My cliché Bali tattoo
“I can’t meet you for brunch tomorrow, I have my appointment to get the unalome”. Thankfully I had been spending enough time with my friend Natalie to know that this wasn’t just an obscure way for her to bail on me, but she truly was going to meet one of the tattoo artists at Conscious Arts Tattoos in Ubud to get this Buddhist and Hindu symbol inked on her inner wrist.
Conscious Arts Tattoo is only one of more than 20 tattoo parlours in Ubud and even more around the island, especially further down the coast in Canngu and Kuta. With the increase in tourists and travellers flocking to Bali in the search of spiritual enlightenment in lush, instagram-worthy, surroundings, getting a tattoo to commemorate the experience has become common practice.
Whether it’s your first tattoo or you have to look for a free piece of ink to get inked, whether you want a fine-line realistic drawing, a colourful watercolour or a geometric sleeve, the community of world-renowned artists that call Bali home have something for every taste and - almost - every pocket.
As for me - when I just got to Bali I was sure I was most definitely not going to follow the cliché and get a tattoo. Especially after ruminating on it for many years, I didn’t want to take any rash decision, diluting the meaning of getting my first tattoo into a tick off the “top 10 list of spiritual things you can do in Bali”, or because it’s one of those things you do when travelling.
Photo by Pauline (@paulinecolleu).
At breakfast one day I met another woman doing the Yoga Teacher Training with me sporting a shiny bold phoenix on her pinky finger. She told me that, together with a couple of dots representing her children back in Lithuania, was the tangible symbol of something she had been working towards in the past years and that had reached a certain level of transformation during our time practicing. Another friend again, inspired by Natalie’s elegant design, decided to get one herself, her first one. A reminder to herself that the person she brought forth during her time in Bali was a version of herself she should hold on to tightly, even going back to her demanding job onboard cruise ships.
At breakfast one day I met another woman doing the Yoga Teacher Training with me sporting a shiny bold phoenix on her pinky finger. She told me that, together with a couple of dots representing her children back in Lithuania, was the tangible symbol of something she had been working towards in the past years and that had reached a certain level of transformation during our time practicing. Another friend again, inspired by Natalie’s elegant design, decided to get one herself, her first one. A reminder to herself that the person she brought forth during her time in Bali was a version of herself she should hold on to tightly, even going back to her demanding job onboard cruise ships.
Why do people get tattoos? I’ve always wondered.
My hairstylist back in Milan views his body as a canvas and the exact design as a prerogative of the artist, whose art he’s proud to be a moving display of. Before I left for Bali he was discussing what tattoo could work under his armpit. One of the most beautiful stories I’ve heard recently is that of a friend who got a butterfly tattoo on her shoulder. When I asked her why, she said that she decided to get the same design as her granny, who decided to celebrate her 80th birthday by getting her first tattoo ever. Because you only live once and at the end it is just skin.
I don’t know how the decision to get my first ever tattoo in Bali crept up on me. For sure it was in part due to the mere-exposure effect: I would have to think quite hard to pick up from my memories any yoga practitioner without ink. For sure long yoga practices with Devon Tao, a woman that is more elf than human, and who approaches life with an unparalleled gentleness, added another visual incentive.
Photo by Pauline (@paulinecolleu).
After an extensive research of tattoo studios whose artists were well versed in fine line designs, I booked an appointment at Charlie Rose in Canggu. By the time I talked to Erly, the store manager, via WhatsApp and made the downpayment via PayPal, I had a vague sense of unreality and a nagging feeling that I was conforming to the cliché, following in the well-travelled and now quite worn-out road blazed open by “Eat, Pray Love”. The Bali version of “I went to Rome and the only thing I got was this T-shirt”, I would take my place in the long list of people that “went to Bali and got a tattoo”.
Laying belly down at 3:30 am on my dingy hotel bed in Canggu, the windows not being able to insulate me from the loud noises of the club close by, I was refining the drawings for my morning tattoo appointment. Taking as an excuse the fact that it was just early afternoon in Italy, I pestered friends and family to give me their opinion on the final selection of possible designs.
The next morning, bleary eyed but quite excited, I took a 30 minutes walk along roads flanked by rice fields and peppered by surfers on speeding Honda Vario to go meet Helen, a very blond, very blue eyed, very sweet, self-taught young artist from Russia that moved to Canggu with her boyfriend. I showed her my design and she helped me transfer it on the iPad, made some slight additions and pretty quickly the drawing was ready to be printed and transferred on my skin. I was mildly worried about the pain, since the tattoo was quite big, however being only 3 needles it really was, as Helen told me, more similar to a light, persistent cat scratching. Two hours later, I was grinning like a hamster and showing off my newly-tattooed forearm.
Of course, me being me, the tattoo not only has a meaning but it actually has multiple ones, almost every component adds another sentence to the story of this tattoo, whose idea has grown and evolved with me over the course of ten years. So when people ask me “Oh that’s nice, does it have a meaning?” I have a ready, though slightly convoluted, and admittedly quite long story.
However I do believe that at the end of it all, the real meaning of getting a tattoo doesn’t lie in what we can express to others in words. Does having an OM symbol on your neck lead you closer to enlightenment? Does a feather on your feet really lighten your step and allow you freedom? Does the compass on my arm truly help me remember that time and life keep moving forward?
Maybe. But I rather choose to believe that the significance of getting a tattoo is in how those black marks on your skin make you feel. Empowered, more centred, more beautiful or, like me, more wild. Sometimes in the search for meaning we run into the risk of being charmed away from our own centre, our own sense of deeper truth, and end up taking others’ believes and behaviours as points of reference for our lives. Either deciding to do something because others are doing it or the opposite, deciding not to something exactly because others are doing it.
So I went to Bali and got my tattoo. Did I follow the cliché? Maybe. I’d like to think that I followed my inner truth.
