Epigrammatic

I haven’t seen you around for a while, he said.

That’s true,came the reply. Were you busy or did you just forget about me?

I think a bit of both, maybe not being sure how I stood with you?

Why? You know that you could never be out of favour with me? 

Why are we talking like we are at a Victorian  gathering?

I don’t know, I guess long absences tend to awkward formality?

That is definitely worthy of a Victorian epigram, he said.

We agreed. 

An imaginary conversation like this happens in my brain often. I find that living with other people in me makes for a great teleportation device and a time machine in one. I can go anywhere and be anyone. 

So the same morning  when I was ‘epigramming’ ,(this word is not found in the dictionary, but I feel rebellious: if I can be instagramming I most certainly can be epigramming!) I watched  a YouTube video of Lin  Manuel Miranda ( he of Hamilton fame) where he was talking about a book collection  of his tweets. 

And that led me to start thinking about tweets as the modern  version of aphorisms and epigrams that wits of yore would toss off casually at a soirée.

A tweet is of course more deliberate  and has an opportunity to be edited before it goes into the aether. 

The epigram would need to be reasonably spontaneous and to context. Even if you had in mind constructed it beforehand , you couldn’t just fling it into the gazpacho when you had already moved  onto entrees.

A tweet is not an exclamation point. It is more of a colon. Something to be expected after the first intake of breath.

There are of course spontaneous tweeters.

The most notable among them being the 43rd President of the United States of America , Donald Trump.

He tweets with no aforethought . ( Does such a word exist? It should.) And so the spelling , the gaffes and the blatant untruths abound in his rants. Consistent and well planned liars make the implausible real. Trump makes no sense . But that is how he is.

His tweets are  like premature ejaculations: too soon  and totally self absorbed

But in Tweets, there  is no consideration given  to wit. 

In the old days when to be a wit was an honourable ambition, the most dreaded misfortune that could befall an aspiring wit was to somehow say something so improper and non-apropos that people would shun you afterwards. 

You may have been called a Dimwit or a Nitwit.

The word Twit , presumably derived  from the epithets above, is used often . Sometimes affectionately as in a wife discussing her husband to her friend. Or a father tousling his child’s hair and saying ‘ you are a right little twit aren’t you.’ But the slangs is often  used to deride .

Do not confuse Twit with Twat. Twat is somewhat vulgar pejorative.

So most tweets are devoid of wit. At 280 characters,you could easily spell out 30 to 40 words in one tweet. (Simple words, not sesquipedalian ones which may exhaust the limit quickly.) And that was more than adequate for wittiness. 

And you do not,unlike  DT,want to continue on to another tweet to complete your thought. That would be circumlocutory. 

As we know brevity is the soul of wit.

Old Bill Shakespeare said that. (Of course the irrepressible Ms Dorothy Parker paraphrased that best when she said Brevity is the soul of lingerie!)

Implying that brevity is a measure of intelligence. 

And DT doesn’t possess that particular quality.

So while we can debate whether Twitter came  from the word ‘Twit’, the creatures of Twitter would protest that it was to do with avian language hence their blue ‘tweetybird’ symbol.

So birdbrains and DT wander around tweeting . And there is nary an epigram in sight.