Performance → Presence

An interview with Mark Nara, by Alexander Illiad

This post is part of an ongoing Q&A series. Thirty questions in total exploring themes of initiation, identity, meaning, and transformation.

Each one stands alone, but together they map a deeper conversation I’ve been guiding for years through Tattoo Pathway.

Rather than polished essays or formal teachings, these responses reflect the way things actually unfold in dialogue.

The first question started with a dream. You can go back to it here if you want to see where this began.

Question 6 (AI):

So much of our world today is built on distraction, performance, and short-term gratification. What does it really mean to live with intention? and how do you begin?

Answer (MN):

Let’s start by unpacking those words. Distraction, Performance, and Short-term Gratification.

Distraction is what pulls our attention away from something meaningful. It’s what moves us away from where we’re anchored. So if we think about anchoring our awareness, our presence, then distraction is drift. It’s surface movement. It’s letting the current take us.

In that sense, Intention is a form of navigating the currents. It’s the oar or rudder. Where your attention goes, your life follows. Attention is also the scope of intention.

I’ve been thinking lately about the difference between folklore and mythology. Both are stories, both carry narrative. Narrative, of course, is how we construct reality. But folklore entertains. It teaches at a surface level, often to children. It orients, but lightly.

Mythology, though, that’s something else. Mythology educates at the deepest level. It refines. It distills. It gathers the archetypal truths of thousands of stories and presents them not just as fables, but as tools for survival. Tools for meaning. Tools for life.

Distraction, then, is what pulls us from myth into mere entertainment. From important to interesting. From initiation into endless consumption. From rooted time into constant scrolling.

Performance is the next layer. It’s the outward enactment of something. It’s not inherently distracting although it can be. Performance, when framed in ritual or ceremony, can become sacred. It becomes a re-enactment of pattern. Of meaning. Of cosmic order. But most performance today is untethered. It’s performance for approval. Performance for applause. Performance as identity.

That leads us to Short-term gratification, which is the result of those two forces. Distraction and Performance, playing together. It’s their relationship dynamic. It’s shallow reward. Quick dopamine. A hit, then emptiness. And it’s no surprise that our culture is full of it. Because meaning takes time. Meaning needs stillness. Meaning asks us to be uncomfortable.

Living with intention begins with resisting those tides. It begins with anchoring attention, deciding where and how to place your energy. It requires self-responsibility. It requires weight and substance.

Intentional living is like casting an anchor deliberately. You choose to drop beneath the surface. You choose to engage with what is real. You choose to ask: Why am I doing this? What is it for? Who is it for?

In tattooing, I’ve watched the difference between short-term gratification and long-term meaning play out on skin. Most people today come in knowing what they want, where they want it, and when they want it. They want a tattoo that confirms who they think they already are. A tattoo used as initiation isn’t about that. It’s not about adding layers. It’s about removing them. About being introduced to something you don’t know yet.

True initiation never satisfies immediately. In fact, it often feels uncomfortable. Because it places a weight on you. A responsibility. A role. It asks you to live up to something, not just reflect back what you already are.

This is where the absence of elders really shows. In traditional initiation, there was a community waiting for you on the other side. A structure. A story. But now, people are trying to initiate themselves. Often alone, often without language or context.

And yet, something beautiful is happening. In this disoriented age, those who are paying attention are starting to walk a new path. These self-initiatory steps, these conversations, these questions. They’re feet softly pressing down the blades of grass on the new track.

In a future that may be overrun with data or stripped entirely of relevance, what will remain is the pattern. The archetypal story. The sacred cycle. That’s what needs to be restored, not as nostalgia, but as navigation. Not as a return, but as a re-becoming.

And intention is where that begins.

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