It’s day 25 and I am REALLY starting to run out of ideas. While I was brushing my teeth tonight at 11:30 p.m., staring into the mirror, I wondered what kind of “creativity” I could conjure up before I went to bed.
That’s when I noticed it — the hideous, black “club stamp” on the back on my right hand. But wait, there’s another one on my left hand.
It made me realize that every time we go out to a night club, we get “branded.” We offer them our skin, and they press on an identity. It’s no big deal, but it embeds itself in our lives. It evolves as we do: smudges as we get sweaty, prickles as we get clean, fades away as we forget.
When we wake up in the morning, groggy, hungover, it’s often the first thing we see that reminds us of the evening before. And, it tells everyone we see: “Yes, I was out last night.” Stamps or tattoos on the hands and wrists have a long history — most are not pleasant.
It’s crazy that I am stamped nearly every weekend and I barely even think about it. For the creativity project tonight, I took a photograph of my hand. I then looked on Flickr for similar images — there were maybe a dozen or so, but not many. Some very unique club stamps are documented, as are some random ones taken by photographers post-hangover. I’ve mixed my stamp in with the Flickr stamps from above — see if you can identify my stamp.
Day #25 — done!
Steph Yiu 