Further musings on Lynn’s Facebook ranting:
(I look past her usual topics – the proper nature of our governance and commerce – and get right down to the literary implications of her – the culture’s – forms.)

Among the emerging forms of poetry at present are two short forms, the status and the tweet. Between these forms, the character limit is is quite different: the tweet cannot exceed 140 characters. The Facebook status update, on the other hand, allows the publication of 63,206 characters. That is, by my reckoning, only a ‘short’ form if one is a Stephen King or a Shelby Foote. One can, as one wag on her blog points out, share multiple copies of the US Constitution in that capacious box. Please; don’t do it, though. The status and the tweet, as Lynn surmises, are not limited by merely technical confinement; (one is, the other much less so). They are limited by the popular estimation of what they ought to be. The zeitgiest wills it that the skin you expose in these spaces be a mere flash. It is preferred that the flash be what used to be called a ‘bon mot,’ a  ‘good word,’ ( – hence the title of this blog, though I often go on at length – ), a single slice of truth cake, a pearl of great price, or, at the very least, a hoot.

The enforcement of the brevity is, on the Facebook status update, a matter of peer pressure. It’s good to be terse. If you can ‘put chaos into fourteen lines,’ try whacking it down to haiku size. A limerick or a cinquain feels a bit indulgent in that small square of of personal turf. I’ve seen the frost accrue on those who transgress. I’ve read the scathing, sneering, arched eyebrow scolding disapprobation heaped upon those offerings that exceed the limits, both in length and pointedness. Who enjoys having their pith be found wanting? The very marrow of one’s being, the reason you got out of bed this morning, or the epiphany you had in dreams or while driving is under attack. Or, as in my case, quite often ignored. Boo hoo. Sniff.

I do not tweet. I need the wide open spaces to express myself. I admire brevity, but admire even more the music of the language, no matter what is said. That’s why I love Lynn’s essays in a bottle so much. She sounds just great. It’s afterward that what she actually said must be made to stand for something I believe in, something human. Sometimes it does; sometimes it doesn’t.

Now that the winter break is very nearly over, and I must return to the studio to see if I can still do it, –  get the dancers off the ground -, my time to exercise my verbal voice will shrink and I’ll have less time for expansive bouts of typing. I have ideas all stored up for another novel or two. I can hear the characters arguing in my head. There are short stories in need of revision and in need of composition. My inner dialogue is all ramped up. Can I still even play the goddamned piano? I’ve merely picked at my guitar. Yet music is where I make my living. I chose it; I must work it. No regrets, really. The environment in which I work is crammed with beauty and daily daring-do. My next novel or story will have to wait out the interregnum. I am entering the zone of enforced brevity. Though I can’t totally drive the voices underground, I can let them argue amongst themselves while I take this important time out.

That’s what I expect to happen; sometimes it does not. Sometimes, the words cannot be bottled. Sometimes they just come pouring out. The battle for concentration is sometimes pitched and smoky.
But right NOW, I’ve got to get suited up for it and out the door.