My tatau’s tapping into some strange and dark places
Tap, tap, tap . . . It’s the noise the tufuga’s mallet makes as he strikes his chisels dipped in ink, cutting a swathe across my body.
Made of sharp bone (or metal these days) combs attached to long sticks, the au ta come in a variety of sizes depending on the pattern the tufuga is working on. The sound varies in pitch depending on whether it’s soft flesh that the au is biting into, or hard bone.
It’s a sound that’s become the soundtrack to definitely the most painful, but also two of the most physically and mentally challenging weeks of my life.
Meeting script deadlines and pitching producers is going to be child’s play after this. They’ll always have to be good ideas, but after this I’m sure I can more easily turn down the volume on the self-debilitating fear.
These are the sort of thoughts that have raced through my head during my sessions in an attempt to do something – anything – to cope with the pain.
Tap, tap, tap . . .
When I ran into someone with a pe’a I would ask them what it was like. And they would say nothing, instead getting a far-off look in their eyes.
I know why now. It’s the look that says no amount of explaining could ever prepare you for what’s to come. All strategy goes out the window once you’re lying there held down by the tufuga’s assistants and that first au bites into your skin.
The challenge is to lie absolutely still and completely relaxed while getting your tatau, and to never let your thoughts reach the point where you want to quit or just die.
In the course of a session your head can go to the strangest places – things you’ve long buried or tried to forget; the important people in your life; incidents that you’ve long forgotten; even wrongs that you’ve committed.
Sometimes I visualise that albino priest on The Da Vinci Code and treat the pain as punishment for my many and varied sins. Other times, I’m focusing on my breathing and just holding on for dear life.
A humble garage has been the perfect place for me to come and suffer like this. I’ve memorised just about every square inch, every window curtain pattern and every crack in the wall in here.
That’s one of the things that helps. Every strategy for coping works to a certain extent, then you have to move on to something – anything – that will get you through.
Everybody there knows what you’re going through, and all do what they can to help you through – from making jokes, to singing songs, to telling stories.
Mid-week I received a boost when the king of my Dad’s village Faleatiu pops in – New Zealand’s most devastating boxer ever – David Tua.
That’s blessing enough for me. Tap, tap, tap . . .
The designs are decorative motifs and patterns symbolic to Samoa’s past and present. Some are unique to the tufuga, some are the same that have been tattooed on Samoans for thousands of years. When I’m finished, I’ll sit down with the tufuga and he can fully explain everything.
As hard as these two weeks have been, the real work starts when it’s finished. The tattoo is just a symbol that you’ve been through the pain. It’s the memory of the pain that will sustain you. There’s no way you’d want to go through all of this, for it to mean nothing. But all that’s to come.
I’ve been thinking for the past fortnight that I just had to get through that tapping. And, for me, that tapping finally finished yesterday.