Wrangling the Uncertain: On Inviting Surprise Into Your Writing

We see it all the time. Politicians who deliberate on all sides of the big questions are seen as weak—thinkers instead of actors (as if to think were not a verb)—and are often accused of waffling. But for essayists the notion that deliberation is a problem is laughable, if by waffling we mean considering one side, then another. The verb to waffle does not, in fact, describe the central quest of the writer, nor the critically thinking politician.

What waffle actually means—aside from breakfast—is “to move in a side-to-side motion,” or “to speak vaguely or evasively,” or “to go on and on without clear point or aim.” Few literary artists worth their salt are vague, but some, particularly the sort who write in parallel or braided forms, do move from side to side.

The best essayists execute those moves with balletic prowess, leaping from one subject to another, leaving behind them a streak of light or fading shimmer of sound, connecting disparate thoughts, breaking indirectly into some kind of new awareness, but then questioning what they find there. The essayer does not so much waffle as baffle. From that confused wonderment emerges surprise.

Surprise itself is not remarkable. Surprise happens. We can’t fully plan for surprise, which is what is so… surprising. We can, however, expect surprise, desire surprise, make the invitation to ecstatic bewilderment an operative in our process. We train as writers in order to know what to do when surprise barges in.

In one of her many essays about Detroit, Aisha Sabatini Sloan invites surprise by going on a ridealong with her police officer cousin. Sabatini Sloan is a theory-trained artist and her cousin is a career cop. The writer is Black and Italian, and her cousin is from the white side of the family. They both crossed many lines in this endeavor. In doing so, the author has to wrangle with the uncertain:

There is an implicit understanding among people who love Detroit that you shouldn’t talk shit. And I love Detroit more than I do most places in the world. A sense of possibility and kindness emanates from all that chaos in a way that’s hard to explain. But censoring trouble doesn’t make it go away. James Baldwin and the Buddhists have long argued that healing results only from staring struggle straight in the face. The late philosopher and activist Grace Lee Boggs spoke of Detroit as a kind of ground zero upon which to visualize a new order. So here goes.

I quote this passage from an essay entitled “D Is for the Dance of Hours” from Sabatini Sloan’s book Dreaming of Ramadi in Detroit, where the author has set the uncertain on the table. I want to write about this beloved place, she tells us, but in doing so I have to show you some things that might not lead you to love the place, too. She wants to protect her dear place from the possibility of our disaffection, or even worse, our fear and hatred.

And yet she knows she won’t be able to come to anything new without taking us through. Her love is deepened and complicated by the potential of our hate. She is uncertain of the outcomes here. She can’t control what will happen if she lets us see her city through all her own complications, but none of us will “visualize a new order” without moving through.

Sabatini Sloan’s essay goes on to take account of the city through the view of her cousin’s squad car, responding to all manner of surprise, the ride giving her the “not-me” view of her beloved city, versions she could not have conjured without movement in and out of other people’s stories. She also braids the city stories with a thread that has to do with music, but not with the famous Motown voices. The music that holds her city together is classical symphony and opera.

She uses opera to tell a part of her father’s story as well as to resee her family city in terms of something contrary to the canned Detroit narrative, the story she hopes her essay will refute. She uses symphonic music as a disjointed soundtrack. “On a prolonged summer visit to Detroit three years ago,” she writes, “I would play classical music in the car while running errands. Each time I turned on the stereo, the world seemed to click—to become suddenly whole.” The description that follows illuminates the common and amplifies the shifting tones of living in this place, this moment:

Colors pair best with their opposites: turquoise and vermillion, blood red and new-growth green. In this way, the east side of Detroit is complemented by music that comes from worlds away: Burned wood and the entrance of the conductor. Overgrown grass and the sweep of a violin bow. A baby carriage tipped over in an abandoned lot and the hush that comes between a song’s end and the applause.

When she rescored the space of her exploration, Sabatini Sloan’s story changed. In order to write about her east side of Detroit, Sabatini Sloan had to actively inhabit the actual character space of her exploration. She had to surprise herself with the tension and discomfort of re-witnessing the sensate terrain she already knew well. She had to act in order to understand, but the consequences of action are always uncertain.

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