Judith Hannan's Blog - Posts Tagged "writing"
Through The Eye of Twitter
A red tailed hawk landed on my fire escape the other day. I watched it for a minute and then thought, I have to tweet about this. There’s a red tailed hawk on my fire escape. It’s so beautiful, I wrote. What a poor representation of where my thoughts would have taken me if I hadn’t been called to my keyboard. I would have noticed the many ways the hawk and I were not alike even though we both live in New York City. I do not perch fifteen floors above the ground on narrow ledges. I don’t find that the best days for traveling are when the air is at its most restless. And so much more of what goes on around me remains unobserved while the hawk can see the twitch of a rat’s tail in the bushes. The hawk doesn’t stop mid-flight and tweet about his upcoming kill.
I started a Twitter account because I have a book to promote. Twitter, I was told, is like being at a cocktail party. You want to say interesting things and be in the midst of stimulating conversations. You want to reveal your life and likes. What you don’t want to do is promote your book all the time. That would be the equivalent of handing out business cards at your daughter’s wedding.
Thus the hawk tweet, which may or may not be interesting, but it’s part of a picture which lets followers know that I am an author who watches the natural world and writes about it, as well.
I started by job as a tweeter with great enthusiasm. It was a challenge going through my day and stumbling upon an idea for a tweet that seemed compelling enough to share. I say stumble because most of my tweets have been accidental, a radio show that makes me think of the homeless mothers I work with at the Children’s Museum of Manhattan, a dance concert I attended with my daughter, an art gallery opening. It’s not that I don’t want to share my life—I write memoir after all—but Twitter seems like a perfect venue for self-involved chirping as opposed to reflection, a place where a hawk is beautiful but not a meditative focal point.
The day I saw the hawk, I hadn’t tweeted anything in a while and I was starting to worry that I was the person at the cocktail party who comes with one or two topics of conversation but, after using those up, spends the rest of the evening smiling at the air as the melting ice in her drink makes the glass sweat and the napkin it rests in shred. So I didn’t take the time to balance the benefits of watching the hawk or telling followers I was watching a hawk. I felt once again like the mother of young children I used to be, a camera always interrupting the space between me and what they were doing so it was only in the pictures and the videos that I experienced the actual moment, which, of course, was now virtual. The hawk flew away, just as my kids’ plays and concerts and silly poses did, and I felt as if I had only been halfway present.
But isn’t that often the way it is for a writer? You sit on the subway or walk down the street or go to the supermarket and eavesdrop on conversations, notice what people are wearing, or observe the mannerisms of a group of teenagers just let out of school. You see an accident, an altercation, a place where two forces rub up against each other say, “That would make a good story,” or, “I should write about that.” You are already composing sentences while you watch.
Without distance of the observer, you will still notice that the person who serving you your tea at the diner doesn’t look as good this morning as she usually does; you will be aware of every word—wise and stupid—that you say during a fight with your son; you will see every detail of the hawk’s feathers. But when you go to tell the story, the details will elude you because you will have taken no verbal pictures. The places where you record those “I have to write about it” moments—a back pocket notebook, a phone, a receipt in the bottom of your bag, or a corner of your brain—will be blank.
So it’s true that, because of Twitter, I didn’t fully enter in an experience with the hawk. But then again, here I am writing about it, which may never have happened if I hadn’t tweeted in the first place.
You can follow me @judithhannan.
I started a Twitter account because I have a book to promote. Twitter, I was told, is like being at a cocktail party. You want to say interesting things and be in the midst of stimulating conversations. You want to reveal your life and likes. What you don’t want to do is promote your book all the time. That would be the equivalent of handing out business cards at your daughter’s wedding.
Thus the hawk tweet, which may or may not be interesting, but it’s part of a picture which lets followers know that I am an author who watches the natural world and writes about it, as well.
I started by job as a tweeter with great enthusiasm. It was a challenge going through my day and stumbling upon an idea for a tweet that seemed compelling enough to share. I say stumble because most of my tweets have been accidental, a radio show that makes me think of the homeless mothers I work with at the Children’s Museum of Manhattan, a dance concert I attended with my daughter, an art gallery opening. It’s not that I don’t want to share my life—I write memoir after all—but Twitter seems like a perfect venue for self-involved chirping as opposed to reflection, a place where a hawk is beautiful but not a meditative focal point.
The day I saw the hawk, I hadn’t tweeted anything in a while and I was starting to worry that I was the person at the cocktail party who comes with one or two topics of conversation but, after using those up, spends the rest of the evening smiling at the air as the melting ice in her drink makes the glass sweat and the napkin it rests in shred. So I didn’t take the time to balance the benefits of watching the hawk or telling followers I was watching a hawk. I felt once again like the mother of young children I used to be, a camera always interrupting the space between me and what they were doing so it was only in the pictures and the videos that I experienced the actual moment, which, of course, was now virtual. The hawk flew away, just as my kids’ plays and concerts and silly poses did, and I felt as if I had only been halfway present.
But isn’t that often the way it is for a writer? You sit on the subway or walk down the street or go to the supermarket and eavesdrop on conversations, notice what people are wearing, or observe the mannerisms of a group of teenagers just let out of school. You see an accident, an altercation, a place where two forces rub up against each other say, “That would make a good story,” or, “I should write about that.” You are already composing sentences while you watch.
Without distance of the observer, you will still notice that the person who serving you your tea at the diner doesn’t look as good this morning as she usually does; you will be aware of every word—wise and stupid—that you say during a fight with your son; you will see every detail of the hawk’s feathers. But when you go to tell the story, the details will elude you because you will have taken no verbal pictures. The places where you record those “I have to write about it” moments—a back pocket notebook, a phone, a receipt in the bottom of your bag, or a corner of your brain—will be blank.
So it’s true that, because of Twitter, I didn’t fully enter in an experience with the hawk. But then again, here I am writing about it, which may never have happened if I hadn’t tweeted in the first place.
You can follow me @judithhannan.
