So, despite seeing Queens of the Stone Age three times on their Villains world tour, I still wasn’t done. I am the kind of person that needs a visual marker of things and I have done this multiple times by getting tattoos. I’m not going to bore you with the meaning behind them all, but this one was pretty straight forward.
‘Always, evermore and on and on’ taken from the lyrics of Villains of Circumstance. This song hit home for me when I first heard it, sitting on my sofa in Adelaide patting my girl cat, Z2, almost crying when I heard these lyrics. I knew saying goodbye to my cats was going to be the hardest thing to do and also to my Mum (Pare Cat) and my sister Willow. I dedicated this song to them before I left, and like I mentioned in my previous reviews, I find it hard to listen to the song now that I am so far away from them. The lyrics still hit home very hard;
‘I miss you now, what’s come over me?
We’re hostages of geography
The wait is long, and heavy too
Despite what you’re accustomed to’
“Close your eyes and dream me home, forever mine, I’ll be forever yours”
The text just wasn’t enough though, I wanted something to make it a bit more unique.
I have a fascination with tails, hence my ‘Tails from Europe’ blog title; also taken from Queens of the Stone Age song ‘If I Had a Tail’ – Josh Homme’s personal favourite. So I wanted to incorporate the tail on the cover artwork for Villains into the tattoo somehow.
My friend Carlos put me in touch with his tattoo artist, Gui from Subculture
Tattoo and Piercing (https://www.facebook.com/GuiMDrawings/)
(https://www.facebook.com/Subculture-Tattoo-Piercing-162405497133968/) in Friedrichshain. I got in touch with him and he was able to fit me in during the week.
We picked out a font together and got working on how to incorporate this tail. He was dubious at first, but once we had found the font, he was able to add it onto the capital ‘A’ at the start of the sentence. Watching him work was really excellent. This man’s talent is superb.
The care he took with the placement, making sure it was perfectly aligned on my arm was excellent and after 4 hours not only did I have a tattoo I was extremely happy with, but I made a cool new friend as well.
The feeling after being inked for me is quite euphoric. I like the tingle and getting used to the pain on the different areas of my body. This time in particular, I was in a heightened state after it was finished even though the actual tattoo itself only took an hour.
I know I have made my mark and I will forever remember my experience, my deeper meaning and the process it took to have it done.
Thanks to Gui, Carlos, Viking Bar (https://www.facebook.com/rock.wikingerbar), Josh Homme and my Queens friends I made on the way; especially Linda, who I shared all of these experiences with.
Miss you Ziebes, Pare Cat and Coke Can.
HEAVY LANDING 