#providing both history/trauma and the tools of transformation is also seen with Delta Slim

[seaglassdinosaur]

The guitar! The guitar belonging to the Twins’ abusive father and passing it onto Sammie! The one that to Smoke represents a generational curse and something they should shun and bury. He and Stack couldn’t cut the pain out of themselves, nor the struggles they’ve experienced as Black men in America, but Smoke thinks he can prevent it from being spread, if only Sammie will give up the Blues, become a respectable musician, and bury that fucking guitar.

Passing on the guitar is indicative of the older generation passing down trauma and history, but it’s also providing tools of transformation. Smoke and Stack couldn’t make anything of the guitar, nor spin their pain into art, but Sammie could.

In Sammie’s hands, that curse, the pain they carry becomes music and connection. Sammie has a way to process their suffering and struggle, and sings about love, sings about his own strained relationship with his father, and sings about the pull he feels between propriety and passion. He sings about culture. The guitar is more than just their family history, it’s their people’s history, and while Sammy cannot erase history, neither can he ignore it; he refuses to bury the guitar.

The idea Smoke pushes Sammie toward is that if it’s possible, it’s a blessing to cast off our painful, ugly history. To escape that history is to find freedom in the world.

But Sammie disagrees. He inherits the same history as them, the same connection to the evil of his uncle, the same ancestry and the guitar. Instead of running from it, trying to assimilate and be a ‘proper’ Black man as Smoke insists, he leans into his heritage, leans into all that impropriety, that history, and rebuilds that fucking guitar. The haunting instrument that’s brought them so much trauma and trouble, that Sammie set aside for so long—it’s been tucked away in a case as he aged, but was never let go of. It’s always ready to be played, always within arms reach. His pain, his past, his people, Sammie carries them with for the rest of his life.