A-Twitter

Not long ago, I had a conversation with Westchester collagist Nancy Egol Nikkal — home in Hastings-on-Hudson, studio in the Media Loft in New Rochelle — a woman who is as comfortable discussing philosophy and literature as she is art.

She told me she and many of her artists-friends take great pleasure in Twitter — a vehicle for communication that I have never personally explored. Still, that doesn't mean I don't have some opinions on it. (If you're a reader of this blog, you know that lack of information or experience has never been a deterrent to my opining.)

It's not that I don't tweet, because I'm against Twitter. Indeed, I think it's a marvelous tool, particularly when no other means of communication exists. Think of the recent, aborted Iranian uprising. Without Twitter, we wouldn't have had a blow-by-blow account of what was happening. Now imagine if we had had Twitter as Alexander the Great — a great letter-writer, speech-maker, log-keeper and propagandist — conquered the Persian Empire. Or if Twitter had been with the soldiers on Omaha Beach. Heady stuff for historians.

But what may be a boon to one profession — there's even been a Twitter opera — has already proved tricky for another. Recently, The New York Times had a story about a Broadway casting director who got into trouble for her tweets about actors at auditions. You don't have to be an arts critic to know that simply because you're not right for one role doesn't mean you lack talent. By sending out tweets during auditions, she was prejudicing the chances of rejected performers getting other jobs.

My lack of interest in tweeting is both professional and philosophical. For one thing, there is a terrible air of desperation surrounding the media's use of it. "Follow us on Twitter!" now seems to end every newscast. (Why don't the anchormen and women just say, "Ooh, love me, love me, love me." ) Even John McLaughlin of the syndicated "The McLaughlin Group"— the grumpiest of grumpy old men, whom I adore — is on Twitter. Hey, if you're not on Twitter, you're not cool. You're out of the loop.

Yeah, right. Listen, young people — who use Twitter and Facebook for social networking — are not interested in old media. If artists want to use Twitter to exchange ideas and support one another, fine. But you'd have to show me the numbers that prove Twitter advances either network ratings or newspaper subscriptions.

The main reason I don't tweet is that I believe in what Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis once said: "I want to live my life, not record it."

If you're always busy observing what you're doing, you're not actually living in the moment doing it.

Yes, of course, a good deal of writing involves observation and reflection. But Ashton Kutcher letting the world know that he's having a bagel is hardly Emily Brontë. In the words of H.L. Mencken (or Truman Capote, I've seen the remark attributed to both): "That's not writing. It's typing."

In the end, what matters is not whether you tweet or send long missives. It's what you have to say and how you say it.