The Craft

I saw Sinners last night. Amazing movie, 6/5 stars and probably the best movie I’m going to watch all year. I’m going to do a spoilery discussion of it at some point soon, I think, but I just want to nibble at something that stuck with me strongly.

To be as vague as I can be, it’s the scene where Stack, Slim and Sammy are in car. Things are said, music is played, and something in me bubbled up. It was the the only time I cried outright (but not the only time I teared up), and in its wake I spent a good chunk of last night thinking about the craft.

To be clear, the “craft” is a shorthand I decided on a few seconds ago, for something I don’t quite have a name for – I just think of it as that nebulous, all-encompassing desire to make something. It lives a little differently in every home, but every home has it as a resident; without that, it’s not a home – it’s just a house, or a building. For me, I know I’ve experienced something great when the craft calls to me; usually, it’s in the form of a ttrpg I’d like to run.

The craft is a core component of Sinners, as well. I suspect, in fact, that it might be the initial seed for the movie, or at the very least in the water that helped it sprout and bloom. And it most certainly was on the set for the entire movie, playing traveler and destination in turn. The craft speaks and, if you listen, teaches you lessons. Lessons about taking what’s in you and transmuting it into something bigger and better. Lessons about how you look, and live, and love when the craft can work with you, and through you, and in you… and what it looks like on the other side, when that’s been taken from you, and you can’t feel it.

Anyway… go watch Sinners, y’all.