Excerpt from Personal Narrative

     The beguiling Andrew Bird had just beautifully sung the last lyric of “Fake Palindromes”. The only sound in the Georgia Theater was the reverberation of the gramophone of the final note of the song. The overwhelming crowd of people around me disappeared. It was just the tantalizing tune and I. As soon as I left the concert, I knew that I wanted a way to commemorate that special night- an evening filled with breathtaking music, the pleasure of being merely feet away from a musician that truly means a lot to me, and sharing the experience with two of my most favorite people.  Eight months later the resonant sound created by Andrew Bird was replaced with the whirring noise created by a tattoo needle. I always knew that I wanted a tattoo and the experience of complete serenity with no sound but the reverberation of a Specimen™ phonograph led me to the idea to get a gramophone as my first tattoo. On June 8^th, 2013, at 2 o’clock at Fine Lines Tattoo Studio in Augusta, Georgia- I made one of the best decisions I have ever made. It was one week after I had turned eighteen years old and my parents knew I was getting a tattoo and that they could not stop me. The fact that I ignored my fear of pain, my parent’s reluctance, and my low bank account proved that I finally was capable of deciding on something for myself. As a child, decisions were made for me. As a teenager, decisions were required to have parental input. Now, it was just me and my own passion for wanting to have a work of art on my body that represented a night, a moment, a concept, an icon, a concert, a transformation, and a brilliant beautiful man that led me to my first solely independent decision in my adult life.