Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Treble clef tattoo on the ankle

Fine line · Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

A single black treble clef sits on the outer ankle of a bare leg, with the wearer's white lace-up canvas sneaker in the frame. The linework is clean and fairly thin, with solid black ink and no shading. The photo is taken from a low angle on a light wooden floor, and the tattoo is the main point of focus.

Fine line Ankle Treble clef 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

The steam organ at Hollins Green has been silent since the fair pulled in on Tuesday, and you are the only one who knows why. Your uncle Teodor keeps the pipes in a tin trunk under the dodgems tarpaulin, and the brass pins on the paper roll have gone soft at the edges. You sit on the running board with a torch in your teeth, reading the punched holes like a language nobody else in the family bothered to learn.

Keep reading

The roll is a hymn, or it was once. Every hole is a note, and the treble clef someone drew in the margin in green pencil is the only sign that tells you which way up to read it. Nobody has played it since the sixties. You trace the curl of the clef with your thumb and count the spacing between holes against the pitch of the tuning fork Teodor left in his coat, and the numbers keep refusing to become a tune.

On the Friday, the lads from the rides come to watch while rain settles over the car park. You have a bent sheet of card with the clef redrawn and the stave lines rubbed out, and you thread it through the spool by hand. The first note is a wheeze, then a wobble, and then the whole organ shudders and the bulbs on the carousel flicker on in order around the ring.

The tune is a waltz nobody in the crowd recognises, and that is the point. Teodor's cough comes from the caravan steps. He listens with his eyes closed and says the name of a village you have never seen. You close the trunk and let the last chord ring out over the wet grass, carrying as far as the fair has ever travelled.