Updated: Dec 8, 2022
Greetings Night Things of Los Angeles, it is your infernal guide through the yawing darkness, Astor, coming to you in flesh and spirit from this most accursed abode, Speakeasy Tattoo. Today I want to spend some time talking discussing someone near and dear to me, a great inspiration, subject of a million tattoos, and daddy to end all daddies; the Devil.
When attempting to visualize the Big D himself what do we picture in our mind’s eye? Is it a horned and behooved Mephistopheles, or is it a Byronic chain smoking badboy with a leather jacket and an 8 pack that could carve marble? It’s an interesting question if we really attempt to follow the money. The Devil is meant to be the embodiment of evil yet how do we as a culture personify something so abstract, let alone represent it visually? It’s a challenge that has invigorated artists for centuries, and today in this City of Angels, we are going to spend some time examining it.
Just me having a normal one
It is said that no artistic representation of the Devil was produced before the 6th century CE and the Second Council of Constantinople. I won’t bore you with all the dull churchy details as they are dull and churchy but the long and short of it is that this particular Ecumenical Council was the one at which the figure of Satan was certified as a key part of church doctrine. Before this, the figure of the ‘capital D’ Devil wasn’t confirmed to exist by the clergy in any official capacity so there would have been no need for visual depictions of him, at least as far as the church was concerned. Post 553 however, the devil, demons, and depictions of hell became de rigueur as horned horrors made their way into all aspects of visual culture. While other subjects in art were depicted to a standard (Jesus was meant to /look/ like the medieval European ideal of Jesus, saints like saints, angels like angels, each with their symbolic attribute and their assigned robe color, you get the idea), the abode of the damned and its Fell Prince were subject to no such regulation and as such artists where allowed to go absolutely hog wild facilitating a space for personalized creativity that was otherwise heavily policed in medieval art.
Depictions of the Devil were wide-ranging and highly versatile at this time. Since the Devil isn’t described appearance-wise in the Bible, artists could exercise choice in how he was depicted without too much pushback from the church. Since art in medieval Europe mostly functioned as instructional illustrations for the church with Hell needing to be depicted as the ultimate counter to the promise of Heaven, as long as he was scary/repulsive/appropriately evil-looking, you got yourself a Devil. Images of the Devil
were often inspired by pre-Christian deities such as Dionysius or Pan, both of whom were frequently depicted with a set of horns and/or cloven hooves, and who embodied traits that would have been understood by the masses to be in opposition to Christianity.
Animals too could be understood as stand-ins for demonic entities. Goats were a popular go to, most likely as an oblique reference to Pan, but they were far from the only beastie to be given this treatment. Pigs were considered unclean and symbols of gluttony and lust, and so a devil depicted as or displaying traits of a pig would thereby inherit these associations. Similarly toads/frogs were not only considered unclean but they came with the bonus association of disaster and misfortune as one of the famous 10 plagues of Egypt, symbolizing God’s displeasure. Bats and bat-winged creatures were referred to in bestiaries as ‘of the devil’ due to their association with night, as well as being a handy contrast to the bird-winged angels. It is also important to note that the seemingly erratic nature of a bat’s flight, coupled with their upside-down roosting, led to an implication of an inversion of order and embracing chaos.
And then there’s the snake.
The image of the snake is so thoroughly intertwined with the demonic that I don’t feel like I even need to go into the specifics, but suffice it to say that even though the particular serpent who tempted Eve wasn’t ever referred to as the Devil in Genesis, the poor innocent snake will forever be associated with the Adversary. Sorry bud.
Whether it be beast which crawleth on its belly, or dread spirit of the sky, the Devil has taken on the aspects of that which frightens us for a millennium and a half. In this way Christendom was not only warned by repulsion against the dangers of sin, but conversely, by their fear of damnation, against that which could harm them (snakes, uncooked pork, etc.). And that’s it. Except no it’s not because it’s at this point I realized this topic was simply too big for one blog post and so fellow sin-eaters tune in next week as we explore the how the devil, the dragon, the father of lies, the great deceiver went from bestial monstrosity to abject stud.
How’s it going Los Angeles. Once again it’s Astor of Speakeasy Tattoo here to spin you salty dogs another yarn. Remember back in January (which was roughly 15 years ago by my count) when for a brief shining period the TikTok meme of the moment was lads singing whaling sea shanties in four part harmony? Well, far be it from me to speculate on what and why a certain thing becomes a meme but if I were to hazard a guess it seemed a lot of us, much like 19th century whalers, were all just trying desperately to entertain ourselves, afloat and isolated and dreaming about some undetermined time in the future when we could all leave our cabins and go carousing and wenching again.
This of course is my clumsy segue into this week’s topic of discussion: the obscure sailors’ art of scrimshaw. To start off let us define what scrimshaw is. To put it simply, it is the art created by whalers of the early 19th century whereby scenes were engraved into the ivory of walrus tusks or, more commonly, the bone or baleen of whales. While the origin of the word is unknown, the term scrimshaw first appeared in print in the early 1800s and seems to have originated aboard whaling vessels during this time period, seemingly as a means to pass the time while away at sea. See when they weren’t absolutely demolishing the world’s whale populations (populations that have yet to fully recover by the by), whalers, it would seem, had a lot of time on their hands, especially at night when hunting their 90 thousand pound quarry would have been far too treacherous. During these arduous voyages, sailors needed some means of keeping mind and body occupied so as not to slip into madness, and so, like sea shanties, scrimshaw became a way for whalers to find pleasure in the monotony that months-long sailing expeditions fostered.
Being a folk art, scrimshaw evolved using the materials that were simply available to whalers of the day: whaling byproducts (bone, teeth, and baleen that would have otherwise been discarded) were used as the canvas, while sail needles were repurposed as engraving tools. Fighting against the rocking of the ship, artists would delicately carve away at the tooth with these fine needles, producing work that ranged from crude, to elaborate and highly detailed. As the artist worked, they would rub pigment into the etching, bringing their scene to full view. Again this was achieved using materials readily available to sailors, such as candle soot or the juice from chewing tobacco.
Scrimshaw developed in an era when whales (particularly sperm whales) were a seemingly endless resource, an illusion of plenty that would be proven unsustainable as whale numbers plummeted very nearly to the point of no return. Their blubber and oil lit up the world, and would end up fueling the industrial revolution, but while commercial whaling has since been made obsolete, there is no denying that the industry that developed in part because of the whaling economy— two centuries of technological advancements in global shipping, trade, and commercial fishing— might end up bringing whales to the brink yet again.
And what of scrimshaw today? Two hundred years ago, scrimshaw and tattooing were intrinsically linked. They were art forms directly tied to the sea, the prerogative of sailors. In their most basic forms, the tools are the same: a needle, and something with which to black its marks. Scrimshaw, though, is by all accounts an endangered art form. With the Marine Mammal Protection Act and Endangered Species Act in the United States restricting the sale of ivory and marine mammal bones, scrimshanders (that’s the correct term for a scrimshaw artist) must find different surfaces on which to work. Exceptions to this rule do exist, such as the scrimshaw made from mammoth ivory or scrimshaw practiced by Alaskan First Nations People, but, aside from these few exemptions it would seem that the art form is destined to go the way of the whalers (or whales) themselves.
Some scrimshaw on fossil ivory by my father-in-law, mentioned in my previous blog entry
Before I go, I want to again bring it back to the lads singing shanties for TikTok. Though most of us aren’t living lives analogous to 19th century whalers (and thank heaven for that), we too are living through a time of deep isolation and fatigue interspersed with the occasional but pronounced bouts of high anxiety and terror. As we continue on into the second summer Covid has taken from us, we could maybe learn a few things from the scrimshanders, to find ways of creatively stimulating ourselves for the sheer joy of it, and the shared amusement of others— be that practicing a dying art, writing, tattooing, or singing sea shanties on the internet. And, by that same token, we should not make ourselves beholden to making masterpieces, but find simple pleasure with what we have to hand.
Updated: Dec 8, 2022
Howdy Los Angeles from Speakeasy Tattoo! This week I have a little yarn I’d like to spin for you all. As I’m sure we are all aware, tattoos have the power to tell stories. Be they decorative or deeply meaningful, tattoos chronicle our personal histories, and so in honor of this most patriotic of seasons, I would like to tell you a tale of one very specific tattoo.
This story comes to me by way of my father in law. Now I’m not one to overuse hyperbole but my father in law might be the most interesting man in the world. He was born in Long Beach in the 40’s, dropped out of school to run away to San Fransisco, lived down the street from both the Chemist AND the People’s Temple, once was in the unfortunate circumstance of being made homeless after his landlord got murdered and dismembered by a junkie (the landlord was cooking meth, and the junkie was a VERY dissatisfied customer), and after all that, my father in law received a letter from the draft board, and ran away again, this time to the Galapagos Islands off the western coast of Ecuador. So in the intermittent years between leaving the US and Carter pardoning the draft dodgers in ’77, he partially made a living as a fisherman, sometimes captaining his solo vessel and sometimes working on larger charter ships fishing the icy waters of the Humboldt Current (he also became an accomplished scrimshaw artist, which I should really write about at some point). During one of these stints working on another man’s boat he had a crewmate whom we will call Tom. Now, Tom had only recently returned to the western hemisphere after a lengthy tour in Vietnam where he was a staff sergeant, and so like many a military man/sailor before him, he sported a collection of prominent tattoos. There were the usual nautical fare of anchors and barrels but standing out in large black letters on the back of his calf read “FRANK FORRESTER”.
Tom and my father in law were crewmates for the entirety of the southern winter, during which my father in law wondered over the strange meaning and placement of the tattoo. It wasn’t until their final voyage at the tail end of August that he finally asked Tom about it, saying, “Alright I gotta know. We’ll be pulling into port for the last time soon, so I’ll ask now: Who is Frank Forrester?”
So Tom told the tale. He’d been drafted at some point in the 60’s, and had made it to the rank of staff sergeant. Having gotten this commission, he was assigned to be C.O. to a company with something of a terrifying reputation. Rumor had it that this company had killed their previous C.O. Understandably he wasn’t entirely pleased with being stuck with this unit, but he assumed that the rumors were vastly over-exaggerated.
They were not.
The story he managed to glean from the men was that the previous C.O. had been a reckless, self-serving glory hound, who intentionally put his company into life-threatening situations in the hopes that he’d be able to do something “heroic” and get a medal. After months of increasingly risky maneuvers the company got fed up, and eventually, when one of the previous C.O.’s stunts got one of their number killed, they made a pact, and rolled a grenade into the C.O.’s tent.
Grisly, right?
Well, Tom didn’t much like the idea of going home in a plastic bag or getting murdered in his sleep, so he sat the guys down and gave them a proposition. Something he’d noticed in the time since he’d been drafted was that equipment broke or got damaged all the time in the theatre of war. And the procedure was to report the loss, and requisition a replacement from the Army. Tom also noticed that in the great slush pile that was the Vietnam War, nobody really seemed to investigate these requisitions, as long as the paperwork lined up. So he suggested that perhaps their company ought to start requisitioning things— a new jeep, a cooking stove, a generator, whatever they could later pawn off to the locals. That would be part one of the scheme. Part two would be that using some of the money from these back-alley transactions, they could then purchase a less expensive version of whatever it was they’d sold, and use that for their own subsistence. The men seemed on board with this scam, and the deal was sealed.
For the next several months the company would make these bogus requests and pocket a handsome profit. However, all of this would easily unravel if it was discovered that Tom was signing off on his unit’s acquisitions and so he and his men decided it would be a lot simpler if the guy signing the forms could never face consequences. Somebody immune to dishonorable discharge, court martial, or whatever else. Somebody… imaginary...
Someone like Frank Forrester, a completely fictitious person, invented specifically to perpetuate this scheme. And so whenever a request was made from that point on it carried the signature of Sgt. Frank Forrester.
Frank, according to Tom, became a real member of the team. There was only one real hiccup that could throw a wrench in their works. The company already had a staff sergeant, and if the worst were to happen to Tom (it was war after all) it would be easily discovered that Frank was a nonexistent entity. Tom brought this point up to the men and after mulling it over the company agreed that if Tom was killed in action, they’d report him M.I.A., and turn his body in as Frank Forrester.
This went on for some time, and Tom and his company made some seriously good money off of it. Then one night, they got roaring drunk, and he didn't remember whether it was in Hanoi or Saigon, but whichever it was had a tattoo shop. The company, half walking, half wounded-man carrying their hammered C.O., pushed their way through the doors and, to hear Tom put it, threw him onto the tattooist’s table and requested that he tattoo, in large sans-serif font, FRANK FORRESTER, on his left calf. Their drunk logic being that Sgt. Frank didn’t have any tags or I.D to signify that Tom was him if his body was recovered and so, logically, the best way to prove that he was Frank would be to tattoo his full name somewhere on his body. Why anybody would bother tattooing his own name on his leg was a question lost down the toilet of some bar in Vietnam, along with several liters of strong liquor.
After his tour was completed, Tom decided he’d had enough of military life and decided to become a trade fisherman, traveling up and down the Pacific Coast until he finally crewed up in Guayaquil, and met my father in law, all the while carrying the tattoo and the story attached to it. It has been 46 years since the end of the Vietnam War, and Tom would be well into his 70’s at the youngest by now, but wherever he may be, be it Long Beach or Ecuador, I hope he and Frank are still going strong.