Latest / Random Heathen Ramblings / Random Heathen Ramblings: S5, EP42 - Scribes Of The Skin [feat. Greg Allison from Free Spirit Tattoos]

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Random Heathen Ramblings: S5, EP42 - Scribes Of The Skin [feat. Greg Allison from Free Spirit Tattoos] · Random Heathen Ramblings

• 0:00
  Hello everyone, and welcome to the Random Heathen Ramblings
• 0:02
  podcast where we discuss all sorts of things Germanic
• 0:05
  Heathenry related. My name is Jesse, I am your
• 0:09
  host. Let's get into it.
• 0:32
  Well, all right, everybody, I am here in Hazel Green, AL, with my
• 0:37
  guest this week and my new tattoo artist or a new tattoo
• 0:40
  artist. This is Greg Allison.
• 0:41
  We're at his tattoo shop here in Hazel Green.
• 0:44
  Free Spirit Tattoos. Greg, welcome to the show, man.
• 0:48
  Thank you, thank you man. Definitely not a new tattoo
• 0:51
  artist, just new to him. Yeah, he's not the new tattoo
• 0:53
  artist. He's just my new tattoo artist
• 0:56
  or a tattoo artist that I'm probably going to be coming back
• 0:59
  too, honestly. I mean, after today, I'm here to
• 1:01
  get to have gotten some work done, which we're going to talk
• 1:03
  about why I got here today to to, to do this episode, why
• 1:09
  we're not doing the normal, you know, virtual thing like I do
• 1:12
  with all my other guests. But who's out there screaming
• 1:19
  Welcome to Hazel? Green, you'll hear crackheads
• 1:21
  out there screaming, meth addicts and everything else.
• 1:24
  I think someone just died on the road.
• 1:26
  Anyway, let's keep. I'm just kidding.
• 1:29
  We'll be right back. After a word from the.
• 1:32
  After a word from the. Emergency response did.
• 1:35
  You see anything? No man, we were recording the
• 1:37
  podcast. Yeah, no, this is this is the
• 1:41
  kind of stuff I guess that I can expect from on site interviews.
• 1:44
  Oh yeah. You know, you just never know.
• 1:46
  We're out of home. But I am on site here today.
• 1:49
  My wife was kind enough to to to come along and and be my sort of
• 1:54
  chaperone. No chauffeur.
• 1:57
  I'm not a kid. It's not my chaperone.
• 2:00
  I I don't. I didn't have to get.
• 2:02
  A note she had to sign for him today.
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  He's not really old enough. Never mind the little bit of
• 2:07
  grey in his beard. Kind of like mine, but you know,
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  it's not as much. She came to sign for him.
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  She's, you know, his chaperone. Yeah, but we, we, we came here
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  today to, to, to, to, to do 2 things.
• 2:20
  So Greg here is again, he's a tattoo artist of what, 2020, 20
• 2:25
  years, 20 years from this area of Alabama has been tattooing
• 2:30
  for for that long and and heathen himself as well for
• 2:34
  roughly about what, seven years? Or so, 7-8 years, something like
• 2:36
  that. So he got into the tattoo game
• 2:38
  before the heathen thing, but it's really cool because he is a
• 2:42
  heathen tattoo artist and, and his passion is, is doing things
• 2:47
  with, with, with tattoos that reflect the, the artistry that
• 2:51
  the art style, you know, the knot, the knot work of Nordic
• 2:55
  and, and dramatic things. So Greg had reached out to me
• 3:01
  like a month or two ago maybe. Yeah, probably.
• 3:04
  Yeah, about a month or two ago. Just out of the blue and, and,
• 3:07
  and said, Hey, you know, I was wondering if you'd ever think
• 3:10
  about coming to the tattoo shop to do a podcast.
• 3:15
  We can talk about, you know, the, the historical sides of the
• 3:18
  art and, and just him as, as a tattoo artist and heathen
• 3:21
  himself and anything he said, maybe get some ink done.
• 3:25
  And you know, I like my ink, but I, it's been a while, it's been
• 3:30
  like a decade nearly since I've had any work done.
• 3:32
  And I, and I read what he said to me and I said, Hey, Greg, you
• 3:35
  know, that would be great. I don't know how soon it would
• 3:38
  be because, you know, I know how much tattoos are.
• 3:41
  I love your work because I've seen his work posted online and
• 3:44
  I'm like, you know, don't know exactly when it'll, because you
• 3:48
  know, we need to set the money aside.
• 3:49
  And he's like, no, no, I mean, just come on down.
• 3:52
  It'll be on the House. We can do the podcast and, you
• 3:55
  know, we'll just hang out and and talk.
• 3:58
  And I was like, Oh well in that case.
• 3:59
  Right, right. How can you refuse?
• 4:00
  And often you can't. Refuse.
• 4:02
  Yeah. He made it very easy to to say
• 4:03
  yes. And at the time of this
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  recording, he actually came in. This is his shot.
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  So he runs his own, he runs his own shift.
• 4:13
  And he came in on his off day to do this.
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  It's the day before my birthday, so this is kind of like a little
• 4:19
  early birthday thing for me. At least it's the way I see it.
• 4:23
  And it's just great to be here because this is the first time
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  that I've done a podcast in person with everybody.
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  So for the folks that listen to this or watch this, you know, if
• 4:31
  you're used to hearing me through a boom mic and, and that
• 4:34
  kind of quality, it's going to be a little bit different, but
• 4:38
  the experience is, is going to be, I think a whole lot better
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  because getting a chance to talk with Greg over the last few
• 4:43
  hours of him working the the piece that he did for me is on
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  my left leg. You're going to be seeing some
• 4:48
  stuff throughout this episode, some some clips of of the work
• 4:51
  being done, some images that we captured.
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  Hey. And I and my wife, I'm sure some
• 4:57
  some content that we captured along the way over the last
• 5:00
  several hours of what I got. But it's a really meaningful
• 5:02
  piece. So I'm gun shy about getting
• 5:07
  anything going on my ribs because I've heard so much of
• 5:09
  the like, it's one of the worst places to get anything, you
• 5:13
  know, feelings wise. I'm like, you have anything on
• 5:16
  your ribs? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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  You got stuff on my ribs, my stomach, chest.
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  When I got my chest piece done, the IT was fine until it started
• 5:26
  getting close to like the sternum.
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  And then it just felt like kind of like a nail getting tapped
• 5:32
  into my bone. I'm like, this is new.
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  I was like trying to hold my breath so as not to move.
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  And then he's like, no man, just keep breathing.
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  You got to breathe. You don't know what you're
• 5:43
  passing out or throwing out that.
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  Does that happen for you too? I bet you have.
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  I mean, in the how many years, 20 plus years you've been doing
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  this? That's one.
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  Of the ones that I. Want so just real quick, Greg,
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  thank you very much for inviting me down here.
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  I had no problem. I'm glad for the hospitality and
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  for, you know, this guy here, anybody that's in the, the
• 6:09
  Huntsville, AL area or within an hour or two.
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  Again, I'm just going to start off by saying that I, I'm going
• 6:15
  to recommend that you come and see him if especially if you're
• 6:18
  heathen and you're looking to get some heathen inspired
• 6:21
  artwork. I gave Greg an idea or, or an
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  image of something that I wanted done, a binder that I had made
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  that commemorates both my maternal and my fraternal family
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  names. And I said, hey, you know, you
• 6:36
  think we could work something with something like this.
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  And he said, I think we can do that.
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  And when I got here, the, the, the, the style that everything,
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  the image that he came up with was, was more than I could
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  expected. I, I, I, I didn't go into this
• 6:50
  with any expectations really. I, I was like, well, whatever it
• 6:53
  is, it's going to be, it's going to be awesome.
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  So come down to Hazel Green AL to free spirit Tattoos and and
• 7:01
  and talk to Greg about booking your next tattoo appointment.
• 7:25
  To appointment but Greg, what inspired you?
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  What? Why did you get into tattooing
• 7:30
  20 years ago? I got into tattooing simply
• 7:33
  because I'm an artist and I wanted to get paid for art.
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  Everyone talks about starving artists and all this, and that's
• 7:39
  true. If you're a painter or
• 7:40
  something, you're probably going to starve.
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  If you're an architect, you'll get paid, but you'll be bored.
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  And I saw like, wait a minute, there's these other guys,
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  they're tattoo artists and they're doing some of the most
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  kick ass stuff I've ever were seeing.
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  Skulls and reapers and everything that a kid loves.
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  So yeah, I know exactly where I wanted to go since age of 16.
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  Didn't quite work out that way off the rib.
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  It took forever to get into shots at 16.
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  Was sweeping people's floors and mopping and trying to, couldn't
• 8:08
  get nobody to teach me nothing. I ended up joining the Army at
• 8:11
  19 and when I was stationed in Fort Bliss, TX, I found a really
• 8:15
  good fellow named Jesse Alan El Paso, and he taught me all the
• 8:19
  basics and got me started. I worked on a lot of friends and
• 8:23
  family and stuff and I was stationed in Germany in
• 8:26
  different places, but when I got out it was just full time.
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  I knew I had to do this. This is what I wanted to do, you
• 8:33
  know? And then getting into Heathenry,
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  I started looking around and I see there's not many good
• 8:41
  tattoos for us. And the ones that are, they're
• 8:44
  all the same. They're very generic.
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  It's the first five images off of Google's search for mule near
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  or Vegasir or this that It's a typical gross of true cone.
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  You know, the little Nordic compass.
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  Not all who wander or lost written in Elder Futhark, kind
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  of basic, not very well translated.
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  But I want to offer something to the more educated heathen, the
• 9:07
  one who knows that they want something good and meaningful.
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  Now, while we. Can't like, say, well, what does
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  a traditional Nordic tattoo really look like?
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  Well, we don't know. We have no archaeological
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  evidence whatsoever. But what I can do is make
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  something custom to that individual that is within the
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  artistic styles of the time, translated into the modern
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  tattooing, and something that will give someone a good thing
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  that they'll feel good about. And as far as the heathen side,
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  spiritually connected, you know, a lot of those tattoos mean a
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  lot to people. And I want to be the one to help
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  with that. You know, there's a million good
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  artists like we talked about. You probably drove past 50
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  tattoo shops to get I Live. Down the road from.
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  All of them full of great artists that can copy whatever
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  you want. You know you show them those
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  first five images off Google, you can get you a nice basic
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  Odin tattoo. OK cool.
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  But if you want someone from someone that knows it in depth
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  and understands the intricacies and hidden symbolisms, you might
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  want to come down to Hazel drink and see.
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  Now that's interesting. You say like hidden symbolisms.
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  One of the things about Europe, the piece that you did for me,
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  yes, that the vine room was it's it's own thing.
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  It was its own stand alone design.
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  Anybody looking at it without being told about what it was
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  could probably come up with maybe something of of their own.
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  Oh yeah, I see this or I see that.
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  They would have absolutely no idea.
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  So the symbolism is hidden in, in the binding itself and then
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  the the knot work in, in, in the other aesthetics that you added
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  to it. Those are, those are somewhat
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  period accurate designs that we've seen on things like cart,
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  you know, engraved these things that last, you know, stone
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  because skin obviously is one of the first things to decay in the
• 10:55
  body. So should you know, can we
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  deduce that probably, you know, Nordic people, Scandinavian,
• 11:02
  Germanic people had tattoos that they had ink inscribed or etched
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  into their skin, Probably so because they were exposed to
• 11:08
  that through other cultures and their travels and whatnot.
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  But we can't find anything because skin's one of the first
• 11:14
  things that it's quite probable. Who's the Arab guy even?
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  Fun line. I've met him.
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  The fun line. Yeah, yeah.
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  He noted that, you know, it looked like the Nordic people
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  had tattoos, but that was translated as tattoos and could
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  have been body painting, war paint or things like this.
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  But we do know that the Viking culture was absolutely in touch
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  with other cultures. It did tattoos at the time.
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  So it's quite reasonable to deduct that.
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  Yeah, yeah. Someone who had gone a Viking
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  probably would have got a tattoo while they was out.
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  Yeah, and I think we were even talking before what you were
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  doing the work like for for a culture, especially like with
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  the men like they would do things to alter their appearance
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  to give themselves a very a certain look.
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  You know, the, the whole like filing into the teeth and and
• 12:02
  like that was a, that was a, a, a thing that we have seen in, in
• 12:06
  archaeological teeth teeth. Last longer than skin.
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  And so it wouldn't be again, it wouldn't be too hard to to
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  imagine that some guy back then being like, Oh yeah, that snake
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  or that whatever it was like, put that on my skin.
• 12:20
  I'm going to put this away and instill fear or whatever, yeah.
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  Or whatever. And yeah, I, I've been obviously
• 13:05
  been getting tattooed on and off for probably as long as you've
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  been tattooing. I think the first tattoo I got
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  was when I first went to Tennessee in and around 2005 or
• 13:18
  6, maybe 2006, 2007, yes. So you're obviously you've got a
• 13:24
  few. You remember when you got your?
• 13:26
  First essay 199818 Of course, my mother said you're not getting
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  one till you turn 18. I ain't stopping for that.
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  And I was glad. And I think that's kind of cool
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  too. It feels like in today's
• 13:39
  culture, tattoos are about as close as we can get to a modern
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  equivalent of a coming of age rite of passage.
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  It may not be perfect, obviously, you know, if you go
• 13:51
  get a Hello Kitty tattoo when you turn 18, not much of A rite
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  of passage in a traditional sense, but it's something.
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  It is what it is. And they are becoming very
• 14:00
  standardized, almost in a modern tribalistic sense where well,
• 14:05
  mom had one grandma, grandpa, these people had, he had one
• 14:09
  from when he's in the Marines. And I just love this.
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  So now I want to get one in that sense.
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  It starts to slowly become a tradition and I'd like to
• 14:17
  provide a solid traditional background for those people,
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  especially for the heathen related ones and.
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  You're doing it. You check out Greg's work
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  because he he does post stuff on social medias, you know, so
• 14:31
  folks that that watch this or listen to this later, his great
• 14:34
  socials where his art can be found will be, will be
• 14:38
  annotated, you know, down in the description or in the show
• 14:41
  notes. So when, when you started doing,
• 14:45
  you know, tattooing, obviously you haven't found Heathen Reed.
• 14:48
  Not at that time. I've bounced around it my whole
• 14:51
  life, but actually coming into it full heartedly wasn't until
• 14:55
  probably about seven years ago. Do you remember what the thing
• 14:59
  was that drew you to even read specifically?
• 15:02
  Probably my dad saying, no, you can't have that Thor comic book
• 15:07
  and give me a huge lecture on how it was incorrect and
• 15:11
  inconsistent with all the mythology and everything.
• 15:14
  And I'm like 4 1/2, maybe 5. Thanks dad.
• 15:18
  And he's just lecturing about it and rambling on.
• 15:22
  And it just kind of sparked a question in my mind that stuck
• 15:25
  forever. Well, OK, they used to worship
• 15:28
  these gods. What happened when they stopped?
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  Did they die? Did they go away?
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  You know, that's kind of a hard imagining thing for a kid.
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  And I didn't like it. You know, it always stuck with
• 15:38
  me. Like they were still there as
• 15:40
  long as people cared and did give them reverence and all this
• 15:43
  stuff. And then later to come full
• 15:45
  circle back into it just feels like coming home.
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  Yeah, an Old Norse translated out with Younger Futhark type
• 15:53
  rooms and stuff like that. And that's the way I prefer to
• 15:56
  see it done because I'm sure you've probably seen or heard
• 16:00
  like, yeah, that's not the correct way to do it.
• 16:02
  You can't use English and Elder Futhark.
• 16:05
  You know it does not translate properly.
• 16:08
  Yeah, yeah, you didn't have. To do any Saxon futhor though
• 16:13
  that'd. Be kind of cool.
• 16:17
  Yeah, it would be. I've carved a set of sax and
• 16:20
  food dark rooms. Out of what?
• 16:27
  I believe it was Oak. Oh, nice.
• 16:35
  I did a a set of younger food arc for a guy that lives down
• 16:40
  here. Blake Russell, you might know,
• 16:43
  called it works. He's a good guy.
• 16:45
  Yeah, he is. He's come up to Tennessee back
• 16:50
  in October. He came up for there's a local
• 16:55
  even group up there, Raven Moon Harp and they do their shadow
• 16:59
  mood event every year. There's a little bit different
• 17:02
  this year, logistics and and everything was a bit different.
• 17:05
  But he came up with his tackle, harp and drums, and we had an
• 17:09
  outdoor pavilion at one of the parks up there, and it sounded
• 17:12
  like a proper, you know, kind of Nordic heathen festival, man.
• 17:15
  He's out there. Yeah, he is.
• 17:17
  I helped him design part of his thing.
• 17:19
  It's a fella harp with the dragon around it.
• 17:21
  Oh, that was you? Yeah.
• 17:22
  Nice. So at the time, obviously you've
• 17:28
  been tattooing for, you know, 10 plus years or something you
• 17:31
  found about Heathenry as being a legitimate belief.
• 17:34
  Yeah. Of faith.
• 17:36
  You know, not just Wicca with a hammer.
• 17:38
  Yeah, which, you know, I've talked before about the, the,
• 17:42
  the modern name for, for heathen also true.
• 17:45
  There's, there's Wicca true out there, you know, the, the, the,
• 17:48
  the, the types of folks that and look, if that's your thing, if
• 17:50
  that's your jam and you want to, you know, practice that way,
• 17:53
  nobody's, I'm not trying to say like you're wrong for it.
• 17:55
  It's just, you know, what we're here about talking today is, is,
• 17:59
  you know, as close to the traditional side of the, of, of
• 18:02
  those beliefs as possible. We're not, we're not talking
• 18:04
  about, you know, again, Wicca with a hammer or just, you know,
• 18:08
  the, the wicked sabbats with a Norse veneer.
• 18:11
  I fell under that category for a while.
• 18:13
  I'm not knocking. I think a lot of you know, I
• 18:15
  used to when I was in the Army, that was what I did.
• 18:17
  I wouldn't call that heathenry. Even though I had good friends
• 18:20
  trying to help me a little bit. There wasn't much of A saying.
• 18:23
  Or understanding back then. Yeah, no, I think I mean when we
• 18:27
  when, you know, when you're first starting out, when you're
• 18:29
  first learning, you know, it's if that's if that's where you
• 18:34
  stay after you've landed there, then that's one thing.
• 18:36
  But I think a lot of us have migrated and moved from places
• 18:39
  that we initially found out. Because I do.
• 18:41
  I remember first coming into heathenry and being like, oh,
• 18:44
  you know, it's I was looking at the Wiccan Sabbath and and, you
• 18:49
  know, framing my belief around those things.
• 18:52
  And then it didn't happen until later on.
• 18:54
  I was like, oh, that's not how the the Norse of dramatic people
• 18:58
  reckon time or, or, or held their holy days.
• 19:00
  You know it was Lunar souls. And blah and blah.
• 19:04
  But so once you found Heathenry, right, and, and you've been,
• 19:08
  you've been a tattoo artist now at that point for how many years
• 19:11
  and you found Heathenry was, was your focus at that point to
• 19:15
  like, did you have a moment during your tattoo tune career
• 19:18
  where you're like, oh, now it's now I'm focusing more on the,
• 19:21
  the traditional tattoos, the, the, the not work, the stuff,
• 19:24
  the rooms, the all that stuff. Like, did you reach a point at
• 19:28
  that? Yeah, yeah.
• 19:31
  Yeah, yeah, I've done knot work and I still do lots of it, you
• 19:36
  know, obviously, but like your standard Celtic knot work and
• 19:40
  things that were stable in the tattoo industry, I had them on
• 19:43
  me. I'd done them and everything and
• 19:46
  really, really switched gears hard for me and made me decide I
• 19:50
  want to focus hard, put some dedicational work into making
• 19:54
  this a good thing for the heathen community.
• 19:56
  When I heard someone tell me that Fuel near was practically a
• 20:00
  swastika and that kind of hurt my feelings, I was like, no way,
• 20:04
  that's bullshit. It's not.
• 20:05
  It's not at all. And it dawned on me like, OK,
• 20:08
  well, some people do see things through their own lens and
• 20:12
  perspectives and other people do make us look bad at times.
• 20:16
  And some of us should do something to try to correct it
• 20:19
  and show like, no, no, everybody who does this is not one of
• 20:23
  those. There's a lot of just normal
• 20:25
  people. Nothing crazy, not far right,
• 20:29
  not far left, just normal people that want what they want.
• 20:32
  And I want to be able to ride a safe, good place for them to get
• 20:35
  something like that. Yeah.
• 20:38
  What? What part of?
• 20:39
  Your you say, you know, doing the research and then trying to
• 20:42
  find things that you what what has been a lot of your
• 20:44
  inspiration to get good source material to to to be inspired
• 20:49
  by. Viking Age jewelry, things like
• 20:53
  that. Getting in and seeing which ways
• 20:55
  do those knots curl? Why does it tie this?
• 20:59
  Is there an animistic reason for these things to be binded the
• 21:03
  way they are? Is this Dragon's tongue in a
• 21:06
  knot because he's tongue tied? Is it so he won't speak?
• 21:10
  You know, like we're trying to shut Fafnir up over here.
• 21:13
  You know, there's a lot of things like that that one can
• 21:16
  postulate. Probably really was a a thing at
• 21:18
  one point in time, especially when you understand some of the
• 21:21
  more older traditions like troll them and things like that.
• 21:24
  Like, yeah, they would tie things and knots and bind them
• 21:27
  purposely. And then you see the artwork
• 21:29
  that's reflected with knots and things binded together or
• 21:33
  gripping beast on each other. Also like to look at a lot of
• 21:37
  room stones and just try to deduct the reasons why.
• 21:42
  I mean ever since I was a kid I've been doing this or trying
• 21:44
  to reverse engineer it and understand why does this loop
• 21:48
  this way. What does that mean?
• 21:50
  Sometimes it means nothing, it's just really good art, but other
• 21:53
  times it does have absolute meaning.
• 21:56
  Yeah, it almost touches a bit on what you were saying before, the
• 21:58
  hidden symbology of it, right? It could be random turns and
• 22:02
  twists and a thing, or it could be magic at work.
• 22:06
  You know, the the magic or the animistic sides of things.
• 22:11
  Have you had people come in with a design that they had and then
• 22:14
  you look at it and you go, actually, what I think we should
• 22:16
  do is make it a bit more meaningful for this reason or
• 22:21
  like what we're talking about. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 22:24
  Some people, you know, I mean, they find something on Google,
• 22:26
  they find it online, they screenshot this or that and it's
• 22:31
  maybe not accurate, you know? And I try to steer them as good
• 22:35
  as I can. I tell everyone they're
• 22:37
  responsible with their own runic inscriptions.
• 22:40
  Like do your research. I am not a fluent old N speaking
• 22:46
  room Carver, so there's room for error.
• 22:50
  So everyone's responsible for looking at their own.
• 22:52
  But I'll try to steer them correctly, especially when I say
• 22:55
  obvious stuff that ain't right, you know, Like someone comes in,
• 22:59
  I think I'm a Berserker, and they want a tattoo off an anime
• 23:03
  series that has no historical reference whatsoever.
• 23:07
  Like, yeah, check it out. You really don't want this.
• 23:09
  It's not what you think it means.
• 23:11
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you love the anime, cool,
• 23:14
  cool. Enjoy that thing.
• 23:15
  I'll tattoo it on y'all thing but you just think you're a
• 23:18
  Berserker or something. Yeah, yeah.
• 23:22
  News flash. That's like, you know, what's
• 23:25
  this we were talking earlier about the you're not a fucking
• 23:28
  biking that guy from Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 23:30
  Black. I can't remember his name, but
• 23:33
  yeah, I think, you know, people this whole thing like Hebrew
• 23:40
  also true the the Nordic style, it's very popular.
• 23:45
  So even for people that don't necessarily believe, you know,
• 23:49
  we were talking a bit about that before where, you know, symbols
• 23:52
  get used because it looks cool. You know, sometimes people come
• 23:57
  in, I'm sure and, and want something of a Nordic or or
• 24:00
  Viking style. And they're not even, you know,
• 24:03
  they don't necessarily believe in in the religion of those
• 24:06
  people. They're.
• 24:07
  Just, I mean, it's very interesting.
• 24:09
  Some of them don't even have that.
• 24:10
  Or maybe it's. Just I think it looks cool, you
• 24:12
  know? And we're not gatekeepers when
• 24:14
  it comes to these symbols. And that, that's the other thing
• 24:17
  too, is, you know, some people really get bent out of shape
• 24:20
  with symbols saying, you know, you can't wear it unless you're
• 24:24
  this or that. Yeah, the only times I'm trying
• 24:27
  to stop people is really when they're making bad mistakes,
• 24:30
  when their design has something hidden in it that they didn't
• 24:32
  recognize. And that's absolutely a thing.
• 24:35
  Sometimes certain patterns emulate hate symbols.
• 24:39
  And your average person may not know because they don't
• 24:43
  understand and they don't see. Like, yeah, they clearly hid
• 24:47
  that in their own purpose. That's absolutely what it is.
• 24:50
  And they don't see it because they don't understand.
• 24:52
  They don't think that way, and that's good.
• 24:54
  But they need someone who does know how to recognize it.
• 24:57
  When I see it going, whoa, you don't want that.
• 24:59
  That black son has nothing to do with what you think.
• 25:03
  You know, It's totally different.
• 25:05
  They have the black son. Some other I mean.
• 25:09
  Black saws double, yeah, the two, the whole room with the
• 25:15
  boot wings that come up. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 25:17
  That's a simple one lot of people can overlook and not
• 25:20
  know. Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of
• 25:21
  little. Things, the wolf's angle, that's
• 25:23
  another one. The wolf's angle thing that that
• 25:26
  was that's, you know, people I've, I've had arguments back
• 25:29
  and forth online about no, it really is.
• 25:31
  It sounds like show me where it's ever appeared in any sort
• 25:34
  of room, stone or archaeology find or anything like that.
• 25:37
  You're not going to find it. It doesn't exist.
• 25:39
  It was a modern thing that was appropriated by certain third
• 25:44
  party that we won't talk about. Because.
• 25:46
  You know, we already know. But, yeah, stuff like that, you
• 25:48
  know, if you're thinking, oh, it's, you know, some sort of
• 25:51
  ancient symbol, No, not really. Yeah.
• 25:53
  Yeah. And some are ancient symbols,
• 25:55
  but the meaning is absolutely lost or completely obscured
• 25:59
  through more modern politics. And we're just not going to
• 26:02
  touch it. You can go somewhere else if you
• 26:03
  want that. I'm not doing that.
• 26:05
  I see two people will often times blame the artist when
• 26:10
  somebody gets something wrong tattooed on.
• 26:12
  Have you ever had that happen? Some people try, I try to really
• 26:15
  make sure they know what they're getting.
• 26:16
  Like, look, man, you paid me to do this.
• 26:18
  This is what you wanted. I just did it.
• 26:20
  It ain't my job to do the research as the artist, right?
• 26:22
  Like if you're informed and you can help educate or whatever
• 26:25
  that I think that's kind of going above and beyond, but.
• 26:28
  Sometimes you need to, though. Yeah, yeah.
• 26:30
  But sometimes people just don't know.
• 26:32
  Like, you looked it up, it said according to Google, this is a
• 26:35
  Viking tattoo. And someone who knows better can
• 26:39
  be like, Nope, it's absolutely not, not even close.
• 26:42
  That's a complete 8 symbol that you probably don't want on you.
• 26:45
  Yeah. I.
• 26:46
  If I have to go on the record ever, I, I know I've said it
• 26:49
  before, but then especially since we're talking about, you
• 26:52
  know, scribing into the skin, These are permanent Alaskan
• 26:57
  symbols. These are permanent markings.
• 26:58
  This isn't something you can just, if you have a change of
• 27:01
  heart or mind, go home and be like, yeah, sure, there's,
• 27:04
  there's certain ways of getting tattoos removed.
• 27:07
  But I guess my whole point is, is like, definitely do your
• 27:09
  research and don't rely on a Google image to be your
• 27:13
  authority on its authenticity or its accuracy.
• 27:17
  Because again, if you just Google Viking symbols of love
• 27:21
  and you're going to see some BS vine ring that somebody drew 50
• 27:24
  years ago, you know, And like, yeah, that's it.
• 27:26
  Like, no, that's, you know, it could be that person's
• 27:30
  interpretation of what love means or something, but it's
• 27:33
  definitely not anything authentic or, or, or
• 27:35
  traditional, you know, like my vine room, the one that, you
• 27:39
  know, he did for me. There's nobody out here that's
• 27:42
  going to be able to find that symbol or anything like it and
• 27:44
  go, that's traditional in, in any sort of artwork binding.
• 27:48
  It's personal to me. I'm the one that made it.
• 27:50
  It's a blend of both of my family's surname.
• 27:52
  So it's in, it's a, in a way, it's a something that's now
• 27:56
  permanently in my skin as, as a, as a offering to my ancestors.
• 27:59
  It's a gift to myself, but also in honor of my ancestry.
• 28:06
  And you appreciate things like that because you are practicing
• 28:08
  heathen and you can see that I could have taken this symbol
• 28:13
  anywhere else and had done by anybody else that wasn't even
• 28:15
  and the care, the spirit of the work wouldn't have gone into the
• 28:21
  work. You know, you and I were talking
• 28:23
  about that before and that's why I recommend for heathens to come
• 28:27
  here is because this guy is living it as well.
• 28:29
  He's living his own heathen and he's doing it.
• 28:30
  He understands, you know, this is a passion of his so that that
• 28:36
  power, that energy is going into the work as well.
• 28:41
  And, you know, having a heathen do heathen art, you know, or
• 28:46
  heathen businesses like I like supporting that for that reason
• 28:50
  too, because again, you, we connect with it in that way.
• 28:53
  It's like with the runes, like I, I make rune sets and sure,
• 28:57
  you know, you can go on Amazon or at a metaphysical store and
• 29:00
  buy a box of runes or little rune stones or whatever.
• 29:03
  And that's all well and good if that's what you want to do.
• 29:06
  At the same time, you can also get something that is, you know,
• 29:09
  like you say, devotional and it's coming from place of, you
• 29:13
  know, I'm doing this and it's it's a joy for me to do that
• 29:17
  type of work. You know, I'm getting something
• 29:18
  out of it too. Exactly.
• 29:26
  And I can't tell you how many times I've, you know, like in
• 29:28
  public, like bands and, and just people in general that, you
• 29:34
  know, are wearing a mule near asking if they're practicing.
• 29:37
  And it's no, I just think it looks cool.
• 29:39
  Yeah. And I'm very.
• 29:40
  Shocked by that, yeah, I guess I expect a lot more out of people
• 29:45
  and more educated responses than what I typically get, but I see
• 29:48
  that as well and. It's kind of shocking.
• 29:51
  Like wait a minute. So you got all these symbols all
• 29:53
  over you and you don't actually practice this?
• 29:56
  This is what you doing. There's this one band that
• 29:58
  they're really good, but like the lead singer, he's got like
• 30:01
  one of those king chains mule nears that he wears his guitar
• 30:05
  has got like an Agus Yalmer and and the volcano sticker and
• 30:09
  stuff on it looks really nice. Like he he decked the the guitar
• 30:12
  out with a lot of like Icelandic Nordic looking stuff.
• 30:19
  You would think that if you're going to go to that extent for
• 30:22
  your for your image that you would have something invested in
• 30:25
  it more than just I think it looks cool, but no, he don't.
• 30:29
  And I'm like, you know, come on, man, show some respect to the
• 30:34
  culture. And again, you could go to other
• 30:41
  artists that are talented, that can do good work.
• 30:44
  I just don't think, you know, you're not going to get the same
• 30:46
  thing out of here. It's like buying a set of rooms
• 30:50
  off of Amazon or Etsy that were, you know, mass.
• 30:53
  Produced or get this man to carve before you himself and
• 30:57
  paying him some good money. You need some roads?
• 31:00
  Make clothes backwards. You know, or any other, you
• 31:04
  know, even businesses, you know, like helping those people that
• 31:06
  that do it because it's a love of theirs.
• 31:08
  It's a passion of theirs, you know?
• 31:11
  Even should just be helping heathens.
• 31:13
  Quite as simple. There's plenty of other people
• 31:16
  that aren't. Let's help each other out.
• 31:17
  Yeah, how many heathens have you tattooed over the years that you
• 31:22
  can think of? A lot I've tattooed.
• 31:26
  Quite a lot I've done. Lots of mule nears, lots of
• 31:29
  rooms. I've pretty sure I'd do a lot
• 31:31
  more than your average. Artist.
• 31:33
  You know, but that also comes from networking within the
• 31:35
  community, knowing lots of people going to the loads and
• 31:39
  different things when I can, you know, and all that.
• 31:43
  But you know, you pretty much stay solitary of your practice,
• 31:45
  right? You don't have a kinder or a
• 31:47
  tribe that. You're no, no.
• 31:48
  I do like to go up to Tennessee, hang out with Bill Skinner.
• 31:51
  Kindred. Really great guys.
• 31:53
  If anyone knows them, his Kindred's really great from
• 31:57
  everything I've heard. Awesome dudes would definitely
• 31:59
  participate in something with them as well, but I try not to
• 32:03
  Usually I'm tattooing, I'm busy, I'm always here.
• 32:08
  Unfortunately, I don't have time for a lot of extra luxuries and
• 32:11
  stuff, which I did. I think every even.
• 32:13
  Sure, it's great. It's good for personal
• 32:16
  development, getting to know the community and exploring and
• 32:20
  seeing things that maybe you didn't think about practicing
• 32:23
  this way, Maybe you didn't understand this or that.
• 32:26
  And then you go and it's like, I get it that it's a lot cooler
• 32:30
  than I thought it was, you know? You learn, you learn a bit of
• 32:34
  the, you know one the way one kindred tribe does it.
• 32:39
  You know you need to go to a different one from another one
• 32:41
  that you get invited to. And you see similarities and you
• 32:44
  see some differences. I think one of the Have you ever
• 32:47
  been at an event where they do stumble?
• 32:49
  Only once, yeah. Well, if you ever get a chance
• 32:52
  to go to others and, or, or see how others, you'll see that too.
• 32:55
  Like some some stumbles are done, you know?
• 32:58
  In a circular. Fashion, some with a horn that
• 33:01
  gets passed around or whatever. Some are done where everybody
• 33:04
  has their own cup like we did. We did.
• 33:08
  We did assemble sort of. If if you want to classify
• 33:12
  assemble, you can't because we were doing it outdoors and
• 33:15
  stumble traditionally has to be an indoor thing for to do that.
• 33:18
  But anyway, at the Raven Moon hearth came here.
• 33:21
  They do a shadow mood event every year at shadow mood.
• 33:24
  This year we were at a, a park with a pavilion, so there was a
• 33:28
  roof and, you know, no walls. But we part of the ritual there
• 33:33
  was to, you know, have a, a, a, a a thing that people that never
• 33:37
  had stumbled before experienced it, get a chance to experience
• 33:40
  it. And everybody had their own cup,
• 33:42
  you know, so they were, we weren't necessarily passing cups
• 33:44
  around, but everyone had a turn, you know, and they were rounds
• 33:47
  and you know, this and that. These days, that's probably
• 33:50
  better, you know, especially after COVID everything, yeah.
• 33:53
  Yeah, there's a specific point being is, you know, you the next
• 33:59
  symbol that they go to might be something different totally than
• 34:02
  that, but they got to see how, you know, one group of people
• 34:05
  did it, or at least in that moment did it.
• 34:09
  And it involves too, I think, you know, just like art and
• 34:12
  language and things over time, you know, once you learn a way
• 34:16
  of doing things from somebody, maybe it's an influence, you
• 34:20
  know, you, you shift, you change, you adjust, and this
• 34:22
  becomes something that integrates into your way of
• 34:25
  doing things like I'm sure your art style has.
• 34:29
  Not always been the same. No, 20 years ago wasn't.
• 34:33
  I'm way too ADD to just stick with one thing.
• 34:35
  I do all kind of tattoos. People ask me if I specialize in
• 34:39
  one thing only. Absolutely not.
• 34:41
  Way too ADD one minute. I want to do these colors
• 34:44
  traditional. This not worth that.
• 34:47
  I like it all, just all over the place, but the passion is
• 34:51
  definitely with within like the you know that that more is.
• 34:56
  Definitely Nordic and Celtic. I like those two.
• 34:58
  I like the way they tie together and it's very similar in its
• 35:01
  animism and everything, the style of the art.
• 35:05
  I like them both and I like to customize them and do something
• 35:07
  original, possibly because it's really hard.
• 35:12
  Well, yeah, I mean when when you get and that's why I like
• 35:15
  working with artists that will that will collaborate with you.
• 35:20
  Right. Because I gave him an image.
• 35:23
  It wasn't even a drawing. It was, it was the, it was the
• 35:25
  symbol that I had wood burned into my ancestral candle holder,
• 35:28
  you know, and I was like, Hey, can you do this?
• 35:31
  And he took that symbol. And then I said, you know, work,
• 35:35
  he, he worked with that. He did, he worked with it and
• 35:37
  made it something of, of something I couldn't even
• 35:41
  imagine. And that's what I like, that's
• 35:43
  why I like working with artists that way is that they don't just
• 35:46
  take what you give them. They they take what you give
• 35:49
  them and then enhance it and make it something unique.
• 35:52
  You know, you're not going to find an art in the style you've
• 35:54
  got the flash art now, but you're not going to find this in
• 35:56
  a a book or searching for it online.
• 35:59
  Maybe you will if you, if you, you know, look up.
• 36:01
  Maybe after we post it, it might end up online.
• 36:05
  I'm not going to copy it myself on anyone because someone else
• 36:09
  copies it. Well, they're stupid.
• 36:11
  Yeah, please don't. You might like it, but it hasn't
• 36:15
  been. Yeah, it's a picture.
• 36:17
  Yeah. Come to me and get some.
• 36:18
  Trademark on it, but now that ever happened.
• 36:22
  I don't know if that's actually a trademark on it, would that?
• 36:24
  Be a little a little copyright circle to see.
• 36:27
  Yeah, yeah. How does that even work nowadays
• 36:31
  with with like copyrighted stuff?
• 36:33
  Do you have You have? I don't know, try not to get
• 36:35
  sued I guess. Try hard.
• 36:37
  To blame us changed it 30%. I don't know, I hope Disney
• 36:41
  don't ever come after me for doing a Mickey Mouse or
• 36:43
  something. Generally, most people are cool.
• 36:47
  I don't know. I've heard of the cases where
• 36:49
  people get a little bent out of shape, but yeah.
• 36:52
  That's the thing about art, I think in general, this is like
• 36:57
  some people, just some artists. I'm sorry.
• 36:59
  I think you see that more in like real big companies, you
• 37:02
  know, they'll pursue legal action and sue the hell out of
• 37:05
  people for, you know, calling something what they call it.
• 37:09
  Even I remember hearing I don't even know if it's a thing
• 37:11
  anymore, but wasn't there a guy that tried to copyright or
• 37:14
  trademark the word heathen? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 37:17
  I don't know what happened with that.
• 37:19
  Good luck. You know, you know.
• 37:20
  It's hoping to eat harder eats them on the shores.
• 37:23
  It's stupid. Worse than what they already
• 37:27
  did. No, they all want them to do
• 37:28
  better and have better and all this.
• 37:31
  So really, if you think about it in those terms, you owe it to
• 37:33
  them to be the absolute best version of yourself that you
• 37:37
  could possibly be. That's the ultimate in ancestral
• 37:41
  generation being good. The deeds you do now makes a lot
• 37:45
  more than anything else. People think their ancestors
• 37:52
  don't want to help them or watch over.
• 37:54
  Well, maybe they're not giving them something good to watch
• 37:56
  over. Maybe they don't like what they
• 37:58
  see. You know that's really bad dude.
• 38:01
  Get off your couch. Stop crying.
• 38:09
  Yeah, I've had those conversations with people
• 38:11
  before. Like, you know, how do I, you
• 38:13
  know, I've heard all about ancestor worship, ancestor
• 38:16
  veneration, but how do I do it? I'm like you do it by through
• 38:19
  your deeds, you know, these they, they got you this far.
• 38:23
  You know, they're, you're the they're the reason you're here
• 38:27
  now live in such a way that honors that what, what has been
• 38:37
  probably the most like impactful tattoo that you've ever done on
• 38:41
  somebody like a memorial piece or, or, or anything particular
• 38:47
  that that really kind of like you still think about it to this
• 38:51
  day. Well, I tattooed 3 little
• 38:53
  shrimps on three dudes asses last night.
• 38:56
  I have a bachelor party. I'll probably remember that for
• 38:59
  a while. But it didn't mean anything.
• 39:00
  It wasn't meaningful or impactful, but it was funny.
• 39:03
  You know, all of them are pretty meaningful to some people and
• 39:07
  some of them don't mean anything as far as what their tattoo
• 39:11
  meant to me. That's pretty rare with the
• 39:13
  devotional heathen work. Usually it means a lot more and
• 39:17
  it feels good because I know it means something to that person
• 39:21
  versus a shrimp on the butt or whatever it may be, you know,
• 39:25
  did. They did.
• 39:26
  They get a story behind that. There has to be a story behind
• 39:29
  that. Like who puts a random shrimp on
• 39:30
  your ass? Bachelor party, crazy, having
• 39:33
  fun, I don't remember. They probably won't either.
• 39:38
  They're going to. This is going to come up in an
• 39:40
  algorithm somewhere. Oh, yeah.
• 39:41
  Remember that one day in November, they're going to wake
• 39:46
  up next morning. Why?
• 39:46
  My ass hurt, you know? Oh, yeah.
• 39:48
  Maybe it's not the first time. I mean, if you, yeah, if you're
• 39:53
  putting shrimps on your ass and it's probably not the first
• 39:55
  time. That's crazy.
• 40:01
  I've. I don't know.
• 40:03
  We were talking earlier about like ancestor veneration.
• 40:08
  An ancestor worship and I mentioned about the tattoo being
• 40:11
  a devotion sort of to my parents on my mother's and father's
• 40:15
  side, because the, the, the ruins contain the sounds of the
• 40:19
  my surnames on both maternal and paternal sides.
• 40:23
  We were talking about, you know, the, the simple acts of living
• 40:27
  in such a way that that honors, you know, our ancestors.
• 40:31
  And I think what you're providing is, is a way for, for
• 40:33
  that to be, let's say, like immortalized, like it's in your
• 40:37
  skin, like you can't not look down and, and forget those
• 40:41
  symbols. Now, you know, if you're, if
• 40:43
  you're ever wondering, you know, people wonder a lot.
• 40:46
  I've asked me at least, you know, how, how I hear all this
• 40:49
  stuff about ancestor worship and ancestor generation.
• 40:51
  You're believed. How do I do it?
• 40:54
  You know, and what do we tell them?
• 40:55
  Live with good lives, be good, be someone your ancestors be
• 40:59
  proud of. No one ever looks and says, boy,
• 41:01
  I wish my kid had it worse than me.
• 41:03
  No, they never did it. They want them to have better.
• 41:05
  They want you to do better. They want you to be somebody.
• 41:08
  Stand up, live a good life, do good deeds, be honorable and
• 41:13
  keep going. Don't give up.
• 41:15
  Don't just start crying because times are hard.
• 41:17
  Be hard. That's what they were.
• 41:20
  Times are really hard for them. So what, you're going to sit
• 41:22
  here and cry? No, no.
• 41:25
  Be hard. Stand up.
• 41:27
  Honor your ancestors for your deeds.
• 41:29
  And actions, yeah. And sure, the tattoos or the OR
• 41:33
  the, you know, this like those are nice again, ways of kind of
• 41:36
  immortalizing their memory and having something indelible that
• 41:40
  you can maybe reflect on. But it ultimately gets to comes
• 41:44
  down to, you know, the boots on the ground, you know, the
• 41:46
  grassroots stuff. Like you've got to be doing
• 41:48
  things and you've got to be. Because like, I think you get
• 41:51
  some something that made me like really think about like our
• 41:55
  ancestors noticing us, you know, and if we're not feeling like
• 41:59
  they are so well, maybe you're doing it was something on the
• 42:02
  line, but like, maybe you can do the things that you're doing.
• 42:04
  Or maybe you're. Not yeah, yeah.
• 42:05
  You don't feel like your ancestors are protecting you or
• 42:07
  watching over you. Maybe you're not giving them
• 42:09
  something good to watch over. Maybe you're living a life
• 42:12
  that's absolutely dishonorable and they can't stand to look at
• 42:15
  it. Takes a little self, you know,
• 42:17
  time to check and get yourself right.
• 42:20
  Be a good person. And that accountability is
• 42:25
  important. And that's, you know, it's lost
• 42:28
  a lot these days. People are expecting things just
• 42:32
  because, you know, and one of the things that Hillary has
• 42:35
  helped me learn is, is nothing comes to us from by
• 42:40
  happenstance. It's been woven, it's been
• 42:42
  poured into the well, it's been woven into the web.
• 42:46
  But those things that come to us have, have come to us for a
• 42:49
  reason. And we we don't attain anything
• 42:52
  by lack of doing anything. No, no, no, no.
• 42:54
  Got to work. You got to put your back into
• 42:57
  the ore. The ore won't do it for you.
• 42:59
  You got to paddle that. You got to make it happen.
• 43:02
  The gods won't do for you what you won't do for yourself.
• 43:04
  You know all that because I mean that, you know, yeah, New Orle,
• 43:08
  New York's out there doing what New York's doing.
• 43:10
  And if you're not steering, then you're going to go somewhere
• 43:12
  like you're going to get thrown, you know, whatever it's it's,
• 43:16
  you know, change your direction. You're likely to end up where
• 43:18
  you're headed. So be present about it and and
• 43:22
  show up as you say and and understand and expect that it's
• 43:25
  it ain't, you know, it ain't going to be easy.
• 43:28
  You talked earlier about rites of passage and how the tattoo is
• 43:34
  a like a modern way of, of symbolizing that, right, Because
• 43:38
  you can't get one until you're a certain age.
• 43:39
  Even if the guardian, you know, you won't let them get it.
• 43:42
  If if they if it's like kind of a bad idea.
• 43:44
  You can talk really about it before.
• 43:45
  I don't care tattoo on your face.
• 43:47
  I don't care if your Mama signs for it, right?
• 43:51
  And it got me thinking about, you know what the I, I didn't
• 43:55
  get tattoos. One of the reasons I never got
• 43:58
  tattoos early on in my life is because it was part of the thing
• 44:01
  that my family didn't agree with.
• 44:03
  So I grew up in a culture that was anti that.
• 44:07
  But once I decided to get one, it, it kind of opened this idea
• 44:11
  up to me is, is make them meaningful.
• 44:13
  And, and then don't just get them for the sake of, you know,
• 44:15
  I guess you can do whatever you want.
• 44:16
  And I'm sure you know, in the 20 plus years you've seen people
• 44:20
  coming in just because it's my birthday and I want a tattoo and
• 44:23
  they just pick something out of a.
• 44:24
  Little bit or whatever. But then you've also got the
• 44:26
  ones that come in and like, hey, I've been thinking about this
• 44:28
  for months or years or whatever. And this is I want you to do
• 44:32
  this so that right of passage and then you're going through
• 44:37
  the I would say the ordeal because I mean, it's, it's the
• 44:41
  needle etching into your you're feeling these things you're.
• 44:44
  Scared it hurts. You believe apprehension, you
• 44:48
  know, there's you know, the nerves like there's all these
• 44:50
  things that are happening and and what have I talked about so
• 44:52
  many times about what ordeal does is it is it breathes worth
• 44:56
  it? And so when you talk about rites
• 44:59
  of passage in any culture, I think you look back on, no
• 45:02
  matter if it's dramatic, Asiatic, that, you know,
• 45:06
  Hispanic, Latin told, whatever culture you want to look at over
• 45:08
  civilizations, like every civilization's rites of passage
• 45:12
  involves some sort of ordeal for adversity to put the child
• 45:16
  through, to understand now you are leaving this child behind
• 45:21
  and you are entering the space of men and women.
• 45:25
  You know, and that's interestingly a topic that's
• 45:29
  been brought up in the human community recently is how we
• 45:33
  don't have for children. You know it's sorely.
• 45:38
  Lacking and like I said, this is is one, but it's not the best.
• 45:42
  It just is 1 something that could like an example of a of
• 45:45
  something, but it makes you think about what that really
• 45:50
  means. It's, it's, you know,
• 45:51
  transitioning from a time of a person's life where they're
• 45:55
  relying on others to a time where now others are relying on.
• 45:59
  You when you see grown men that act like children's because they
• 46:01
  never transitioned. I never grew up still in that
• 46:07
  mindset. They didn't have that rite of
• 46:09
  passage. Yeah.
• 46:12
  And I'm thankful for, you know, very good.
• 46:15
  Little older than me, but the generation of children from,
• 46:20
  from my generation, we've kind of were on that last the cusp of
• 46:26
  like Gen. X to millennial, you know, so I,
• 46:29
  I grew up in a, in a, at a time where those Gen.
• 46:31
  X values were still kind of around for me.
• 46:36
  I worked on a farm for 11 years. I, you know, I had chores to do
• 46:40
  with my mom and dad and maybe mow the yard and take out the
• 46:43
  trash and, you know, do all these things.
• 46:45
  And if I was given an allowance, it was because I was doing all
• 46:48
  these things. It wasn't this just like, here's
• 46:50
  20 bucks for a week for living here and eating my food.
• 46:52
  Like, I'm sorry, what? Like, how is how does that work?
• 46:56
  You know, the kids these days really expect that they're just
• 46:59
  supposed to be given money to live.
• 47:01
  Unfortunately, I think they do, you know, and how does that set
• 47:04
  you up? For the, for the real world, you
• 47:05
  know? You go out and you you come to
• 47:08
  places like Greg's and you're like, just put this tattoo on me
• 47:11
  instead of maybe thinking about it and going, you know, what's
• 47:14
  this? What does this mean?
• 47:16
  How is this going to impact me for the rest of my life?
• 47:19
  You know, what am I doing with my life?
• 47:22
  Getting a shrimp on my ass, getting shrimps on their asses.
• 47:25
  That's what they're doing. Well, what else, Greg?
• 47:31
  Anything else that you had on your mind that you wanted to
• 47:33
  ramble about? Covered a lot of it.
• 47:37
  I'm sure I'll think of something lighter.
• 47:39
  I should have said that. But that's OK.
• 47:41
  We'll just have to get another tattoo and come down and do
• 47:43
  another one. There you go.
• 47:43
  There you go. All right.
• 47:45
  I know whatever. My wife needs a tattoo.
• 47:47
  She she's wanting a tattoo. So we'll just have to come back
• 47:49
  down and she gets she gets hers done and do another one.
• 47:54
  But yeah, you guys, again, all the stuff that you've seen up to
• 47:56
  this point throughout the episode, little clips, little
• 47:58
  segments, little behind the scene stuff from, from the chair
• 48:03
  at the table, however you want to call it, from, from the beat
• 48:05
  lavatory, you know, where the magic happens.
• 48:09
  Pictures and and content really just can't do justice.
• 48:12
  I, I, I said this to Greg off camera earlier that, you know,
• 48:15
  I've looked at all of his stuff and I was super impressed by
• 48:17
  your work. But seeing it in person, seeing
• 48:21
  it on my person, those pictures that they don't do it justice.
• 48:25
  Don't they ever? Do yeah.
• 48:26
  And I'll just I'll speak first hand that you know, you're
• 48:29
  looking for. And and I honestly think that
• 48:32
  because of the style that we did and the meaning behind it and
• 48:36
  how it speaks to you as as as another heathen, I think that
• 48:39
  power in that magic was invited to this piece.
• 48:42
  You know, like, again, anybody else could have done it and it
• 48:45
  wouldn't feel or mean the same thing to me.
• 48:47
  So as heathens, you know, these are the types of things that we
• 48:51
  think and that we feel. This is parts of part of our
• 48:53
  worldview, I think is as a large absolutely, you know, getting
• 48:58
  something done like this from somebody who thinks the same way
• 49:00
  and believes the same way definitely makes a difference.
• 49:06
  So I'm going to cherish this piece.
• 49:09
  You guys stay tuned because I'll I'll share I'm sure after a week
• 49:12
  or two when it heals up the the the healed version of it that
• 49:16
  you guys have already going to be seeing the right after the
• 49:19
  fact version of it. So come to Hazel green AL and
• 49:23
  see Greg. Tell him I sent you and he'll
• 49:26
  he'll he'll treat you well. You can message me on Facebook
• 49:30
  at free spirit tattoos. I'm very responsive that I'm
• 49:34
  also on Instagram as well. OK, great.
• 49:37
  So all of this stuff that you. Can find him on Social wise will
• 49:41
  be annotated in the show notes of the podcast or if you're
• 49:43
  watching this on Patreon down in the comments down in the
• 49:46
  description area. So if at the very least give
• 49:49
  them a follow show your support in that way.
• 49:52
  And again, we drove my wife, she drove us an hour and 40 minutes
• 49:56
  to come down here for this today.
• 49:58
  And I got no regrets or no regrets.
• 50:00
  No regrets. Don't forget to hit that like
• 50:03
  and subscribe for them. Yeah.
• 50:05
  You know, all those important things.
• 50:08
  So thank you all so very much for watching and listening
• 50:10
  today. Greg, thank you so much for
• 50:11
  being like yesterday and thank you for.
• 50:13
  Letting your guest here definitely, definitely.
• 50:16
  I have a great time. All right, folks.
• 50:18
  Well, until we talk to each other again, may the gods
• 50:20
  continue to notice you. May your ancestors smile upon
• 50:25
  you. The.