Twenty Six Slippery Words

There are words that often seem to leap from my grasp. I promise this is not the early stages of dementia, as some of them (impetigo, celadon) have been escaping me for decades. Sometimes these words come to me without hesitation, during conversation. Other times, they stick tenaciously to the tip of my tongue. A few years ago, I catalogued these words in the Notes app on my phone.¹ I thought that listing the words would help me remember them. It did not. So, here is another attempt: a short story including all twenty-six words and phrases.

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I arrived early at the art center to spend a few hours working with clay. This is my escape. I’m no artist, just a craftsman. My best creations are ones I copy from real artists. I work exclusively on the wheel – hand building requires too much talent. I’ve been doing ceramics on and off for 44 years. I developed a serious crush on my ceramics teacher in 9^th grade and enrolled every year of high school.² By graduation, I was hooked.

As I entered the ceramics studio, I donned my ceramics hat, a baseball cap with a “Santa Clay” logo. This cap is kind of a shibboleth, letting those in the know understand that I am both a potter and a fan of the Southwest. I wedged some clay, sat down at my wheel, and got to work. Almost immediately, my friend Doris wandered over.

I love talking to Doris, but I also recognize she is bad for me. I waste a lot of time talking to her; she gossips incessantly and compliments me continuously. This is what keeps me from quitting her altogether. She presented me with a new type of bat system for the wheel. I knew immediately it was a specious product, not only because this friend is reliably fallacious but because her recommendations tend to be pernicious, with ill effects only recognized with time. She is not a truly nefarious character, she is just not trustworthy. There have been times I have considered giving her absolute crap recommendations just for the sake of reciprocity.

I love working on the wheel. I can sometimes lapse into solipsistic thinking, but when I have my hands in clay, I know there is a world outside my mind.

After creating a few espresso cups (our home supply had fallen below three dozen, dangerously low), I moved into the glaze room. I headed over to the shinos and celadons, glazes I love, even if I can’t remember their names. While ceramic outcomes are predominantly random, glazing encourages and rewards deliberate practice.

Bob soon entered the glaze room, thus letting me know that the rapture had yet to occur. I’m a bit of a contrarian and Bob is so damn honorable that I always leave our meetings feeling like a terrible person. Bob launched into one of his monologues about the state of the world. I do respect him, but his moral vanity often irks me. I love to imagine an equally self-righteous person looking back on his views in 100 years and judging him harshly. At least I was happy to see that his chronic impetigo had resolved.

Bob usually works on giant, self-indulgent sculptures of great figures from the world’s religions. He poses multiple figures in ways that make them appear to be in civil discourse. The central conceit here is that if we could just listen to each other, we would all get along. I appreciated the first one of his pieces, but after 60 more, each explained to anyone willing to listen, I now understand that his art is just virtue signaling.

My opinion of his work is subjective, but given how long I have done ceramics, it is an informed subjectivity. To wit, it is terrible. Bob thinks his pieces are realistic despite outrageous errors of scale, e.g., fingers larger than heads. His admiration for his work might be an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect. He is truly “unskilled and unaware of it.” It is amusing to watch Bob examine some of the sculptures Olivia produces in the studio. Olivia seems to have been touched by the hand of God. The cognitive dissonance one appreciates in Bob when he, convinced of his talent, looks at Olivia’s perfections in clay, is a wonder to behold.

The piece I was glazing was meant to suggest reverse skeuomorphic design. I was creating a perfect replica of an iPhone 15. While I was working on this piece, first Doris, then Olivia, and then Bob came to discuss it. After talking about the iPhone that much, its very name seemed to have lost all meaning. I repeated it a few more times, reaching the vaporous realm of semantic satiation.

Bob wandered over once again to show me a fired, but apparently unglazed, vase. I asked him if that was what he intended, and he noted that he had glazed it. He wondered if some sort of sublimation had taken place where the solid glaze skipped the liquid phase, turning into a gas and disappearing from the pot. We both stared quietly at the vase for a few minutes.

When the silence got too uncomfortable, Bob, who knows I am an EBM enthusiast, asked if he should get the new shingles vaccine. He had heard it reduced the risk of dementia. I groaned. He said, “Come on, you can’t possibly doubt that result. I heard it on NPR AND The New York Times.” I thought about just sending him my Sensible Medicine article, but instead, I patiently explained my objection.

“Are you troubled that they did not use propensity matching?” he asked.

“No, it was really a natural experiment; they did not need to match.”

“Did you buy the process measures?”

“I did. It was impressive that 47% of the younger patients got the Shingrix vaccine vs. basically none of the older group.” Worried that he might think I was a unique type — antivax, conservative, South Sider, potter — I had to get the last word in. “Wherever you come down on the study, you should definitely get the vaccine.”

As I left the studio, I noticed two people standing outside, both texting on iPhone 15s. It seems like I have been seeing these devices a lot recently. Then again, it could just be the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon.

1. I have lots of lists on my phone. I expect they’ll be a source of pieces for this Substack.

2. I’m kind of embarrassed to admit that I submitted slides of my pottery with my college applications.