Undoing

Good morning Speakeasy Tattoo friends, and in case I don’t see ya: good afternoon, good evening, and here is a quote I remembered recently while reflecting on my week. Initially I only remembered the beginning of the quote, specifically the word undone.

“Let’s face it. We’re undone by each other. And if we’re not, we’re missing something. If this seems so clearly the case with grief, it is only because it was already the case with desire. One does not always stay intact. It may be that one wants to, or does, but it may also be that despite one’s best efforts, one is undone, in the face of the other…”-Judith Butler, Undoing Gender

This week was one I had been waiting for, the week I was asked to take one of my coil tattoo machines apart, and put it back together! I’m a big fan of undoing things, so I was excited to take apart a machine. While I may of had a past life in which I worked on large industrial machines, taking them apart and putting them back together- I was nervous about getting all the tiny washers and screws right when putting my tattoo machine back together! How did I do it, you ask?

In other words, I just made sure to arrange each group of pieces within a consistent system. The system I used was to think of the pieces as words in a sentence, so the pieces all read left to right. Then I arranged each major section like sentences in a paragraph, the top of the machine being the beginning and the bottom being the conclusion. Here’s a pic of what it looked like:

After disassembling and reassembling my machine, I feel much more comfortable and less mystified by it. Lately I’ve been having dreams in which I review the tattoo related information I’ve been learning in my apprenticeship, so I hope to have some machine disassembly dreams soon. Other cool things I’ve seen lately at the shop? Scott tattooing Nicole’s head…that was super cool! Not to mention, the completed tattoo looks badass and gives me gothic warrior princess vibes.

That’s all for this week’s post! Thanks for reading.

until next time,

-M.M