Story Frame 65 – Inked

Not long after I moved to Asheville, I decided to get my first tattoo. Tattoos have been around since the late 1800s and in a town inhabited by many, many inked individuals, the idea of having art not only on my walls, but also on my body, was irresistible to me.

I chose Kitty Love, Asheville’s first female tattooer. I felt at home in the inner recesses of her studio, which at the time was located in a back room of Liquid Dragon Tattoo, Asheville’s oldest tattoo studio.

Located at the back of an alley in between two of our favorite restaurants, Bouchon (French) and Mela (Indian), both owned by friends, Kitty’s room had shelves of art books, which gave me an added degree of comfort.

Kitty was an interesting individual. Depending upon which day you saw her, her long hair could be brown or perhaps magenta. Not long after she graduated from the Maryland Institute College of Art with a BFA in illustration and graphic design, she began tattooing in 1991, part of a wave of art school grads and other enthusiasts who embraced this intriguing and social art form at the turn of the Millennium, she says.

Decades later, she still feels that tattooing holds ‘a unique cultural position and role in contemporary identity.’

Zoë was home from university and insisted on coming with me. I was pleased she wanted to be the boss of this new experience, both to look out for me as well as to watch over me.

“So, what do you want?” Kitty asked me when we met.

I’d given this some thought for the past several years. What would I like that really expressed me and my worldview, something I could live with for the rest of my life?

And what I kept coming back to was very simple: the Danish word tak, which means thank you. It made a little statement about being half Danish. I also liked that it expressed gratitude because that’s important to me. I called it my “grati-tat.”

But then I worried it might be misconstrued as someone’s initials, like an old boyfriend something. So, I expanded it to Tusind Tak – A Thousand Thanks – even better.

I also decided I wanted it on the center of my back.

“Across the backbone?” Kitty asked. “That’s going to hurt.”

“I’ll be okay,” I assured her. She asked me to take off my sweater, then examined my skin.

“Your back has had sun exposure,” she said. “It would be better off if you put it a little lower down.” She pointed to the tramp stamp area.

Zoë erupted in laughter.

I told Kitty what tak meant and that having a message that said “a thousand thank you’s” inked just above my ass was probably not the best idea.

Laughing with us, she agreed and repositioned Tusind Tak in the center of my back.

When Zoë and I got back home, Leif appeared from the dark downstairs recesses of where his room was.

“Show him your new tattoo!” Zoë said.

Leif’s dark eyebrows shot up. “You got a tattoo?!” he said.

“Yup!” I said. I turned around and lifted up my sweater. He took in the words.

“What do you think?” I asked.

“You only have a thousand things to be grateful for?” he said, laughing.

As many will tell you, getting tattooed can be a slippery slope. One leads to another. And another. It’s an artful addiction.

And so, it wasn’t long after that mere words were not enough. I wanted images. And I wanted them to represent two passions in my life – my people and my travels – tied together in a botanical theme.

I went back to see Kitty and pretty soon, colorful flowers began to bloom on my leg.

Clutching a piece of Danish china in the pattern called Blå Blomst, I first asked her to copy the blue flowers onto my leg. They would representing my mother, my Danish heritage and our amazing roadtrips in Denmark.

Not long afterwards, I noticed some purple azaleas for sale at the Biltmore House’s greenhouse. I looked at the tag and discovered they were called “Karen azaleas!”

As purple was her favorite color, that was just too coincidental, so I bought them. And, as I did with Dad’s azaleas, I bought not just one, but all they had. Later, I brought a photograph of them over to Kitty and asked her to tattoo images of them – representing my sister, my father and Asheville – around the Danish blue flowers.

Now that my own body was forever inked, it wasn’t long until a documentary film came to me about that particular art form.

Artists, musicians, and other creatives aren’t the only ones to get tattooed. Soldiers like them, too – and for the same reasons.

While I was getting to know my new town, Emmy Award-winning film director Nancy Schiesari was creating a visceral and raw documentary that offered an unusual window into the minds and hearts of US soldiers.

Shot primarily at River City Tattoo Parlor in Killeen, Texas, male and female soldiers revealed aspects of themselves that would likely never have happened had someone sat them down under the lights for a standard interview.

Instead, these soldiers, against the background hum and buzz of the tattoo guns, shared stories about the ink on their bodies and why they’d chosen what they did – while they were getting inked. Their stories (and their tattoos) were mind-opening, heart-breaking and in their own way, inspired respect.

Nancy and I were introduced to one another by Maria Rodriguez, Sr. VP – Broadcasting at KLRU in Austin, Texas and Sreedevi Sripathy, Associate Director of Broadcast and Distribution at ITVS, a San Francisco-based organization funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to help filmmakers bring interesting and untold stories out into the world. Tattooed Under Fire would be the first of more than a dozen films that would come my way from ITVS throughout the coming years.

Shot on location in Killeen Texas, home to Fort Hood, America’s largest military base, Tattooed Under Fire more than qualified as ‘interesting and untold.’

Lying on a tattooist’s table or chair, under the unique discomfort of having tattoo guns and pens permanently drilling ink into your skin, the soldiers Nancy spoke with opened up and heart expanding and heart wrenching stories.

One particular interview was with a young man who had the image of a baby in a blender inked on his upper bicep. Viewers would act viscerally to that, I realized, because in their mind they can imagine the horror that would happen were someone to push the button on that blender. And that was exactlythe point. The soldier’s story is told in two parts. At first you hate him for having that tattoo. But in the second part of his time on screen, in between deployments, we see a different side of him as he tells the story of what happened to a child in Iraq, how she jumped into his arms when her family was killed, and how they clung to each other, even though he was ‘the enemy.’ The impact that little girl had on this soldier, and perhaps even on us as viewers, will last a lifetime.

Moved to tears by this documentary and the windows into the minds of soldiers it gave viewers, I pitched it for a Veterans Day broadcast. Many programmers responded with prime time airdates on or close to November 10th.

Five days before Tattooed Under Fire was to premiere on PBS stations, satisfied I had everything under control, I took the afternoon off and went out for a short hike.

And then he unthinkable happened.

When I came back home and checked my email, I was startled to see my inbox flooded with messages. What on earth?!

While I was out hiking, a mass shooting had taken place at Fort Hood, exactly where Nancy’s film had been shot. It was the deadliest shooting on an American military base and the deadliest terrorist attack in the US since 9/11.

It takes a long time to make a documentary. As a result, apart from PBS NewsHour and FRONTLINE, a lot of what is seen on public television has been months, if not years, in the making. But Tattooed Under Fire was one of those rare moments where we hadd exactly the right film to respond to the breaking news headlines.

The soldiers killed and injured in the attack were not the same soldiers as those profiled in Nancy’s film. But they were like those soldiers and their stories provided a great deal of insight into the kinds of individuals we’d lost in that attack.

One after another, PBS programmers shared their thoughts with me. There were many moving ones, but these two, especially, said it all:

I'm a wreck, this film totally blew me away. (It) is one of the most powerful documentaries I have seen this year... a compassionate portrait of America’s children in the military ... and their personal need to arm themselves with body art to help process their reality. A very good reason to give peace a chance. (This documentary) reminds me of the old local barbershop, where the community would gather for gossip and camaraderie... I don't really like tattoes but now I get why these kids get them. Really quite brilliant, very moving...
Hildy Ko, KCTS

I thought about it all the way home from work tonight. Really stays with you...
Denise Mills, KNME

Sharing stories matters. This is why I love what I do.

More about the film @ Tattooed Under Fire

[Photo – not of me, but by me – from the Asheville Tattoo Festival, 2013]