So, what is it with convention promoters hanging people from meat hooks? They usually pick some crazed-looking misfit with facial tattoos, screw-on horns and a yellow Mohawk, the clown the TV cameras go after for the evening news. The social outcast who knows absolutely nothing about tattoos, except that they hurt. Is this who we want representing our art form? Yeah, I know, the promoters don't do the actual impalements, but they're clearly responsible.

Please don't think I've forgotten the young women who go through this ceremony of self-mutilation. I'm sure there are countless females who get off on swinging by their kneecaps with a crowd watching, but mostly it's men, the macho muchachos who love scar tissue.

My first exposure to suspensions was a 1970 Richard Harris movie, A Man Called Horse, in which Harris as John Morgan, an English aristocrat captured by Sioux Indians in 1825, undergoes the long, painful Sun Vow ritual, where he is hung in a tree by the tendons of his chest. I distinctly remember the sounds of audience members barfing into their popcorn. The ones who didn't flee the theater, that is.

So, what does this kind of behavior have to do with tattooing, except to cater to some fringe element that thrives on sensationalism? I know all about Fakir Musafar and his declaration that it's our body, so we can do whatever we want with it, but let's be sensible here. Musafar's followers also embrace tongue splitting and snapping off fingertips with a bolt cutter, but that doesn't mean it belongs in a tattoo environment. The only possible connection I see to tattooing is the element of pain. And if that's true, let's start tattooing without ink.

To most people, the pain element of tattooing is about ritual and transcendence, not pain for pain's sake. But even if it were, there's some skin art at the end of it, not welts, open wounds and perforated tissue.

Sure, Capt. Don Leslie used to hammer a ten-penny nail up his nose, but that was carney. People paid to see it, and it was part of a bigger show. I've seen Capt. Don pin a bowtie to his clavicle, but that, even according to Don himself, pales in comparison to today's piercing scene.

There are lots of nut cases walking around; people who slam their privates in window frames, carve swastikas in their foreheads and perform all manner of self-inflicted tortures, but art isn't part of any of that. If there is anything in the world that's pure art, it's tattooing. Hey, we love it so much that we submit to being scratched for hours with an electric needle. But, I'll tell you now, if there weren't a pretty picture at the end of it, there'd be a lot fewer tattoos in the world.

At the last show I attended, the good-sized showroom had burlesque girls, a sword swallower and some rock bands. Most of the time, about 250 or so people looked on. When the suspension part started, the crowd dwindled to about 24. So, for two dozen people the promoter paid someone to erect an elaborate, ten-foot, wooden scaffolding? C'mon, how about a seminar instead? Let's learn something beyond how insane and misdirected we can get. Ask yourself, would Sailor Jerry stand for such bullshit? Or Bert Grimm? Or Paul Rogers? Get a grip. For heaven's sake, people, get your priorities straight.

Bob Baxter
Editor in Chief

baxter@skin&ink.com
www.skinandink.com