Thought During the Covid-19: What Can Tattoos Bring to This World?
At the beginning of 2020, an epidemic broke everyone’s normal life. In the past two months of isolation at home, we have truly felt the fragility and tenacity of life.
I also gained a period of time to think about the meaning of my survival and plan for the future.
Tattooing is a job of close contact between people, and it is impossible to carry out work in such a special period.
The studio that rushed to resume work around the 10th day of the Chinese New Year did not resume work until the end of March.
After experiencing the tattoo boom in 2016-2017, this epidemic is a hit to many practitioners. In the short term, at least two months of a sharp decline in income, but we also have to pay for rent.
The modern tattoo is a niche industry.
A niche industry means fewer customers. When the economy is developed, this industry can rely on the strong strength of public companies to share some of the benefits. But during the economic downturn, people will have less money in their pockets, and even food and clothing are difficult to get, and people’s demand for tattoos will be further reduced. It is foreseeable that in the next three to five years or even longer, we may not be able to reproduce the prosperous tattoo market in the previous two years.
Under such circumstances, we have to think about a question: In the face of a sluggish market, what reason should we rely on to persist? In other words, what is the significance of our career in tattooing? What can tattoos bring to the world?
If you ask a tattoo artist a question: why are you in the tattoo industry? I believe the answer most often will be “love”.
Yeah, tattoos are a niche. The income of working in the tattoo industry is unstable, and it is extremely difficult to become a tattoo master. In the eyes of many people, tattoo artists are not in the mainstream.
In many ways, a tattoo artist is not a worthy profession. So many tattooists study hard and keep working year after year. It is because they love tattoos.
Why do we like a job? Physiologically speaking, it is our brains that determine the skills we are good at. These skills can bring material and psychological satisfaction, so further training continues to improve and form positive feedback.
Some people say that food and clothing are worry-free, and having sex with a lover is the meaning of life, but these are all instinctive needs of biological evolution. Satisfaction instinct is of course also a kind of meaning, but on a certain level, physiological satisfaction is only the surface meaning. As the only species known to have higher intelligence, human beings need to be given spiritual meaning. Therefore, only human beings have formed civilization; only human beings have formed high-level aesthetics; only human beings have created music, art, sports, and other things that meet spiritual requirements.
The tattoo is meaningful to meet spiritual needs. Ancient tattoos can be used to highlight the social status of the tribe and can be used as a bridge between wizards and gods, and modern tattoos are to make themselves more beautiful, to remember the past, to sculpt the present, to inspire the future. This is the spiritual satisfaction that tattoos can bring.
For me, the biggest meaning of a tattoo is that it can reflect the brilliance of life.
1. Tattoos can commemorate loved ones
A guest processed his father’s image into a tattoo.
The zodiac of the girl is a rabbit and her Japanese boyfriend.
The white dragon originates from “Spirited Away“.
Treble clef、snake、science machinery.
Cover a guest’s burn scar.
6. You can ridicule your own experience
A ridicule about amputation.
Ms. Dawn Crag is the first practitioner in the world to use tattoo technology to repair scars and breast reconstruction.
Taipei tattoo artist Josh Lin and Dawn Cragg working together.
I love it because it makes sense, and I can persist in adversity because I love it.
Tattoos satisfy spiritual needs, and the tattoo industry may not be able to provide direct production assistance, but tattoos convey emotions through a pattern and reflect humanistic care. This is the value that tattoos can bring to the world.
As The Killers’ “Human” sings:
Pay my respect to grace and virtue
Send my condolences to good
Give my regards to soul and romance
They always did the best they could
The road ahead is still blocked and long. I hope that all tattoo artists will not forget their original intentions and try their best to bring a little love and warmth to the impetuous society.
