Black ink tattoo of a treble clef and bass clef over a wavy music staff, with script lettering reading music is the sound of life, on the upper back.

Treble and bass clefs with script quote on back

Lettering · Back · Black and grey · Photo

The design shows a large treble clef and bass clef sitting over a ribbon-like musical staff, with two dots beside the bass clef. Curved script lettering reading music is the sound of life arcs around the left side of the clefs. The tattoo is rendered in solid black ink with clean outlines and no shading, and it sits against plain pale skin on the upper back.

Lettering Back Treble clef Bass clef Music staff Musical note Script Quote Music

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit down, lad, you're letting the draught in. Not that chair, that's Dennis's, and he'll have your ears off. Here. Now, you asked why I still carry this great lump of wood up the stairs to the Mechanics' Institute at my age, and I'll tell you, but you'll have to hold the stand steady while I do.

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Nineteen fifty-eight, Calder Vale Silver Band was short a cornet and long on opinions. Our conductor, a Mr Haworth with a waxed moustache and hands like coal shovels, put a sheet of manuscript on my stand and said the bass line was mine now, because I was the only one who could count to four without moving my lips. I'd never read a bass clef in my life. He drew one for me on the back of a fish-and-chip wrapper, a hook with two fat dots beside it, and said, 'That's where the floor is, Thomas. Everything else sits on top of it.'

That's the thing nobody tells you. The treble sings and the bass holds the house up, and a band with no bottom is just a noise in a shed. My mother had a saying stitched on a cushion in the front room, music is the sound of life, in curly letters copied off a calendar, and I thought it was soppy until the winter my brother Frank was laid up with his chest. We stood under his window on the cold cobbles and played the Londonderry Air through the frost. He couldn't speak by then, but I saw his fingers tapping the sill in time.

So that's why. Somebody has to be the floor. Now pass me that tuning fork and mind the stand, because the second half is in four flats and Dennis is already sulking.