on certainty

the price of nonfiction is a claim to certainty. it is its risk. an arrangement of facts becomes a symphony, refined & sure of itself. but what if it were recorded improvisation, instead? what if we traded our positivist notions of truth for sincerity & honesty? in letting go of certainty, we invite possibilities for arriving at collective truth that lessens the aura of the individual genius who is singularly capable of delivering it. & this to me is the mode of truth-telling & storytelling that feels much better on the page & in our ears. tellingly, it’s not the form most rewarded in this moment. let the industry tell it, no one wants to read a book where the author is not lauded as some savant dispensing expertise, but is instead more interested in telling you up front that this unknowable & uncertain thing is where they want to think & maybe the point is not to create a commodity or make a scholarly contribution or win an award. because this unknowable & uncertain thing is not easy or “accessible” or obvious or always optimistic in the face of this horror show we are living—but it is probably where our thinking will need to go right now. liberation isn’t a self help manual. we have exhausted certainty. that is why i am once again thinking with trane.

(note to subscribers: I have a longer piece on (long)form that I’m conceiving as the third note of the black composition diary. I am working my way through an intense period of the manuscript that feels like a simultaneous undoing and building up, that feels vulnerable in the face of all the things I don’t and cannot know. what becomes of honesty in such a moment? and what form(s) should it take?)