Semioticians analyze symbols, so for this series, we’ve asked 25 of our semio colleagues from around the world to explicate the symbolism of… one of their own tattoos.

In the early to mid-1980s, I was into punk, New Wave, and alt rock. I didn’t grow up in a household where we ever listened to “classic rock,” as rock from the ’60s and ’70s came to be called around that time… except for the Beatles, of course. During those years, I developed an abiding interest in Paul McCartney’s post-Beatles oeuvre, plus the Velvet Underground, the Modern Lovers, the Beach Boys, and Black Sabbath… but I was (and mostly remain) indifferent to the Stones, The Who, Aerosmith, Pink Floyd, Fleetwood Mac, The Eagles, et al. Worse, I was (and mostly remain) scornful of members of my generational cohort who deeply love that music. I think of them as misguided, “Boomer-identified” generational victims.

But then I was introduced to the majesty and mystery of Led Zeppelin! Jimmy Page’s guitar work (aggressive, heavy; yet also delicate, folk-inflected), Robert Plant’s vocals (ethereal, expressive; yet raw, wailing), John Bonham’s drumming (groove-heavy; yet precise)… this was for me a quasi-religious revelation. I spent many hours during my freshman year in college sprawled on the floors of darkened dorm rooms, guided by Led Zep through sensory-rich landscapes, from eldritch forests to the far edges of the galaxy. It was never solely about psychedelic thrills, though, for me. Like T.W. Adorno, who discovered in Schoenberg’s formal experimentation an aesthetic antidote, of sorts, to society’s reified consciousness, the tensions in Led Zeppelin’s music provided inspiration. My (ongoing) intellectual quest for negative-dialectical notions of the self, truth, and right action in the world found its embodied counterpart in Zep’s cathartic music.

The summer before my sophomore year, my friend Flareball persuaded me to accompany him across the Massachusetts border to New Hampshire, where it was legal to get a tattoo. I toted my copy of Physical Graffiti — which I’d often listen to, for the entirety of its 82 minutes, before getting out of bed on a Sunday — from Boston’s Jamaica Plain to the South End, where my friend Alice traced the logo of Zep’s Swan Song label for me. On this album one will find an adaptation of the traditional blues song “In My Time of Dying,” which features the lyrics “Meet me, Jesus, meet me / Meet me in the middle of the air. / If my wings should fail me, Lord, / Please meet me with another pair.” The logo’s winged, falling figure was adapted from an 1869–70 artwork (Evening, or Fall of Day) that hangs in Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. Whether this figure is supposed to be Apollo or Icarus, or perhaps Lucifer, doesn’t matter; for me, it’s a permanent reminder of what Led Zeppelin’s music signifies. And it’s a memento of who I was, and what mattered most to me, at that time.

Later, I’d pore over Harold Bloom’s writing on clinamen, or poetic misprision — an ironic interpretive move wherein a poet creates, by a corrective movement or “swerve,” a sense that their precursor was on the right track… but only up to a point. Bloom points us toward the Epicurean philosopher Lucretius, for whom the atomic “swerve” is what makes change possible in a static universe. He also uses Milton’s falling angel as a model: Though our actions may be predetermined, while rushing towards our fate we can at the very least “swerve.” Heady stuff! Which served to super-charge, for me, the meaning of my tattoo.

While visiting Memphis, Tenn. — during my junior year in college — I spent an hour in a flotation tank tucked away in the back of my friend Sherman’s record shop, Shangri-La. Nothing happened until I raised my hands over my head, arching my back and bending my knees in order to fit within the tank’s tight confines. Now a babble of competing voices emerged in my head, then faded away; I understood these to be the conflicting imperatives of my superego and id, normally mediated and suppressed by my ego. That entire psychic apparatus melted away… yet something remained. This was a consciousness at once amused and sympathetic, detached and involved. Exiting the tank, I showered and dried myself off — wondering all the while about that alluring presence I’d discovered with myself, the “I” above / behind / beneath both my conscious and unconscious self. In the bathroom mirror, I caught sight of my tattoo. I’d adopted that exact posture in the tank! The engaged-ironic consciousness with which I now identify? It’s my inner angel.

TATTOO YOU: Nicola Zengiaro (Italy) on CORAL OF LIFE | Su Luo (Taiwan) on AN ISLAND, A TREE | Thierry Mortier (Sweden) on LIJFSPREUKEN | Cristina Voto (Italy) on JELLYFISH | Charles Leech (Canada) on SURF WAVES | Mariane Cara (Brazil) on BECOMING’S TRIAD | Chris Martin (Canada) on PUNK ROCK HEART | Angie Meltsner (USA) on ENJOY EVERY SANDWICH | Samuel Grange (France) on POLYMORPHOUS | Inka Crosswaite (Germany) on LAYERED FRAGMENT | Al Deakin (England) on FAMILY STAR | Hibato Ben Ahmed (France) on HENNA HAND | Max Matus (Mexico) on KALINGA REDOX | Whitney Dunlap Fowler (USA) on IN THE UNTETHERED | Chirag Mediratta (India) on THE SONG OF THE BUTTERFLY | Alexandra Ncube (England) on LIMINAL ROOTS | Josh Glenn (USA) on FALLING ANGEL | Aarushi Chadha (India) on PART-TIME PEOPLE PERSON | Serdar Paktin (Turkey/UK) on RESISTANCE & SURRENDER | Tatiana Jaramillo (Colombia/Italy) on EMBERÁ BLACKOUT | Antje Weißenborn (Germany) on FADED STAR | Sundari Sheldon (USA) on SUN | Roberta Graham (England) on SUNFLOWER/GUNMETAL.

Also see these global semio series: MAKING SENSE (Q&As) | SEMIOFEST SESSIONS (monthly mini-conferences) | COVID CODES | SEMIO OBJECTS | COLOR CODEX | DECODER (fictional semioticians) | CASE FILE | PHOTO OP | MEDIA DIET | TATTOO YOU (semioticians’ tattoos).