Moments of inscription/textuality at the hippie hostel/drum festival where I spent the weekend.
1. There was an amazing tattoo artist at the hostel. I've seen him work at festivals before and he's definitely an artist--a remarkable draftsman, and fine sense of color and design. And I saw his work on many of the folks at the festival, not the mention many examples of the work of other tattoo artists. So I read many texts that happened to be written in ink on various bodies. Many of them were purely visual in their design, but some were pictographic. I'm not sure about the reason why such ritual tattooing is so popular at such festivals. It might have something to do with the fact that so many of us have largely lost the sensual experience of writing, being for the most part digital (though that, of course, is also sensual, but not one that reflects that sensuality with the individuality signature of handwriting). So we allow ourselves to become texts, and allow it to be inscribed not only on our bodies but in our psyches in the form of pain. I'm sure that people more conversant with tattoo culture could say more interesting things about it. Perhaps after I get a tattoo myself I'll be able to wax eloquent on the subject.
2. This tattoo artist, by name Abraham, is also a Reiki master. In his workshop, he described Reiki (a Japanese form of energy work) as tattooing your aura. Then he gave us all Reiki attunements. I watched him with much curiosity because as part of the attunement, he seemed to be inscribing letters and symbols on the air (or rather the energy field, or aura, of the one getting the attunement). I asked him about it later and he showed me some of the symbols. They were pictographic symbols, some of them recognizably Japanese pictograms, some seemingly unassigned to any language systems. He also did different symbols for different people. So, in fact, he was reading the aura, then with concentrated chi energy, inscribing something appropriate to that reading to aura of the recipient. It was an interesting moment of reading/inscription/textuality.
3. Finally, I found the composting toilet/outhouse to be an interesting scene of inscription/textuality as well. There were things to write with and write on in the composting toilet, such as the "log" (get it?), or the compost-ition book (get it?). There was also a sort of moral handbook from L. Ron Hubbard, filled with 1950s pieties about being a good moral person and law-abiding citizen. There was lots of marginal comments in the book, some typical of what you might find on bathroom stalls, others more pointed and anti-authoritarian, which is not surprising given the number of hippie anarchist types passing through that hostel. I myself made an inscription in response to some diatribe against the supposed soul-killing crime of thievery. I wrote: "Consult Jean Genet on this subject." I nearly put a little star by one of the more unctuous statements, and then making my comment a footnote, but I resisted. But I did laugh at myself, thinking that even there, in a composting crapper in a hippie haven in the woods, I was habitually being the academic.
Posted by jeb at November 10, 2004 10:00 PM | TrackBack