Truisms outside of their native environment. What I like about Jenny Holzer's work is that each sign, each pencil, each fortune inscribed on a paper weight is a commodity that speaks, or seems to, even when it has only platitudes to offer. It is about messages and the things with which we imbue them. When collected in one space, however, as they are here or on the printed poster, it loses the feeling of fetish - i.e. an object that speaks to you.
In college a writing instructor gave me a pencil inscribed with one of the truisms, and I regret that I no longer have it, nor can I really recall it; it may have been "You are guileless in your dreams" which echoes or is echoed by "Innocent When You Dream" from Frank's Wild Years by Tom Waits.
