LIke A Spinning Tattoo

OK, I admit it:  I'm a cultural cretin.  I just don't get it.

While dining recently at a Hudson Valley restaurant nicer than I have any business being in, the table nearby was filled with a group of 4 young women apparently celebrating a birthday.  They, too, appeared to be dining over their heads -- we surmised on the largess of Daddy's credit card.

Itt wasn't, however, their animated and giddy chatter that caught my attention, nor their perky attractiveness, but rather the narrative tattooed behind the right shoulder of the one seated with her back to us.  the cursive, multi-line script was sort of underlined by the upper hem of her crop-top dress -- one that had to have been carefully chosen to complement the tattoo.

Now, one might think me voyeuristic to pay this much attention to a young woman's shoulder, but I had never seen a tattoo version of War and Peace, or at least what looked from a distance like it could be, and I was curious to see what it actually read.  Besides, it appeared that the young woman wanted her shoulder to be read, and I was curious enough to oblige.  I wasn't alone.  I noticed one of the waiters conveniently and discreetly positioned to study the shoulder of one of the other women at the table who was similarly inscribed.  And ultimately I didn't have to stare; the tattoo was amazingly precise and the text sufficiently large to take the epigram in at a glance:

"And this just feels like spinning plates."

OK.  And...what am I supposed to do with that?  I understand the general reference.  I remember watching, years ago, various plate spinning entertainers ply their craft on the Ed Sullivan Show, and I have used the image often enough to describe the fairly common realities of work.  But I haven't tattooed it on my shoulder, and I'm not 24 years old. 

It's not that I disapprove.  First of all, it's none of my business.  Second of all, while I've never understood the whole tattoo intrigue, I figure a person's skin is her and her own to do with as they wish.  I'll keep mine clear, thank you, but decorate yours all you want.

But "this just feels like spinning plates"?  What about that is something you want to keep reminding yourself of for the rest of your life?

Back home, the puzzlement still scratching at me, I had the thought that the phrase must be a fragment of something more.  Typing it into Google, the confirmation quickly popped on to the screen.  The quote turns out to be the seminal line from a song by the British band Radiohead.  I read the entire set of lyrics online and still didn't get it.  Locating the CD at the library yesterday I sat very still and listened very carefully to the track.  Several times.  I got back online and read several fan comments and interpretations and descriptions of the enigmatic composition that sounds to me like the Muzak elevator version of a dentist drill.  And after all this research and contemplation, I can now definitively say...

...I just don't get it.

I haven't a clue as to what about this song or this line would so inspire this woman to want to keep it with her always.  But I can say that it doesn't bode well for the future.  If she feels that frenzied and fatigued -- and just a little cynical -- at her age, I hate to think what she might inscribe on the other shoulder when the plates really do get to spinning and tilting and threatening to fall off the pole about 30 years older.