CHICAGO
BOOKING 3/21 and 3/23
There are days the lake is an ocean, white capped and cold. I walk at the edge of the trucked-in sand and hold myself against the wind, dodging the rolling water at my feet. What I see are seiches, standing waves that form in a contained body of water. It’s not a tide or a weather event, just movement; the physics are the same in Lake Michigan as they are in my bathtub.
There is an initial force, my hand or wind or the pressure from a storm system, which disturbs the water. They call the crest and basin that form harmonics. A high and low point in sync, the seiche maintains equilibrium in the water. It holds the energy from displacement; the lake is a system in balance.
The impulse from the initial force travels across the entire lake and is then reflected back, generating interference as it travels. Repeated reflections continually produce standing waves, resonating, slowly losing height and depth, and finally dissipating.
In a lake as large as this one, you don’t see all that when you’re standing on the shore. You see the chaos of hundreds of impulses reflected, reflecting one another, bounding and pulsing. The waves are harmonics and the lake is dissonance.
The chaos maintains itself with a steadiness, ultimately showing itself to me as the gentle wave lapping on the beach, rhythmic and soft.
Seiches caused by pressure will mimic a tide. The massive wave will take the entire length of the lake, resonating over and over, slow and unmovable.
When I sit by the shore I can see the rise and fall as neutral. When the shoreline pulls away, I know it will come back. But in the thick of it, body in the water, my head rings. I hurl myself at each crest. The waves are standing, the body is vast, and all I can do is tread water.
Some days I want to hold the grief in my hand. I think if I could it would make sense, this small pool. I’d stare at it and I’d understand it, hold it, feel it, this thing born from me. Some days I get close, cupping it in my palms before it slips through my fingers, hitting the surface and spreading itself out again farther than I can follow. I don’t recognize it when it comes bounding back to me.
And then, spring comes. Warm, high pressure air systems quiet each seiche, the lake finally rocks itself still.
If I try, I can float- just barely. The top half of my body seems to hang by a thread. I clench my muscles and sink like a rock. I float, holding my breath. The water holds my weight.
A cycle begins and ends. I forget and I remember. I swim in the white capped water like it can’t hold me, like I can fight my way out of it all. Like clockwork I’m reminded, this is it. All of it.
This basin of echoes, cup of sound, these waves loud and long. I feel each seiche start to crest and fall beneath me; I let it. I know I’ll forget, become the swimmer again. The cycles are many and layered.
There’s nothing to do but let it ring.
Books are open for a few days in Chicago, for the final leg of this little winter series- more info through the booking link below.
I will only be tattooing water abstracts here. These are ideally arm and leg placements, fully wrapping, with heavy areas of black and some repeating elements. We’ll have a video consultation beforehand and I’ll come prepared with some designs for us based on that to create a piece with together. Ideally you are comfortable with freehanding. This piece, though much larger, is an inspiration and starting place for these.
You’re receiving this email because you’re on my Chicago specific mailing list from forever ago- if that no longer applies, feel free to remove yourself or rejoin the general/not-place-specific mailing list through my website! This will be my last email for a little while I think, so I promise it’s not spammy <3
-Jude