have been thinking.. hadestown and sinners are so, so intertwined as stories and its honestly beautiful. they tell such similar stories.
stories inherently abt Black music and Black culture and Black labor. and the horror when those things are exploited and used and destroyed, but. stories still abt the beauty in that music and culture.
stories with a boy. some call him naive but with his life he couldn't be. stories about boys with a guitar, and a magic to them. boys who could heal the world with their songs. boys who healed old wounds.
stories with a girl that boy loves. a girl who softens for him and finds love in a night with him, a girl who he makes feel lovely.
that boys song brings the world back to Life, and for a moment - everyone dances, and the joy is real, and there is no danger. but the song ends when a white man comes calling.
a white man who promises eternal life in death, in eternal night, who promises he'll save you. who says it will only hurt for a moment, and never again. a white man who erases you to make you be apart of him.
a dance where that white man is in the center and the Black people hes "saved" dance like corpses around him, their heads hung down and all the spirit gone from them.
you try and save the ones you love most from their fate, but - you can't. damn, you can't. you look back. and you let them go, to live an awful half life forevermore.
a boy being held by a white man, who tells him to sing him a song before he kills him. like hes a songbird. and that boy escapes.
no girl, no family left. the boy wanders this earth alone. but he still sings. wherever he is now. he grows old alone. and its a sad song, its a tragedy. but for a day, forever ago?
goddamn, he lived. the people who are dead now lived.
and wasn't that worth it all?
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
theartofmadeline
