Black lettering tattoo on the inner forearm reading WORDS FAIL, with the line MUSIC SPEAKS inverted beneath it, in a plain sans-serif typeface.

Words fail, music speaks lettering on forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a forearm near the wrist carrying two lines of black sans-serif capital lettering. The upper line reads WORDS FAIL and the lower line, MUSIC SPEAKS, is printed upside down relative to the viewer. The ink is solid black on light skin, with a plain background and soft, even lighting.

Lettering Forearm Word Music Quote Text

Find an artist for this

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

Dear Nell,

Keep reading

The lock-keeper at Ferrin's Cut has taken to calling me the silent bargee, which I suppose is fair, since I have said perhaps forty words to him since Tuesday. I have been practising the sentence you asked for, the one about the boat and the flood and why I left, and every time I get as far as the kettle it goes clean out of my head. So I am writing instead, which you will say is cowardice, and you will be right.

Dad's fiddle is under the bunk where it has been since the funeral. Last night I took it out, tuned it by ear because the pegs have gone stiff, and played the slow air he always did when the tow-line snapped or a customer short-changed him. It came out sour in two places. He would have laughed. I held your last letter up to the lamp and read it twice, then turned it over, and it was the wrong way up, which is how I read most of what you send, squinting, half sure of the sense.

Here is the thing I meant to say. Words fail me when it matters, Nell. They always did. Dad could never say he was sorry, so he tuned my violin instead, every Sunday, until I could hear the difference between a true note and a near one. Music speaks where I can't. I think that was all the apology I was ever going to get, and I took it.

Come up to the boat at Easter if you can. I will have the stove going and the fiddle out, and you can tell me whatever you like, and I will try to listen the right way up.

Tom