“There is something utterly magical in knowing that almost 200 people have different pieces of the same poem on their body. We walk around with them every day: wake up, shower, smoke, whatever. When people ask us what it means and we say ‘the Boulder Tattoo Project,’ we summon each other, even the strangers, to that very place. We are a part of something now that has never been before. Something nameless and desirable. Something dynamic and impermanent. Yet it will stay stationary in our skin for the rest of our lives.
The line that begins with ‘largemouth’: ‘largemouth bass got lucky, and then not so.’ I can’t begin to explain my relationship with this sentiment, so I will let it speak for itself. It applies. What I can speak is the writing that it has inspired me to do, most importantly this:
largemouth laugh trapped in tattoos
I’m always late for everything. And when I arrive, it’s in a shuffle and it’s distracting and annoying for everybody else. I had known about the Boulder Tattoo Project since its conception, seen many of my friends get their phrases, and my response was always just, ‘cool.’ Then one day, mid-November, I got out of Yoga class and my body said to me ‘it’s time.’ I called Claw and Talon and asked what phrases they had left. My choices were ‘the’ and ‘largemouth.’ Initially, I chose ‘the,’ which I was going to get on my finger as a sort of continual semiotics lesson for myself. Then I got to the store and read Boulder Zodiac and saw why I couldn’t get ‘the.’ I had to be LARGEMOUTH. It’s the first word in the Pisces stanza, my birthday is 2/22—I am a mammalian pisces, 1 dolphin chasing its own tail or 2 dolphins playing catch-up. It was the last noun left and it was (is) for me. I’ve been on stage since I was five, always able to fill any space with my voice. I chatter. I can’t contain myself around people and end up blurting out a story that doesn’t matter. You can hear my laugh from blocks away.”
Elanor Tisch’s “largemouth”
The Boulder Tattoo Project 