Black script lettering reading 'Music is an outburst of the soul' beside a large treble clef, drawn as a tattoo-style design with no body part shown.

Treble clef with 'Music is an outburst of the soul'

Lettering · Black and grey · Flash

A large black treble clef sits on the left, with the words 'Music is an outburst of the soul' written in flowing script that wraps around it. The design uses solid black ink with clean, even linework on a plain white background. It is a flat, centred composition with no shading or colour, and no body part is visible.

Lettering Music Treble clef Quote Script Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Pallas had been boring holes in the tortoise shell since the lamp burned low, and his thumbs ached from the rasp. The shell had come from a dead animal bought at the harbour market in Piraeus, scraped in vinegar until it lay pale and thin as a fingernail. He had built seven lyres that year and sold four. The fifth, the one on the bench now, was for a girl named Thaïs who had come twice to ask whether it was ready, and who never once looked at the instrument, only at the window where the sun came in.

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He ran a finger along the crossbar, then tightened the first gut string until it hummed. The note was thin and not quite right. His master had told him that a maker should tune not to his own ear but to the ear the thing would be heard by. So he waited with his eyes shut and let the market noise fall away: the donkeys, a fishmonger shouting prices, the slap of wet nets. Something rose in his chest that had no words for it. He plucked the string again, harder, and the sound that came out surprised him.

When Thaïs came at dusk he did not explain the tuning. He handed her the lyre and told her to strike it however she liked. She held it awkwardly, like a child holding a bird, then drew the pick across all the strings in one rush of noise. It was not a melody. It was breath pushed out through wood. She laughed, and her face changed, and Pallas understood that this was what the instrument was for. Not the song, but the escape of something that had pressed against the ribs all day.

She paid him in two bronze obols and left the lyre on the bench. After she had gone, Pallas picked it up, swept the shavings into a pile with the side of his hand, and played one chord into the empty shop until the lamp guttered and went out.