There are legends of people born with the gift of making music so true it can pierce the veil between life and death, conjuring spirits from the past and the future.
In seemingly any discussion of Sinners, someone invariably makes a reference to “that scene” or “that one scene”, which seemed almost immediately to be used as a commonly understood shorthand for the piercing of the veil at the juke joint.
Before the year is out, I’d just wanted briefly to mention Sinners, specifically in the context of how “that scene” transformed my understanding of the spiritual and cultural idea of ancestors, because what became vibrantly clear to me was that what’s happening when the veil is pierced is that everyone has access to their ancestors—by which I mean, or by which I took the movie to m…
There are legends of people born with the gift of making music so true it can pierce the veil between life and death, conjuring spirits from the past and the future.
In seemingly any discussion of Sinners, someone invariably makes a reference to “that scene” or “that one scene”, which seemed almost immediately to be used as a commonly understood shorthand for the piercing of the veil at the juke joint.
Before the year is out, I’d just wanted briefly to mention Sinners, specifically in the context of how “that scene” transformed my understanding of the spiritual and cultural idea of ancestors, because what became vibrantly clear to me was that what’s happening when the veil is pierced is that everyone has access to their ancestors—by which I mean, or by which I took the movie to mean, not just the obvious in that the musicians of the past are ancestors to the people in the juke joint but that the people in the juke joint are themselves ancestors to those musicians we glimpse of the future. It had never occurred to me before to think of ancestors as such a bidirectional continuum, but doing so through this scene made me have a much deeper appreciation for cultures that spiritually center ancestors. It’s not a framing meant solely to make you sit with who made you possible but to sit as well with who you will make possible. The temporal gate of “that scene” shows that the idea of ancestors is never only about what’s been but also about what will be, and this simply never occurred to me before Sinners.
Strangely, and this is what prompted me to try to get this down now despite the autistic burnout that’s making the cognitive task of writing so fucking painful, the other day I finished Becoming Kin by Patty Krawec, and I’ll just leave off here with the inciting remark.
Aanikoobijigan is the Ojibwe word for “great-grandparent” or “ancestor.” But it is also the word for “great-grandchild” or “descendant.” The word I would use to describe the person three generations before me and the person three generations after me is the same word and it connects seven generations. Aanikaw, the root word, refers to the act of binding or joining.
Originally published to bix.blog by Bix Frankonis. Comments and replies [by email](mailto:bix@slow.dog?subject=What ‘Sinners’ Taught Me) are welcome.