lowquality.net

I have been feel­ing like my life has been with­out mean­ing. I have been see­ing a ther­a­pist. I have been grow­ing a beard on the inter­net. I have been strug­gling to make music a pri­or­ity in my life.

Mak­ing music a pri­or­ity is hard when your life has been com­pletely trans­formed by bur­den. I went to col­lege for music and now I owe a lot of money. A LOT of money. I stopped teach­ing music and refo­cused my ener­gies into a com­pletely dif­fer­ent field. I make more money now, but I’m not happy. Even worse, I’m not really pay­ing my stu­dent loans anyway.

A long time ago I saw this image in a book called “How The Fender Bass Changed The World” by Jim Roberts and I might have even com­mented then about how it would make a cool tat­too. I loved the idea of James Jamer­son being viewed as a Saint. If you were to think of the elec­tric bass as kind of a cult or Amer­i­can Music as kind of a reli­gion, Jamer­son would be a revered fig­ure either way.

After I saw Scrivener’s type­writer phoenix and I learned the story behind it, I knew that I needed a sim­i­lar per­ma­nent reminder in my life. A right of pas­sage, a reminder of who I am– because the older I get the more con­fused I get about myself. The idea of this saintly Jamer­son illus­tra­tion kept float­ing back into focus. Not just because I am a huge fan of Motown and because I am a bass player, but because I wanted throw a part of myself into music the way some do with reli­gion, which is some­thing I think I did unknow­ingly as a teenager, before I went to col­lege for music got myself all screwed up and con­stantly sec­ond guess­ing myself. I wanted to ask music to give me another shot at hap­pi­ness. I wanted to remind myself that I used to believe that music would save my life. I needed to feel like maybe it still can. I don’t know if a tat­too, in itself, can do that, but I felt like I needed a per­ma­nent reminder of the life-long com­mit­ment I once made and how that com­mit­ment is just as indeli­ble as this tattoo.

Jan­u­ary 28th, 2008 was, in many ways the worst day I have had in a long time. My stu­dent loan sit­u­a­tion is beyond man­age­abil­ity. I sched­uled this tat­too weeks ago, and part of me just wanted to can­cel the appoint­ment and go home and sleep. It is now Jan­u­ary 29th, 2008 and Jamer­son would have been 70 today if he were still alive. I am turn­ing 29 on the same day. James would have already made his­tory at my age, but he would also have 16 years left of his life. Jamer­son could not change with the times, he could not adapt when Motown left Detroit and he was plagued by per­sonal demons that even­tu­ally killed him in the form of alco­holism. I some­times think I might be fight­ing off my own demons. Not drugs and alco­hol, but far more sub­tle and devi­ous demons. I guess its kind of crazy, but I kind of feel like a reminder of Jamerson’s life could help me to stay on the right path.

So after hav­ing the shit­ti­est day ever, I walked into Fuzion Ink and the Temp­ta­tions were play­ing. No fuck­ing joke…

I am going back in March to get the col­or­ing finished.

Ses­sion One
Ses­sion Two
Ses­sion Three