Introduction
“People know what they do; frequently they know why they do what they do; but what they don't know is what what they do does.”(1) In this spirit, knowing roughly what it is I am doing, having at least devoted a good deal of thought to why I am doing it, and not daring to dwell on the spectre of future consequences, I do hereby inaugurate the blog known as Wolf’s Tone. My gaze is fixed forward…
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I start this blog with four primary purposes in mind. First of all to create a neutral space which I hope will foster creativity and the synthesis of ideas; second, to develop my craft of writing; third, to write for an “audience,” which is to say that other people will at least have the option to read my writing without my individual consent; and fourth, to begin creating a digital portfolio which may serve, in some small way, as a record of what I’ve thought and when and how I’ve expressed it. I entrust my words to the electron ether, for solar flares, Russian bots, and future generations alike to do with them what they please.
I imagine that the content of Wolf’s Tone will be a catalogue of whatever happens to be persistently on my mind at a given time. I have set myself no guidelines for what to post, nor have I given any thought to what message the blog as a whole should convey, except that it should faithfully reflect its author. Likely the blog will be a collection of my reflections and opinions on the topics that most interest me: international relations, global politics, the media, architecture, philosophy. I hope it will also include reviews, diary-like entries, and the occasional personal reflection. I tend to be verbose, and am inclined more towards fully-realized essays than traditional blog posts. The posting may therefore not be regular or frequent. But I hope to write pieces both short and long, as well as to experiment with different formats, genres, and styles. Short articles on a common subject may be composed as series. I am also interested in collaborating with friends, whether as co-authors, through exchanges, or simply by “publishing” guest writers. I will count a blog that defies clear characterization as success over the opposite.
I have enabled comment sections, message-submission forms, and social media sharing for all posts, and made my contact information publicly available. Any and all criticism or commentary will be gratefully received, though I have no particular expectations in that area.
Let me briefly address these words’ physical surroundings. I designed the website that hosts Wolf’s Tone before it was clear I would ever have anything to post there. If I have a fifth, somewhat less grand motivation to add to the four stated above, it is to indulge my love of design and the aesthetics of the written word. Know that while the essays you read here are almost certainly the fruits of dissatisfaction and cynicism, they appear on your screen swaddled in a labor of love. The aesthetic details into which I have put considerable thought—the page layout, the fonts, the use of images and color, and so on—also provide a welcome safety net both for me and the for reader. If this post or any other should happen to be intolerably bad, deeply misguided, lame, or in some other way incompatible with your senses of decency and worth, simply retreat a few paces from your computer until the individual words can no longer be made out. The objectionable content will suddenly appear as pleasing to the senses as anything I have ever written.
Here is a final reason to have a blog, though not one I necessarily had in mind during the planning: in this age of endlessly editable Word documents and instant-sync cloud platforms, I think it is important to have somewhere to put one’s writing so that it can be definitively done. Otherwise, the things one writes will remain at the mercy of every momentary whim during every retrospective read-through, and will never, ever be done. The digital age has stripped personal writing of its bodily integrity; perhaps the refuge of a blog it will allow mine to recoup some of that lost sovereignty.
I owe debts greater than I could ever hope to repay to many other close friends and family members, a fact I seldom find the words to admit. I am motivated by the thought that they might be reading.
https://etymology.github.io/posts/rehearsal/
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(1) Attributed to Michel Foucault
WOLFE TONE (born Theobald Wolfe Tone, 1763–1798) Irish republican and revolutionary; leader and martyr of the 1798 Irish Rebellion.
WOLF TONE /wʊlf toʊn/ an undesirable resonance inadvertently produced on stringed instruments; silenced through the use of a WOLF ELIMINATOR.
WOLF’S TONE the style in which, for better or worse, these pieces are written.
[A blog project by WOLF HERTZBERG for wolfhertzberg.com]
