This question comes up at every exhibit and every time I mention the URL to this site. When Jen Contino asked about this in an interview for THE PULSE, I told her that the emblem was modeled after my daughter under the influence of 1940's pulp magazines, which seemed like a pretty reasonable explanation, until I came across this obscure photo in one of my old files:
I lost some time back in the 1990's and sometimes things come back to me. It turns out I got the tattoo when I was locked up in the Garber-Manderfield compound. The baby head was supposed to be a symbol of immortal youth. The tattoo was cut in by my cell-mate Lao Dan, who quoted the Tao Te Ching: Be filled with Te,
Like a baby:
Wasps, scorpions and vipers
Do not sting it.
Fierce tigers do not stalk it.
Birds of prey do not attack it.
Bones weak, muscles soft,
But its grasp is tight...
It can scream all day and not get hoarse,
Its harmony is complete...
When beings prosper and grow old,
Call the not-Tao.
Not-Tao soon ends.
Pu tao tsao i
The beard was not part of the design, but when hair began growing in, the baby head developed some magnificent facial plumage.
Getting out of the GM took some creativity (that's another story) but when I joined up with some hobos, part of the initiation involved pine-tar, and I wound up loosing a few layers of skin. By the time I met my wife and settled down, all memory of Lao Dan and the Bearded Baby was washed away in the river of peril and enlightenment that I was caught up in at the time. And now it has joined the deleted chapters of my biographical apocrypha.
posted by john | May 12, 2003 12:55 AM |