Black ink drawing of a tattoo design showing a musical staff ribbon forming a heart, with a treble clef, notes, stars and the words Music is Life.

Music staff heart with treble clef and script

Lettering · Black and grey · Flash

A pen and ink drawing of a design where musical staff lines curl around a heart shape, with a treble clef at the top and notes scattered along the ribbons. The words Music is Life are written in flowing script across the lower staff, with small stars around the edges. The linework is dark and even, with light grey pencil shading on the ribbons and a plain white background.

Lettering Music Heart Music staff Treble clef Musical note Star Ribbon Script Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit down, the lot of you, and mind the kettle, because this is the bit where Mabel Greaves throws a fiddle into the Kennet. Nineteen twelve, and the narrowboat Lark lay tied under the willows below Hungerford lock. Arthur had gone to the cattle sales with the week's takings sewn into his waistcoat, and Mabel had three hours of quiet, which was two more than she wanted.

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She spent them copying out a tune her mother used to hum over the tiller. There were no proper staves in the cabin, so she ruled her own on the back of a seed catalogue with a brass rule she had borrowed from the lock keeper and never given back. Every bar came out crooked, the notes sliding down the page like eels off a hook. She gave up on the ruling, pinned the paper to the cabin door, and let the damp curl it round the chimney. By dusk the lines had wrapped the stovepipe twice, and a heron was standing on the minims as if it had paid for a seat.

Arthur came home at dark, full of cheap cider and good news about the price of heifers. He found the paper, read it upside down, and called it rubbish. Mabel took the fiddle off its hook and drew one long bow across the cabin, a scrape so raw and true that the kettle stopped singing. Arthur sat down on the step and didn't say a word, which in thirty years had never happened before.

In the morning the tune was still there, pencilled in soot on the cabin roof where the rain had not reached. Underneath it Mabel had written music is life in her best copperplate, with a row of stars around the edge to keep the heron honest. Arthur never learned to read a note, but he could hum the whole thing back to her before the kettle boiled.