“I am a very quiet and super-shy person,” says Dunn, now 60 and living in Berkeley. “I pretty much have always distilled what I had to say out loud down to using the least amount of words possible.” She started inscribing plates, bowls, mugs and vases with verbs like “dream,” “focus” and “begin” — monosyllabic aspirations for her own life.
I was surprised to see this in WaPo, published today, not 10 years ago. This stuff has been a laughing stock for years. I've seen TikToks that are just some young adult wandering around the family home pointing to the various words the mother has affixed to the wall and lined up on shelves and counters. WaPo is taking it seriously? Why? Because Dunn looks kind of cool at the potter's wheel and lives in Berkeley?
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Why?
Because "I found one person who agrees with my idea for a story"
Therefore "we".
I'll take "why are major news industry firms going out of business" for $200, Alex.
You know what would make this kind of word-decoration fun? Write it in Chinese! Which seems more fun? Dream or 夢? Focus or 集中? Begin or 開始? And there's a long tradition of writing out four-character maxims and hanging them on the wall. I actually don't have any on my wall myself, but I still have similar stuff. Growing up, we had a screen excerpting a passage about the Battle of Red Cliff and some miscellaneous Chinese poems I couldn't read; today I have hanging in my living room a set of four large scrolls with miscellaneous Ming-era advice on family life, done by my grandmother. I'm trying to remember whether any of our bowls or vases had words or maxims on them -- I think probably not, but some of them might say 福 (good fortune) or something in that vein on them.
Anyhow, it's more or less the same thing, but it's calligraphic art and traditional, so it seems less kitschy. At least to me.
“I pretty much have always distilled what I had to say out loud down to using the least amount of words possible.”
Or maybe the fewest ...
I had to go back and see when "Eat, Pray, Love" was published (2006) and the movie came out in 2010, starring everyone's favorite, Julia Roberts.
Gag me, did not pick up either one of em.
The protagonist and pseudo-religious attitude was perfect for the Obama era, and WaPo pines for those golden Obama Years, doncha know?!
That's my theory of why they dredge up this trunk of cuddly gunk.
Perhaps they just meant plate, bowl, mug, and vase are monosyllabic.
It could be Meade at that pottery wheel! He looks kind of cool and lives in Madison--the Berkeley of the Old Northwest. Just get him back to his early days, let him throw some stuff that says "Pups", "Paws", "Puparazzi", and...well..."Stuff", and he could become an icon.
Those one word decorative statements can be cloying or pretentious. Their worst flaw is their imposition of too much specificity in spaces that will often contain activities that are out of sync with the word.
Personally, I have had it with articles telling me that "we" do something or have some opinion.
Wapo didn't require me to sign up to read that. I have to wonder if it was actually an advertisement of sorts.
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