The Importance of Words (or A Blank Canvas)

Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.
- Rudyard Kipling[1]

As readers we have all been affected by texts we have read. I can recall vividly how upset I was at Beth’s death in Little Women and how much I cried when Pepper was put down in The Saddle Club. Words have tremendous power to change a person: the Bible, the Qu’oran, the Bhagavad Gita – they have all changed people’s perceptions of the universe, morality, good and evil. And it isn’t only in religious texts that words hold power; a good writer can pull you into their world while teaching you something about your own.[2] The written word has extraordinary power over those who read it and it seems safe to assume that it holds the same power over those who write it. It certainly does for me.  
Words have always been important to me. I began reading and writing at a young age and found that I was much more comfortable in the world of words than I was anywhere else. I could escape to the land of the magic faraway tree or write myself into an exhilarating cross-country horse race without leaving the comfort of my room. I also found that I could express a lot through the written word, much more than I could through speech. Writing enabled me to convey thoughts that were running around my mind far more articulately than saying them ever could, and as I grew older and began to experience depression, this began to matter even more.

When I suffered from depression I dealt with how I felt by writing. From escaping the confines of daily life as a child by writing myself into a farm in the middle of the Welsh countryside, I began to detail the ups and downs of my mental health through the ‘I’ of the narrator. While I didn’t realise it then, what I was doing was taking part in the process of therapeutic writing. I drew from my own experiences when writing these stories, detailing the feelings and emotions I had gone through in dealing with my depression and self harm. While it didn’t stop either of these it certainly helped to see those experiences on paper, making them clearer in my mind and easier to accept; the process of writing, to me, has always seemed to make things more understandable. Writing about my feelings enabled me to take a step back from them and they became more ordered. They were constrained by things like punctuation and grammar. They were bordered by the margins and lines on the page. In some way they were like wild animals, suddenly captured and caged, if not tamed.

Throughout my periods of depression, body modification had also become important to me. My tattoos and piercing helped me to create a sense of identity which felt more like ‘me’ than anything had before. I enjoy both the process of becoming modified (the thought that goes in to what I’m going to get and where I’m going to get it, discussions with my tattooist or piercer and the act of getting the work done) and being modified itself. I put a lot of thought into what I’m going to get and each piece has a meaning for me. Throughout the periods in my life where I have hated who I am and where I’m going, my modifications, like writing and reading, have been constants.

Holding a pen above a blank sheet of paper is the same for me as an artist holding a paintbrush over a blank canvas. There is so much power, and apprehension, in the waiting; what will I write, will it be any good, will I be able to say what I want to say? Holding a pen above a blank sheet of paper turns the paper into my canvas, in the same way that my body become a canvas under the tattooist’s hand and so it was only natural that the tattoos I got moved from flash to custom designed pieces of text which meant something more to me.
The first piece of text I got tattooed on me was the line ‘not all those who wander are lost’, taken from a poem that appears in Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring:

All that is gold does not glitter.
Not all those who wander are lost;

The old that is strong does not wither

Deep roots are not reached by the frost.


When I first got that tattoo it meant that while I was still young and trying to find my place, in society and within myself, I didn’t need to be guided. I was intelligent enough to decide for myself what my path would be and how I would get there. As I grew older it also spoke to me of defiance: that I was depressed, modified and self harming didn’t mean that I was going off the rails. I may have been wandering through myself and the world around me but it didn’t mean I was getting lost. It meant that I was working my way through the forest knowing that someday I would get to the other side, and I would know myself better for it. The tattoo is written in a variant of Germanic Runes, which also was significant for me. I had been reading tarot and learning about runes for several years; I loved the way that the runes looked; and thought it was appropriate language for the words being tattooed upon my skin.
After a year and another tattoo I decided I wanted another piece of text tattooed on my upper left arm, to match that on my right. Again it would be written in Runic, but this time the text would come from a different source. At that stage of my life I was self harming more than ever. I was severely depressed and believed that nothing would go right. I wanted help, but I didn’t know how to ask for it. At the same time I felt that my scars were beautiful in their own way; they reminded me of the way I had felt and they reminded me that I was still alive. I had always been a fan of Patrick Jones and his writing. He is an amazing poet and playwright, and his words have spoken to me, particularly in regards to self injury. The first time I met Patrick I devoured everything he said, at this point not even having read anything of his. When I did read his work I was gobsmacked; if felt as though he was writing down what was in my head:

My scars remind me that I’m alive…; In this blood within wound / flesh over nails / sky above man / weep
into
why

I thought about getting the text ‘prozac ain’t no bandage to this much blood’ tattooed on my arm as I had been put on antidepressants and they had done nothing for me, but that line didn’t feel right, as much as I loved it when placed in context. I wanted something that would express what I felt about my scars, but something that could stand alone and not sound better when placed into the context of a poem.
I had read the poem Guerrilla Tapestry and had seen it performed and it really struck home, particularly the lines

this hole in my throat this gap in the ink
this place without meaning
this stuttering eloquence of screaming

It was then I knew that I wanted that last line, but I needed it to be worded differently. When I was flicking through the cover of The Manic Street Preachers’ album Generation Terrorist I came across a quote attributed to Patrick which read ‘there is eloquence in screaming’. Right away I knew that was my tattoo.
The next text tattoo was a piece of text from a VNV Nation song called Further. The refrain from which the text is taken goes:

The sun was born so it shall die
So only shadows comfort me
I know in darkness I will find you giving up inside like me
Each day shall end as it begins
And though you’re far away from me
I know in darkness I will find you giving up inside like me

And it is the final line which means most to me. Again it relates to my depression and self injury, but I also find it gives me hope, strange as that may seem to some. For a long time I’ve wanted to give up; on myself, on my friends, on the world around me, but I’ve kept going. Some days are worse than others, granted. Some days I want to stay alive because there’s so much that I want to do, some days I don’t. But I know that I’m not alone. For me the darkness in the song refers to the lowest of the low; that pit you sink into when you feel like you’re all alone, that no one else could ever feel the same as you. But I know that there are others there with me: some of my closest friends, some strangers who I’ll never know, and knowing that I’m not alone gives me the strength to help others, and myself.
When I first wrote this article I ended with the paragraph:

I know that I’ll never really get out of that darkness and I know that there will be times that I will want to give up and just lie down and go to sleep forever. I think when that time comes I’ll welcome it, but for now that tattoo shows me, and others like me, that there are things left worth going on for. That’s one reason why the tattoo is written in English, plain for all to see.

Now, however I feel differently. The latest addition to my collection of text tattoos is the phrase ‘this too shall pass’. In my previous writings on self harm and depression I’ve drawn a lot on the Buddhist idea of impermanence. The Buddha said that all things are impermanent, in a state of flux:

All conditioned things or phenomenal processes, mental as well as material, that go to make up the samsaric plane of existence are transient or impermanent.[3]

A person is constantly changing, life is constantly changing and nothing lasts forever. This is an idea I’ve tried to hold onto through the really bad times, when I’ve been as low as I can be. ‘This’ll pass,’ I tell myself. ‘In an hour, in a day, in a week, things will be different.’ And usually I’m right. Having the knowledge that things are impermanent, has helped me a lot, and I wanted to have a reminder of that, just in case I forget.
I did think about getting the text in Welsh, as I’ve been wanting a tattoo in my native language for a long time, but I decided against it. I’d always heard ‘this too shall pass’ in English and I felt that would be the best language for it to be written in. I also wanted to have the specific text ‘this too shall pass’ rather than any other variations. The quote itself appears to have originated in Jewish folktales concerning King Solomon (although there are different versions of the folktale):

King Solomon, feeling blue, asked his advisors to find him a ring he had once seen in a dream.

“When I feel satisfied I’m afraid that it won’t last. And when I don’t, I am afraid my sorrow will go on forever. Find me the ring that will ease my suffering.” he demanded.

Solomon sent out all of his advisors, and eventually one of them met an old jeweller who carved into a simple gold band the inscription, “this too shall pass.” When the king received his ring and read the inscription, his sorrows turned to joy and his joy to sorrows, and then both gave way to equanimity.[4]
Which I think relates to the Buddhist idea of impermanence very well.
I chose my wrists for this tattoo partly because I’ve always wanted a tattoo there, and partly because this placement meant I would have a text that means a lot to me in a place where I can both see it when I need to, and know it’s there even if I’m wearing something over it.
The journey I’ve gone through in terms of self discovery has been reflected in the nature of my text tattoos. Each of the tattoos have helped me find myself. The process which started at reading the text and finished at having it written on me has shown me something new at every step and so, in my own way I have learnt the power of words.

[1] Said in a speech Kipling made to the Royal College of Surgeons in London in 1923
[2] For example, see Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series.