I read somewhere about the old art of tattoo in Japan
How some would have their whole body covered with ink
even though they knew it would eventually kill them because the pores of the skin have to be able to breathe
and when you fill them all up like that you starve the body of oxygen
and you slowly die.
And so they would die, and then they would be skinned and their skin would be mounted and shown as a piece of art on a wall.

When I sing all my favorite songs on a stage somewhere there’s gonna be songs I learned when I was a kid, and there’s gonna be new songs about people I knew when I was a kid, and everything in between, like a diary, like I’m reading my diary to you, and it gets a little longer over time, and some of the old stuff becomes more meaningful as the days go by and things happen, and on a night like tonight I’ll sing some old song but it will suddenly surprise me with a brand new meaning and it’ll catch in my throat and I’ll have to try not to show it and try not to let my throat tighten up and make my voice sound pinched and weird and I’ll just try to act natural and tell myself to straighten up while I’m trying to relax my throat muscles and think of something else even while I’m saying words that now mean a lot more than they did the last time I sang them. Then the next night, it’ll still be strange and hard but a little less rocky and then over time it’ll just become a new tattoo, like a piece of art that costs a lot and probably gets me a little closer to the grave. And in the end, I guess you can skin me and hang me on your wall, and at least I will have made something of myself.....