Levity re brevity

Here is Play On! again, but cut down to pocket size. Shorter is not necessarily sweeter. Riding by the old Winter Park High School football practice field, I recall many 1930s hot sweaty late summer afternoons when I picked myself up from the sandspurs and dirt after having been clobbered. Playing football teaches a kid a few niceties about unavoidable verismo — toughness in the face of change doesn't call for meanness, but life-preserving resilience.The French have a saying, "The more things change, the more they remain the same." Change is the way of life.

At my age, I should be used to it. My hope is that I stay around awhile longer and manage to evolve even more!

Long ago, I finished perfecting my IQ. Now I'm going to work on my looks.

More than a quarter century ago, I was asked to write here a weekly newspaper column of some 1,200 words.

Under the name, "Play On!," I have produced an unbroken string of columns whose words now total more than 1,700,000. (Not counting reviews I've written of musical performances.)

My cerebrum has gotten so used to cranking out 1,200-word segments that beloved wife is wary when she asks me early mornings, "How are you?," lest I give her a 1,200-word assessment!

And so it is come to pass that I have been asked to curtail my venerable column from 1,200 words per week to 500.

At first glance, I might have thought that my work would be reduced to 5/12ths its former onerousness. But the business of miniaturization carries with it its own arcane miseries.

You may have heard about the guy who wrote a letter to a friend saying, "If I had had more time, I would have written you a shorter letter."

Being succinct is harder than being "wordy" and requires more patience, care and time.

Brevity is made more difficult because it necessarily entails eliminating literary inventions of the author, creations that he may have fallen in love with. Whereas words can stack up toward infinity, the downside limit is zero.

Compressing into smaller space what one has written is less and less possible as space evanesces — and when no room is left, nothing more can be said.

Somewhere along the line, a writer reaches the moment of decision when brevity begins to annihilate comprehension.

To this old Winter Parker, compromise is a dirty word that is too often present in today's confusing palaver.

Further downsizing the cerebral input that has shaped Play On! throughout the years is a daunting task.

Sadly, every writer must remind himself occasionally that he does not own the newspaper.

As you get grayer and more philosophical, you realize the fact that you don't own much of anything — at best you are the custodian of such things as houses, automobiles and newspaper spaces.

I am pleased indeed that you and I shall still have some good times to spend together —briefer though they will be!