Black and grey fine line tattoo of three staves of sheet music with the word Unlimited between them, placed on the upper back.

Sheet music tattoo across the upper back

Fine line · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A black and grey tattoo of three staves of sheet music, with treble and bass clefs, notes, beams and ties drawn in fine, even linework. The word Unlimited is written in small letters between the top and middle staves, split into syllables. The design sits on the upper back and is photographed straight on in monochrome, with the staves filling most of the frame.

Fine line Back Sheet music Musical note Treble clef Bass clef Staff Lettering Word

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The piano in the back room of the Fenwick Arms had been tuned by a man who hated sharps, so every chord you played came out with a faint grievance in it. You learned to live with that. You sat at it on Thursday nights after the dinner crowd had gone, when Mrs Adeyemi wiped down the bar and pretended not to listen, and you played the same four bars of the nocturne until your left hand ached. The copy on the stand was pencilled in three hands. Someone had written Unlimited over the top stave in capitals, then crossed it out, then written it again smaller, as if the word had been argued over.

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The bass line was the hard part. The notes sat low and close together, and the ties looped over them like the stitches on a sleeve. One Thursday the lamp buzzed and you stopped, and Mrs Adeyemi came in with two mugs and set one on the lid of the piano without a word. She had sung in a choir in Lagos before she came to Hull, she said, and she had a rule: never stop in the middle of a phrase, even if the room is empty. Let the next note carry you.

You played the phrase through to the double bar that night, badly, and when you lifted your hands the room was so quiet you could hear the tide turning out past the harbour wall. Mrs Adeyemi raised her mug to you. You didn't finish the nocturne for another month. But you never again stopped in the middle of a bar.