No Alternative

She admits, “I’m used to being an outsider, no matter what I do, I’m used to the odds being against me, being judged and rejected,” but eventually, Lewis’ love for music outweighed any fear of turning her back on her livelihood of acting for a few years. Though she isn’t academically trained in music, Lewis grew up listening to everyone from Nina Simone to Jimi Hendrix to Ella Fitzgerald to Iggy Pop to Mozart. She taps into the deepest and most painful parts of herself; her voice is passionate and raw, at times revealing a hint of Janis Joplin.

Lewis calls herself an emotionalist because she “delves into and connects with and deals with emotion” in her music. This can mean Terra Incognito’s dark and haunting “Female Persecution,” or the despairing and melancholic “Romeo,” or it can mean the “rip your guts out” song “Noche Sin Fin,” or fun pop tunes like “Uh Huh” and “Fantasy Bar.” Though Lewis’ first album was pure guitar rock, Terra Incognito is incredibly varied and more sophisticated: simply done, sans gloss.

 Omar A. Rodriguez-Lopez, whom Lewis aptly describes as her “soul brother from Mars,” produced the album and encouraged Lewis to do one-take vocals for several tracks, such as “Hard Lovin’ Woman,” which is a gutsy blues song she wrote on the piano in ten minutes. They made part of the record in Mexico at his place, and then in Brooklyn, and Lewis caught onto “his way of approaching music, because it’s not so pedestrian. It’s not about chords and verses and bridge and chorus and hooks and all of this fucking language. It’s about connecting with something really deep, and all of the sounds he created on the record are an extension of the story of my vocal character.” This character is a complex figure, just like Juliette: strong yet vulnerable, sexual yet nurturing, a woman as an artist.

When it comes to performing, Lewis is working on matching the visual to the sonic; the guitars on Terra Incognito are more atmospheric, less rooted in the dirt, and the drums are groovy, which means that Lewis is playing with sparkle, shimmer, feathers, and glam. “I’m into the idea that a little pixie lives in a forest and she has a pet bull…the two contradicting forces that live within me.” On stage, Lewis feeds off the crowd and channels “the energy in the lava that lives underneath the ground,” because to her, music is spiritual. The frequencies of the guitar, the kick-drum, and the bass connect her to the earth’s vibration.

Eventually, her audience is also released; “You transcend negativity, you transcend your cool bullshit, your bad mood, your pretensions, and everyone turns into their ten-year-old selves.” She attracts an eccentric mix of misfits and freaks and hopes to “empower people in their own voice…to recognize their own strength, their own uniqueness, and do something with it.” Terra Incognito is ultimately about personal disillusionment, but it’s also about hope, and then there’s a “big, fucking, defiant, raging, joyful, middle finger somewhere in the equation!”

Recently, Lewis has returned to acting, and managed to squeeze in four new films. One of these is Drew Barrymore’s Whip It, which required her to train hard for brutal roller derby scenes. Lewis plays badgirl Dinah Might, which is a great addition to her history of portraying quirky, anguished characters, rather than the quintessential pretty girlfriend. “I didn’t get into movies to be a Nicole Kidman or to be a starlet,” she says. “I just want to move people emotionally. I’m so happy that I’m not known for my cheekbones, or the right dress.”

Juliette Lewis Recommends:

Vitamins!

“I’m really into healthy living…supplements, vitamins! It’s good to get it started now. I live off vitamins and good food, no drugs, drinking in moderation, and loving what I’m doing. Get rid of people in your life that are too negative.”

Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and The Rise of Raunch Culture, by Ariel Levy

“It comments on Girls Gone Wild and that whole fucking MTV nastiness they keep pushing. You know these dating shows? It’s like, who are the producers who are putting this out to like fifteen-year-olds? All it’s doing is encouraging the worst behavior.”

 (photos of Lewis by Kyle Timlin)

Over the last year, Mclean has switched from film to digital and now composes landscapes in post-production after taking multiple images from left to right, paying close attention to the way light hits different parts of the scenery. Through this process, he can focus on capturing motion and “creating a moment in time,” while, perhaps inadvertently, adding a hint of surrealism to nature as it is. Although this method is easier than shooting on film, he does admit that film was “a medium constantly in flux,” and says that “film is full of unknowns, digital is not.”

Among some of his travels and journeys, Mclean lived in Niger, for five years, as a peace corps volunteer. He remembers “being in my village in Niger as I was taking pictures of a ceremony. When I started taking pictures I was on the outskirts looking in, but by the time I was finished I was in the middle and surrounded. I became part of what was happening. I have that same feeling as I am photographing a farmer or an athlete; for that brief period of time, I am one of them.”  www.rodmclean.com

Writing of Spencer comes with ease and fluidity. Though this might seem to indicate that Spencer was an easy character to pin down, it does not, by any means, imply that Spencer was simple, or easily understood. Rather, it’s that his interests were so wide-ranging and massive and he expressed himself so vividly, openly, and genuinely through his numerous friendships and projects that nearly any conscious observer could tell what inspired him, motivated him, and sparked his curiosity. He possessed the rare ability to entice anyone to enter his world of bare-bones music and creativity.

Spencer was a Bukowski and a Kerouac, a typewriter-writer and crayon-colorer, a whistler and playful-monkey, an energetic leader and lover of anything adventurous. His passion for turning life into an art project, his fearlessness in following his own footsteps, his left-brained inventiveness, and his great big self-confidence were incredibly admirable, especially from the point of view of friends, like myself, who were actually a few years older than Spence. He had his moments of being a bit of a bully and a know-it-all too (perhaps because, in some ways, he really did) and he could be somewhat manipulative when he wanted to do something his way…certainly a tough persona to crack, or to argue with. He also had moments of being quiet and contemplative, with an obvious sensitivity, gentleness, and sympathy for other people and animals (perhaps this helps explain why he had so many female friends).

I can remember meeting Spencer. It was in early June of 2004, and I went to the Fleetwood house, with my friend Sara, for the first time. I was a little unsure about being there, and I didn’t know anything about Spencer beforehand…nevertheless, we bonded instantly. He was doing card tricks on the “door table” to entertain everyone (his specialty) and I did a trick I’d learned from my dad, which is actually more of a mind trick than one using cards. Spencer wanted to know how I’d done it, so we taught one another and traded secrets, pinkie-swearing that we would never tell anyone else. Without even trying to, Spencer made me feel comfortable and at home. His childlike smile, heartfelt laugh, obvious love for Ben, and growing love for the rest of us Sarah Lawrence kids was overtly evident. Months later, Spencer did my card trick at a party. He was happy-drunk and wearing a long sari skirt, and he’d amplified the trick by rolling up and placing the person’s “chosen card” into a bottle of some sort, and then emphatically throwing the rest of the deck across the table.

I can remember his room, there in Fleetwood. He hung a lighter from a cord he’d tied to the ceiling, which hovered just above the chessboard, as a means of solving the problem of losing lighters. That summer, everyone often hung out in Spencer’s sun-room, with the curtains drawn and his red light coloring the space. We’d lounge on his hammock, mattresses, and piles of clothes. One time, the two of us were deep under his big plaid blanket and he made it rise and fall with his arm, telling me that we were in the belly of a dinosaur (a plaid one, I guess) and that this dinosaur was breathing. Another time, everyone sat around and listened to “The Captain’s Log,” which Spencer had made by duct-taping a tape recorder to his arm for the entire week he’d been alone in the house (and he had to shower with his arm sticking out!), as his housemates were beginning to arrive. He’d been exploring every person and item as if he were an alien, or perhaps as if they were alien to him, and we all cracked up at Spencer being Spencer, even when no one was around.

One night in September of 2004, I took Spencer to campus for a little tour. He wore his “Follow the Leader” T-shirt and carried a cane because his knee hurt. We ended up in my on-campus apartment with Sara and Ben, and Spencer made me do his eye makeup like Alex from A Clockwork Orange. One night before this, during the late summer of ’04, a bunch of us were sitting on the porch in the backyard of the Fleetwood house. The devil structure Spencer made out of metal and mesh and who-knows-what-else was glowing brightly, a lit candle inside of its demonic mouth. Spencer had an acoustic guitar, and he started playing some of his songs, such as “Rita.” At that point, I’d had no idea that Spencer was so musically gifted, and hearing his voice and pure melodies was absolutely magical.

It wouldn’t be long before Foood, the band with Jake, Shawn, Adam, and Vladic, became “The House Band”—minus Vladic, and plus Spencer and Ben. Honestly, it was Spencer’s ideas and mischievous creativity at the very core. I remember sitting in the basement and watching them rehearse the first song Spencer wrote for them, “That Wouldn’t be Right.” He was still reading the lyrics out of his brown notebook, and he used the crazy microphone he’d constructed with an animal skull, fire extinguisher, dish soap dispenser, tubes, and piece of wood. I remember the first actual show they played. It was at the very end of the semester; somehow, Jake managed to use the band as a project for class, so he automatically “booked” them to play Reisinger, the Sarah Lawrence auditorium, during the showcase for individual performers in the music department. They were the last act, and by the time they took the stage, only a few people, including Missy, Joy, and myself, stuck around to watch. Though they’d wanted to be called “Satanic Mechanic and the Mystery Attack,” the Music Director called them “The Jake Miller Band.” Shawn wore the house sombrero (donned mostly during games of Kings), Ben his orange coat, Jake a long ’70s vest that Spencer found (among many other treasures he loved to carry home) in the garbage, and Spencer’s get-up was the best of all. He wore a gas-station attendant jumpsuit, fingerless gloves, a black wig under his fuzzy hat, sunglasses, and of course he carried that cane, with which he whacked at the cymbals, while debuting his skull microphone. They performed a cover of “Hold the Line” and a few other songs. In later shows, Spencer used the dreamachine he made with Shawn and projected Nosferatu, in addition to banging the lid of a cactus-drawn trashcan and eventually donning the sombrero during “storytime” of “Dos Manos.”

I can see Spencer carrying his lab mouse, Willow, in his shirt pocket, and letting him nibble at things he probably shouldn’t have been eating. He’d made a little home for him out of a big tin container, and, once, even put Willow on Tony the cat’s back. I can see him brushing Tony with a toothbrush and checking his body for scrapes after he’d been outside. I can see him throwing Tony against a mattress to watch him bounce off, in order to prove and perfect his cat reflexes. I see him banging on the insides of the piano, removed to create the “piano table,” and making a ruckus. I see him inventing instruments out of kitchen utensils and reading dirty magazines aloud as we sat on the floor around him. I see him doodling Satanic drawings on Missy’s fish tank and creating the most ridiculous scenes playing Grand Theft Auto. I see him purposefully pissing off the owners at The Continental in New York City, during a show, because they wouldn't let Dave in without his ID.

I remember one night, during December ’04, when he let me read his journals. They were all stacked on the windowsill in the dining room, and I’d been yearning to peer through, but caught only glances here and there as he drew in them. We sat at the dining room table at 5am when everyone else was passed out around the house, and he wore a moth-eaten sweatshirt and chewed on the string. I started with his older journals, which had photographs taped inside, but then jumped a few years and started reading his newest one. He commented on my doing that, but allowed me to read as he sat back and watched without a shred of embarrassment or hesitation.

I can think of one memory of Spencer, in particular, that perfectly encapsulates him. It was January of 2005, and there was an abundance of snow. The night before had been a dual-party in Fleetwood celebrating the return of Ben and Spencer from the Midwest and the re-departure of Dave and Nora to England and Ireland, respectively, for second semester. It was a fun and energetic night, and the next morning, Spencer, Missy, Ben, Dave, and I set off in the snow around 3pm to have breakfast at the diner about fifteen minutes away. We had to walk single-file due to the snow piled along the sidewalk, and Spencer led us. I remember him whistling. Whistling and singing to himself. And I can see him swinging that cane, and wearing a big floppy hat. People stared as we shuffled by, and I felt proud because we were his Merry Pranksters, marching triumphantly through town.

My relationship with Spencer is a tough thing to describe. We were eerily similar and yet quite opposite (sun and moon, extrovert introvert, so to speak), and sometimes this caused tiffs. Spencer was easily the most inspiring and interesting person I’ve ever met, but he sure as hell could be difficult (albeit charmingly) at times! He had a very specific “I dunno” shrug, coupled with an “innocent” expression and twinkle in his too-blue eyes that was almost convincing. Once, I told him I was “onto him” because I had a younger sister the way he had a younger brother, and therefore I too understood the sly manipulation involved in getting someone to do something you wanted, just for the heck of it. Spencer had a natural ability to entertain and make others laugh without even trying, and sometimes he could be rather domineering, perhaps without trying as well. When alone with him, a softer side shone through…one that was perhaps less completely sure of everything, one that was insightful and perceptive and candid, one that wrote poems and recorded dreams, and one that truly needed other people. I saw a lot of longing in him—longing to make art and music and fun and friends and girlfriends and memories and trust and statements and maybe even history. What’s funny is that despite the fact that Spencer produced mounds and mounds of songs and poetry and writings and drawings and cartoons and sculptures and inventions, most of the time when you saw Spence, he wasn’t doing any of these things. For a few minutes, I watched him record “Dinosaur” at Fleetwood, but only because I had gone over there earlier than usual, when his housemates were in class. He was standing with headphones on and lumbering about in his big jeans as he barked, “I am a dinosaur!” When he wasn’t in the basement or the practice spaces with The Stevedores/The Cactus/Canfield Devil House, Spence was at the center of anything fun; he was at the table during drinking games, playing games on the projector, or lazily hanging out with his buddies to watch cartoons and Westerns.

I remember when the band was working on the final recordings for their album, during May of 2006. They had set up colorful lights in Reisinger, where they’d spent previous weekends recording. I sat in for a few hours as they worked on “Thunderdome.” Spencer had already done the vocals, so we read Conan comics and played cards. I had a lot of extra cash on my Sarah Lawrence food card, and it would all go to waste if I didn’t use it up within the next few days. Spence and I left the building together and he scooped me up and perched me on his shoulder as we walked to the “pub.” We bought about 50 dollars worth of snacks and hauled it all back to Reisinger. After another hour or so, it was time to record handclaps for the last part of the song. John Swartz had four of us stand facing each other (Spencer, Jake, myself, and perhaps Ben?) as he played the music they had just recorded. He told us to clap a little off-beat so that it would sound like more than four people. Then, he told us to shout and laugh as if we were at a party. I remember Spencer going “woo-hoo!” and I couldn’t help but laugh.

I only knew Spencer for two and a half years, but it took far less time for him to become embedded in me. He was somebody who sought truth and freedom, somebody who enjoyed being alive and accepted life’s finality, somebody who perhaps even saw ahead into his future. He was somebody who became one of the legendary musicians/creators he himself admired.

(artwork by spencer bell; photo playing live, by a.dupcak; photo at organ, by j.reynolds; photo of stevedores, by s.tunick)

There have been hundreds of them. Some raised by wolves, some by wild dogs, others by monkeys and gazelles. They wander out of the forests and jungles covered in dirt and sores, sniffing the air and walking on all fours. As if lifted from the pages of a fairy tale or witnessed in the darkest recesses of an old time freak show, these are our modern-day monsters—the wolf-boy, the bear-girl, the ape-child. They are half-human and half-animal, though such a statement is intrinsically paradoxical. With every new feral child’s discovery, the age-old question, “What makes us human?” is laid bare. A feral child is a prism through which we can attempt to understand humanity’s primal nature and the society that successfully represses it.

While the concept of a feral child usually involves one who has been raised in the wilderness by animals after abandonment early in life, there are many others who become “feral children” after years of intense isolation indoors. Genie (a name given to protect her actual identity) is the most famous of such cases. Discovered in California in 1970, Genie had the appearance of a seven-year-old, weighing just 59 pounds, when in fact she was thirteen.

During a routine medical exam as a baby, a doctor told the family that Genie seemed “slow” and could possibly have a form of mild retardation. Genie’s mentally unstable father, Clark, decided to “protect” her from the rest of the world by holding her hostage; Genie’s mother, Irene, was partially blind and dependent on her delusional husband. The parents and their older son slept in the living room while Genie was confined to a bare bedroom. She was tied to a potty-chair and made to sleep in a crib enclosed with metal screening, bound in a makeshift straitjacket. Year after year, Genie sat in the chair, with very little mobility, wearing diapers. Clark beat her for making noise and would growl and bark like a dog to terrify her into silence.

Finally, Irene left the house with Genie and entered a welfare clinic, where a social worker alerted the police to the child’s condition. Genie soon became a prize patient for many doctors, psychologists, and linguists, as she bounced from home to home and endured an endless variety of tests, treatments, therapies, and examinations. She was taught to chew and to divert her anger and emotions outward, instead of violently scratching herself. During frequent temper tantrums, she might bite and kick, and would often urinate or masturbate without discretion.

After a few short years, Genie no longer possessed her strange “bunny walk” (she functioned as if blind due to her lengthy sensory deprivation and walked with her elbows bent and hands pointed down) and she warmed up to acts of affection, making eye contact and forming personal bonds, but the biggest challenge was still unresolved—the issue of language acquisition. Language is the most important method of human communication and interaction, and it is integral to society and the functionality of its participants. Noam Chomsky wrote of the human brain’s innate language ability and believed that if you placed infants on an island together, they would eventually form their own language despite having never been exposed to it. Another theory suggests that puberty acts as an age limit for acquiring language, as well as the proper usage of grammar; when discovered, Genie was dangerously close to that barrier, having surpassed the “critical period” of early childhood when language is learned. Though she did learn to speak many words, as well as to sign, Genie was never able to create syntactically correct sentences and could not hold a conversation or communicate abstract thought.

The same was true of Victor the Wild Child, emblemized in the film by Francois Truffaut titled L’Enfant Sauvage, which, oddly enough, debuted the same year as Genie’s discovery. Victor, or the Wild Boy of Aveyron, had been found in 1799 in the woods of Southern France and was taken on by Jean Marc Gaspard Itard in the pursuit of proving that he could be fully civilized, trained to speak, and taught to show human emotion. Just as Genie had become a case study during the linguistic debate of the ’70s, Victor became a study in the Enlightenment debate about the differences between animals and humans, which the benchmark of language ability, as well as empathy, hoped to clarify.

Victor (also a name given to him, as he had no known identity), like other feral children who endured years in the wild, ran and walked on all fours, and he had hard calluses on his palms and knees. He was unresponsive to cold weather, suggesting that some human reaction to temperature is a result of conditioning. Kamala and Amala, the Wolf Girls of Midnapore, discovered in 1920 and supposedly found in a wolves’ den, ate raw meat and would kill chickens. They would not allow themselves to be dressed, and would also bite or scratch. Like Victor, they had enhanced senses, such as smell and hearing, and could see well in the dark. The wolf girls did not speak and apparently howled at night. It is also believed, however, that they were mentally challenged and had cognitive defects, since the myth of having been raised by wolves is an ancient Indian conception to explain animalistic behaviors of such children.

Victor, unlike the wolf girls, was eventually able to produce the necessary range of sounds for speech, and he performed well during Itard’s many tests, yet spoke few words. Once, he produced a valid emotional reaction, but his lack of language and Itard’s tire of the project caused Itard to abandon the wild boy altogether. It would seem that since Victor could not be civilized, Itard felt that he had failed in his mission, which is quite in contrast to Truffaut’s optimistic cinematic ending. It would also seem that the world just didn’t know what to do with Victor. Similarly, once the grants ran out for Genie’s therapies and experiments, she was tossed into the foster care system, where much of her rehabilitation was undone as she received further abuse.  

In a supposed experiment conducted by Russia, one group of orphaned babies was held while the second group was not cuddled or picked up—this group died from the lack of human touch. Another set of babies in an overcrowded Romanian orphanage produced high levels of cortisol when left for hours without physical contact. These situations, though obviously cruel, verify the notion that touch is essential for normal human development, especially in terms of the immune system, as well as a baby’s emotional and cognitive development.

According to Scholastic Early Childhood Today, infants who are rarely touched have brains that are 20% smaller than those who are touched a lot. Psychological dwarfism is a term applied to stunted growth caused by “severe childhood neglect” or “emotional deprivation.” Not only does the child’s growth become stunted, but he/she will also experience developmental delays and the delay of puberty. Many feral children, particularly those kept in isolation like Genie, and more recently Dani (known as “The Girl in the Window”) who was found badly neglected in a roach-infested house in Florida, have seemingly suffered from this disorder.  

Victor is also considered to be the first documented case of autism. As the story of Genie and other feral children demonstrate, children who are not raised in nurturing environments can develop traits associated with autism, such as difficulty with communication and learning, lack of empathy, failure to understand abstract concepts, and self-injury. Of course, there is also the mystery as to whether the child in question has become autistic due to harsh conditions or was autistic from birth, which may have been cause for their abandonment; certainly Genie’s poor treatment by her father was catapulted by medical remarks on her intellect.

When it comes to autistic children, as with feral children, psychologists and therapists attempt to “civilize” the child, and though this is for the child’s own benefit, it is also for the good of society at large. According to New Age belief, some children with ADHD, OCD, and also autism are considered “Indigo children” and represent a higher state of human evolution by possessing paranormal abilities such as telepathy. Although this belief is highly contested, it does say something about our need to classify those humans who do not fit in with society’s behavioral norms.

A widespread belief during the Middle Ages was that expectant mothers could become affected by encounters with creatures. Even the mother of the infamous “Elephant Man” Joseph Merrick (who actually suffered from Proteus Syndrome) was said to have been frightened by an elephant during pregnancy. Then there was the “monster” Julia Pastrana, born in 1934 in Mexico, who had large amounts of hair over her body, as well as an overdeveloped jaw that produced an ape-like appearance. In New York, she was displayed as “The Marvelous Hybrid” or “Bear Woman.” A professor deemed her a “distinct species,” while the London newspaper called her “nondescript,” which was a term used for strange animals and monsters. In Germany, her traveling show was canceled due to the fear that pregnant women could miscarry at the sight of her, or experience “maternal impression” and bear children that looked like her.

As decided by Linnaeus, in the first serious attempt at scientific classification during the 18th century, the feral child is a primitive man separate and distinct from Homo sapiens. “Homo ferus” was a creature rarely encountered by humans, and this species was “often grouped with other marginal creatures such as deaf-mutes, madmen, savages, and apes.” Human diversity proved challenging to 18th century thinkers.

Conditions such as Hirsutism (excessive hairiness) or Hypertrichosis (“werewolf syndrome”) cause a person to appear feral or animalistic. Jojo the Dog-Faced Boy, who had long hair covering his face, was claimed to have been the product of a union between a bear and a peasant woman. When displayed, he might bite and growl at viewers in order to live up to his billing, but naturally this was only an act, as he was not actually feral.  

Then there is the case of the genetic defect that causes human beings to walk on all fours. In The International Journal of Medicine, Uner Tan of Turkey writes about a Turkish family that walks on two palms and two feet with extended legs; they can stand up only for a short period of time. The family speaks a primitive language and is, collectively, somewhat mentally challenged. British and Turkish scientists have fought over classifying the syndrome, with the UK scientists accused of paying off the affected family without ethics approval and for their own personal research.

The defect responsible for this “reverse evolution” has been linked to what is known as the language gene. Certainly, walking is one of the most important and obvious distinctions between humans and animals, yet apes can also walk bipedally. The development of language must truly separate humans from primates and other species, but what then if the human in question does not have the ability to speak? What about those with genetic defects, or those with autism, or those like Dani who, even after intensive speech therapy, have not yet spoken, or those like Victor the Wild Child who could say few words? Societal reactions to these human “monsters” may have shaped the way we view normalcy, as well as our definition of what it means to be human. As we look to the past and keep our eyes peeled around the forests in the future, questions will abound, yet the answers always lie just out of reach.

Visual artist, tattooist, and cult icon Paul Booth is always looking for new ways to disturb. Nowadays, he’s delved into filmmaking as just another medium for  getting under peoples’ skin. A burgeoning horror filmmaker with an appetite for such auteurs as Fulci and Bava, he admires the ability of Jaws, which he saw in the theater as a child, to instill in him a deep-seated fear of the ocean. “That’s the kind of movie that I want to make, something that puts people in therapy for the rest of their life. I want to affect people in such a way that my movie can fuck them up.”

          
The same is true of his artwork, whether or not he’s using skin as his canvas. Since Booth’s creative process is identical for both artistic endeavors, his Last Rites Tattoo Theatre serves as tattoo shop and ever-changing art gallery. Though the building’s exterior is like any other in Manhattan, once you step inside this third-floor Theatre, you’ve entered a realm of heavy metal music, smoke and fog, candles, skeletons, red velvet curtains, upside down crosses, evil oil paintings, hanging nooses, and an altar for the banner of the Last Rites skull logo. The first dimly-lit room serves as an open space for the tattoo staff, while Booth inks clients, creates art and dark ambient music, and displays his personal collection of formaldehyde jars (with brains!) in a separate room. Booth has created a unique environment as warm and welcoming as it is creepy. “That’s all in how it’s done,” he explains, “the décor, the color tones, the vibe, the camaraderie, the sarcasm, the smoke machine, everything. You know, it’s mystical. It’s a philosophy that I’m driven by, which I think is effective.”

Booth’s public, private, and professional world is a microcosm that revolves around and within Last Rites, which also serves as a community. Booth created a hierarchy “for people that share [his] point of view of the world, of the darker side of human nature, the appreciation for dark art and how it moves you.” Ritean Monks are societal outcasts for whom Booth, as their leader, has created a virtual online gathering, as well as the physical Theater, in which many gather for art openings and events. In terms of visual art and tattoo, Booth says that he was always driven to create his own style, having remained insulated from the world at large. “I haven’t owned a TV in sixteen years,” he admits. “I don’t watch the news, I don’t read the paper, I’m totally oblivious intentionally and it’s the same thing in art…I just stayed in my bubble and developed my own thing and my demons became their own identity.”

Demons are greatly at play in Booth’s work and personal history. His traumatic Catholic school upbringing, complete with fear-inducing nuns, caused him to greatly despise and set out to antagonize the Church. “Not that I can single-handedly take out the Vatican,” he says with a laugh, “but I’ll certainly die trying.” It was only in art classes that the frequently punished Booth found freedom and discovered his artistic and rebellious nature. Having dealt with a degree of mental illness and social anxiety in his adult years, Booth uses art as a release, while tattooing has become his primary method of social interaction—through fighting his own demons, he helps other people fight theirs. Many of his clients “want to depict their nightmares, their darker sides, for various reasons, so it’s almost shamanistic.” He develops intense connections with clients suffering from emotional pain; they come to him for release through custom tattoos. Since Booth does most of his work freehand, trust is a significant factor.

Most of Booth’s highly detailed tattoos are demonic, dark-colored, or biomechanical images that swirl and contort to the specific body shape. No two are exactly alike. In some cases, his clients are terminally ill and looking to come to terms with their identity before death. Booth tells the story of a client for whom “cancer had riddled his body and he felt that his body was not his anymore so he got the tattoo in order to feel a part of himself again.” For many, tattoos are a powerful means of self-exploration and thus Booth often becomes a tool. He finds himself unintentionally soaking up his clients’ inner demons while artistically depicting their emotional states. He believes that he is “cursed with this empathic ability,” and, as he connects physically, he will “recycle their mental cancer through [him] back onto their skin.” Unfortunately, he also claims that “a degree of residue ensues…fragments of mental cancer I’m collecting over the years…I’m not only tormented by my own shit, I’m tormented by theirs, collectively.”

Booth never got along with his father (“that’s part of my demons”), a knife maker who worked in the garage and kept secret about his craft. After high school and prior to taking up the tattoo trade, Booth was a repo man and stole cars in dangerous Harlem neighborhoods. For days after the adrenaline rush, he would paint alone and then go out again to pop locks with special tools and deliver cars to chop shops. Although he brags, “I was good…Nissans took me eight seconds,” he also confesses, “I had a death wish back then. I didn’t give a fuck about anything. This was before I had a kid (at 19). I didn’t expect to see 30 at all.”

His first tattoo was his daughter’s name and it wasn’t long before he had full sleeves and an intricate and specially designed facial tattoo that covers the right side of his head and neck. “I just wanted to represent myself and my right brain and all it’s craziness,” he explains. “I believe in a degree of spiral theory and I really wanted a spiral involved and a chaotic kind of feel.” As empowering as it is, and although he still loves the image, Booth  has a “love-hate” relationship with the impossible-to-avoid negative attention his ink often incites. This obviously visible tattoo combined with other forms of self-expression cause him to become a spectacle in any conventional public setting. Despite the bad energy, Booth states, “Whether I was liked or hated never really mattered to me, what I wanted was to never be ignored.”

For years, his work has been in high-demand and he’s inked such musicians as Slayer’s Kerry King. For certain clients, like Ryan Martinie from Mudvayne, Booth tattooed collaboratively with Filip and Titine Leu from Switzerland. Experiments such as this led to the start of Art Fusion, which is a collaborative tattoo and art movement involving a worldwide community of artists. Paul also co-produced Tattoo the Earth, the first music/tattoo tour. Throughout his creative life, he was repeatedly told that tattooing is not “art,” but for all of those who agree with this notion, Booth confidently declares, “I demand respect for what I do. It’s not whether I’m good or bad, it’s just I am an artist, do not tell me I’m not.”

(artwork by Paul Booth/ photos by A. Dupcak)

Czechoslovakian director Jan Švankmajer and Canadian director David Cronenberg challenge conventions of cinema. Each auteur provokes awareness of the mental and (more so) physical self by symbolically and graphically delving into themes that relate to subconscious human fears and desires, such as sexual perversity and violence. The two also depict alternate  perceptions of reality to reflect characters’ inner conflicts and the uncertainty of the world.

JAN ŠVANKMAJER has been called an “alchemist of the Surreal.” His disinterest in adhering to the mainstream embodies the central principles of the European avant-garde, and his multitude of short and feature-length films, from the 1960s until present, are influenced by and contribute to the Surrealist tradition. Many of his films (such as Faust, Neco z Alenky, and Otesánek) depict absurd or illogical interpretations of reality, and incorporate or take place within a fairy tale framework (like Wonderland, for example). In such worlds, puppets and marionettes are talking characters, and humans become dolls, or are capable of impossible movements. Švankmajer’s trademark is to juxtapose disturbing, sexually revolting (or perhaps appealing) imagery with children’s objects in macabre settings that evoke fear and enjoyment. He is also known for his unique approaches to animation, stop motion,  and trick cinematography. Using clay to represent the body in many forms, he magically personifies a plethora of items, including food, dolls, nails, and a tree stump (that becomes a baby in Otesánek), as well as natural objects like rocks and wood. In his short film “Meat Love,” two raw slices of meat vigorously copulate. His latest, and truly bizarre, feature film, Lunacy, also plays with unconventional sexuality.

DAVID CRONENBERG is the most prolific horror auteur of recent years and widely recognized within the subgenre of “body horror,” which refers to films that incorporate a sense of physical wrongness in the body. For Cronenberg, this means mutations, gory trauma, parasites, ghastly scars, operations, and extreme transformations (like in his Fly remake), which serve not only to horrify viewers, but to cause awareness of the corporeal self. In Crash, he confronts issues of morality, suffering, and repressed sexual desire through a storyline that involves a group of people who fetishize car crashes. One of his characters is deeply fascinated by the way modern technology transforms the body to create “the new flesh.” Although at times bordering on pornographic, Cronenberg emphasizes that his films are “anti-pornographic” because his sexual scenes are “complex and difficult” for viewers, and purposefully so. His characters are often cool and detached from emotion or reality (such as within the video game world of eXistenZ) and many  protagonists are “mad scientists” or doctors. In recent films, such as Eastern Promises, he has been veering from the surreal and alienating to the direct and dramatic, but still captures the beauty and sexuality of violence by using the body as a vehicle for expression.

In the last several decades, high-precision measurements have proven that our universe is expanding. Someday, all of it might contract and fall inward to a single, condensed point. If so, we could find ourselves in an “oscillatory universe,” such that the “Big Crunch” renders another “Big Bang,” and starts anew the entire evolution of physical reality, over and over. This theory is just one of several (“Big Freeze,” “Big Rip,” “Big Bounce,” et cetera) that could be argued ad infinitum. Some even hypothesize that the Big Bang formed a much grander “multiverse” and that ours has an infinite number of parallel sisters. Though we have no effect on the fate of these affairs, human awareness and intellect has served to create mathematical paradoxes that reveal the bewildering perplexities of physics.

The Möbius strip is one such example. Named after its “inventor” in 1858, (though another mathematician independently devised it the same year…talk about collective unconscious), the Möbius strip is known as an “abstract” or “designer” surface, since it has no real-life counterpart that occurs naturally. To start with, picture a rectangle and declare that its two vertical sides are one and the same. The resulting “two-dimensional manifold” might remind you of old Nintendo games, where Mario runs to the right and emerges from the left of the screen. Similarly, in Cylindrical chess, opponents move across the board, from right to left, and vice versa. Such surfaces render the possibility of “three-dimensional manifolds,” where an object in a room may exit through a point on the walls, ceiling, or floor, and reappear at a corresponding point.  

For a Möbius strip, a half-twist connects opposing sides of a long rectangle to create an endless band. Unlike a cylinder, which has two distinct sides, the Möbius strip has only one side and one edge, or “boundary component.” The paradox lies in the fact that these sides are not independent; you can traverse both “sides” of the strip’s surface without ever reaching the “other.” Imagine drawing a line down the center and you will simply end up back where you started. Mathematical artist MC Escher often employed this and other paradoxical objects to create optical illusions and spatial impossibilities in his artwork.

Topologically, the Möbius strip is a circle. The Ouroboros is an ancient symbol that portrays a snake or dragon swallowing its own tail and forming a circle with its body. Used throughout history in religion, mysticism, and alchemy, the Ouroboros symbolizes unity, renewal, the cyclical nature of the universe, and the continual cycle of life and death. In Gnosticism specifically, it signifies eternity. The Ouroboros may have also been the origin of ∞, the symbol for infinity.

Unlike Creationism, Aristotelian doctrine states that the entire cosmos, set in motion by a previously unmoved “Primary Mover,” Himself an infinite being, has no beginning or end. Aristotle wrote that all heavenly bodies were “ungenerated” and exist eternally due to their circular motions; time, as the measure of motion, itself limitless. When Einstein introduced relativity and four-dimensional curved space-time, we learned that three-dimensional space evolves or expands as time advances, and that the two are inexorably linked. When we look at the stars, we’re actually looking back in time.

Various ancient cultures incorporated the theory of “The Great Year,” which posits that the same series of events that catapulted the world will happen again after a specific duration (usually about 25,800 years), when the stars return to their original positions. A singularity point (like the Big Crunch’s finale, or the Big Bang’s initial “zero size”) is assumedly the world’s original starting point (or one of infinite origins). This point that began it all, and those at the very center of black holes, is not a particle at all, according to string theory, but a one-dimensional, oscillating loop. Just as you can circle around and around the Möbius strip indefinitely, we may very well find that when we travel to the outermost reaches of space, the innermost region of a black hole, or all the way backwards in time, we’ll end up just where we began.

Synesthesia is a neurological condition that involves the coupling of two or more senses, whereby “one type of stimulation evokes the sensation of another.” It is believed to be caused by a “mis-wiring” of the brain—a cross-activation between two different regions. Essentially, synapses specific to one sensory area overlap into another, which results in a “related set of cognitive states.” Although statistics are difficult to calculate, as there are upwards to 48 subtypes of the condition, it is estimated that slightly more than four percent of the population are true synesthetes; that is, their experiences are constant, involuntary, and consistent. Though this “gift” is bestowed upon few, it doesn’t stop some, who aren’t themselves “afflicted,” from making attempts at becoming synesthetic, be it through coupling music with vivid imagery (à la the psychedelic era of the ’60s), sensory deprivation, intensive meditation, or the use of hallucinogens. Synesthesia can also be a natural consequence of blindness or deafness, and can occur after strokes, head trauma, or seizures.

The subtypes involve a wide variety of sensory combinations. For some, emotions, smells, tastes, pain, music, or personalities (which may account for the perception of auras) produce specific colors or patterns. In the case of auditory-gustatory synesthesia, spoken or written words produce distinct tastes; in tactile-gustatory, taste is experienced as shapes. Most have “uni-directional” synesthesia—for example, a specific sound or frequency will always induce a particular color, but that color, when viewed separately, will not in turn induce the sound. Rare cases of “bi-directional” synesthesia do, however, exist. Since it is linked to the X-chromosome (and is therefore hereditary), the disorder is far more common in females than males, and also occurs more frequently among left-handed individuals.

The synesthetic experience is highly individualized. No two synesthetes (even those with the same subtype) share sensory experiences. For some, the letter B is blue, for others, it may be pink, yellow, or green; some have multiple forms of the condition (as when both music notes and the alphabet produce colors), while others have just one. Sensory associations begin in childhood and continue, without variance, into adulthood. In fact, most synesthetes are surprised to learn that others can’t perceive the world in the unusual ways they do. As of yet, there is no “cure,” though it would seem unnecessary given that synesthetes feel pleasure and enrichment from their condition. Certainly, the lives of many creative notables, from poets to composers to painters, and even scientists like Tesla, have been fueled by their enhanced perceptions. Lucid dreaming and synesthesia personally inspire Richard D. James of Aphex Twin and synesthetes have a greater propensity for déjà vu, clairvoyance, precognitive dreams, and feelings of a “presence.” On average, they also have higher IQs and excellent memories. Vladimir Nabokov wrote of his colored-hearing in Speak Memory: “The long ‘a’ of the English alphabet…has for me the tint of weathered wood, but a French ‘a’ evokes polished ebony.”

New Yorkers Sarah Levine and Carter Lewis have chromo-graphemic synesthesia (the most common subtype), which means that individual letters and numbers appear colored on the page. They each have their own strict, unvarying color assignments. For Sarah, certain combinations are more pleasing to the eye; the number 239, for example, has “really pretty colors” while 947 is “particularly ugly,” and when colors like “red” are spelt out it trips her up. Interestingly, many other chromo-graphemic synesthetes, like Sarah and Carter, experience A as red, which indicates that their assignments might be partially environmental—red is the first color of the spectrum (as A is the first letter of the alphabet) and, in school, children are taught to associate A with a red apple. Carter, a musician, considers her synesthesia inspiring and explains how it was a learning device for reading music: “The note ‘c’ is royal blue just like the letter…whenever I play or read music, I read by color.” Sarah’s siblings are also synesthetic; to her brother, months and days of the week appear colored. To her sister, numbers have sexes and personalities; the more individual digits that make up a number “get along with each other” the more appealing that number becomes.

On some level, everyone can occasionally tap into a synesthetic experience, either through dreams, memory, or common sensory associations (such as lower musical notes evoking dark shades and higher notes evoking lighter ones), and non-synesthetes can certainly enjoy synesthetic art, from Fantasia to Stan Brakhage to the vibrant paintings of Michael Fratangelo. Brooklyn’s Issue Project Room dedicated all March exhibits to synesthesia. The opening of “Sensorium” featured color-intense paintings, moving images, multimedia art pieces and a performance by Laure Drogoul, where blindfolded audience members described the emotions and memories different scents conjured up. To identify the same weed (concealed in envelopes), responses ranged from bubblegum, to lemongrass, to cider, and England.

Want to “practice” pseudo-synesthesia? Here are some ideas—listen to a piece of music and draw the shapes and patterns you “see.” When you next encounter a bright solid color, ask yourself, “What is the scent and taste of this color?” Choose a picture and describe it without visual words—talk about taste, texture, and emotions. Good luck!

(photo by Amy Dupcak) 

Founder of the “band” Suckdog and the ‘zine Rollerderby, author of Drugs Are Nice; A Post-punk Memoir and writer for Nerve.com, Lisa “Suckdog” Carver is known for her unapologetic personality and candid, sometimes crass, sexuality. Few possess her kind of guts; intrinsic to the DIY movement of the late ’80s and early ’90s, she’s reveled in the outlandishly experimental and explorative.

Carver attributes some of her fearlessness to having been a fearful child. Born in a small Massachusetts town, her early years were anything but ordinary; “I’d written a lot about my dad, who was a sociopath,” she says, “but my mother was too, she was just better disguised.” Her parents kept her away from other people, mostly due to their own social inabilities. “I didn’t want to be different,” Carver remarks, “I really wanted to blend in, and was unable to succeed.”

After moving to southern California, at 15, to live with her father, whom she worshipped, but who continually made fun of her, Carver learned the hard way how to overcome her anxieties. “All of my worst fears came true,” she explains. “People pointed at me and laughed because I was so conservative looking. Mexicans and low-riders would drive by and throw bottles at me as I walked down the street…so after that, I was kind of like ‘well fuck it.’” By the time she returned to her bland East Coast town, a true seed of rebellion had already been planted and Carver was well on her way to becoming a defiant nonconformist. She got kicked out of school for wearing see-through clothes and again for having hair in her eyes. “I stood up for my right for long bangs. I just didn’t care about anything.”

At age 16, the punk rock outcast started a fanzine and also freelanced for other magazines. At 17, she began performing on stage, setting up shows, and recording demos under the name Suckdog with her high school friend, Rachel. At 18, she joined a scandalous traveling performance art troupe called Psychodrama. “They would have me on stage washing pots and pans and hanging clothes…it was just trying to bother people, and I would throw the pots and pans and stuff ‘cause I would get excited; maybe because I was on cocaine, maybe not.”

The following year, she moved to France and married the French noise-musician Jean-Louis Costes. Combining their love of the avant-garde, desire to shock, and Carver’s inclination to act as the exact opposite of what others would expect, the pair created The Suckdog Circus: a mixture of “musical performances, film screenings, and general audience agitation.” As they repeatedly toured the U.S. and Europe, Carver and Costes wrote and performed noise music operas that involved heavy doses of sex and blood. She admits, “I’m not, like, talented, I don’t have control over performances, it was just to inspire chaos…you hope for disaster really because that’s more interesting.” As she has written, Carver was continuously seeking to change “what music was, what it meant to be a boy or a girl, what performance was, what movies were, and what writing was for.”

Carver returned to the States two years later, which came as a great relief. Fueled by a desire to write articles the way she saw fit, and about people whom she found fascinating, Carver started her own quirky ‘zine called Rollerderby, which has been credited as the first “per-zine,” or “personal magazine.” According to Carver, Rollerderby was “approachable, you could latch onto it, you could talk about it. It was weird enough to stand out, but not weird enough that it only appealed to .001% of the population.”

What inspired her initially was an interview of the Velvet Underground; rather than allowing a journalist from The New York Times to interview the band, Andy Warhol gave the job to Ingrid Superstar, even though “she wasn’t a writer, she wasn’t a thinker, she was just this girl that didn’t really know what to do herself but she wasn’t like anybody else.” In Superstar’s conversation with the Underground’s rather serious drummer, Maureen Tucker, she asked questions such as, “What size bra do you wear and how come you don’t wear lipstick and do you masturbate?” Carver exclaims, “That’s what I wanted to know!” From then on, she decided never to let craft get in the way of saying what she wanted to say and, unlike many journalists, who attempt to form the interview, Carver was never afraid to ask random, open-ended, or ridiculously dirty questions. In one instance, she followed Christina (John Spencer’s wife) from Boss Hog, who was being antagonistic, into the bathroom and shouted questions over the stall. Through such methods, and through her unique role in the underground music scene, Carver was able to capture life in 1992. “It was just a little piece of magic,” she says of Rollerderby, but then assures, “it wasn’t like the Beatles or something.”

For a few miserable and destructive years, she lived in a dark basement with her second husband, industrial/noise music icon and Satanist Boyd Rice, with whom she had a son named Wolfgang. She explains, “If you’re under the rock and you’re looking out from under the rock, it’s just sparkling and wonderful.” After finally splitting with Rice and leaving with their son, Carver wrote her first book, Dancing Queen: A Lusty Look at the American Dream, providing social commentary on and celebrating such aspects of American culture as roller-skating, disco, and trailers. Of her country, Carver says, “It’s brought about the end of the world or started it, and I’m not a fan, but it’s mine, so I still love it.”

Carver has written that people mistakenly believe things are hard when they are actually easy, and this seems to be the case considering that Soft Skull Press published and widely distributed her next book, Drugs Are Nice, in 2005. This conversational memoir exudes honesty, as Carver retells adventures, conversations, and relationships, writing openly of her marriages, stint as a prostitute, friendship with GG Allin, experiences in The Church of Satan, and her own brand of feminism. Never fearing that she has revealed too much or been too bold, she explains, “Even though me is what I write about, what I write about isn’t actually me; what I’m writing about is this person who is looking at the world right now.”

The entirely self-taught Carver has also been loaning her wit, sincerity, and bizarre escapades to Nerve.com for a decade, though she confides that her fascination with sex is really “a fascination with people and what’s most real.” She believes that we are all completely disconnected, “but when you’re fucking, you’re there…it’s harder to be pretentious when you’re that up close with somebody.” For Nerve, Carver provided a multi-interview piece on what sex is like for handicapped people and audaciously discusses her boob job, having been semi-molested as a child, and having enjoyed promiscuity.

Now a mother of two and a new lover of six-hour long make out sessions after a night of taking E with her boyfriend, Carver has started a book about a year of dating on Match.com. As she says, “I thought I met weird people in the underground…no, it’s the lawyers and the teachers that are the freaks in our country!” However, her book might be halted since, after about 16 Match.com dates, she actually plans to marry the second. That is, if she can divorce her third husband, with whom she is currently battling in court for custody of their daughter. Throughout the chaos, Carver continues to promote the self-expression of others by fully expressing herself. She is a perfect example of never letting the world stop you from doing whatever it is you want to do.

(photo with permission from lisa carver) 

Kat Von D gained notoriety as the odd one out on the TV show Miami Ink. After a very public split with the Miami guys, she returned to her beloved Los Angeles to open a Hollywood shop called High Voltage Tattoo. Soon after, Von D introduced the world to Miami Ink's rival, L.A. Ink. Premiering this past August, L.A. Ink features the clientele of many rockstars and celebs, and the show has become one of the highest rated programs in the history of TLC. She’s also organizing her own tattoo convention/ music festival this February in Orange County, called Musink. This spunky tattooist, who remembers tattoos before she remembers names, isn’t afraid to show her true colors (though she does prefer greyscale), and Beyond Race couldn’t help but delve into the history, passions, and lifestyle of Miss Kat Von D.

Where are you from originally?
Kat Von D: Well, my parents are from Argentina, and they moved to Mexico back in
the ’80s where I, along with my brother and sister, were born. We then migrated north to the states when I was 4, and I was practically brought up in the Inland empire (about one hour east of LA) until I decided to move to Los Angeles at the age of 17. Since then, I've been an Angelino until this day!

How did you get started as a tattoo artist? Do you come from a background of fine arts? Were you interested in tattoos from a young age?
I've always been artistically inclined since I was a kid. My parents were very supportive of my art from the beginning, since my grandparents on both sides were artists. By my early teens, I became heavily involved in the punk rock scene, where I made friends with a bunch of delinquent tattooed rocker kids, who one day got the bright idea to have me tattoo them, since I was always doodling. So, by the time I was 14, I was tattooing all my underage friends since they couldn't get tattooed at professional tattoo shops and, by the time I was 16, I got hired to work at my first pro shop in the ghettos of San Bernadino. I didn't get through too much of my freshman year before I started tattooing, so I was never formally trained in fine arts. Everything was kind of learned by trial and error, but I think there's a beauty and rawness to that style and for that I am grateful.

What aspects of tattooing particularly appealed to you?
I loved the lifestyle, aside from the art side of it. It was much easier to relate to kids who came from a not-so-well-off upbringing, and I've always loved the working class. Tattooing thugs and hooligans in the bad part of town always fascinated me, and definitely made a lasting impression onto what I consider my style to be nowadays.

How did you your family first react to your chosen profession?
I come from a pretty conservative upbringing. My parents are old school Latinos who were definitely shocked by my career choice at such an early age. I think they were hoping it would be a phase and that one day I'd go back to school and explore some more "appropriate" career roads, but that didn't happen. Fast forward to eleven years later and a TV show later, and finally I received the understanding and respect for what it is I do. I knew they would eventually come around. Pity it took a silly TV show though.

Tell me about some of your main influences in terms of tattooing or art.
Los Angeles is my main influence. The music, fashion, mixtures of cultures and subcultures, the Latin community, especially the Mexican side, the murals, the lowriders, cholos, along with the rock ‘n roll and metal music scene that has always been so prominent here have also contributed to my influences. As far as artists go, the great masters have always influenced me. I've always been drawn to realism. So I'd have to say the obvious ones: Michealangelo, Da Vinci, and Carvaggio.  As for modern day artists, I am a big fan of Micheal Hussar and Shawn Barber, who I'd like to think influence me to try my hardest to be a better artist.

What's so special about tattooing in Los Angeles as opposed to other cities? How is the scene in L.A. different from the scene in Miami?
Los Angeles is the mecca for black and grey tattooing. It's where it came from and originated. There's a definite higher amount of people collecting fine line black and grey than anywhere else I think. Also, living in Hollywood, everyone's tattooed! So more people are open to actually seeing tattooing as an art form and not just something
hookers and sailors did. The LA tattoo scene versus Miami is like comparing apples and
unicorns...completely different. A higher amount of serious tattoo collectors reside in Los Angeles, versus your typical tourist souvenir tattoo.

Can you talk about your experiences on Miami Ink?
I took a lot of life lessons with me that I believe will make me a better, business owner, coworker, and friend. Being in Mimi, and working with the likes of Ami and Nunez, taught me a lot of "what NOT to do's".

What about your new shop, High Voltage Tattoo? What makes it special?
Well, when you get down to the core of things, it's all about tattooing and what we, as tattooers, can bring to the table. I've basically compiled a team of experienced and extraordinarily talented tattooers with a good attitude. Which is pretty damn hard to find!
Everyone gets along and respects each other, meanwhile, learning from each other. It's so important to grow together, and I believe I have a found a beautiful sincere tattoo family.
Aside from that, I've decorated it with a lot of rock memorabilia, mainly from musicians/bands I've tattooed throughout the year, along with an amazing skate ramp built by Tim Glohmb (Bam Margera and Tony Hawk's ramp builder), a stripper pole, photobooth, and plenty of rare and collectible art from all over the world. I'm pretty proud of the shop as a whole, and I truly believe High Voltage will really set a higher standard for tattooing.

What is it like filming L.A. Ink in the shop, and how do you feel about it?
It's been an exhausting experience from day one. I mean, every single thing in the shop, from the lightning bolt handles on each drawer to the chandelier, was all put together by yours truly. I'm such a perfectionist that I had a hard time having people help me. I ended up doing everything pretty much on my own, which included endless late nights of doing this shit. Filming in it isn't as glamorous as people make it out to be. Being followed around by a camera and sound crew 10 hours a day isn't a piece of cake, and definitely causes wear and tear on the shop itself, but, in the end, I believe the show to do good for people in general, not just tattooers.

You have a profound love for Beethoven and sport a Beethoven tattoo. How did this passion come about? Do you find time to practice the piano still?
My grandmother, Clara Von Drachenberg, was a well-known pianist back in the day in Germany, and taught the three of us, my bro, sis, and I, how to play from an early age. Unlike most kids, who went to slumber parties, my siblings and I were forced to practice a minimum of an hour each day and were on a strict and rigorous piano lesson schedule from the age of six. At the time, I hated my parents for it like any normal kid would, but now am so grateful for my parents' disciplinary actions. I later fell deeply in love with not only Beethoven's music, but his life and history. Since then, I've collected anything Beethoven related, and have three pianos (one of which resides in my office at High Voltage Tattoo), and I try and make time to play on a daily basis depending on how busy my schedule is.    

I know you like black ink portrait tattoos. Would you say that this is your preference? What other particular styles do you gravitate towards?
I definitely gravitate towards black and grey. I love anything realism though. People I think have the wrong impression of me. When I was in Miami, no one else on the show did portraits so I ended up taking over that department and I think people began to assume I only did portraits. I'd say the majority of tattoo requests I get nowadays are portraits, and that's mainly because of the TV shows. On the contrary, I do enjoy doing color.

Tattooing seems to be a rather male-dominated profession. As a woman, have you faced any challenges or obstacles?
Nah. I mean of course, women have always been ignored when it comes to male-dominated industries, but I believe the world is-male dominated, and I'd much rather spend my energy busting out good tattoos, than complaining about my gender. Sometimes you gotta give 110% to be considered equal and gain respect from peers, but if you're driven by what other people think of you, then what's the fuckin' point, right?
I mean, if a chimpanzee was "the best" tattooer, you bet your ass I'd get tattooed by that chimp, regardless of its gender.

Is tattooing still the mark of the counterculture or has it become too popularized and mainstream to be considered as such?
Tattoos will always be a taboo in some parts of the world. I think with the help of shows, such as L.A. Ink and Miami Ink, more and more people are becoming more comfortable with the idea of being tattooed. It was like that with belly button piercings. 10 years ago, if you had that shit done, you were "crazy" and a "rebel". Then, Britney gets hers done, and now, it seems like girls are born with them. Sometimes I wish it were like it used to be. Being part of a subculture is always cooler in my book.

Which tattoos, of your own, are your favorites?
I'd say my star tattoos on my face are my favorite. They've become a trademark, and I believe them to be something that separated me from most. It was a symbol of me not caring about what others thought, and doing things because I truly liked them. I believe my tattoos to set an example for women everywhere that you can still be heavily tattooed and be successful, beautiful and carry yourself in a feminine way.

Do you think there will ever come a time when you may regret your tattoos, particularly the facial stars?
I'll never regret my tattoos. I don't regret very much in my life. My tattoos are like landmarks in time for me, good and bad, and I love looking back at each and every one. People always ask the most annoying question: "What are you gonna do when you’re 80?" And I always reply with this: "Listen, if I’m lucky enough to ever see my 80s, I most likely won't care what the hell I look like! And plus, if I saw an old lady with old and faded tattoos all over, I'd think she was the coolest thing on the planet! As long as I'm not drooling on myself in a wheelchair, I'll be stoked!"

Since you are always booked months in advance and are in high demand, how do you balance your professional life with your personal life?
That, I have a hard time with. I am a certified work-a-holic, and it definitely becomes a problem. I have a hard time saying no when I know I need time to myself, and often find myself tattooing any chance I get on my scheduled days off. Fortunately, I have the raddest boyfriend, Orbi, who understands, and is fully supportive of what I do, and a family that knows that I'm only working this hard right now so I won’t have to later.

(photo by Lionel Duley) 

                                  

While in high school, the tomboyish Michelle got her first tattoo in Texas from some “biker dude.” After this experience, anytime Michelle had “extra money whatsoever,” she went to get more. The aesthetics of tattoos, as well as their history and culture, particularly appealed to her. “It’s a craft,” she says, “where you use your hands. There are less and less crafts in the world, or in modern society, but tattooing is one thing you still need to have an artist do. You can’t produce it with machines.”

In 1989, she moved to New York to attend Parsons, where she earned a degree in Painting. When she first moved to the city, only a few artists were working; tattooing was illegal, having been outlawed since 1961. A new friend, Sean Vasquez, helped her out with the technical aspects of tattooing and encouraged Michelle to start. On account of the ban, she definitely didn’t have a traditional apprenticeship: “It was really different…with no conventional shops, most people were working out of their apartments or some sort of setup like that.”

Tired of tattooing out of their apartments though, Michelle, Sean, and a few other artists opened East Side Ink at 122 Saint Marks—a dedicated space for tattooing. “It was interesting,” Michelle remarks, “having a collective of artists in one space…very hectic.” Their shop wasn’t street level and, without a sign out front, customers had to know the address and buzz just to get in. She remembers, “We practiced on a number of squatters and street people.” When the lease was up on the place, she moved to Ludlow Street, while the rest of the gang moved to a commercial space and continued to work under the name East Side Ink.

For the next couple of years, Michelle stuck to herself, working by appointment out of her Ludlow apartment. She also worked briefly at a legal parlor in New Jersey, which was a great opportunity for gaining experience. Michelle says, “I think how you really learn is by doing it full-time. Tattooing ten hours one day taught me more than struggling along in New York City for two years, trying to figure it out on my own.” During this time, she kept in constant contact with other artists through the New York Tattoo Society, formed in 1985. Meetings of the Society were held in various places throughout the city, such as CB’s Gallery. The Tattoo Society became a tight-knit web and community, creating a fellowship among outlaw tattooists. Their monthly meetings, where artists would discuss various topics on tattooing, learning techniques from one another, were events to look forward to.

Around 1997, rumors of legalization began to circulate. I ask Michelle whether or not she, personally, played any role in the push for re-legalization or in the petition process. Michelle replies, “I stayed out of if. I didn’t really want anything to do with it…I kind of thought it was the way to bring us out into the open so they could clamp down on us.” Tattooing having been underground certainly kept the competition out and Michelle was hesitant to “see the floodgates open and all these people come around and start tattooing in our little city here.”

As it happened, however, she admits having benefited significantly from re-legalization. She and fellow tattoo artist Brad Fink, from St. Louis, had plans to open a shop together; in ’97, they opened Dare Devil Tattoo, right across from Michelle’s previous solo space. Two years later, Michelle and Brad bought and fixed up Fun City—the oldest tattoo shop in New York and the first to freely operate despite the ban. Given her qualms on legalization and her “real mistrust of the unknown,” Michelle assures that it “actually turned out to be a pretty benevolent process…and now that it’s legal and now that I have my shops and everything, I enjoy my shops and I love working with people. So, in the end, it was a great thing.”

Now a highly successful artist and owner, with a staff of eleven, Michelle tries to divide her time evenly between Dare Devil and Fun City. As I watch her ink a beautiful design of three entwined female figures, I want to know about her preference for tattoos. She tells me that she loves traditional American tattooing the best and most of her own are done in this style. Works by many different people decorate Michelle; her arms are just about filled up and she has tattoos on her back and legs. In fact, she boasts a rather historically significant collection. She tells me, “I really like getting tattooed from the old guys…and a lot of really good artists out there these days are going to be the guys with the good stories.” Since she’s an artist, I expect that she’ll sport some of her own designs, and I’m a bit surprised to discover otherwise. “No,” she says, “If I’m going to someone to get tattooed by them, I want to get something that they did. I’m not going to go to somebody else to get my work.”

As we close up our conversation, I think back to what Michelle had mentioned earlier about her mom. Though she definitely had other plans for Michelle’s future, it sure seems like Michelle has exceeded expectations. She confides, “Her biggest problem with me tattooing was she felt I had no security being self-employed. That bothered her even more than the tattoos.” Like many aspire to, however, Michelle Myles has definitely proven her mother wrong.

(photo from daredeviltattoo.com) 

Not everyone is a born artist. Most would consider tattoo inexorably linked with the fine arts, but there’s a lot more to tattooing than the artwork itself. Even the heavily tattooed probably take for granted, or are otherwise oblivious to, the artistry and innovation involved in manufacturing inks and equipment, without which modern-day tattooing wouldn’t be possible.

Picture New York City in the mid-to-late-’80s—with tattooing illegal, you had artists working in backrooms and bedrooms, using autoclaves to sterilize needles, running secret ads, and meeting up at places like The Pyramid and CB’s Gallery for Tattoo Society meetings, where connections were made between artists, freaks, and radicals of the underground culture. Enter Wes Wood. Originally from a conservative, upper middle class family in Long Island, he was a skydiver who worked in the printing business, but wanted to break into tattoo. A few blocks from his apartment on Ludlow, he met Lower East Side artist (and Beyond Race mentor) Clayton Patterson, who had just established The Tattoo Society. Wes quickly made contacts with tattooists who would become formidable figures in the industry; he admits, “If there were no Society, there wouldn’t have been any of this, none of it. There wouldn’t have been me.” One such figure, Huck Spaulding, had a “skinny little catalogue” of supplies that inspired Wes to create his own.

Although he began his foray into tattoos as an artist, the art was “never a big thing” for Wes because his strength lay in the mechanical side. He tattooed at his shop on Canal Street, later called Sacred, but needed a second artist. He arranged for Andrea of East Side Ink to judge three aspiring artists as they simultaneously tattooed little birds on Wes’ skin. When the young and eager Anil Gupta proved worthy of apprenticeship, Wes quit tattooing. Humbly, he told himself, “He’s already way better than me. I feel like an idiot, I’m not an artist,” and thus delved into the supply business.

“Technically proficient” Andy Keator, a retired submarine engineer, took Wes under his wing. After learning from Andy for a short time, Wes began “making stuff and having stuff for sale, and [he] had ideas for better kinds of needles and tools.” He was the first to offer tight needles, which are now mandatory. “I had to make everything,” he explains, which included tubes and coils, which he drilled, threaded, and rolled by hand. Eminent artists of this golden age of tattooing, so called for the innovation, authenticity, and communal spirit that permeated the era, revered Wes as their “technical guy” and came to his start-up company, Unimax, for their equipment. 

Wes’ creativity and determination supplemented the industry in a variety of ways—“I had the ideas and then I went and I did them.” He was the first to sell sterilized needles that came in tubes and also invented the 2 x 8 sterilization pouch now used universally. A psychiatrist told him that the noise of the tattoo machine could cause mental problems over time, which provoked Wes to create the silent machine. Although his invention worked, he was scared of leaking AC current into the tattooist’s arm and was glad when the patent fell apart.

After careful analysis of popular inks, which revealed “pages and pages of ingredients,” Wes became dedicated to selling only the purest. He explains, “They’re all inert, they’re non-toxic…All of my inks are just alcohol, water, and glycerin.” He describes the difficulty, especially in earlier years, of purchasing pigment for tattooing because of the liabilities (and perhaps discrimination) involved. Wes was also one of the first to combine tattoo with piercing; the two used to be quite separate forms of body art, but Wes, in his catalogue, sold supplies for both.  

Having opened a multitude of successful tattoo/supply shops throughout the years (both before and after tattooing became once again legal), the internationally respected Unimax is now located at 269 Canal Street, though Wes also owns Bowery Tattoo. Unimax sells an enormous collection of tattoo and piercing equipment, body jewelry, books, flash, grips, inks, medical supplies…you name it he’s got it! Talk about making an impact. 

(bottom photo of Wes Wood by Clarice Connors for Beyond Race) 

It’s a sunshiny day in Washington Square Park and spontaneous street performers attempt to wow you with their eclectic talents. If you’re especially lucky, you might come across spunky and playful hula-hoopers, like 2007 Miss Hoop NYC pageant winner Natasha Kouri. “Young and old, guys and girls, gay and straight…hoopers are happy folks that wear silly clothes, smile often, and believe you're never fully dressed until you've applied glitter,” Kouri says of the performers who take a simplistic childhood toy and amp it up with music, tricks, and even fire. Kouri will blast “gypsy or circus auditory candy, start dancing, and encourage strangers to try out some extra hoops.” She loves “teaching folks who never realized they had hips,” and admits that it doesn’t harm the ego either. “I suddenly transform from financially challenged dorky NYU student to glittery seductive fairy hoop superstar!”

Kouri doesn’t find performance life personally lucrative; she’ll occasionally make money from the sale of sparkly handmade hoops, or from gigs, but she performs purely for enjoyment. “Hooping makes my body and head happy so I do it a lot…I move better, I feel more confident in expression through dance.” Prior to catching the hula-hoop bug (from a Grooverhoop-ers demonstration held at Washington Square), Kouri was a living statue. For two years, she’d coat herself with body paint and stand motionless on a platform for moving passers-by. Though it “fed [her] need for self spectacle” and introduced her to a larger group of performance artists, Kouri faced inner conflict and needed a change. “Hooping filled the gaping hole that statuing had left,” she explains. “I finally found my form of expression that got me out and active. I found a new group of crazies to interact with.”

Whether it’s at the park, Coney Island’s “One Night of Fire,” NYC’s Mermaid or Halloween parades, or the notoriously wild Burning Man festival, Kouri prefers a group setting and public venue; “When the street is a stage, the audience finds themselves performers as well. The public environment adds a touch of magic and connection…it's a gift to strangers.” Deeply interested in “evidence of eccentric creativity,” Kouri plans to eventually attend grad school for Expressive Arts Therapy, in order to create “a new form of therapy that uses skill toys and circus arts as a medium for healing.” If you catch Natasha Kouri during daylight hours, or spinning her LED hoop at night, feel free to say hello. Hoopers love that.

(photo by Zandy Mangold) 

Intrinsic to a communal childhood and national identity, Coney Island is America’s very first amusement park. Though this Brooklyn playground was never the epitome of innocence or perfection, CI’s conflict-ridden history is essential to its significance and charm. CI has always been subject to property battles between real estate moguls who either want to tear it down or build it up, and neighboring communities generally resist such change. Back in the golden ages, Dreamland, Luna Park, Steeplechase Park, sandy beaches, and grandiose post-Victorian architecture provided the ultimate in leisure and recreation. In the early 20th  century, CI peaked, but declined in popularity after both World War II and technological innovations, giving way to years of crime and neglectful deterioration.

Although groups like the not-for-profit Coney Island History Project aim to increase awareness of the park’s “legendary and colorful past,” and also to promote appreciation for its neighborhoods, city zoning laws (restrictions only allowing amusements and no buildings taller than 260 feet) have been the biggest factor in saving CI from total renovation. That is, until recently. The current dilemma goes something like this: Astroland owner Carol Hill Albert sold the site to developer Thor Equities in November 2006. Thor proposed a $1.5 billion renovation and expansion to remake CI into a “year-round entertainment destination” with “enhanced amusement and seaside attractions.” Originally Thor planned to build condos, but scrapped this idea (after much controversy) in favor of high-rise hotels, commercial shopping, movie theaters, indoor water park, brand new roller coaster that would run above the boardwalk, two-tiered carousel, man-made canal for boat rides, fountain to project images of mermaids and whales, etc. In 2001, Thor had purchased the Albee Square Mall and, upon winning zoning changes there, sold the property for $125 million; the new owners now plan to build “one of the tallest buildings in downtown Brooklyn.”

Despite protests from CI performers, merchants, and enthusiasts, Thor has already demolished the Go-Kart track, batting cages, and mini-golf course near the boardwalk. As the battle for rezoning rages, Thor head-honcho Joe Sitt may further demolish the area to increase pressure on the city. However, according to a high-ranking official, his idea might be “dead in the water” because the city isn’t thrilled with Thor's Las Vegas-style vision or the plan for 350 time-shares at his potential hotels. Currently, the city is looking to collect $200 million to replace a three-mile stretch of boardwalk from Sea Gate to Brighton Beach. Obviously, the park, or what’s left of it rather, would benefit from some refurbishing, but Brooklyn is no Disneyland. The Cyclone, built in 1927, is one of the nation’s oldest wooden coasters. Fortunately, this ride, the Wonder Wheel, and now defunct (but still lit) Parachute Jump have been deemed historic landmarks and will remain for future generations to enjoy.

(photo by Amy Dupcak) 

Settling down for an interview with Michael Galinsky and Suki Hawley in their cozy home in Brooklyn is easier than I imagined.  With two young daughters (Fiona is almost five while Harper is an infant), a dog, cats, and Thai food on the table, I am immediately thrown into the hustle-and-bustle of dinnertime. Michael begins a fun conversation mildly interrupted by Harper’s giggling and Fiona’s spunky attitude. Despite attempts to put Harper to bed and convince Fiona to eat her “bro-co-li,” Michael and Suki are friendly and eager to talk adventures and projects.  

Suki is originally from Dallas, while Michael is from Chapel Hill, North Carolina.  As an NYU undergrad, Michael took photo classes and a documentary film course, which guided his interest toward documentation. First and foremost, he was a musician and, while playing with his band, Sleepyhead, he photographed the underground music scene in New York City.  What Michael tells me next makes my jaw drop: Sleepyhead toured with Half Japanese, who then needed a bassist for another show—Michael stepped in and got to open for Nirvana at Roseland! In fact, Michael had seen Nirvana play a tiny show at Pyramid Club before they broke big.  Sonic Youth and Iggy Pop were in attendance and Nirvana only played three songs before they “beat the shit out of each other and destroyed all their stuff!” 

Michael and Suki met through Suki’s then-roommate, who was in a band called Ruby Falls.  Michael had set up a mini-tour in the Southern states for Sleepyhead and Ruby Falls.  Along the way, they met a lot of amazing musicians and easily found places for their entourage to crash, such as the “Rocket House,” which seethed with creative energy. Back in New York, Michael met Suki and told her about his incredible experience.  He convinced her to drop out of NYU and make a movie, claiming that it was better to learn by doing than by learning from professors.  He tells me of his belief in the importance of documentation, especially within an impermanent, localized music scene.  At the time, he thought, “This is going to be really interesting in ten years because it’s not going to exist…it’s going to have resonance and it’s going to mean something.”

Inspired by Penelope Spheeris’ cult classic, Suburbia, which was as much about the anarchic lives of punk-rock squatters as it was about the raw music culture, Michael wanted to document the musicians he’d met down South. Another filmic inspiration was Over the Edge, which depicts music-and-drug loving teenagers wildly revolting against society.  His and Suki’s resulting project, Half-Cocked, featured musicians (primarily from the bands Rodan and Crane) as actors, despite their lack of actual acting experience.  In some ways, they became caricatures of their real personas as the film veered between reality and fiction.

In order to create a narrative with conflict, Michael and Suki developed a storyline about a rather miserable teenager named Rhoda (played by Rodan’s Tara Jane O'Neil) who lives in a house with a bunch of wannabe-musician friends. One night, she steals a van of musical equipment from her older brother (played by Ian Svenonius, singer of The Nation of Ulysses and The Make-Up), who fronts a pretentious indie band.  Rhoda and four friends embark on a runaway road-trip, but quickly run out of cash. They book shows for themselves as the band “Truckstop,” even though none of them know how to play. Encouraged by new friends, they gain some genuine fans before the cops catch on to their thievery.

According to Michael, “naïveté breeds action.” They’d scored a deal with Matador Records, who were very supportive, and planned to promote a soundtrack. Michael says, “We didn’t know how hard it was to make a movie; the film is the least of your costs…I still don’t know how we did it.”  Half-Cocked was made for only 11,000 dollars, which includes the costs of film, gear and equipment, food, and all traveling expenses (they shot in Louisville, Chattanooga and Nashville).  The entire shoot took only eleven days, which Michael says was “the worst two weeks of my life! Suki and I nearly killed each other.” The film’s grainy quality seems purposefully low budget and I ask Michael about this: “We wanted to do it in black and white because we wanted it to look like the photos I had been doing.”  It was meant to appear as a document: harder, more concrete, and more real than your average film.

After it’s completion in 1994, Michael and Suki couldn’t get Half-Cocked into any film festivals.  “It was very specific to underground culture…it wasn’t Slackers, it wasn’t Clerks.”  They realized that Half-Cocked’s audience existed in the same bars and underground venues they’d shot in the film; with this in mind, Michael and Suki embarked on their own journey.  Heavily mirroring Half-Cocked, they used the same van to travel and, as a cure for boredom and a new creative outlet, formed an improv band called Drop Ceiling.  From venue to venue, Drop Ceiling performed (completely unrehearsed) and then Half-Cocked was shown from the exact spot where the scene had been filmed, as if the movie were projecting back upon itself.  Of the improv band and showing the film, Michael shares his philosophy of “daring to suck!”  He says, “A lot of the times you’re going to suck, and then every now and then there’ll be that moment of brilliance, and that moment of brilliance is really worth it.”

In 1997, Michael went to Spain with Sleepyhead.  Unai, their tour manager, wanted to show Half-Cocked in Spain like they had in the States.  Suki couldn’t fathom the idea of making the trip all over again, so Michael suggested that they do another film while touring with Half-Cocked.  Since Unai was such a great character, he became the film’s protagonist: an unreliable tour manager.  Abandoned by his American band, he promotes a feisty New York City performance artist while selling and taking speed.

Filming Radiation was, in fact, Michael and Suki’s honeymoon, as they had just married.  Although Radiation also represents a documented reality, it is more fictitious and scripted than Half-Cocked; Michael and Suki sought to make a slightly more polished, narrative film.  Along the tour, they shot scenes in the afternoon and then showed Half-Cocked at night.  A one-time performance by Drop Ceiling in Barcelona was even used for the establishing shot.  As they traveled, Michael and Suki constantly rewrote the script.   Initially, Radiation was a love story, but Unai and actress Katy Petty didn’t have any chemistry.  Instead, the film portrayed a dysfunctional and undefined sexual relationship.

While Half-Cocked breathes youthful inexperience, Radiation is grimmer and dire; it gives off the feeling of being older, when things don’t always go your way. It is also more slickly produced, tighter, and in color. Radiation made it to forty film festivals and went to Sundance in 1999. A special Tenth Anniversary DVD of Half-Cocked, which includes Radiation and a host of photo galleries, music videos, and sound pieces, is now available.  Michael and Suki believe that Half-Cocked will resonate with a younger generation who missed out on the independent music scene of the early ’90s.

Since Radiation, the pair has directed a 2002 political documentary called Horns and Halos, about the shelving of James Hatfield’s book Fortunate Son. More recently, they finished Miami Manhunt, a film about the search for a serial rapist, which aired in December on A&E and had 1.8 million viewers. Michael and Suki also started a distributing company called Rumur, through which they are distributing their own films and others.  Currently, they are at work on another socio-political documentary, but spend most of their time at home.  Some day, Michael hopes to make a documentary about Dr. Sarno, a doctor whose methodology on psychosomatic back pain threatens doctors who make big bucks from back surgery.  

To me, Half-Cocked and Radiation represent a freedom and independence rarely captured on film.  Michael and Suki are certainly admirable in their abilities to self-motivate, work together as a team, and manage a wonderful family while pursuing collective artistic endeavors. I leave their home smiling, clutching DVDs and an original poster from the Half-Cocked States tour. It blows gently in the Brooklyn breeze.

(cover image of Half-Cocked)