):
the pool doing physical therapy like we talked about with Eckhart Tolle
plant. I had no headphones on. I was just in it was actually a cold plunge
and I was just in there. And I felt it
that same feeling I had in the coma shot through me like
shattered glass I was just like and I started
smiling and I was like, oh, I'm alive I was like, I'm a
(27:43):
fucking live dude and it like all of the unprocessed
trauma I went through was immediately processed and
it was like just too much. I got out of the pool and
I was like wailing. I was like just so emotional.
And I walked in and I was like, Dad, I need you.
And he was like, good. And he came around and
(28:04):
he's like, what's going on? I'm like, I'm alive. And he hugged me and he
just hugged me tight. And he said, I've been waiting for this to happen. Welcome
home, son. And I just, I melted. And I'm like,
and that gives me goosebumps now, man. I was like, Oh,
I'm here to help. And today,
my dad's my bass player in my band, dude. We had a gig last night
(28:27):
and I turned to him and I'm like, this is better than the hospital, huh? And
he just gets a little tear in his eye and he's like, keep rocking,
son. And it's just, it's amazing what happens. Wow.
That's powerful dude. Yeah. It's weird how for
some people that can show up like that, like almost like a bolt of lightning.
And in your case, what I heard right there is it kind of was, um,
(28:51):
you know why it took that long and why it happened in
that cold plunge that day. I suspect it
was, you know, a lot of buildup, your soul, whatever animates
you. I call it a soul. It doesn't really matter. It's that light of
life that animates us all. Um, which
isn't an alcoholic and is well aware that it's
(29:13):
a gift to be here and to be alive. It's the ego that takes
control of the soul and says, shut the fuck up, I know what's going on.
But somehow, it had been talking and
trying to talk to you and trying to get through to you, and it was
working on you and working on you and working on you, and that day, for whatever reason,
it was able to crack through that ego. You were probably just enough
(29:34):
relaxed or the cold water or whatever it was, that
cart totally playing on the headphones, and it created a crack, and
that voice shot through, and you heard it. Loud and clear. I
That kind of brings us to this tattoo. You've
(29:55):
been tattooed a lot, but this latest piece that you
just finished, is for those of you who are listening
to the episode, some of you are gonna watch us on YouTube and you'll be able to see photos of it, but
it's your entire front torso from deep up high on your neck
and throat, across your shoulders, complete coverage all the way
down through your front torso, down past your pant line. And
(30:16):
it's a huge dragon head. Patrick Sweeney, who
works with me here at Guru Tattoo, one of my favorite tattooers I've ever worked
with, look him up if you haven't seen his work, fucking absolute prodigy,
did the piece. And also I just want to add before you tell us
more about that, having had my front done and having
tattooed for 30 years, I can tell everybody listening, if you haven't had your
(30:37):
front torso done, it's some of the most punishing, brutal
tattooing that a person to go through. Most people, they
get their fronts done. I sit with them for four hours, five hours. And
Grayson over here is asking Pat to do 12-hour sessions on
him. He can tell you more about some of why he did that
and what the tattoo meant and what kind of healing it provided, what kind of
(31:00):
cathartic reflection he was able to attain through the process of getting
this massive, beautiful tattoo. So I kind of highlighted everything,
Yeah, man. Thank you so much. Yeah. What
a, he is such just a genuine human too. Cause
I have a lot of personality and you know, I was
(31:20):
like, dude, you're going to have to tell me to shut up. Like there's going to be times. And
he's like, hey man, I'm on your throat. You might want to keep it quiet, you
know? But no, it was, it
just kind of grew from there. I think, and I've learned this from
my sister who's also just a phenomenal artist up
in Washington that like, I'm the
(31:40):
canvas, right? So I have an idea and I'm like, and
I went to Patrick and I went to him to look at some scar tissue on
my body and I was like, hey, is this going to be salvageable in
any way? And he's like, yeah, yeah, it'll take some time. It'll take some work. He's like, I don't really want
to touch somebody else's work. Like I'd rather do a fresh piece with you.
And I, it was like an intuition, man. I just said,
(32:01):
what about like a dragon on my chest? And he looked at me and he was
like, Nah, what do you mean? I'm like,
like a big, metal, angry dragon. And
he's like, yeah, okay, yes.
How willing are you to do it? I'm like, dude, I
(32:21):
have the funds right now and I want this. And he's like, okay,
well, I'll send you some stuff. And then like
a week goes by and I come back in and he has very, Like,
he has the stencil, and he's like, if you're sure, man,
this is gonna hurt. And I'm like, bring it. And
that's how I went after this whole process. You talked about, you
(32:44):
know, I asked Patrick how long he's tattooed one person, and he
said 10 hours. And I'm like, we can top that. And he's like, bro, with
your front? Like, I don't know. And I'm like, yeah,
let's do it. And it's almost like, there's a part of me
that may be a defect, right? It might be... an
ego thing obviously right i want to prove i can do it but
(33:06):
also there it comes from a deeper part of me that's like i've been through worse
right so when when people much worse yeah and so when people are like
damn that's crazy i'm like Yeah, ask me about it.
Part of the reason it's this glaring, aggressive dragon
is because it's like, oh yeah, that's nothing. It's everything.
(33:29):
But it's also, it's like, no, talk to me about how I feel. Because
that's this dragon, this is skin. That's skin. It's
like, I can take it on the skin. You know, that's how I treated it. And I'm
telling you, Aaron, there was some areas of this,
and I mean, you know, where I had, and the
day I met you, you're like, how are you getting through that? That's what you said to
(33:51):
me. And I looked at you and I said, God and
a mouth guard. And
that's what I did, man. I brought an MMA grade mouth
guard to chew down and I just bit the
bullet and it's constantly, this will pass, this will
pass. And I believe, I had faith, right? I
(34:13):
had faith that something good would come out of this. Even if it's just people out
there that are going through some chronic pain. Guess what? It
gets better. It does. It does. I didn't think I
was gonna make it through the shit I got through. Hell, I didn't think I was gonna be
rockin' and singin' in a band. I didn't think. It's
not about what you're thinkin'. It's about how you're livin', man. And the
(34:33):
tattoo, there's a couple portions where, the
worst was in the 12 hours. When he was goin'
over a line packin' color, down on like the lower low
the lower abdomen and i was like
i was i was squealing i was like bro this
is intense and there was something pat said to
(34:53):
me really early on before we even started he's like He's
like, I was like, cause I was asking him how this is going to work. Cause I've never had, you
know, that's like, you only have one full frontal. So I was like, and
he's like, you're going to be talking to God a lot. And I was like, knowing
like my spiritual health and fitness and wellness and helping people
in the program and learning like that humbling
(35:14):
myself and trying to be of service is like my willing that that all
kind of treats my ism. Right. I was like, okay
i'm gonna do so i memorized a lot of prayers i memorized and and
my lyrics to my songs i would just go over them and over
them and over them trying to like cement them into
my brain but when it got down to how painful this
(35:36):
shit was Because, I mean, functionally
amputated left arm, dude. I've felt some shit. Nothing
compares to this, the pain that I
felt, not physical, when he was just going over
and over and over on my abdomen. The prayer was
just, please. That's it. I was just saying, please, please,
(35:58):
I surrender. Please help. Help me. Help me. It was just
constantly like, God, help me get through this. Help me get through this. And counting,
a lot of counting. I would just count to 12 and then back
to 1 and then count to 12 and back to 1. And I mean,
Well, not the best part, but the unusual part is you asked
(36:20):
for it. You didn't have to do that. You could have
done four, take a couple weeks off, come back, get four more.
And I think you said something earlier that I wanted you to kind of extrapolate
a little bit about was the pain you had been
given earlier in your life. It wasn't by,
(36:41):
I mean, it kind of was your choice, but
it wasn't like an overt, obvious choice. And
the tattoo was different in that way because it was
your choosing, which I heard when you said that, and I'll let you talk
a bit about it, but I heard sort of like, I'm
Yeah, it was definitely a power move because,
(37:04):
and I forgot about that. Yeah, I totally, so it's an
art of surrender, right? That's with pain. Pain
management is an art of surrender. Absolutely. And I was like, I've
been through- Life is the art of surrender. Well, and
a lot of the emotional convictions that I had had that had dug
me into this, whole of despair. That was
(37:28):
a lot of unprocessed emotions. And
unprocessed thoughts turn into festering emotions. And
those festering emotions will strangle you if
you don't get help. And if it's silence, if
it's God, if it's people, if it's something that you, a
routine, I highly recommend to people that are struggling with things, get
a routine and stick to that routine. Routines matter most
(37:51):
when you don't want to do them, right? So I know
for me, it was like, I've been through something
and I want to wear it on my skin. That's another part of this tattoo. It's
like, I want to, I want to have something to like, look
at these scars, right? Like that's, that's basically what it was like. And,
and yeah, it was a power move. It was, it was the art
(38:13):
of control because I was like, I know I can get through this. And I had faith
that I'm like with the shit I've been through. And I talked to you
a little bit before about how, My mental
conception of things was very foggy and bewildered and
diluted with mental hemorrhaging, emotional
(38:33):
hemorrhaging and like drugs and all sorts of stuff when I was in
the hospital still, right? Like I didn't really experience with
complete consciousness the severity of the pain I was
in. So this was, there was a, you just reminded me
of this, when I was getting tattooed and it was like at the peak of just destruction,
I was like, you're processing. I would tell myself, I'm
(38:55):
like, okay, body, you're processing, you're
processing. And I would just remember that like, this is
And that's why some guy, do you
think, okay, what I just heard there is a lot of the pain you
went through after the accident, obviously when you're going through surgery, they're
putting you under, they're administering painkillers or doing a lot of
(39:17):
things so that you really don't. that because that trauma is
still happening. Yeah, you could be unconscious under anesthesia. But
your body some part of your body is still feeling the pain of
what they're doing to your arm that day, which is if you were awake would
probably be blinding pain. Yeah. But so
this agony so this pain is is being dumped into your
(39:38):
body without it being processed to
some degree so some part of me is telling me like when you
got the tattoo you're not just processing the pain that the
tattoo oh yeah you're processing processing the stored pain of
everything you didn't get a process during your accident it's almost like that
it was like a doorway to allow all that processing all
(39:59):
that pain that you had been through coming out in the tattoo you just
gave me goosebumps because you you just nailed something that i am now coming
that makes sense right because it was a lot
of this and the responsibility to my being
my soul is is to process this
(40:20):
right it it's it's like
my body got through it and my mind wasn't awake for
it so now hey wake up We
I find that life is some kind of teacher. It's a teacher. Right.
So how does life teach? It gives
(40:41):
you challenges. And, you know, to make me to make this simple, like
I gave the example earlier, perhaps you're an impatient person.
And that impatience affects your marriage, affects
the way you raise your children, affects the way you do your job at work. I mean, it's going to show up.
Patience is a virtue. We all want to be infinitely patient
if we could. But because this person is
(41:03):
not patient, they find themselves in traffic and they're pissed and
they have a choice to make. They can find more patience, less
resistance to the small inconvenience
that's occurring to them, or they can spend the rest of the drive to work being
fucking pissed that there was traffic on
the freeway and it was an inconvenience to them. Why is this happening to
(41:25):
me? Why is this happening to me? So that little
traffic, I would say that traffic was you know, in
this simulation that I think we're in, was specifically designed
for that person that day to help them find patience. Now, the
person in that card chose not to. So, what
life usually does, it'll elevate the lesson, and maybe
(41:46):
next time it'll help, you
know, maybe you saw your finger off while working on a porch because you're rushing through
it because you have no patience, and you take the skill saw and you just take
the tip of your finger off. My father did that one, who was an extremely impatient man.
who is a very patient man today, by the way. Love you, Dad. But I
think in that moment, he was so impatient, and
(42:07):
his impatience was just, ah, ah, ah, and he chopped his
finger off. Well, there's life elevating the lesson. A
little more intense this time. You just took the tip of your finger off. And so when I look at
your story, this young man full of anger
and angst and confusion and all the things you spoke of
earlier, I think life was delivering you opportunities to
(42:27):
learn, small ones probably at first that you ignored, little
bigger one, little bigger one. And I wonder if you look back on
the accident itself and the events that transpired afterwards, as
exactly that. Life finally was like, okay, we're
going to send you a very, very big wake up call, a clear picture,
a very clear picture. And we'll see if you get it this time. And
(42:49):
even then you seem to have fought it. Your story is inspire me.
That's for sure. And I think everybody that listens to this is going to feel similarly. I
mean, we all have our problems and we might think they're big. I
can sit here and say, I've had a pretty blessed life, knock on wood. I
haven't been any through anything quite like what you've described and you know, it's
an inspiration because You know the little challenges I
(43:10):
think I'm dealing with today. They just don't really seem all that fucking big anymore
so kudos to you you're back with the living you're back
with the Awake and and
you're working with a lot of others to help them And and
you're spreading the word and you're spreading the the love that you've you've come
to realize through a very painful process But it
(43:31):
got you here. Yeah, and I guess That's
Yeah. I'd like to say one more thing just to wrap, to put
a little bow on this, man. Um, I've also been given the
gracious opportunity to, um, counsel
men who have been in accidents, um, working with the hospital and
Dr. Hinchcliffe and my phenomenal orthopedic
(43:55):
therapists, um, my OTs and
my, my PTs, they, they all, they've,
they've given me the task to be able to
talk to other men and women who have been in terrible accidents as
like almost a, just
a voice of reason. Like you can do this, right? Even if it's a little
(44:19):
encouragement. So if you're going through something physical, reach
out to me, like I will help you cause I've been in, you
know, we don't, we don't have to go through shit alone. We're
And that's a unique gift that you can now offer others that I
couldn't. My words wouldn't mean as much to those people, but they
probably mean a lot coming from somebody that's been through what you've been through. And they need to see it,
(44:41):
right? To see is to believe. If they're laying there and they're going through that stuff,
and you're looking at them going, I was right there, and look where I'm at now. Hope,
Occupational therapy, physical therapy. Love, it
just works, right? And I'm a testament to
that. It's not all
what I did, right? Sometimes it's just letting
(45:07):
Thank you for coming. You approached me and I was like, huh, what? And
you started telling me your story. I'm like, oh, hell yeah. I could see it
in your eyes. I'm like, this dude has got a story and I could
see his eyes are bright and shiny and I could see he's
awake and I just can't wait. And I didn't even ask you much. I told you,
I'm like, I don't even want to know. Just come on and just tell me the whole thing on the show. So
(45:28):
it was beautiful, more beautiful than I thought it could have been. I am honored to
know you deeper and better. I'm stoked that you're a fan of Tattoo. I'm
stoked that you're a fan of Patrick. It sounds like we'll be seeing more of you. You got some
more skin still to cover. We're not going nowhere, so I look forward
to all that. And God bless you in what you're
doing for the world and for others around you in the AA group
(45:48):
and in the physical therapy trauma group for the physical trauma people.
God bless you in that. I wish you only the best and it's
Yeah. All right, everybody. Thanks for tuning in. Always appreciate
the fans that repeat. Come back to the show. Thank you.
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